Forever Home in the Eternal Family of God

The First Eden, The First Adam

God, Creator and Sustainer of all things, is Spirit with masculine and feminine characteristics.  When He invented human beings, He created them male and female so that when they come together as one, they would reflect His character.  God made Adam and Eve in His spiritual image and placed them in the paradise of the Garden of Eden where they enjoyed perfect fellowship and harmony with Him and with one another.    

Adam and Eve were not fashioned as programmed robots.  In His sovereignty, God made them with free moral agency, the ability to choose between right and wrong, light and darkness, His way or their own way.  God desired loving relationship with humanity, but this would not be possible if their love was forced; there had to be an alternative for their love to genuine. 

Yahweh planted two trees in Eden.  The Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  He told them not to eat of the second tree, but Satan tempted them and they gave in to his deception.  The enemy of our souls lured them with godhood, and Adam and Eve took the bait.  The deceiver planted seeds of doubt in their brains which made them question whether or not God was hiding the good life from them. 

Satan was tempting them with a distorted version of what they already had.  Adam and Eve enjoyed perfect unity with God and were to function in His authority, entrusted with dominion and stewardship over all creation.  They were like God, but the serpent tempted them with a desire to be God.  There’s a vital distinction there.

Of Satan the Scriptures say:

How you have fallen from heaven,
    morning star, son of the dawn!
You have been cast down to the earth,
    you who once laid low the nations!
You said in your heart,
    “I will ascend to the heavens;
I will raise my throne
    above the stars of God;
I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly,
    on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon.^[a]
 I will ascend above the tops of the clouds;
    I will make myself like the Most High.”
 But you are brought down to the realm of the dead,
    to the depths of the pit.

–Isaiah 14:12-15

And of the First Adam and the Second Adam (Christ), the Scriptures say:

So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit.  The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual.  The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven.  As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man.

–I Corinthians 15:45-49

Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—

To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come.

But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!

–Romans 5:12-15