As we are slowly unwrapping the dynamic between the truth and the lie in the Genesis narrative of the fall, we have found that the lie about God and the lie about us is overcome by the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.

God warned Adam and Eve that eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil would bring death. Consequently, Adam and Eve passed from the realm of life, which is relationship with God, into the realm of death, which is separation from God. They passed from the realm of innocence into the realm of judgment, where the knowledge of good and evil rather than love of God reigns supreme.

We cannot simply walk with God and enjoy his presence as the most relaxing and refreshing part of the day. Instead, we hide to conceal our emptiness and shame. We now relate to God, ourselves, and others through the evaluating filter of our knowledge of good and evil. Nothing in our relationships is direct or innocent; it is all filtered. Because the worth we receive in our fallen state is conditional, our strategies for getting life always require hiding and performing. We try to hide our shame from ourselves, from each other, and from God. Because we view God with others through the filter of our knowledge of good and evil, we view them as judges from whom we must hide and before whom we must perform. Our lives of innocence have been replaced by lives of hiding.

Our strategy for getting worth is performance – to display to others what we ourselves judge as “good” while we hide what we assume others will judge as “evil” in us. So we try to conceal our nakedness – who we really are – under a covering that hides all that we think is liable to judgment and that displays all that we think is viable as a source of approval. Living out of our knowledge of good and evil, we display and strive to acquire all we judge as good. And we suppress and strive to avoid all that we judge to be evil.

We are created to experience unconditional and unsurpassable worth. We simply cannot receive or give unconditional and unsurpassable love when we are performing before and hiding from the One from whom we are supposed to freely receive love as well as those to whom we are supposed to freely give love. Only when we yield to God’s Spirit and resolve that Jesus uncovers the true God and true humanity, only to the extent that we crucify the old self and live in faith, and only when we stop eating from the forbidden tree do we begin to experience the fullness of life and love God created us and saved us to have.

When our judgment against God turns into judgment about ourselves, producing shame, we engage in another judgment, this time against others or against God. This is simply another way we hide. We blame others. Instead of returning to trust and vulnerable honesty, Adam and Eve acted out of their own self-interest and continued to judge rather than humbly letting God be the judge. Hence, they tried to protect themselves by blaming others. To feed our emptiness, which the knowledge of good and evil itself created, we must rely on our knowledge of good and evil and seek to justify ourselves. We must therefore hide by rationalizing ourselves and blaming others. We judge others harshly in order to judge ourselves with approval.

The half-truth of the serpent’s lie is that God was indeed threatened when Adam and Eve acquired their forbidden knowledge, but he was not threatened for himself, he was threatened for us. His goal of replicating his triune love to and through humanity was threatened. If humanity became immortal in their state of separation from God, in the prison of knowing good and evil, it would have quite literally been eternal hell. So as an act of mercy as well as judgment, the couple was banished from Eden. The final manifestation of the realm of death in the Genesis 3 narrative is Adam and Eve’s banishment from Paradise.

Our sin opened the floodgates for powers of destruction to corrupt everything. This is our curse. Whereas we were created to participate in the ecstatic love or our Creator, in Adam we participate in the destructive accusations of the Accuser (1 John 5:19, 2 Cor. 4:4).

The world changed dramatically with the fall, to be sure, but God did not change (Mal. 3:6). Despite the fall and its consequent curse, however, God’s love was not deterred. God is love.

God’s mercy is evident as well, even in the midst of the curse. To restore union with us, God himself bears the guild and punishment of our crime. Christ pleads the case of sinners, as it were, before the justice of the Father. In doing this, Christ breaks the Enemy’s  deception about who God is and reveals himself to be the God of unsurpassable love and mercy.

To do this, the Son of God would have to go to Golgotha and experience nothing less than hellish separation from the Father to accomplish what God’s love had set out to accomplish. Christ dealt a fatal blow to the accuser who makes us accusers (Rev. 12:10-11). But God was willing to do this. Indeed, despite the anguish, he considered it joy (Heb. 12:2).

The only weapon the powers ever had to use against us was our own sin. But for all who will accept it, his mercy always triumphs over judgment (James 2:13).

Boyd, Gregory A. Repenting of Religion – Turning from Judgment to the Love of God. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2004.