Could Adam have appealed the verdict?
by Russell Grigg
Usually, in countries not run by a dictator, a person who has been found guilty
of any offence has the right to appeal to a higher court against his or her conviction.
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Genesis chapters 1–3 record that God created Adam, gave him the Garden of
Eden to live in, told him he could freely eat the fruit from any tree there except
from one called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and warned him that
if he did eat from that tree the penalty would be death. This was not advice, but
a command. The tree was not poisonous; it was disobedience that had death in it.
Adam (and his wife, Eve) ate the forbidden fruit. God summoned them, interrogated
them, and pronounced the sentence of death. So could Adam have appealed this verdict?
The offence
What Adam and Eve did was not a minor matter, like for example our incurring a parking
fine. Adam had been clearly given one law to obey, ‘Don’t eat that particular
fruit.’ Equally clearly he had been told the penalty, ‘If you do, you
will die.’ He could not claim that the law was unjust or that his situation
was unreasonable.
The prohibition was a simple and fair test of his (and Eve’s) obedience to
and love for God,1 and a
means by which they might acknowledge that God ruled over them. Clearly they were
being tested.2
The Judge
Was it appropriate for God to exercise the role of judge with respect to Adam and
Eve?
Answer: Yes. From a human point of view, the creator of a game, say like
Monopoly, has the absolute right to decide the rules and plays of the game. As Adam
and Eve’s Creator and Lawgiver, God also had the absolute right to be their
Judge. However, regardless of any human rationalization we may envisage, Almighty
God, for no other reason than that He is Almighty God, had the absolute right to
be Adam’s Lawgiver and to set any rules He chose (consistent with His holy,
righteous and just character) for Adam and Eve to obey.
Note that God had not sought their downfall. On the contrary, He had made obedience
both easy and pleasant. He had ‘created man without a sinful nature, placed
him in an ideal environment, provided for all his temporal needs, endowed him
with strong mental powers’; He had given him ‘work to engage his hands
and his mind, provided a life-partner for him, warned him of the consequences of
disobedience, and entered into personal fellowship with him.’3
Christ (‘the last Adam’, as He is called in 1 Corinthians 15:45) too was tempted by Satan,4 but He overcame the tempter, thereby wresting
from the devil ‘that dominion over the whole race which he had secured by
his victory over the first human pair.’5
The interrogation
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In most human courts, by far the most time is spent in establishing what the facts
were of past events, and sometimes errors occur in evaluating the evidence given.
However, God did not need the divine equivalent of a human trial, either to establish
the facts, or to evaluate them, or to pronounce the penalty. Being omniscient, He
knew what Adam and Eve had done the moment they did it. Not only so, but God knew
what the facts would be even before they happened. Before He created them, God had
known that Adam and Eve would disobey Him and fall into sin.
When God next appeared in the Garden, the consequences of sin were already in operation
in Adam and Eve—shame, guilt, and fear, shown in their hiding from God, with
whom they previously had had perfect fellowship. He began by calling Adam, the authority
figure in the family. God’s questions, ‘Where are you?’ etc. were
not to obtain information, but were rhetorical, possibly in order to encourage Adam
(and then Eve) to confess their sin.
The defence
Was there any evidence that Adam could have put forward but didn’t?
Answer: No. Adam did not deny the facts. His only defence was both frivolous
and blasphemous, namely that Eve had given him the fruit, and that God was the one
who had given him Eve. So, if anyone was to blame, it was one or both of them! Eve,
in turn, blamed the serpent.6
The record shows that these were invalid excuses.
God had not allowed Satan to tempt Eve in the disguise of ‘an angel of light’
(2 Corinthians 11:14), whom she might have mistaken for a
divine emissary with new instructions, but rather in the form of a serpent, ‘a
creature, not only far inferior to God, but far below themselves.’ Thus ‘they
could have no excuse for allowing a mere animal to persuade them to break the commandment
of God. For they had been made to have dominion over the beasts, and not to take
their own law from them.’7
God had given His law to Adam, before Eve had been created. This suggests that Adam
had later passed it on to Eve, as she quoted the prohibition about eating the fruit
to Satan (Genesis 3:3), albeit with the addition about not touching
it. Adam might have said to her, ‘So don’t you even touch it.’
Be that as it may, they were both required to be subject to God’s authority.
The verdict and sentence
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With the pair finally acknowledging their guilt (Genesis 3:12–13), God pronounced sentence, sometimes
called ‘the curse’ (Genesis 3:14–19). This was to have consequences, not
only for Adam and Eve, but also for their descendants, that is, for all mankind.
The original warning had been, ‘Dying you shall die.’8
From that moment, their human bodies began to decay, and would eventually ‘return
to the dust’ (Genesis 3:19). Adam ‘received into his nature the
germ of death, the maturity of which produced its eventual dissolution into dust.’9
Eve was told that child-bearing would involve ‘pain’ and that her husband
would ‘rule over’ her. The ground was cursed, so that Adam’s work
from then on would involve ‘painful toil’. Originally they had been
given dominion over the earth (Genesis 1:28), but now all mankind would be in subjection
to the ground. ‘Everything injurious to man in the organic, vegetable and
animal creation, is the effect of the curse pronounced upon the earth for Adam’s
sin … consequently many things in the world and nature, which in themselves
and without sin would have been good for him, or at all events harmless, have become
poisonous and destructive since his fall.’9 Finally, Adam and Eve
were cast out of the Garden of Eden.
Was the penalty too harsh for such a ‘small’ offence?
Answer: No. The seriousness of an offence depends on the one offended.
Offence against a fly (for example) is much less serious than one against a man.
How much more then, offence against Almighty God! The motive for Adam and Eve’s
disobedience was not appetite, but pride—the ambition to be like God (Genesis 3:5). All sin is essentially rebellion against God’s
authority and His revealed will. The measure of God’s wrath against sin is
the measure of His holiness. And the measure of the penalty—death—was,
and is, the measure of the enormity of the offence of rebellion against God.
Was there a court of higher authority to which Adam could have appealed against
this sentence?
Answer: No. Almighty God,10
omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, is also the Most High God.11 He is also ‘the only true God’ (John 17:3). There is no higher authority than He.
What of God’s mercy?
God’s mercy can be seen in several aspects of this judgment:
- Knowing what would happen, God chose His Son, Jesus Christ, ‘before the foundation
of the world’ to be the means by which we could be redeemed from the results
of Adam’s and our own sin, and restored to Himself. (1 Peter 1:18–20; Revelation 13:8; Ephesians 1:4).
- God promisedAdam and Eve, and us, that the seed of the woman (the
virginally-conceived Jesus Christ) would ‘bruise the head’ of the serpent,
i.e. cause the ultimate downfall of Satan (Genesis 3:15).
- This was accomplished by Christ through His death on the cross for our sins, and
His Resurrection. Now, those who repent of their sins and have faith towards God
will, after death, be united with God and attain that state of holiness and fellowship
with God which Adam and Eve lost for us in the Garden of Eden.
Relevance for us
The Bible tells us that we too must all one day appear before God to be judged.
The Bible tells us that we too must all one day appear before God to be judged.
‘For it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment’
(Hebrews 9:27). God has told us that He will perform this
work of judgment through the Lord Jesus Christ. ‘For He has set a day when
He will judge the world with justice by the man He has appointed. He has given proof
of this to all men by raising Him from the dead’ (Acts 17:31).
Christians are those who, in this life, have already pleaded ‘Guilty’
to the charge of rebellion against God’s authority. However, they are able
to say, ‘My case has already been heard. On the cross, Jesus Christ was my
substitute (Isaiah 53:6). He accepted my guilt as well as the responsibility
for all my sins, and He paid in full the penalty that I deserve.’ He is now
our ‘advocate’ or defence lawyer (1 John 2:1). Believers have been pardoned eternally, and
will face no retrial.12
For them to be judged for sin again (their own or any ancestor’s) would be
double jeopardy.13 Instead
of a judgment of condemnation, Christians will face an assessment of reward.14,15
The unsaved will be judged by God’s record of their lives and their relationship
to Him (Revelation 20:12, 15). The opportunity to obtain mercy will
be over, and there will be no higher authority to whom anyone can appeal. For this
reason unbelievers would do well to heed the words of 2 Corinthians 6:2, ‘Now is the day of God’s
favour, now is the day of salvation.’
Acknowledgement:
Many thanks to Clarrie Briese, B.A., Diploma of Criminology (Cantab.), A.O., former
Chief Magistrate of NSW, Australia (see www.creation.com/briese),
and also to Christopher Wiltshire, LL.M., Th.C. (Moore College), for help with this
article.
References and notes
- Cf. ‘If you love Me, keep My commandments’ (John 14:15). Return to text.
- Cf. Genesis 22:1–18, where God tested the
faith of Abraham; and Exodus 16:4–5, where, concerning
the instructions to the Israelites about gathering manna in the wilderness, God
says: ‘I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions.’
Return to text.
- Thiessen, H.C, Lectures in Systematic Theology, Wm.B.
Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, USA, revised edition, p. 181, 1979.
Return to text.
- ‘in every way’ just as we are—yet was ‘without
sin’ (Hebrews 4:15). Return to text.
- Keil, C. and Delitzsch, D., Biblical Commentary on the
Old Testament, Vol. 1, The Pentateuch, trans. from the German by James Martin,
Wm.B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, USA, p. 93, 1968. Return
to text.
- By means of a supernatural miracle Satan used the serpent
to tempt Eve to eat the fruit (Genesis 3:1–6; Revelation 12:9,20:2).
Return to text.
- Ref. 5, pp. 93–94. Return to text.
- Translated in KJV, NIV, NASB, etc. as ‘surely die’
(Genesis 2:17). Return to text.
- Ref. 5, p. 105. Return to text.
- Hebrew: El-Shaddai, e.g. Genesis 17:1 ‘I am the Almighty God …
’. Return to text.
- Hebrew: El-Elyon, e.g. Psalm 78:35 ‘God Most High …’.
Return to text.
- Drawing from Isaiah 53:10; John 5:24; Romans 8:1; 2 Corinthians 5:21; Galatians 3:13; Hebrews 10:10–14;
1 Peter 2:24. Return to text.
- A legal term meaning that a person is immune from being judged
twice for the same offence. Return to text.
- Matthew 6:3–4, 20; 10:42; 25:34–40; Luke 19:11–27 cf. 1 Corinthians 3:11–15; 2 Corinthians 5:10; 9:6.
Return to text.
- Matthew 5:11–12; Luke 6:22–23; 2 Timothy 4:8; James 1:12. Return to text.
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