Cheryl Schatz

Charis,

Does the Bible identify the moment sin entered the world?

I think God is quite clear when he identifies to Adam the reason why his actions (his sin) brings a curse upon the earth and the animals.  It is because Adam sinned by omission and commission.  He was commanded to guard the garden and instead of guarding and protecting the garden against the enemy, he listened to the voice of his wife while she was being deceived.  This was considered treason as God brings the blood of the victims upon the head of the watchman on the wall.  Adam also ate of the fruit willfully and without being deceived.  This was his act against God and both sins brought a curse from God on this world.

I do not think that we can equate “not good” with sin.  Rather, I would think that God’s saying that Adam alone was “not good” was a statement that God intended male and female all along to work together and have a special intimacy together.  A human without intimacy is “not good”.

You wrote:

Whyte quotes Behman as teaching,—
“There must have been something of the nature of a stumble, if not an actual fall, in Adam while yet alone in Eden . . . Eve was created [he should say, “elaborated”] to ‘help’ Adam to recover himself, and to establish himself in Paradise, and in the favor, fellowship and service of his Maker.”

The problem with this is that sin is a very serious issue.  God identifies sin for us because he does not want us to have fellowship with him broken.  If Adam stumbled while being alone, then God would have to identify that and tell us that there was sin in the “camp” before God brought the woman to Adam.  God certainly could have told us that Adam was already a sinner and that Eve would help to recover Adam in his sin, but God didn’t say that.  Also if Eve’s place was to help Adam come out of his sin, then where does that leave Jesus?  Isn’t Jesus our only Redeemer?  One human cannot account for the sin of another and if Adam was already a sinner then no “mere” human could help him but the God-man Redeemer.

Since God only identified a “not good” issue not a “sin” issue, then we can know that there is an issue of incompleteness not of raw sin.  If I am wrong about this, I welcome the opportunity to see from the inspired words in the text that I am wrong.  Where else did God ever identify “sin” as “not good” rather than calling it “transgression”, “sin”, etc?  I haven’t seen any evidence of this so I think it is much safer to stay with what the text actually says.