Fear No Fear

(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)

“but you shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.”“
Genesis 2:17

This is a negative commandment. It is the flip side to yesterday’s positive commandment. This is the CONSEQUENCE that will occur, should the positive command be broken. This is so important, that between the two verses the idea of NOT eating of this SINGLE tree is mentioned TWICE. First, humanity is told that they can eat of every tree as much as they want, whenever they want. Second, humanity is told that they cannot eat of this one single tree. Ever. This is a command given to the MALE, and not the FEMALE since the she had not yet separated from the he. There was only the one entity. She would then have received this command when HE shared it with her. She did not get it directly from God. She had second-hand information. This is a key point when it came to temptation in Genesis 3.

The tree of life is NOT MENTIONED in this restriction. There was no need since humanity was already immortal. Death was NOT part of creation. It had NO PLACE in the system that was functioning. There was NO temptation to eat of it, because it would give humanity NOTHING that they did not ALREADY have. The sage Ramban writes: ‘if Adam had not sinned he would have never died, since the higher soul bestows life forever, and the Will of G-d which is in him at the time of his formation would always cleave to him and he would exist forever… Know that composition indicates destruction only in the opinion of those wanting in faith, who hold that creation came by necessity. But in the opinion of men of faith who say that the world was created by the simple Will of G-d, its existence will also continue forever as long as it is His desire. This is clear truth. That being so, In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die means that then you will be condemned to die since you will no longer exist forever by My Will.’ This is also why those who believe in Jesus and abide in His Rest will still age (for all things of fallen creation die – our physical bodies which will return to their physical components), but to NOT have to deteriorate. We can live out our lives in wholeness and health because of what Jesus did, so we can do what we are called to do, and then give up our spirit and die (Romans 8:11; Matthew 27:50; Isaiah 40:31; 2 Timothy 4:7-8).

The promise is that if they eat of this tree, death would become part of their lives. In fact, it was so important that in the Hebrew it doesn’t read ‘surely die’. Instead, the exact wording is “for in the day that you eat of it, you will die die.” Young’s Literal translation has the end of the verse as “for in the day of thine eating of it — dying thou dost die.” This was ABSOLUTELY true, though not in the way that they thought once they chose to rebel and violate the command. So God was speaking perfect and absolute truth that humanity wasn’t totally understanding. This is also the opportunity the devil had to lie with A truth about death – this is his Modus Operandi. This is exactly the same way that he quoted scripture to Jesus, while at the same time misapplying it. A lie is never more effective than when it is truth misapplied, misquoted, and mishandled. The spiritual death of humanity was IMMEDIATE. This SPIRITUAL death (Romans 6:23) from Sin also led to the progressive strength of death itself, which led to their PHYSICAL death (James 2:26). God spoke total truth. In the most important way, they died that very day.

With this command, God was framing the authority humanity had by restricting them. Without restriction, authority has no weight. You CANNOT have dominion if there isn’t a way in which you can exercise self-control.

This isn’t about no free choice. Humanity HAD free choice. They could choose to obey or choose not to obey. We have always had that choice. It is how God presents His will (Deuteronomy 30:19). The question is only whether we will CHOOSE to obey the commands of God and do His will or if we will CHOOSE not to.

God was not restricting KNOWLEDGE. He was not keeping anything from them except ungodly things. By increasing their knowledge of GOOD by experiential revelation of God’s moral character, point of view, words, and nature; they would automatically also know about everything NOT good. Anything that showed up and was NOT from God or NOT aligned with His nature, moral character, point of view, or words could therefore be rejected, avoided, and stood against for being NOT GOOD or evil. If darkness is the absence of light, then by experiencing only light we de facto know what darkness is: any absence of that exists now. This is the journey into knowledge of all things that humanity was poised to make. There are no shortcuts to knowledge.

This negative commandment is the judgment for sin. Death is the judgment for sin. It was NOT lifted and it hung over every descendant of humanity – broken DNA (spiritual AND physical) breeds broken DNA because ALL LIVING CREATURES procreate according to their KIND. Adam and Eve end up dead and broken so all their children are inherently the same (like citizens of Z nation have a child who is automatically a citizen of Z nation as well – Romans 3:23). This is the price that Jesus paid. He took on the judgment for this broken command for ALL humanity, enabling anyone willing to receive to accept HIS nature to replace THEIR nature and therefore pass from DEATH to LIFE (John 3:16-18; 5:24).