Note: Be sure to read part one first.
The gospel begins with God. Faith presupposes Christ, the work of Christ is necessitated by man’s sin, and man’s sin is defined by God’s holy character. The context and backdrop of the entire gospel is therefore God Himself. Our study of the gospel of Eden must therefore begin with God.
As we are introduced to the garden narrative we immediately encounter the LORD God presented as the Creator of the heavens and the earth (2:4). In the next verse we find that God is not only the generator of creation, He is its sustainer as well. 2:5 makes clear that God not only created and ordered the conditions in which rain occurs, but is the one who actually causes it to rain. In just these first two verses God is established as absolutely sovereign over all subsequent events, environments, and entities.
This absolute sovereignty is further displayed in the creation of man in verse 7. From His prior creation (the dust of the ground) God fashions His masterpiece. It is a direct divine act (breathing) which imparts the very life which animates this creation. Man’s combined physical existence and ontological awareness is therefore a perpetual and undeniable stamp of his Maker’s ownership.[1] Every breath he draws testifies to the sovereign lordship of Yahweh-God.
The LORD God then plants a garden and puts Man there to work it and keep it (2:8, 15). As this garden home is described, God is continually presented as the absolute sovereign (2:8, 9, 15). The man’s garden existence is not only defined by the command of 2:15 (to which one could add the dominion mandate of 1:28 when reading the accounts in parallel), but also by the admonition of 2:16-17.[2] In this admonition the holy character of God is clearly revealed. There is a tree from which you must not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die. Therefore, whatever the tree of the knowledge of good and evil may be said to represent, it certainly represents an ethical test.[3] This test reveals God’s holy character in that the stakes are absolute. Deviation from the command brings death.[4] God’s perfect holiness is always displayed in His perfect justice (praise God His justice is not inconsistent with His grace!).
In verses 18-24 a new character enters the garden. Like with Adam, the creation of this new character is accomplished by the sole power of the LORD; save with one crucial difference. Rather than form the woman from the dust of the ground, God forms her from the body of Adam. This fact is deeply relevant to the subsequent events of chapter 3, as the creation order would have Adam exercising responsible headship and loving protection over his wife, a function he clearly fails to perform (3:12).
A casual reading of the text would seem to indicate that after the creation of the woman God takes a brief intermission. This notion is of course utterly unbiblical[5] and inconsistent with what we have already noted about God’s operational sovereignty over his creation. Yet the fact remains that in the text, the LORD is temporarily absent. He is not present (although He is mentioned scandalously in 3:1-5) until He quite literally thunders back onto the scene in 3:8.[6] His judicial return will be dealt with in future posts. At this point, it is crucial to note that the text has presented God as the sovereign creator, perpetual ruler, and holy lawgiver. These truths about God must be understood before sin, Christ, or faith may be understood. The garden narrative has therefore set the stage for the unfolding of the gospel. However, before grace can lift man up, sin must drag him down. In the next post we will move onto the second step in our gospel outline: man in the garden.
[1] Romans 9:20
[2] The first Adam’s combination of command and admonition finds significant parallel in the active and passive obedience of the Second Adam. Christ’s perfectly Law abiding life is the fulfillment of Adam’s charge and his sin-bearing death is the remedy for Adam’s failure.
[3] Gonzales writes that “…in order to prove man’s fealty and promote his ethical maturation, Yahweh-Elohim devises a probationary test (The Covenantal Context of the Fall, 19).” Meredith Kline calls the tree of the knowledge of good and evil the “Probation Tree (Kingdom Prolouge, 103-107).”
[4] “The severity of the curse answered to the gravity of the offense of covenant-breaking (Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 102).”
[5] Psalm 139:7 and Jeremiah 23:23 are indicative of the mountain of texts which testify to the omnipresence and omniscience of God.
[6] “The key phrase describing God’s approach through the garden, traditionally translated ‘in the cool of the day,’ should be rendered ‘in the Spirit of the day.’ ‘Spirit’ here denotes the theophanic Glory, as it does in Genesis 1:2 and elsewhere in Scripture. And ‘the day’ has the connotation it often has in the prophets’ forecasts of the great coming judgment (cf. also Judg 11:27 and 1 Cor 4:3). Here in Genesis 3:8 is the original day of the Lord, which served as the prototypal mold in which subsequent pictures of other days of the Lord were cast… On the original day of the Lord in Eden, God’s parousia-advent was in the theophanic mode of ‘the Spirit (Presence) of the day (of judgment).” Meredith Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 129.
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