Winning Life Coached by the Holy Spirit: The Fumble

Fall of Angels

As previously discussed angels were created to be the servants of God. However, God created them with free will. At some point, they were all given one command by God. Whatever the command was, those who obeyed became good angels. The disobedient, led by Lucifer, became the bad angels (demons or devils).

After the creation of man, the bad angels primary goal was to pull people away from God, severing the life of grace within them and breaking their relationship with God.

Fall of Man

When God placed Adam in the Garden, Adam only had a few simple things he had to do:

• Be fruitful and multiply; fill and subdue the earth.
• Rule over fish in the sea, birds in the sky, and every living creature that moves on the ground.
• Eat from any fruit tree in the garden.
• Do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
• Have friendship with God, walking and talking with Him daily.

Seems simple enough right? It must have been a little more complex, for God created Eve to be a helper for Adam in all his tasks.

Still seems pretty simple, except we’ve forgotten about the bad angels, led by Lucifer. Things were about to get pretty complicated.

From Genesis 3:1–8, Amplified Bible:

Now the serpent was more subtle and crafty than any living creature of the field which the Lord God had made. And he [Satan] said to the woman, Can it really be that God has said, You shall not eat from every tree of the garden?

And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat the fruit from the trees of the garden, Except the fruit from the tree which is in the middle of the garden. God has said, You shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.

But the serpent said to the woman, You shall not surely die, For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing the difference between good and evil and blessing and calamity.

And when the woman saw that the tree was good (suitable, pleasant) for food and that it was delightful to look at, and a tree to be desired in order to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she gave some also to her husband, and he ate.

Then the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves apronlike girdles.

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

We can see that our first team members made some mistakes.

• First, Satan questioned God’s Words to Adam and twisted them slightly when they were repeated to Eve; Eve listened.
• Second, Eve choose to engage in dialogue with evil, and not only did she engage in dialogue, but she provided a plethora of embellishment to God’s Word.
• Then, Satan again challenged God’s Words in a way to raise doubt as to whether They were really true, and again Eve listened.
• Fourth, Eve took her eyes off God and His Command, and she looked at what God had forbidden, considering it and seeing only the positive aspects with no thought of negative outcomes.
• Finally, she choose to disobey God; not only did she choose to disobey, but she led Adam into disobedience as well.

Admittedly, we could ask where Adam was that he allowed his wife to engage in dialogue with an animal. We could ask why he didn’t overhear what was going on and intervene to stop Eve. We could also ask why he didn’t refuse Eve’s request. While these are all logical questions, they are irrelevant.

Adam and Eve made a bad decision, and the consequences were huge, not just for themselves, but for all humans.

Consequences

One of the very first consequences Adam and Eve experienced was a feeling of guilt or shame over their bodies, and especially the parts used for intimacy. This guilt and shame was so great that they wanted to hide from God; they forgot the intimate fellowship they had with him.

They also forgot God was all-knowing. He challenged them, knowing full well they had eaten from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil against His Command. The next consequence was that the helpmate relationship was broken. Adam blamed Eve, and Eve blamed the devil; neither took responsibility for their own actions or the actions of their partner.

God immediately instituted several curses:

• The serpent and its kind were cursed for allowing itself to be used as a tool of the devil.
• Eve and her daughters would have great difficulty in bearing children. In addition, the partnership was permanently broken; men were given the authority to rule over their wives, and wives would always focus only on their husbands.
• The ground was cursed; Adam and his children would have to work very hard to get sustenance from the ground.
• Finally, spiritual and physical death were introduced.

The ultimate loss was that Adam and Eve were kicked out of Eden. A cherubim with flaming sword was set to guard the entry and prevent anyone from accessing the Tree of Life, thus living forever in a fallen state.