Chapter 3 - Knowledge of Good and Evil
(How to Lead a Life of Godliness?)
And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” (Genesis 3:22)
So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.
After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life. (Genesis 3:23, 24)
God put two things before man: one is life and the other one is death. He placed both of them before him in two different trees as fruits. He also gave Adam the power to think and act on his own. But through his disobedience man chose not life but death.
Adam could not have tasted death and lived forever if he had plucked and ate the fruit of the tree of Life. Instead, Adam and Eve ate the fruit of tree of Knowledge of good and evil and accepted death.
Spirit, Soul and Body:
When Adam was created by God, three realms were found within him: the spirit, soul and the body. Both the spirit and the soul are hidden within the body and hence we call them (both soul and spirit) the inner man. The outer body is made up of flesh and blood.
The bodily outer man looks like a tent containing spirit and soul. As soon as the first man (Adam) accepted death through disobedience, immediate death occurred in the inner man. Days passed before the physical death occurred. This can be seen in Genesis 5: 4-5:
After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters. Altogether, Adam lived a total of 930 years, and then he died.
Knowledge of Good and Evil:
Man, who was made to know only good, knew what evil was because he plucked and ate the fruit of the tree of Knowledge of good and evil. Having inherited the knowledge of both good and evil, Adam and his generation were liable to cling to evil rather than good.
This is what God expected of Adam and his descendants after Adam sinned: as a sinful man, who knows good and evil, one should hate evil and embrace good. But man began to do evil more than good. We see this in the life of Cain, the son of Adam. In Genesis 4: 6-8 we read:
Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast?
If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”
Now Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let’s go out to the field.” While they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.
After killing Abel, Cain answered God to His question, "Where is Abel?": "I did not know where he was; Am I guarding him?" (Genesis 4: 9). Cain, who was supposed to protect his brother and do good to him, rose up against him and did evil to him. So he received a curse from God.
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