Genesis3:22

Allow me to give the basis for that statement:

1. A short cut: If man had been obedient, he would have slowly learned the positive consequences of doing good and then wanted those consequences so much he would never do anything to lose them. However, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil provided a short cut. By eating from it, man learned quickly about the consequences of doing evil; he learned the hard way (more about this later).

2. Designed to live forever: How long would man have lived if he had not eaten from the forbidden fruit? Was man created as a mortal that would die, or as an immortal being who would not die?

Didn’t death enter the picture due to man’s sin? Yes. So if he had not sinned, man would not have died. If you think God made man as a mortal being to begin with, what is your explanation for death if there were no sin?

Consider that the bodies of people and animals are self-repairing and self-restoring. Your bones are constantly being torn apart and restored with new bone material; your skin is constantly pushing one layer of cells up to the top and replacing the lowest layer with new cells. Red blood cells have a life of about 4 months and are being replaced (created by the bone marrow and destroyed by the liver) at a rate of 2 million each second!

It appears that God made these bodies so they could last forever, or maybe, after a person lived a very long time, he would be translated directly to heaven without death. The original arrangement did not include death.

3. Cursed with death: By the time Gen 3:22 was spoken, man was already cursed with death for his disobedience, so he could not live forever physically just by eating the fruit of the tree of life. It was impossible.

Remember that the biblical use of “death” was first of all a “separation.” However, as God designed things, a separation from Him will eventually result in us being separated from our bodies; spiritual death leads to physical death. The point here is that since man was already cursed with the punishment of spiritual and physical separation, eating once from the tree of life would not stop him from dying (as many have supposed).

4. The meaning of “forever”: The Bible’s term “forever” comes from a word meaning “long duration, long time, either in the past or in the future.” Context must indicate if that means a long time with limits, or a long time without limits, i.e. for all eternity. This context can actually go either way, but I think these other factors I am sharing with you seem to favor “a long time with limits,” meaning longer than 900 years. The “concern” of the Godhead was that, by eating of this fruit, man would sustain his life for an undue length of time in a way that would require no work or hardship, and would thus avoid feeling the full consequences of having disobeyed.

5. The name of the tree: Notice it is not called “the tree of eternal life,” just “the tree of life,” or “the tree that provides/sustains life.”

6. Only one tree originally was off limits: Why did God only prohibit eating from one tree and not both? In the common method of interpreting this verse, if they had eaten once from the tree of life and then eaten once from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would live forever in their new state of being “enlightened to sin.”

7. The grammar is not conclusive. I don’t see any commentators arguing their side from the choice of verb tenses (which changes part way through the statement).

8. Instead commentors argue for their viewpoint from the use of the words “lest” and “also.” In my opinion the word “lest” can go either way, it can point toward a fruit that only needs to be eaten once, or to one that is best eaten on a regular basis. The use of the word “also” points toward some type of similarity between the two trees. “Also” is an adverb, which seems to point to how they ate the fruit, but the BDB lexicon says it usually emphasizes the word following it, even if it is a noun; this supports my idea that it highlights that this other tree was also special. Or it can mean “even,” which would also support my interpretation. Thus, it does not need to mean that they would eat of it in the same way; it could mean that this tree, like the other one, was special. There were important consequences that came from eating of the one tree; there could be important consequences from eating of the other tree as well. I think that the similarity was not about how they eat from it, but the magnitude of the consequences. Other trees could be eaten from at will without consequence, but not this one.

CONCLUSION: I think they had been eating regularly from the tree that sustains life because God told them to do so. When they sinned, they gained a partial awareness that moral choices have consequences. I say partial because they felt shame, but that was not a strong enough punishment to teach the true danger of sin because they felt they could cover up their shame with a few twigs and leaves. God knew that if they continued living in the garden (the protected enclosure) and continued eating from the tree that sustains life, they would get the impression that they could do what they wanted now, and pay the price later, and that price would not be a big deal. Therefore God had to expel them from the protected enclosure in order to teach them the full reality of the consequences of disobeying God’s clear commands. Yes, they gained the knowledge they needed about good and evil, but only after they felt the full brunt of evil’s consequences, which gave them the full perspective on the matter.

I am convinced that “knowing good and evil” did not mean they would know what good and evil are, rather it meant they would learn what good and evil bring, i.e. the consequences of good and of evil. They already knew what evil was; it was doing something that God had told them not to do (they just didn’t understand why). But they did not yet have a full understanding of the consequences. God had told them that the primary consequence would be death, but what did that mean? What would it feel like to be separated from God? Would it be medium bad, or really bad? Would the punishment be immediate or delayed? There was only one way they could learn the answer to those questions – through experience.

But God does not need to experience sin in order to understand its consequences because He has assigned those consequences. Man cannot fully understand such things unless he experiences them.

At first their understanding of consequences was incomplete. The first consequence they learned about was that you can get what you want first and pay for it later. The fact that they ate the fruit and did not fall down dead reinforced this idea. Upon eating the fruit they felt strange; something was different. Then they felt shame. But the harshest consequence of all did not come until later.

Learning that doing good brings good consequences causes no change to our soul because the cost of doing good is paid up front. When you go to a store and buy something with cash you pay the price up front, then you go and enjoy the item you purchased. But evil is like buying on credit. You can buy almost anything you want, enjoy your purchase, and then pay for it later. This yearning for instant gratification with delayed payments twists our souls; it bends the metal we are made of and damages our ability to keep a proper perspective on temptations. Adam and Eve had their hard consequences come quickly because God kicked them out of the garden. But what if God had not expelled them? The tendency to want something now and pay for it later would have ruined them. Shame alone was not enough because they thought they could cover that up with a flimsy handful of drying leaves.

Some consequences had to be strong and swift because they could not be allowed to stay in the garden and live an easy life while waiting for the consequences to come much later. The word “garden” meant “protected enclosure” and Eden meant “delicate delights.” They could not learn what they needed to learn while staying in the “protected enclosure of delicate delights”  They had to feel the separation to know that it was real.

How does this apply to us?

I suggest to you that we, like Adam and Eve, are still learning about the consequences of good and evil and we are learning it through experience. If a person does what is right in God’s eyes, what will it mean for his relationship with God? Will it bring closeness or create distance in the relationship? If someone does not follow God’s prescribed way, what will that do to his relationship with God? Will it bring closeness or create distance in the relationship?

Imagine a man who thinks he does not need God, so he rejects all restraints and begins to do whatever he wants to do. This will create more separation between him and God, but that separation will not feel like death to him so he will keep going. While there is a little bit of pleasure in that course of action, he will also find frustration, anger, bitterness, a lack of fulfillment, and enslavement to his own passions. His separation from God will become greater, and he will be someone who is “dead in their trespasses and sins” (Eph 2:1). Even while he freely tells others that there is no God, no such thing as sin and therefore no consequences for sin, his hatred of everyone around him and of himself will grow stronger. We can say that he has eaten from the tree whose fruit is the learning of the consequences of sin, and he is in the process of learning from experience that sin is not all that it promised it would be.

But we also know that this life is like a test and our responses to God during this life will determine which set of consequences we will experience for the rest of eternity. The man in the example above is being given a chance to see what the consequences of sin are like. If he is willing to humble himself and repent, he can begin to learn about the consequences of living for God and experience true life for all eternity. If not, he will experience eternal death, a state of eternal and complete separation from God.

In my opinion, the shame they experienced grew from the knowledge of some important facts. They did not suddenly sense a strange, random feeling and wonder where it came from. Their response (covering up) shows that their shame was connected to something specific.

Why cover the reproductive organs?

The Hebrew uses a word that means “girdle, belt or loincloth.” This clearly indicates that it was only the midsection that was being covered.  Why was there suddenly shame associated with the reproductive organs when there had not been any before?

They had two option; they had the opportunity to learn what it would be like to really get to know God. They could single-mindedly pursue answers to the questions: “What would it feel like to be in a strong, intimate relationship with the Creator? Is there no limit to how close we can get to Him? What will the benefits of such a relationship be like?”

But they also had the option of learning what it is like to feel the consequences of sin. Instead of seeking to please God they can seek to satisfy self and suffer the consequences of doing so. They could focus on finding the answers to such questions as: “What can I get away with? What will separation from God feel like? Will it be as bad as He made it sound?”

I believe that when God walked with them in the garden, in the person of Jesus, He talked to them about the future and told them they would pass on to their children their basic traits, who they were and what was important to them. Their inclinations and tendencies would get passed on to their children.

That is the reason their shame was connected to their reproductive organs – they knew they would pass on to their offspring the tendencies they had demonstrated in their act of sin. They were ashamed to know that not only had they chosen the worst option, but now their children would be inclined to choose it too.

How does this apply to us?

Just like Adam and Eve, we can ask, “What would it be like to really get to know God and live super close to Him?” or we can ask, “What would it be like to reject God and do what I want to do? How bad can this separation thing be?” Far too many people take upon themselves, by their own choices, the negative consequences of sin. They choose to learn what sin brings by stepping into sin, when they could choose to learn what being close to God brings by entering into a relationship with Him.