The first man gets to go into the garden.
Posted on June 6, 2011 by Pastor Tom
In Genesis 2:15 God places the first man in the garden. The Lord God commissions man to work and keep the garden. (2:15) The man doesn’t plant the garden. He is to work it and take care of it. It is like God has placed man as the garden’s guardian. So work was part of the pre-Fall world. Work is not bad. It, like everything else, has been tarnished by the fall. We will see this more in Genesis 3. But work in the resurrection life and originally in this garden was fulfilling not frustrating. It was productive and satisfying.
Then the Lord God sets the boundaries upon which man can remain in the garden. (2:16–17). Do you want to stay in this paradise man? You are welcome to eat from any tree in the garden except one. Do not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. When you eat of it, you will surely die.” There is only one rule to abide in this paradise. You can think, act, create, care, enjoy and explore. But don’t eat of that tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Now one commentator had a quite profound observation about this. We hear a lot of proposed solutions for all that ails mankind. One proposed solution is creating the right environment. If man is placed in the right environment, he or she will do right. But here was a man placed in a perfect environment. Here was a man not yet tainted by sin. Here was a man who gazed at the most beautiful environment ever seen. Yet man still did not choose right. The commentator writes: Beneath the surface narrative however, the story poses the crucial problem of human existence: unaided human beings cannot create paradise. Flawed and limited, they cannot oversee and ensure justice and wholeness; they cannot even tame the monster within themselves. Paradise comes at a cost. To live there, one must submit to the rule of an “other,” the owner of the garden. This is an essential feature of paradise: Do we choose to live in the garden and submit to the master? Or do we choose our own reign and face expulsion? Those willing to submit find wholeness and intimacy; those who choose otherwise echo the defiant sentiment of the fallen archangel, who in John Milton’s words proclaims, “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.” Humanity at its best, when tested, rebels even in the perfect environment.
Next time – the first woman
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