That the real personal devil was there, the responsible agent, is surely implied by our Lord (Jno. 8: 44): “Ye are of your father the devil; he was a murderer from the beginning and abode not in the truth because there is no truth in him.” So also John (1 Jno. 3: 8): “He that committeth sin is of the devil, for the devil sinneth from the beginning,” i. e. ever since that first great sin in tempting our common mother. “For this purpose was the Son of God manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil”—according to that firstpromise—“I will put enmity between thee and the woman, between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” Paul incidentally gives his construction of this narrative: “The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly” (Rom. 16: 20); and our Lord also in Luke (10: 18, 19): “I beheld Satan fall as lightning from heaven; and I will give you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy.” In 2 Cor. 11: 3, Paul gives us a plain, historic version of this narrative—“But I fear lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.”——But Satan is perhaps most sharply identified in the descriptive points made by John (Rev. 12: 9 and 20: 2): “And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the devil and Satan, who deceiveth the whole world.” ... “And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent who is the devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand years.” Our Lord, as also Paul and John, saw in this narrative a real Satan and also the veritable serpent, made his instrument.
3. That Satan should use such an instrument is manifestly within and not beyond his power. It has in certain points its analogy in the demoniacal possessions recorded by the Evangelists. As to power he is spoken of as the god and prince of this world, “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.”
The Scriptures attribute to holy angels great power over material agencies; and with scarcely less fullness to Satan and his legions also. In the case of demoniacal possessions, nothing can be more obvious than the manifestations of Satanic mind, mind speaking through human lips indeed, yet giving utterance to Satanic thought. “We know thee who Thou art.” “What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? Art thou come to torment us before the time”? (Mat. 8: 29 and Mk. 5: 7 and Luke 8: 28. See also Acts 19: 15.)
4. Other points in this narrative are recognized in the Scriptures as historic and not merely symbolic. Paul wrote to Timothy (1 Tim. 2: 13–15): “For Adam was first formed, then Eve, and Adam was not deceived; but the woman being deceived, was in the transgression.Notwithstanding, she shall be saved in child-bearing,” etc.—all referring very definitely to this narrative as fact and not merely drapery illustrating some universal truth.——To the same purport is Paul in Rom. 5: 12, 19: “As by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin.” “As by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners,” etc. So also 1 Cor. 15: 21, 22.
5. The sin of the first pair stands in its appropriate historic place here (not a merely symbolic place), being immediately connected with the curse upon the serpent (and under him upon the devil); upon the woman also, and the man and the ground; also with the expulsion from Eden and man’s changed life, from the ease and the delights of Eden to sweating labor upon a stubborn soil, in perpetual conflict with noxious growths.——These considerations suffice in my view to prove that this narrative must be taken as simple history, and not as symbolic drapery employed to set forth, not these specific events, but only the general truth of human depravity.
II. The Moral Trial.
Provision was made for this trial by one simple prohibition, forbidding to them the fruit of one tree in the midst of the garden. Of all else they might eat as they pleased. All they could need for subsistence or enjoyment was freely permitted them; but the fruit of this one tree they might not eat on pain of death. This was the test of their obedience. This was to discipline their faith and their love toward their divine Father. There the tree stood before their eyes in the midst of the garden—every sight of it suggesting their Great Father’s word—not to be eaten at all on penalty of death. Will they cheerfully and even joyfully deny themselves so much for the love they bear their Father? So long it shall be well with them. Every time they put down the temptation to eat of it they will become stronger in their spirit of obedience and more happy in God. It was a means of continual culture in holiness, ever leading onward and upward into deeper communion with God and more assured and joyous submission to his will, more strength of purpose in obedience, more delight in whatever self-denial obediencemight involve. Surely it is not too much to say that they might make this means of moral culture a priceless blessing to their souls. How could paradise meet the greatest of all their wants—the want of their new-born souls—without this one provision for proving and invigorating their loving obedience to their God?
Need we then raise the question—What was God’s purpose in this prohibition? The answer is at hand—To accomplish precisely this result; to give the first human pair a test of obedience which should be naturally a means of moral culture and of growth in holiness.——The horrible thought—that God meant and sought to make them sin—how can we say less of it than that it is born of Satan! For it assumes, as Satan did in the garden, that God sought, not their good, but their hurt; is not benevolent but malevolent! Our souls recoil from this assumption. Doth not the Scriptures say truly (Jas. 1: 13), “Neither tempteth he any man”? Never, for the purpose of drawing him into sin!——Is it replied:—God certainly knew they would eat that forbidden fruit; the answer is, Undoubtedly he did; but this proves nothing as to his purpose and aim in placing them under this moral trial. If it be yet said—He might have made the trial so much less that they would have borne it successfully: the proper answer is, Who knows that? Who is wiser or more loving in such an emergency than God?——Consider also that while God knew they would fall, he also knew that he could redeem the race through his Son, gloriously; and so could make the wrath of both wicked men and devils subserve his praise. We may account this to be his reason for subjecting the first pair to a form of trial (every way good and wise in itself and well designed)—although he foresaw they would fall before it. It was still (as he saw the case through to its remotest end) better than any other form of trial; better than no trial at all, supposing such a thing in their case possible.
Thus may we vindicate God’s ways in this transaction. It was kind in him to grant for their free use every other fruit in the garden—all they could need. It was right that he should impose some test of their obedience and love. Indeed it was a natural necessity of their moral nature that this question of obeying God, always and every-where, should come to issue. Assurely as they were moral beings, capable of knowing duty and of doing it, born into being with susceptibilities to happiness which sometimes must be virtuously denied at the demand of God and of the greater good, so surely they must meet this trial sooner or later, in one form or another, until they become so strong in their holy purpose, so fixed in the spirit of love and obedience to God that temptation to sin is of course spurned away and duty is done for evermore without a question. Moral trial, therefore, if not in this precise form, yet in some analogous form, is the necessary means of developing moral strength and confirmed holiness; is therefore the natural pathway to the blessedness of heaven. Thus, with no wavering of doubt, we may vindicate God’s ways toward man in this first great moral trial brought on our race.
In what sense was this called, “The tree of the knowledge of good and evil”? (Gen. 2: 9, 17 and 3: 5)——It brought the knowledge of evil by fearful experience; the knowledge of good to a certain extent by the freshened sense of contrast with the experience of evil. Sin gives to moral beings such knowledge of good and of evil—knowledge it were better far for them they should never have!