Commentary on Genesis, Vol. 1: Luther on the Creation

by Martin Luther

The greatness and awfulness of the sin of Eve therefore can neither be lessened nor made too great. This greatness and awfulness of the sin of Eve are the pregnant causes of all the calamitous punishments which we endure. So awful was the sin, and so awful the turning away from God! And this horrible turning away from God is the great solemn fact which our minds ought to contemplate. They ought not to dwell upon the mere plucking or swallowing the fruit; for those who look upon the act only, and not upon the sin of the heart, from which the act proceeded, must naturally be led to accuse God of cruelty for having inflicted upon the whole human race such terrible punishments for so small and insignificant a sin. Such reasoners on the matter, therefore, hate God and despair; or like the Epicureans they laugh at the whole matter as a fable.

What we have to consider therefore is the Word. For that, against which Eve sinned, was the Word of God. As great therefore as was the Word, so great was the sin which Eve committed against the Word. It was under this sin that all nature fell, and under which it still lies. For, how can nature overcome that sin! It is of a magnitude infinite and inexhaustible. Consequently, to overcome this sin there is need of him who brings with him an inexhaustible righteousness, even the Son of God.

That Satan knew all this, his subtlety proves. For he does not immediately entice Eve with the sweetness of the fruit; he attacks at once the chief strength of man, faith in the Word! The root and source of all sin therefore is disbelief, and turning aside from God. Even as, on the contrary, the root and source of all righteousness is faith. Satan therefore first of all draws Eve aside from faith to unbelief. When he had accomplished this and had brought Eve not to believe the Word of God's commandment spoken unto her, he had no trouble in accomplishing the rest, in causing her to rush up to the tree, to pluck the fruit and eat it. For when sin is ripened in the heart by unbelief, the external act of disobedience soon follows. This is the manner in which the nature of sin is to be considered, namely, according to its true magnitude, under which magnitude we are all ruined. Next follows the description of sin, with its punishments.

V. 7. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves aprons (girdles).

I have remarked above that the form of all Satan's temptations is the same. He first plies his temptation upon a man's faith, and then draws him away from the Word. Upon this follow various sins against the second table. This procedure of Satan we may see plainly manifested in our own experience. That which follows therefore in the present chapter, is a particular description of sin, what it is in the act, and what it is afterwards, when the act is performed. For, while sin is in the act, it is not felt. If it were truly felt, we should return to the right way, warned by the sorrows which sin ever brings upon the sinner. But because these sorrows lie hidden, after we have departed from integrity of soul and from faith, we go on without concern into the act itself. Just as Eve sinned in eating the fruit, after she had been persuaded by Satan, contrary to the Word of God, "that she should not die" but that the only effects would be, "that her eyes would be opened," and that she would become wiser. After she had drunk in this poison of Satan through her ears, she stretched forth her hand to the forbidden fruit, plucked it and ate it with her mouth; and thus she sinned with all the senses of her mind and of her body. And yet she did not even then feel her sin. She ate the fruit with pleasure and entreated her husband also to do the same.

The essential principles are the same in all temptations and in all sins, whether of lust, of anger, or avarice, etc. While the sin is in the act, it is not felt; it terrifies not, it stings not, but it rather flatters the passions and delights. And no marvel that the case should be so with us when we are infected with this poison of original sin, from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head, and especially when we reflect that the sins of paradise took place in nature while it was yet sound and perfect. Hence it is that we see in the cases of profane men, of fanatical spirits and of those who have no faith, or who have fallen from the faith, how secure and unconcerned they are, how vehement and pertinacious in defending their errors; so much so that they will not hesitate even to die in the defence of them. Such is the nature of sin, while it remains unfelt. But afterwards when the sin is made manifest by the law, then it comes down upon the man with all its intolerable weight.

So before this discovery of her sin, while it was inwardly preparing for the act, the eyes of Eve were not opened. Had they been she must have died before she could have touched the fruit; but because her eyes were not yet opened, and because her unbelief yet remained, there remained also the longing for the fruit prohibited, and there remained also the purpose and the desire to obtain the Satan-promised knowledge, which was also forbidden. Poor miserable Eve, she is so wrapped up in disbelief, both in soul and in body, that she sees not the mighty evil she is committing! Similar examples of the insensible security and unconcern of sin are furnished by our ecclesiastical histories. Arius securely blesses himself, as long as he can find means of eluding the Scripture testimonies concerning the Divinity of the Son.

But this security lasts not very long. As soon as the eyes of Eve were opened, she remembered the law of her God spoken to her, which before she had forgotten, "that she and Adam should not eat of the forbidden tree." Before she had this knowledge of God's law she was "without sin," as Paul expresses it, Rom. 7:9, "And I was alive apart from the law once." Not because the law really did not exist, but because the apostle did not feel the threatenings and punishments of it; and hence he seemed to himself to be "without the law." "For through the law cometh the knowledge of sin," Rom. 3:20. When therefore the law revived in his knowledge of it, his sin revived also with that knowledge, Rom. 7:9.

All this Moses would indicate in his history of our first parents, when he says, "And the eyes of them both were opened," as if he had said, Satan had closed, not the eyes only of Eve, but her heart also by unbelief and by the disobedience of all the members of her body and of her soul without and within. But after her sin was committed and "finished," he willingly suffers the eyes of them both to be opened, that they might see what they had done. For this is Satan's manner of cutting short the ruin of those who sin under his temptations; when they have sinned, he leaves them to perish in despair.

This portion of sacred history therefore is like a complete exposition of the sentence of Paul's words, "For through the law cometh the knowledge of sin," Rom. 3:20. For the law does nothing but make known and cause to revive that sin, which before the knowledge of the law lay asleep as it were and dead. Just as in the following chapter it is said to Cain, "If thou doest evil, thy sin sleepeth until it be made known to thee," Gen. 4:7. For it lieth asleep, while it is in the act. But when the law comes then the eyes are opened, so that the man then sees what God had commanded, and what punishment he had decreed for the transgressors of his command. When this takes place, so that the law fully rules in the conscience; then a man arrives at the true knowledge of his sin, which knowledge no human hearts can endure unless consolation be given them from above.