All #ourCOG News 5.0
GEN.2:16-17, Why would God place a tree in the garden and then forbid Adam not to eat?. If not because Adam eat the fruit, how can he know that God is good?,.
Discussion
20 comments
-
Because from the beginning God gave man free will. He wanted a relationship with man, not a dictatorship. He wanted us to freely love Him and worship him. He wanted us to love Him on our own instead of just making us do it.
God is God. God is sovereign.?
God created the Earth and man. How magnificent is that? ?
-
The partaking of the fruit was not knowing the goodness of God per se but the knowledge of good and evil. It was called obedience. He hearkened unto Eve and willfully sinned as he had receivrd the direct commandment not to eat. The relationship was one of obedience just as now
-
It was a test to see if they would trust God and obey Him. They could have eaten of the Tree of Life, but chose poorly. Their choice represents the choice before each of us. Obedience or rebellion. Life or death.
-
God’s love was demonstrated in that humanity was endowed with free will; we were granted freedom of choice (Genesis 2: 16,17, Joshua 24:15, Isaiah 7:15, John 5:39,40, 7:17, and Revelation 22:17).
Could anyone conceive of God as a loving God Who created intelligent beings, but then programmed them to slavishly serve Him without any personal willpower? Hardly!
-
Do you lock your kids up in the basement as soon as you bring them home from the maternity ward to keep them from doing something bad?
God doesn’t do that either.
We have an option to follow God or to not follow God.
-
Because he knew Adam and Eve will break the original covenant.
-
True love always offers choices
-
God placed a lot of things in the garden and Adam and Eve were told they could enjoy the whole garden, but also given the condition to obey God and not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. I don’t know if the intent of your question is sincere or not, but I notice you didn’t say that God provided the garden for Adam and Eve to flourish in, but only that He “forbid Adam not to eat?”. So your OP already comes from a 1 sided way of thinking that appears malicious and contentious. Am I correct?
-
Keep in mind, I’m not accusing you of anything, thus the “Am I correct?”
-
Adam was not ready YET to partake of eating from both trees. He ate too soon. He gained the knowledge of sin and felt guilty in the presence of God. Out of mercy, God would not let them eat of the tree of life. Otherwise they would live forever in guilt. That would be hell. So God removed them from the Garden for their own good.
-
Because God is a fair God. That may not make sense, but here is what I learned.
If God did not place the tree of knowledge in the garden and if there was no prohibition to eat its fruit, then how could man who has a free will, love and follow God? By giving man free will, it is only fair that man also be given a choice, to use the free will God gave him. If there was no free choice, then man would not be free to love God and obey Him. Man would be like the animals, living by instinct or a kind of robot.
God wants us to follow Him of our own free will. He allows us to make the choice to obey or not obey. He allows us to make a choice because He is a fair God. The choice is yours, to accept His son Jesus as Lord and savoir or to reject Him.
-
Our God was establishing free will and allowing his creation to exercise that will.
-
How could they know it was wrong to disobey God without the knowledge of good and evil? It doesn’t really seem to work as an actual literal story imo, but idk
-
This question should be raised to Calvinists.
-
I can almost see a reply in the line like:
WHO ARE YOU TO QUESTION GOD?
which actually means don’t ask question that will defeat my theology.
-
I think any answer is speculation at best, which is fine. But the question does presume that we should know the answer. Is it possible that there are things that God has good purposes for which we ruin by making our own bad choices and therefore, God doesn’t reveal his intended purposes?
I think that may be the case here, but Scripture is silent on why God does many things.
-
Do you think God was up to something here?
(It wasn’t that Adam didn’t know good he just didn’t know the difference between good and evil.)
-
A sovereign God does what he pleases.
-
You need to understand that God forbid the fruit for our own good. The desire to “know” is the desire to control. That’s why we are commanded as Christians to follow Kingdom principles not our own desires. We control nothing if we have died to self. The taking of the fruit was a desire to have the power of God, to know all things, not to know God Himself. If we prayer with wrong motives we build the kingdom of self. If we pray to advance the Kingdom of God we don’t control anything but we get to play a part of what God is doing.
-
[…] GEN.2:16-17, Why would God place a tree in the garden… […]
Comments