2 Corinthians 4:4 “whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them.”
So did Adam and Eve’s eyes of their understanding open on the day they ate the forbidden fruit? The answer to that question is also no, for in the above quoted passage of scripture we see that Satan blinds the minds of unbelievers. Satan does that because he knows that if they were to see and understand the truth of the gospel that they would believe and be saved. And so the moment Adam and Eve sinned they stepped out of light into darkness, and Satan blinded their minds from understanding the truths in God’s word from that time on. And so that truth coupled with the fact that as believers we have to pray to ask God to open the eyes of our understanding, confirms to us that it was not Adam and Eve’s eyes of their understanding that were opened when they ate the forbidden fruit.
Genesis 2:8-9 “The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed. (9) And out of the ground the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”
And so in order for us to more clearly understand which of their eyes were opened when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, we need to relook at the passage of scripture that refers to their eyes being opened. From this passage of scripture it is clear that eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is what caused their eyes to be opened (Genesis 3:6-7). So let us now examine the fruit of this tree that had such a profound impact upon the lives of mankind. Firstly we know that God is the one who planted this tree in the Garden of Eden, for that truth is revealed to us in the above quoted passage of scripture. And secondly we know that because God planted this tree, that the tree and its fruit was in fact good, for the scripture teaches us that God made all things good (Genesis 1:31).
Genesis 3:22-23 “Then the Lord God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever"-- (23) therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken.”
We also know that when Adam and Eve ate the fruit that their spirits died. Many in the church have erroneously referred to the fruit that Adam and Eve ate as poisonous fruit, which is why they died spiritually when they ate it. But the fruit itself did not kill them, for the fruit was actually good and not poisonous, for God had made all things good. And so the fruit was not poisonous, it was just forbidden. Therefore it was the act of eating the fruit that killed them, for their action was an act of disobedience to God’s command, and disobedience to God’s law is sin. In other words it was their sin that caused their spirits to die, for death entered through their sin (Romans 5:12). We also know that before Adam and Eve ate this particular fruit that they had no knowledge of good and evil, for as revealed to us in the above quoted passage of scripture, it was only after Adam and Eve ate of the fruit that they became aware of good and evil for the first time. There is another truth that we learn from this passage of scripture, which is that the fruit that Adam and Eve ate on that day impacted their physical bodies and more specifically their brains, for they now had knowledge that they did not have before. So how do we know that? We know that because God tells us that if they had eaten the fruit of the tree of life it would have impacted their physical bodies by making their bodies’ immortal, which is why God removed Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, thus ensuring that the bodies of mankind remained mortal. Therefore just as the fruit of the tree of life would have impacted their physical bodies, so the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil impacted their physical bodies and more specifically their brains, for the region of their brain where their conscience was located was activated for the first time when they ate that fruit.
Genesis 3:8-10 “And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. (9) Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, "Where are you?" (10) So, he said, "I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.”
And so what the fruit did was to make Adam and Eve conscious of the sin that they had already committed. As we will see in the following sections, the conscience of man is given to us to distinguish between good and evil. And so we see that it was in fact the eyes of their conscience that was opened for the first time, for the moment they sinned their conscience revealed to them good and evil for the first time, and it convicted them of the sin that they had just committed. We know this to be true, because as the above quoted passage of scripture declares, when God came to commune with Adam in the cool of that day they hid themselves from Him because they knew that they had sinned.
Michael E.B. Maher
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