I wonder what would happen if Adam didn’t eat of the fruit?
That’s probably a question most of us have wondered at some point. I mean, let’s say they stayed pure, that doesn’t mean their children or grandchildren would have. Let me ask you a question. Was it conceivable that Adam, Eve, or any other human would not eat it? In other words, was man destined to sin?
Now before you throw me out for being a heretic, I’m not saying that God made us to sin. Not even remotely. What I am asking is this, is it possible to create free will beings, that are not God, that are what we are, that also will not sin? It seems to me that God likes how He made us. In Genesis 1:31 it says everything He made He saw as good. Yet there we were, humans who ultimately choose to sin.
Let me pose one more question, with an answer I believe can show in scripture. Was the process that has existed since our creation, including Jesus dying for our redemption, the only way we could be created and then also perfected? In other words, did God create us knowing what we would do but Jesus planning all along to bring us to His salvation? The basic answer is yes. He created us knowing what we would do, but also planned the way to redeem us before we were created.
Ephesians 1:4-5 (NIV) says, “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.” My reasoning would be this, God desired us the way we are, so much so, that He created us knowing what our weakness could produce. The capacity of free will people to sin is inherent because to have the ability to choose right means that you have to also have the ability to choose wrong. The reality that we would choose wrong, and that Jesus was the plan to ensure that we were not lost.
2 Timothy 1:9 (NIV) tells us something similar. “He has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time.” Here again, the plan of redemption even preceded our creation, it wasn’t an after thought! So to revisit the original question, Adam (or one of his descendants) would sin because their very nature lends itself to it, so to ask what would happen if he hadn’t seems to be an impossibility. To further take that through to the end, the fact that God planned for our redemption tells us that it was inevitable that sin was coming. Not because God made sin, but because He made something with the capacity to.
The thing that we may never really be able to answer is this, what does God see in us that He loved so much, that He had to create us the way that He did? It speaks something very special to us that we should spend some time meditating on. God loves us in such a special way, unlike anything else He ever made or could have made! Wow!
Certainly our imaginations can take us to questions we just can’t know. Perhaps there are many things that I even overlooked in this. I will say this, this question has opened for me some thought “rabbit holes” that I have not been down before. That keeps our faith interesting, doesn’t it?
Be Blessed,
Pastor Jeff
