Sin is not only a destroyer, those under its power are also prone to colossal deception. It is why so many refuse to trust the Lord Jesus.

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“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.” [Matthew 7: 13-14]

THE LORD’S MISSION

No one is more loving or kind. No one is more willing to sacrifice on your behalf. No one gives His heart as He does. He will do anything to save you. He has proven this by His perfect life and sacrificial death. His goal was to defeat sin and thereby set people free from its power. There was only one way to do this. He risked everything in the process. How so?

What most Christians fail to consider are the immense implications of His mission. In order to defeat sin He would have to live His life entirely free from sin. He could never sin, not even once. If He did He would suffer the penalty of sin which is spiritual death.

Once the Lord God decided to become a Man, to pass into the realm of humanity as one of us and enter into the greatest and riskiest mission of all time, He knew it meant putting the entire Universe including the celestial environs of heaven up for grabs. If He failed the devil would gain everything. If the Lord sinned, if He violated the Torah, even only once, and even only in a minor way, He would no longer qualify as the perfect unblemished Sacrifice Lamb. That would mean there would be no Savior. It would mean there would never be a Savior. That would mean He would go to hell. It would also mean we all would go to hell. There would be no way to get around it. The apostle Paul would never write, “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” Death would win. It would forever sting the heart of all. Human beings would be but a memory. God would be a memory. The devil and his evil henchmen would rule forever. 

Thus, we must always be cognizant of what was at stake. The Lord’s life/mission was obviously the most fundamental and crucial aspect of our potential salvation. No one can even imagine the immense pressure the Lord was under. These were monumental implications. The prodigious power of sin and the temptation thereof is such that no human being has the ability to ever come close to defeating it. It is by far the greatest disease known to man. Sin is simply far too powerful and human beings are far too weak and prone to temptation to ever have a chance against it on their own. Once Adam sinned he released this sad inability and weakness, this incessant persistent flaw, upon all succeeding generations. Once sin entered the realm of humanity it put everyone at risk of eternal damnation.

Prior to the Incarnation, with Himself as the only possible candidate, the Lord God knew He must be the first human to defeat sin. He knew He must be the first to never give into temptation, to never be deceived by the devil, and to never be betrayed by His own flesh. Setting a perfect example, He would never choose this fallen hell-bound world and its absurdly temporary pleasures over the spiritual purity of heaven. He must be successful in opening a spiritual door to eternal life for all. He would be that Door.

ADAM’S MISSION

Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. [Genesis 2:15]

Humans were not bound by sin in the very beginning, of course. Adam had authority over sin. He had authority over death. Hell had no hold on him. He was absolutely free and lived in paradise. The Lord created Him above all Creation which included the devil. Adam had greater power than the devil. Adam ruled over the devil and all his fallen angelic cohorts. He was the king of the Garden, second only to God. The objective was for the Lord God, through Adam His human agent, to spread His righteous dominion throughout the world defeating the devil one step at a time and eventually eliminating his dominion here. God’s pure, holy, righteous, and loving dominion as it existed in the Garden would replace the devil’s evil dominion across the planet. The way Adam would accomplish this would be to continually cultivate and keep the Garden.

I wrote the following passage in my book Real Christianity in reference to Naboth’s Vineyard. You can find his story in the Book of 1Kings, Chapter 21. His Vineyard is a perfect spiritual type of each real Christian’s individual ministry and purpose. The spiritual significance is the same as Adam’s Garden:  

One would do well to understand the creative power of one’s own vineyard. Every believer has a destiny to fulfill, a purpose for being here. Each person has a vineyard and is commissioned by God “to cultivate it and keep it.” The believer’s cultivating and keeping of his vineyard is his reason for existence. To cultivate is to prepare, to work at, and to foster growth. To keep one’s vineyard is to guard it, to preside over and protect it, to secure and maintain dominion, and to be individually responsible for its yield. It is that which gives purpose, it is his or her place in the body—the place where God dwells. [Real Christianity—The Nature of the Church © 2001 by RJ Dawson. All Rights Reserved.]

Well now, without looking too far into this, one should be able to immediately ascertain the devil’s strategy. Adam was the sole link between God and His dominion on the earth. Adam was outstandingly faithful to his mission but was only successful at continually achieving it day by day by fully focusing on God first and on his cultivating and keeping.

He was also fully aware that he must never engage in any activity that would subvert it and by which he would lose the strength and wherewithal to achieve it. Such spiritually unfruitful activity, the one and only “Thou Shalt Not” he received from God, is fruitful nonetheless though in the evil realm and is actually represented as forbidden fruit existing within Adam’s own Garden, a reminder that even in his earthly paradise there existed temptation and at a given point in time, a tempter. But not to worry. Adam was fully aware of this. The Lord taught him well. He trusted God. He obeyed God. Under these circumstances he would never eat the fruit of the Death Tree.

Remember, the devil did not need to defeat the Lord God, which he could not do anyway; all he had to do was defeat Adam. Yet he knew, of course, that this was a virtual impossibility. He knew he could never convince Adam otherwise. Perhaps he had tempted Adam on occasion, maybe many times. It did no good. Adam’s bond with God with far too strong and unyielding. And no, Adam wasn’t duded up with body armor or armed with automatic weapons that could perforate the devil in seconds and cut him into a thousand pieces. Such weapons have no power over angelic beings (hell’s angels) of the spiritual realm. The only method for defeating and taking authority over the enemies of God, demonic entities, and sin is by gaining and using the Lord God’s spiritual power and by living in a state of no sin. As long as Adam never sinned he would maintain his complete dominion over the devil. He would continue honoring God, serving God, living for God, and increasing God’s dominion. He would continue RULING OVER the devil forever. Though certainly a potential weak link compared to God, Adam was effectively no weak link at all. The devil was flummoxed by this. (Keep this in mind as you consider your own discipleship.)

EVE’S MISSION

For however long it was, when Adam remained alone with God he remained successful. He continued faithfully in his work. But eventually, he became aware of something missing, an awareness he could not initially explain or understand—he became lonely. He realized that he had developed a desire for human companionship. He sought God over this issue. The Lord, not feeling slighted in the least, responded by blessing Adam with his next greatest gift. You see, Adam’s future mission must include others. Not only must the Garden be fruitful—Adam must be fruitful. Not only must the Garden continue producing beneficial fruit of every kind in great amounts and continue to expand, others must come forth to assist in Adam’s “cultivating and keeping.” He must have faithful human offspring to assist him in defeating the evil forces pressuring the Garden borders from without while he expanded them outward from within. Adam was meant to be a spiritual patriarch of a great righteous clan. He was destined to grow from miniscule beginnings in a tiny obscure Garden amongst the wilds of nature and the evil dominion of the devil to a worldwide Garden covering the earth with no room for evil and no place for the devil.

To achieve this he would need help, a lot of it. The overall mission was far too grand to achieve alone. He would especially need someone very close. One cannot be a patriarch without a strong loving matriarch. Of course, rather than the future, Adam primarily had the present on his mind at that particular time. And rather than thoughts of a future matriarch and kids and family, as wonderful as such thoughts were, he was thinking more along the lines of an extended honeymoon. God did not disappoint.

The Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man. The man said, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” [Genesis 2:22:23]

Eve was God’s crown of Creation. As far as Adam was concerned, God saved His best for last. For both, it was love at first sight. A holy covenant between these two was formed. God officiated as both a covenant official and a wedding preacher. He explained what love was, what it meant to be husband and wife, and what was expected of each for both one another and the future. He also taught them about working together, about ministry, and about cultivating and keeping. Because Eve was essentially born into an existing situation God explained what her role would be. 

You see, Eve was created to be Adam’s one and only fully supportive side-by-side loving companion in holy covenant with him. She was Adam’s ezer kenegdo, a “helper suitable for him.” She was not equipped to rule except as part of Adam’s rule and must yield to the one she was created to serve just as Adam yielded to the One he was created to serve. Also, she was not equipped in the natural to as great a degree as Adam to perceive spiritual dominion and what must be done to gain it and maintain it. She was not created primarily to be a warrior but a nurturer. She was there to stand with Adam, to support him, to assist in easing the pressure of responsibility upon him, to be forever by his side and work alongside him under his authority. Her gifting and nature would be a tremendous benefit for Adam, aiding him to assist in maintaining his strength and continuing onward. He would become a much better and spiritually fruitful man due to her love and support. He would, of course, also love her and shelter her and protect her. He would cherish her. It was to each other’s benefit to provide what the other lacked and needed the most within the realm of their humanity. These two were destined to be on the forefront of spiritual battle and would need every bit of each other’s support, care, and encouragement. They were dependent on one another. They must be true. They were the only people in the Garden.

SATAN’S SUBTERFUGE

As long as their covenant union remained intact the devil would continue losing and continue losing ground. The wicked devil, a being of great darkness and evil, therefore must find a way to subvert this covenant marriage and especially this new person, this innocent beautiful woman.

The creation of Eve presented the devil with a new opportunity. Once Eve inhabited the Garden the devil planned on applying the exact initial strategy against her as he had with Adam. He would operate on the sly. He would find a way to bypass Adam. He would do an end around and hope Adam would never suspect anything. He determined to catch her off guard and meet with her alone away from Adam’s protection. It wasn’t simply because she was a new opportunity for him but because he had noticed a weakness in Eve he could exploit, a weakness Adam did not have.

Though the devil ruled the planet and had the run of it in the spiritual realm ever since God cast him out of heaven, he only had dominion here and nowhere else. And he didn’t appreciate the new invaders invading his turf. The devil hated the Garden. He hates everything pure and holy and righteous. He obviously opposed Adam’s mission from day one knowing exactly what it represented. He knew it was spiritual war directed against him but his counter offensive against Adam had been completely ineffective.

What the devil attempted with Eve is what he attempts with everyone. His goal is to corrupt, to change whatever is good, wholesome, and honorable into something immoral and sinful. Adam’s only chance was staying close to God. With him, however, it was not mere chance; Adam was very close to God and would never, ever betray Him.

The devil knows all too well what happens when a person becomes dedicated to God the way Adam was initially. Such people—real Christians—are a never ending headache for him. They’re a pain in the neck, a thorn in the flesh, and an endless succession of punishing left jabs and jaw-breaking right crosses pounding cranium and midsection, leaving ribs broken and face a bloody pulp, and all this before the sweeping left hooks slam upside his head, contorting it grotesquely, and knocking him clean out of the ring. These real Christians unrelentingly stand up for the Lord Jesus and His righteousness and thereby inflict ongoing damage to the devil’s workings. They do exactly what Adam did when he was right with God.

Though the devil fights them, they have the wherewithal through the Lord’s Holy Spirit to successfully fight back and thus engage their enemy every step of the way. They pray. They fast. They stay “read up” on the Word of God. They stay filled with the Holy Spirit. They remain revved up on full oil lamps. They invade the enemy’s dominion. They rescue lost souls. They witness. They tell others about the Lord. They preach and teach the Gospel. They uncover lies, false doctrines, and false narratives, revealing them for what they are. THEY EXPOSE THE DEVIL AND THE LORD’S HUMAN ENEMIES. They do exactly what the Lord Jesus taught His disciples to do:

The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name.” And He said to them, “I was watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning. Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will injure you.” [Luke 10:17-19]

EVE’S WAVERING TRUST

Though she did very well for a while, maybe a relatively long time, the day came when the devil’s temptations and tricky wordplay began to at last find their mark. On a particular day, not unlike any other, she happened to have a weak moment. This happens on occasion to all believers, of course, and demands an immediate adjustment. One must quickly pivot back in God’s direction. I would think Eve had done this many times. She was not unaware. And she certainly was not unaware of temptation. Well, she suddenly pivoted alright, but in the wrong direction.

She started perceiving the Lord God as someone holding out on her. She felt she was being dishonored. She tired of her apparent secondary place. Mostly however, the devil had finally convinced her that Adam was no longer worth honoring or serving. Why should she be this so-called ezer kenegdo? Why should her life be a mere side by side support to Adam’s life? Shouldn’t they be identical? Shouldn’t they share top billing? And for that matter, why should she actually serve God? Is He really what He claims to be? Why are we stuck in this Garden? Why can’t we venture forth outside these Garden walls and check out the scene beyond? What else is out there? Maybe this serpent isn’t so bad after all. Maybe this tree, this big beautiful tree, filled with beautiful fruit that looks quite delicious and nurturing and is likely even better than all the rest of the fruit in this Garden is actually a very good thing, a wonderful thing, and something that Adam and God are keeping me from enjoying. Maybe if I do eat this fruit that for some strange reason they don’t want me to eat I can not only attain the authority of my husband but actually have him serve me! And maybe I can even be like God! Give me the papers. I’m signing…

TRUST MISAPPLIED: THE FALL

The Lord God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” [Genesis 2:16-17]

Adam didn’t have to eat the forbidden fruit. He knew better. God had always warned him. God warned him for a very good reason. He could never explain the full implications and outcome of such a vile deed because Adam, in his purity and innocence, would never understand anyway. Rather than know, then, Adam would have to TRUST. This is what faith is. It is not just faith, it is pure faith in the Lord God. It is faith in believing His words, directives, teachings, and commandments. It is trusting in Him that He knows best and we therefore must obey and comply. It is for our own benefit but also His and our relationship. And this faith, this trust, is not just faith in a generic “God,” it is faith in the Lord Jesus who is the express image of God.

Those who trust in “God” but refuse to trust in the Lord Jesus are not actually trusting in God at all. They don’t even know God.

Yet, Adam knew God. And he trusted Him completely. But he was suddenly presented with a different dynamic. It came out of left field and he had a big problem processing it. As the one who had to keep everything intact, he was challenged with fitting this new puzzle piece in—it was large and unwieldy and appeared unsuitable to the Garden environs. In the effort to contain it all Adam lost sight of his main objective, part of which was to not try to fit things in that simply didn’t belong, that were not at all good for the overall setting.

His main problem along these lines (understatement alert) was what to do about Eve. She had already eaten the fruit. She never prayed about it. She never asked his advice. She just did it. And now she was a different person. Her internal beauty had faded. He still wanted her, of course, but he also wanted God. How could he have both? Somewhere around here is where Adam began losing his trust. He was no longer completely sure about the Lord. He had strayed into onset unbelief. The new dynamic threw him. It was something he never thought he would have to deal with. In his final analysis, he decided that the only way to make it all work, to please God, to please himself, to please his wife, and keep everything intact and all included, was to join up with Eve in her new endeavor instead of showing her the door. This way he could keep her. God would understand…

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” [Genesis 3:8-13]

SIN CAUSES SPIRITUAL BLINDNESS

Adam failed. He failed at his mission. He was defeated by a far lesser foe. The original dominion plan was lost.

This required another Adam. A future Adam. A final and only remaining chance Adam who must be successful, though also under the commandment to never sin and thus maintain power over the devil, and the world, and the flesh, and temptation, and the grave, and hell, and death itself. He would be the last Adam:

So also it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living soul.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. [1Corinthians 15:45]

He would also be the firstborn of a new paradise, an everlasting spiritual Kingdom:

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything. [Colossians 1:15-18]

The God Adam knew was the only God there is, the One who dwelt in heaven in the far reaches of a glorious celestial realm. But this God also walked in the Garden. This is not a mere euphemism. Adam and Eve heard the sound of His walking. They also talked to Him. Directly. This was not a theophany. It was not a disembodied Spirit. They heard His voice. They saw His face.

Yet now, somehow, something terrible had happened. Adam was now on the other side of a former spiritual relationship. Fear had replaced faith. His purpose had drifted away. His mission had ceased.

And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. [2Corinthians 4:3-4]

How is it that the devil has the power to blind the minds of the unbelieving? Could it be because unbelief is a sin? Could it be because those who willfully dwell in sin are under his authority? Is it because they cannot bring themselves to trust someone they cannot perceive? Do they not perceive Him because they are under a trance? An enchantment? And is this not due to the great power of sin? The fact of the matter is that sin causes spiritual blindness and a break in relationship with God. The only way to be reconciled to Him and have the spiritual blindness removed is to first have the sin removed. And the only way to do that is to turn from sin and seek the Lord Jesus since He is only one that has the cure.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” [Matthew 5:8]

One must desire an actual relationship with God. One must no longer justify sin or dwell willingly with sin but repent of sin and cease from its practice. One must become pure in heart. When a person is cleansed by the Blood of the Lamb, which pays for all sin, it washes it away. It scours out all the sin from an individual’s life all the way down to the infinitesimal DNA level. Then an amazing thing happens—spiritual seeing happens—spiritual sight is created. The thick colossal deception one has been subjected to is overcome and removed. Though one may never see the Lord God with the physical eye one can nonetheless see Him with spiritual eyes. One becomes aware of His holy presence. One discovers that the Lord Jesus actually exists and is the source of all Life and blessing.

One receives the revelation that Jesus is the Lord God. He is the One we all have been searching for. He is the One who longs to rescue and save all who desire Him.

And one knows He can be trusted to the nth degree.

Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.” [John 2:28-29]

BLESSING BORN OF TRUST

How much better it is to get wisdom than gold!

And to get understanding is to be chosen above silver.

The highway of the upright is to depart from evil;

He who watches his way preserves his life.

Pride goes before destruction,

And a haughty spirit before stumbling.

It is better to be humble in spirit with the lowly

Than to divide the spoil with the proud.

He who gives attention to the word will find good,

And blessed is he who trusts in the Lord. [Proverbs 16:16-20] [1]

© 2023 by RJ Dawson. All Rights Reserved.

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[1] Unless otherwise noted all Scriptures are taken from the New American Standard Bible, © 1960, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.