CHAPTER 7: SUMMARY OF THE GARDEN OF EDENHere, in summary form, are the cardinal points we have seen in our examination of the Garden of Eden. They are presented in parallel with the first 12 points of the common understanding of the Gospel I've outlined earlier. 1) CUG: In the beginning God created the universe. Truth: In the beginning God created the universe. 2) CUG: Everything in the creation was good, including humanity. Truth: Everything in the creation was good, including humanity. 3) CUG: While God has many attributes, two are of primary importance as it pertains to the Gospel: He is perfectly loving and He is perfectly just (righteous). Truth: God is love. God is perfectly just (righteous) in that He always works perfectly in accordance with His loving nature. 4) CUG: The creation was a manifestation of His love. Truth: The creation was a manifestation of His love. 5) CUG: In order to assure that His justice might be known, and that we might remember that He is God and to be obeyed, He set one Tree in the Garden that Adam was forbidden to touch, as a test of Adam's obedience. Truth: In order to try to keep Adam from great harm, God commanded (warned) Adam not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. 6) CUG: Adam, however, did partake from this Tree. Truth: Adam, however, did partake from this Tree. 7) CUG: This act of disobedience angered God, and offended His sense of perfect righteousness. It missed the mark of proper obedience. This is called sin. Truth: This Tree changed Adam's perception from a unity of the glorious goodness of life, making him know good and evil. It made him aware of both what was and was not. What was (created), was good. What was not (uncreated), was evil. 8) CUG: God therefore punished Adam by casting him out of the Garden of Eden, cursing him with a life full of suffering. Truth: God set immediately to try to heal his poisoned children, preventing them from eating from the Tree of Life, which would have immortalized their pain. Their pain was to be only temporal, guiding them back to the paths of goodness. 9) CUG: This brought death and suffering into the world. The wages of sin is death, eternal separation from God. Truth: In his goodness and love God saw to it that all suffering and evil would be limited and temporal. All evil, all sin, will die. 10) CUG: God's perfect righteousness cannot abide the presence of disobedience, otherwise known as sin. Truth: Though God was willing to forgive Adam's transgression, Adam sought to hide from God. Adam did not want fellowship with the creator. 11) CUG: Therefore, due to this sin, Adam was destined to spend the rest of eternity apart or away from God. Truth: Therefore, all Adam had to do was repent, turn from his sinful ways, and return to the goodness that was intended. Unfortunately, in his fallen condition, he had no way to do this. He simply could not heal himself. Clinging to his delusions and filth, man was lost. 12) CUG: However, God's loving heart could not tolerate such a thing. Though Adam justly deserved God's temporal and eternal punishment, God nevertheless wanted Adam to have everlasting fellowship with Him. But Adam's sin made fellowship with the perfectly righteous creator impossible. Truth: However, while humanity wandered strugglingly, God set out to create a surefire cure for man's spiritual sickness. |
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