The first thing we should realize about our texts from Genesis is that they are intended as depictions of our life with God. The Hebrew word for “Adam” means “humankind,” and the writer of Genesis 2-3 is telling us that this is our story, that this is the way we all have walked with our Lord.

Thus we learn from Genesis 2 that while we were created in the most intimate fashion by God and given his breath of life that fills our lungs in their regular pumping (v. 7), God nevertheless set limits on our existence. And those limits are symbolized by that tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden that God planted for Adam (vv. 8, 16, 17). The fact that God forbids us to eat of that tree does not mean that he forbids us to pursue scientific knowledge or even to go to the moon. Rather, the tree stands for the fact that we are not gods and goddesses, that we cannot construct our own right and wrong, that we cannot run our own lives and plan our own futures, but rather that we are dependent on God for knowing good and evil and for our ultimate destiny. We are not the masters of our own fate and the captains of our own souls, no matter how much our society would like us to be autonomous, self-governing individuals. No. We are creatures, wondrously fashioned in love by our Creator, and dependent on him for the continuance and direction and goal of our living. And if we try to live apart from that dependence, God tells us, we will surely die (v. 17).

The story of us all that we find in 3:1-7, then, is the portrayal of our attempts to shake our relationship and dependence on our Creator — in short, to run our own lives and to be our own deities.

The serpent in these verses is not intended to be the figure of Satan. He has been created by the Lord, and his only distinguishing characteristic is that he is more subtle than any other wild creature that the Lord God has made (v. 1). He actually is just a character that the writer of this tenth century B.C. text uses to tell the story of all human beings.

The serpent engages the woman in what Dietrich Bonhoeffer has called the first conversation about God. That is, the serpent leads the woman to step outside of her intimate relation with her Maker and to discuss God as an object — always a disastrous step. And what the serpent does in that conversation is to set three temptations before the woman.

First, the serpent tempts the woman to think that God is not good (v. 1), that he won’t give the woman what she desires and what will be good for her (cf. v. 6). But like all of us pious folk, the woman is very zealous to defend God, and so she replies that she and her husband may eat of any tree except that in the midst of the garden, “Neither shall you touch it, lest you die” (v. 3). The Lord never said not to touch the tree, of course. And so a little self-will has entered the picture. The woman has begun setting up her own tiny rules. The door is open just a crack, and the serpent sees his opportunity.

The serpent therefore tempts the woman to believe that God is not serious. “You will not die” (v. 4). God is not really serious about his commandments — all of those instructions that he has given us in his love. You shall not kill, or commit adultery; you shall not steal or bear false witness; you shall not covet. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” “Take up your cross and follow me.” Nah. God is not serious about all those commandments. We won’t suffer any punishment or evil circumstances if we ignore what God has said. His threat is just a bunch of bluff.

The third temptation, then, is to believe that God is jealous, that he cannot stand to have someone challenge his authority and status. “God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (v. 5).

There follow, therefore, two telling accounts of our sin against God, in verse 6. The woman sees that the fruit is good for food, and that it is a delight to the eyes, and that it is desired to make one wise. In other words, eating the fruit looks like the right thing to do at the time! And that is the way it is with our sin, isn’t it? It looks like the right thing to do! There are very few of us who set out deliberately to do something wrong — at least not very often. We want to be good people. We want to live Christian lives. And some action looks like the good and right thing to do in some situation. It looks like the “loving” thing to do, like the “compassionate” act to take. And so we do what we think is proper. The only difficulty is that it goes against the command of God, as Eve’s action goes against God’s specific Word. And so we fall into sin, trying to do the “right thing” by following our own desires or wisdom.

But Adam’s action in this story is typical of our sinfulness too. “And she gave to her husband, and he ate.” In other words, he just goes along, as we just go along and fall into the sin of complicity. Someone makes a racial slur, and we just stand there and don’t say a word. We just go along.

The result of our failure to heed God’s commandments and to follow his will for our lives results in the distortion and corruption of every one of the good gifts that God has given us in his good creation. And that is illustrated by verse 7 of our text. The man and the woman in this story, who stand for you and me, were created as mutual helpers for one another, to be joined together in the joyful oneness of matrimonial love (3:18, 23-25). But when they break God’s commandments and try to go it on their own and to be their own god and goddess, that good gift of marital one flesh is disrupted (v. 7). Suddenly there is a split between them, and the man’s ego stands over against the woman’s ego, and they are ashamed in their nakedness. And that mirrors the terrible battle and disharmony of the sexes that we know so well in our culture.

But what a pathetic ending is given to our text (v. 7). This man and woman — you and me — have wanted to be their own masters of their lives, shaping their own course, and deciding on their own what are right and wrong. They have wanted to be glorious creatures, replacing the glorious God and making him unnecessary. Instead, they must sew fig leaves together to hide their own nakedness from one another. There we are, in all of our glory and misery, wanting to be like God, and turning out to be pathetic and unclothed trespassers instead. It is a telling portrayal of our lives as sinful human beings.