Gen. 3 - The Fall

"What is Sin?" - see Through the Bible with Miss Happy and Friends!

"What are the Consequences of Sin?"

Well firstly, and ironically, the fruit which seemed to promise the knowledge of good and evil, actually distorts Adam and Eve’s perception of good and evil!

Thus, rather than seeing God as good and loving and someone to run towards; Adam and Eve start seeing God as someone to be feared and so hidden from. And so their relationship with God, which was previously so intimate that the God who made all things walked with them in the garden, is now torn. Importantly, though, we see God’s grace even at this early stage as he doesn’t simply abandon them, but rather clothes them.

Significantly, the other consequences of sin are all closely connected to the calling and privileged status God granted humanity in the first instance: so work, rather than being blessed and fruitful, will be hard and toilsome; child bearing – being fruitful in the reproductive sense – will be painful; and the relationship between men and women, rather than being empowering and helpful will become unequal and oppressive.

And the last main consequence is, somewhat bizarrely, that Adam and Eve realise they are naked! The significance of this is related to shame; to the fact that, while before they had nothing to hide and so could be completely vulnerable with one-another and God, now they have sin to try and hide. (As an aside, it also helps explain why we often experience both the deep longing to be truly known, and corresponding fear!) This connection between nakedness and shame reappears a number of other times in the OT and adds great significance to the fact that Jesus would have been crucified naked!