Genesis to Jesus
IV. A Test of Love - Failed
a. Sacrifice and Selfishness
b. Death Threats
V. The Second Coming of Adam and Eve
VI. Study Questions
IV. A Test of Love - Failed a. Sacrifice and Selfishness
What's going on here in the Garden? Adam failed a test of his love - not only of his love for Eve, but his love for God.
God gave Adam the responsibility of guarding the garden sanctuary, the dwelling place of God and man.
In the confrontation with the serpent, he failed in his duties. He didn't protect the garden or his wife or himself.
Why did God test him like this? Because covenant love requires total self-giving. Self-sacrifice is essential to fulfilling the obligations of the human relationship with God.
Remember what we said in the last lesson: A covenant means that God "gives Himself" to His people and the people, in turn vow to "give themselves" to God.
In the Scriptures, each of the covenants requires the people to make a symbolic offering of themselves to God.
There is no covenant without sacrifice. The sacrifice is offered by the people to symbolize their offering of "themselves" to God. The sacrifice is a kind of token of their commitment to the covenant, their commitment to give all that they have and all that they are to God.
Noah makes a sacrifice from each of the animals he took with him in the ark. Abraham is asked to sacrifice his only son, Isaac. The Israelites in the time of Moses are required to sacrifice an unblemished lamb in the place of their firstborn. And in the time of David's son Solomon, sacrifices were offered daily in the Temple.
Each of the covenants foundered and was only partially successful. Why? Because of a failure of love, a failure of sacrifice. The people refused to give themselves completely.
Noah, Abraham and the rest all did great things. But they also did dumb and terribly wrong things: Abraham took a concubine. Noah became drunk. Moses lost his temper in the desert. Israel worshipped the golden calf. David committed adultery with Bathsheba. His son, Solomon, built a harem in addition to building the Temple.
We see in Adam's failure the beginning of this pattern. In fact, because the human race was so weakened by Adam's original sin that no one could give himself completely to God. And because of Adam's sin, humanity lost its birthright - its divine inheritance, its membership in God's family.
b. Death Threats
But before we move from Adam to Jesus, let's look at the riddle of the story. God tells Adam and Eve not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. "The moment you eat from it you are surely doomed to die," he warns (see Genesis 2:17).
In the Hebrew there is a "double death" threat here - literally "You shall die die" or "die the death." Why the repetition of the word "die" Can you be more dead than dead?
The serpent directly contradicts God. He tells Adam and Eve: "You certainly will not die" (see Genesis 3:14). He says, too that they will be like "gods who know what is good and bad" (see Genesis 3:5).
And it's true that when they eat the fruit, they don't keel over and die. Instead, their eyes are opened just like the serpent said they would be (see Genesis 3:7). Even God has to admit, "See! The man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil" (see Genesis 3:22).
Is the serpent right? Was God lying to the two? It certainly looks that way on the surface.
But of course it isn't that way.
Adam and Eve do die the moment they eat the fruit - spiritually. The truth in Satan's lie was this: Adam and Eve would not die a physical death once they ate the fruit. Adam and Eve lost something greater than natural life when they sinned; they lost supernatural life, the life of grace in their souls.
Seduced into trying to be like God without God, they died the death. Yes, they chose the fruit freely, like God they exercised free will. But their freedom only led them into slavery. Their eyes were indeed opened, and they discovered their nakedness and were ashamed.
We know that Satan has "the power of death" (see Hebrews 2:14-15). Adam and Eve should have listened to God, whose warning seems to echo in these words of Jesus: "And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both body and soul in Gehenna" (see Matthew 10:28).
V. The Second Coming of Adam and Eve
But even as His children have exiled themselves from paradise through sin, God promises them redemption, a homecoming.
He promises that throughout human history there will be an "enmity" between the serpent, Satan, and the woman, "the mother of all the living," and between their offspring (see Genesis 3:15, 20).
The early Fathers of the Church called this the "First Gospel" (Proto-Evangelium).
God was promising, here in the first pages of the Bible, a new Adam and a new Eve, to undo the damage done by the first couple.
St. Paul called Jesus the "last Adam" or the New Adam (see 1 Corinthians 15:21-22, 45-49; Romans 5:14). And the tradition of the Church has always seen Mary as the "new Eve" (see Catechism, nos. 410-411). ;
As Adam called Eve "woman," we see Jesus call Mary "woman" (compare Genesis 2:23 and John 2:4).
As Eve disregarded God's commands, Mary offers herself freely to the will of God and says "Do whatever He tells you" (see Luke 1:38; John 2:5).
Finally, as Eve was the "mother of all the living," Mary is given by Jesus to be mother of the people of God (compare Genesis 3:20 and John 19:26).
Jesus enters the world as the new Adam - the One who does what Adam was supposed to do.
He comes, not to do His own will, but the will of the Father who sent Him. He comes to serve and to offer His life as a ransom for many (see Mark 10:45; John 15:13).
Jesus enters a garden and experiences the curses of Adam - the dread of death, falling to the dirt, sweating blood from his face in His agony (compare Genesis 3:17-19 and Matthew 26:36-46; Luke 22:44).
He is crowned in thorns and stripped naked (see Matthew 27:29, 31). And He is led to a "tree," the Cross - which the early Church saw as a symbol of the Tree of Life in the Garden (see Acts 5:30; Galatians 3:13; 1 Peter 2:24).
Yet on the Cross He was obedient, saying to God in prayer: "Not as I will, but as You will" (see Matthew 26:39).
He does not grasp at "equality with God" as Adam did (see Philippians 2:5-11), but lays down His own life in sacrifice for the sake of the "garden" - the world, for His bride, the Church.
Adam's bride Eve was created from his side while he slept. The Church, the bride of Christ, was born from His side, which was opened by the soldier's lance while he slept in death on the cross. His side issued forth blood and water, symbols of baptism and the Eucharist (see Genesis 2:21-22; John 19:34; Catechism, nos. 766; 1067).
Finally, the resurrected Jesus appears in a garden ("in the place where he had been crucified") to a "woman" and is mistaken as a "gardener" - perhaps a reference to Adam's task to be keeper of the garden of paradise (see John 19:41; 20:14-18).
All this God promises in the "first gospel."
But we have a long way to go before Jesus comes. We'll pick up our the story where we leave off in the Garden in our next lesson.
VI. Study Questions
1. What does it mean to say that God created man and woman "in His own image"?
2. How is Adam both a firstborn son and a priest?
3. What does it mean that Genesis 3 is told in "figurative language"?
4. What does the Hebrew word nahash mean?
5. What was Adam's sin?
6. Name 3 ways that Jesus is depicted in the New Testament as the "New Adam." Name 3 ways that Mary is depicted as the "New Eve."
7. For prayer and reflection: The Mass readings for the First Sunday of Lent (Cycle A) are Genesis 2:7-9; 3:1-7; Psalm 51:3-6, 12-14,17; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11. Read the texts in order and pray for the Lord's help in hearing the connections that the Church wants us to hear. Pray, too, this excerpt from the Opening Prayer for the Mass:
Lord our God,
You formed man from the clay of the earth
and breathed into him the Spirit of life,
but he turned from Your face and sinned....
Bring us back to You
and to the life Your Son won for us
by His death on the cross.
