Genesis 3 - Man's Fall & God's Grace
- Chad Werkhoven
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
Genesis 3 isn't just about man's fall, it's about God's grace.
Genesis 3 (NIV)
3 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ ”
4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
8 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. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?”
10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
12 The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,
“Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
16 To the woman he said,
“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”
20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.
21 The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the LORD God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23 So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
Q&A 7
Q. Where does man's corrupt nature come from?
A. From the fall and disobedience of our first parents,
Adam and Eve, in Paradise.
This fall has so poisoned our nature
that we are born sinners—
corrupt from conception on.
Summary
What’s so shocking about this sad slide into sin is its subtlety. We often refer to this episode as the fall, a word that implies violent collapse. Falls are rarely gentle—whether it’s a person slipping on ice, an airplane dropping from the sky, or an empire crumbling under its own weight.
But this—the greatest fall in history—unfolds through a quiet, ordinary conversation. No shouting. No force. It begins with a wild animal the LORD God had made, one more crafty than the rest. As the NET Bible puts it, the serpent was shrewd. Adam, God’s image bearer entrusted with dominion, should have driven it out to keep the garden holy—but he did not.
Notice the serpent’s strategy. He doesn’t force sin or even directly tempt. He simply sows doubt and twists the truth. And it works—which is why he still uses the same tactic today.
The serpent exploited the woman’s weakness: theology. She didn’t know God as she should, so he asked, “Did God really say…?” God had forbidden only one tree, but that command had first been given to Adam, and it was his job to teach it to those who came after him. He failed. The woman added to God’s word, saying they couldn’t even touch the tree.
The serpent had succeeded. Once it became apparent to the woman that she couldn't trust her intellect, she handed over the decision making reigns to her lower senses. And since the fruit seemed good, pleasing to the eye and desirable, she took some and ate it. All while the man stood passively and watched it all unfold. Until she gave some to him - who was with her - and he ate it too.
Dig Deeper
Most English Bibles title this passage The Fall, an accurate but incomplete description. Genesis 3 doesn’t only recount humanity’s rebellion—it also introduces God’s grace. That’s why we keep coming back to this passage so often.
The LORD God comes searching for His fearful, ashamed image bearers. Instead of crushing them with deserved wrath, He covers their nakedness with garments made from a sacrificed animal. Even as He pronounces curses, He does so in a way that points forward to the gospel—the serpent-crushing promise.
Even Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden is an act of grace, preventing them from cementing themselves in their rebellion for eternity by taking from the tree of life and living forever. This sets forth the story of the Bible from this point on until Revelation 22, when access to that Tree is finally restored for all those who are in Christ.
ACKNOWLEDGE WHO GOD IS: Our Father, who came to find His fallen image bearers;
ALIGN YOUR LIFE WITH GOD'S WILL: Pray for strength and wisdom to see past the serpent's ongoing lies;
ASK GOD FOR WHAT YOU NEED:
