God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them (Genesis 1:27).

Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever” therefore the LORD God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken (Genesis 3:22-23).

I love to look at things in the scriptures that appear to be in conflict with each other. The two sections of scriptures above are a good case in point. God created man in His own image. In verse 26 of Genesis 1, God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.” Then in Chapter 3 God is saying, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil.” Was man created in God’s image and likeness or did the fall of man make man like God – did adding the knowledge of evil make man like God – did sin complete the creation God started? NO! Chapter 1 verse 26 said “Let us do something,” and verse 27 said, “Something was done.” In what way did sin make man like God? The change was in the knowing of both good and evil. Before man knew the serpent, He knew God and the woman God made for him. After the encounter with the serpent mankind also knew the serpent and evil (bad, wrong).

When traveling someplace, all that is required is the right directions from where I am to where I am going, unless a wrong turn is made. That is what happened to mankind. God was giving man the right directions; the serpent came along and got mankind off onto another road. Mankind then needed a different route to get to their destination. Man also learned of the place where they were once they got off the intended route. God did not want mankind to have eternal life while they were out of bounds. Man now had wrong information (knowledge of evil). God’s answer was to remove man from the garden where there was also a tree of life. Then life was offered again by God through grace. Grace was God’s plan to get mankind back on track. If sin made us like God then the serpent’s information would not have been wrong information (knowledge of evil). If sin made us like God, eternal, then taking mankind out of the garden would have been a useless act. Sin only made us like God in one way, the knowledge of evil. God is not evil, so as mankind traveled down the road that the knowledge of evil led us, we have become less and less like God in all other ways.

What about the idea that the knowledge of evil has taught us of God’s goodness? If sin has led us away from God, in what way did it show us God’s goodness? The thing that brings us back to God (grace) has shown us God’s goodness. But wasn’t sin required for us to need grace? Didn’t we have to get off of the right road before we needed directions to get back to the road? Yes, but is grace a requirement for the sinless? Did Jesus need the grace that His life bought before He took our sins? No! In the sinless state (before the fall) mankind didn’t need grace as we know it today. Adam did not need grace until he sinned, just as he didn’t know evil until he sinned. Adam did not need the thing that took mankind from the face of God to know God and goodness. Evil cannot teach us good. We cannot learn light from total darkness. Is it only when light comes into the darkness that one can learn of light? Now that we are in darkness, we would say, “Yes.” If we were living in light, we would know light but not darkness.

The Hebrew word translated as “evil” means more than one word can explain. The word means: evil, adversity, affliction, bad, calamity, distress, harm, hurt, hurtful, ill, misery, soar, trouble, vex, wicked, worse, wretchedness, wrong. In contrast to God, evil means the absence of God in ones life or unbelief of God in ones heart. Evil takes from mankind all the blessings that God created for us. In the battle field of life, evil is on the other side and the effects of evil (the absence of God) is heavy on the children of God. I am battling illness and poverty with God’s promise of healing and prosperity. In doing so, those evil spirits have attacked me in those areas. Now I am standing on God’s promises; I will be healed and I will be prosperous. It is not my knowledge of evil that gives me confidence, but the grace of God. It is not the fall that has taught me to stand, but God’s promises lifting me up.

© 2008, Tim D. Coulter Sr.