Recently, there has been a trend amongst so-called “progressive Christians” to subvert plain Biblical teaching in various places in the Bible. They will make wild claims, like the word translated as “homosexual” in 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10 meaning something different, although the word literally means “a male who engages in sexual activity with a person of his own sex.”
One passage that seems to come up a lot from these false teachers is Genesis 3. They claim that the serpent told the truth to Eve in verse 4 when he said, “You will not surely die.” They say that after Adam and Eve took and ate of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they didn’t die, making God the liar, not Satan. You might ask, “What is their point in saying this?” The only goal is to cause true Christians to doubt the trustworthiness of the Bible.
So, what did happen in the Garden? Did Satan lie to Eve and tempt her to violate God’s command like we have been taught? Or, was the Serpent right all along? Well, as Hebrews 6:18 says, it is impossible for God to lie. So, there must be an explanation. In fact, there are a few.
The first explanation comes from the phrase God used in His command to Adam. In Genesis 2:16-17, God said to Adam, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” This phrase literally means “dying you shall die.” The phrase does not necessarily mean immediate death. Instead, it is emphasizing the certainty of death. And, in Genesis 5:5, this certainty came to pass when Adam was 930 years old. He surely died.
Secondly, Adam and Eve did, in fact, suffer an immediate death in the Garden. After eating the fruit, they hid from the presence of God (Gen. 3:8-10) and were ultimately expelled from the Garden (3:23-24). Death is a separation. Usually, we mean the separation of body and soul. But, in the Garden, man was separated from God because of his sin. As Paul explains in Ephesians 2:1, when you sin, you become “…dead in your trespasses and sins…”
Lastly, a physical death occurred that day as well. In Genesis 3:21, the Bible tells us that “…God made garment from skin…and clothed them.” Where did those skins come from? Isn’t it curious that in the same chapter that gives us the first prophecy of Jesus’ Plan of Salvation (v. 15), we find the deaths of animals instead of sinful men.
God cannot lie. That serpent of old was always a deceiver. But, our God has always been a redeemer. Though we were dead in sins, He made us alive in Christ Jesus (Eph. 2:1).