Gen 2:16-17 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die."

Isa 46:9-10 For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things which have not been done

I often hear the question, "If God knew that Adam and Eve would eat from the forbidden tree, why did He put it there to begin with?" This is often followed by the objection that God could have avoided a big hassle and spared us a lot of grief if He had just dropped the whole Tree of Knowledge idea. On the surface, it seems that God made a mistake. That is until you consider the matter more deeply.

Remember from Part 1 that God created man because of love. He desired to have someone in His image whom He could love and from whom He could receive love. This issue is at the heart of why He forbade Adam and Eve to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. To understand this, we must understand a little more about love.

When I ask college students to define love, I often get blank stares. More often than not, their understanding of love extends only to a feeling they had when exchanging glances with a member of the opposite sex at a party. Ok, maybe I'm a bit cynical. Nevertheless, the student typically has not heard what Jesus said about love in the Gospel of John. In John 15:13, Jesus said, "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends." In these profound words we can learn something about the definition of love. A man who dies for a friend makesthe ultimate choice, namely placing his friend's interests above his own. This leads us to the conclusion that love is the complete lack of self-interest. Additionally, we can say that at the heart of love is the issue of choice.

Without choice, one cannot demonstrate his love. Indeed, without choice we would all be elaborately designed robots only able to perform the functions that our maker has programmed us to do. A robot does not love. Furthermore, without choice we would not understand the concept of love. Without this understanding, we would not be able to receive God's love for us. Indeed, this would defeat the whole purpose of why God created man.

That is why God placed the tree there and forbade Adam from eating its fruit. As long as they chose to place God's desires above their own, they demonstrated their love for Him and enjoyed the fulness of His presence in their lives. It was when the serpent deceived them into believing that God was holding out on them (Gen 3:4-5) that they chose to fulfill their selfish desires and demonstrate that they loved themselves more than Him.

Although God knew that Adam and Eve would eat from the tree, He placed it there anyway. He considered that the benefits of creating a race of beings who had the capacity to love far outweighed the harm that man would cause when he chose to love himself. You see, He already had a plan of redemption in place before Adam ever sinned. In fact, that plan contained the greatest act of love the world has ever known, God sacrificing Himself for His selfish creation. God counted the cost of creating man and giving him free will, and He considered it worth it. He considered you worth it.

In Part 3, I will attempt to answer the question: Why did God make the consequence of Adam's sin (i.e. death) so harsh?

Each succeeding year on campus, I have noticed the increasing number of students who have never read the Bible. When ministering to such scriptural blank slates, I like to take them back to the very beginning, the creation account in Genesis. The story is a familiar one, even to those who have never read it. Indeed, its familiarity makes it easy for us to gloss over it as just another of those childhood lessons from Sunday school. One may say, "Oh, I learned about that a long time ago. I know all about it." However, as I have taken students through the first three chapters of Genesis, I have watched as the proverbial light bulb has been lit by deep revelation after deep revelation. In this post and several to follow, I hope to share some of these insights with you, especially concerning the love of God.

To start out, I'd like to ask a question that just about every human being has pondered at one time or another. Why are we here? In other words: Why did God create man? To answer this, we must contemplate God's nature. Who is He? What is He like? What makes Him tick? One clue to answering these questions is found in Genesis 1:26. We have been created in God's image, and because of that amazing fact we share some of His characteristics. Ask yourself these questions:

Why do I have friends?
Do I hope to get married someday? OR Why did I get married?
Do I hope to have children someday? OR Why did I want to have children?

There is something in us that craves companionship. We desperately need to have someone with whom we can share life. This is graphically demonstrated when someone is punished by being placed in solitary confinement. Left alone, the human mind eventually becomes unhinged. I remember before my children were born. My wife, Lisa, and I desperately wanted to have children. I've frequently pondered the reasons for this. We weren't lonely. We had a very fulfilling marriage full of fun and adventure. We wanted to have children so that we could pour out all our love and affection on them, and so that they could love us back. I remember after our first child, Matthew, was born and Lisa was pregnant with Michael. She would often say, "I love Matthew so much. I just can't imagine loving another child as much. I don't know if I have that much love in me." Needless to say, when Michael came along, somehow our love multiplied, and we fell in love with him every bit as much as Matthew.

We are created in God's image. The Bible tells us that God is love. He wants to have creatures in His very image upon whom He can pour out His very self, every last ounce of love that He has (which is a lot) and from whom He can receive love. God was not lonely. He simply had love to give and created man to be the recipient of it.

In the next installment, I would like to take a stab at answering another question that jumps out at us when reading the story of Adam and Eve. If God knows the future, certainly He knew that Adam and Eve would disobey Him and eat from the forbidden tree. So, why did He put the tree there in the first place? The answer is, because He loved them, but I'll explain that more fully next time.