MULTITUDEOF SINS FOR ADAM AND EVE

KEY VERSES: Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. For he that said, “Do not commit adultery”, said also, “Do not kill.” Now if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law. (Jas 2:10-11); And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins. (1 Pet 4:8)

  Sometimes Christians get comfortable in doing whatever is their strongholds. “Strongholds” are those behaviors and attitudes that Christians are not able to overcome for whatever reason, but always because they don’t deliver everything to God to cover with His blood. Strongholds are affronts to God. Rather than cleave to God, in essence, strongholds are cleaving to Satan.
  First off, should Christians be law-keepers? To be honest, God is not impressed with those who merely keep the law. Why so? Because they cannot keep them all! It’s that simple; there are enough laws that everyone is sure to break one. God is pleased, though, when Christians are willing to keep all the laws. The best example is Abraham who was willing to do what God commanded, although he hated the thought of it. He was willing to sacrifice his only remaining son (Ishmael had been emancipated), although killing was repugnant to him. The faith of Christians is measured by the faith of Abraham (Gal 3:7).
  Christians aren’t called on to sacrifice their son, but their own flesh, as God did. I bet you never thought of the crucifixion in that manner. It was God’s Flesh that suffered death. His Flesh (Jesus), however, did not die, but was resurrected and Jesus lives again. The death of God’s Flesh was gain for Him because it redeemed all of mankind. That was God’s Purpose all along, and death consummated His Purpose!
  Note that Jesus did not get partially crucified. There was no mercy wherein at the last minute, he was reprieved. He suffered death until his Purpose was finished (John 19:3). What was finished? Many things, but they all amount to the same thing - the Covenant with Abraham was finished. God’s Name, written in blood, signed off at the bottom of the Covenant, part one of three which was, “In thee (Abraham) shall all families of the earth be blessed” (Gen 12:3). What did God mean, “blessed?” Blessed is living in bliss. It is glorification – immortality in the Presence and Goodness of God. It is salvation from the Adversary, and in an entirely good place, namely the Paradise of Heaven. It is eternity with Jesus who Comforts and his virtue keeps glorified flesh entirely good just as in the Garden of Eden.
  Maintaining those strongholds is as if the flesh of sinners has only been partially crucified. One sin is as if sinning proliferantly, breaking them all with one swipe. However, love covers them all with one swipe as well (1 Pet 4:8 above). As always, I go back to original sin by Adam and Eve because it is the prototypical sin.
  In the beginning, there was one law:

And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” (Gen 2:16-17). 

  God made other edicts, but there was only one command, and by the way, it is the same command that is still extant with the Greatest Command and its corollary:

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself. (Luke 10:27).

  By obedience to that first command, it was obedience to the Greatest Commandment. The First Command was written on stone for perpetuity as the First Commandment: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me (in my face)” (Exod 20:3). We demonstrate to God the love that we have for Him by eating of the Tree of Life, and refusal to eat the fruits of the (false) Wisdom Tree. The Tree of Life is the Doctrine of God and is symbolic of Jesus. The Tree of Knowledge is the doctrine of sin, and represents God’s Adversary – the Serpent. By eating of the Tree of Knowledge, Adam and Eve demonstrated who was truly the God they loved. Who was he? The Serpent? The Tree of Knowledge? No; they loved themselves more than the Word of God (Jesus; John 3:1-2,14).
  Essentially, Adam and Eve broke only one Law. That was the “law of love:” (“Love is the fulfilling of the law;” Rom 13:10). There was one Law, they broke it, and showed not love. It didn’t matter which unspoken command that they broke, because effectually there was only one Command!
  For the benefit for those with excuses (rationalizations), God elaborated on His First Law. He reworded it for clarity because his creatures didn’t get the point because they were easily beguiled. They failed to understand that disobeying God in any respect was denying God love. Even today, when Christians sin, it is withholding love that is due God. Why should anyone love God? Because He is their Creator and potential Re-Creator. There is no one else who could do those things; let alone us creatures saving ourselves.

  Just think on this: Your own father chooses to conceive you because he wants your love. In spite of all the complications that you will have, he chooses to have you despite the certain insolence that is soon to come. Then after you are born, you soon learn disobedience, and disrespect your father. He afterwards loves you as he did before – when you were but a glint in his eye and an innocent baby.

  Well, that’s how God loves us so! Fathers are proud of their sons, and God is proud of His creatures, and desires that we not perish. Any sin that people do, is perishing. Christians must endure to the end, but one sin leads to another. Satan entraps to prevent spiritual endurance to the end to demonstrate to God that sinning Christians lack the love they proclaim.
  Did Adam and Eve commit one sin or many? I propose that they broke all of the Ten Commandments! “How so?” you ask. By breaking even one is as if breaking them all (from the key verses). Did they actually break them all? Let is check:

(1)    “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”  Adam and Eve never abandoned God. They became syncretic; they perceived themselves as God, just as the Serpent accused them (Gen 3:5).

(2)    “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” It is easy to think of “graven images,” or manufactured idols. However, read on: “any likeness of anything.” It seems that either the Serpent or the Wisdom Tree became their idol, but it was actually their own flesh! How so? They pleasured their flesh… their senses: “And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat” (Gen 3:6). What changed? Their flesh was appeased. It is to be noted that their spirit was not!

(3)    “Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain.” The Lord’s “Name” is Jesus who is the Word (John 1). The Word said, “Thou shalt not eat of it (the Tree of Knowledge of Evil),” but they ate of it anyhow. They took God’s Word in vain; meaning that Eve hearkened unto the voice of the Serpent (Gen :13), and Adam to the voice of the woman (Gen 3:17). Jesus was the Voice of God who spoke that command and walked in the cool of the evening when He questioned them! The two took God’s Name with apathetic disinterest. Thus, they were guilty of disrespecting the Word of God. (Note that the breaking of any command is taking Jesus frivolously because the Commands were written on stone by the “Finger of God” (Exod 31:18)). God when manifested is Jesus, and “the Face of God” is Jesus’s face for when we see Jesus, we see the Father (John 14:9).

(4)    “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.” God rested on the seventh day; the day after Adam and Eve were created. Nowhere in scripture does it say that Adam and Eve kept the Sabbath. That’s the day of rest for us as well, and the time to honor God. It is not known the exact time of the original sin, but chronologically, the activity previous to sin was God creating woman. The next activity would be the Sabbath on the seventh day, and as can be seen, the next activity coinciding with the Sabbath was Eve’s temptation and sin. Then Adam copying the woman. It appears that the first sin was on the Sabbath, and Mosaic Law was to perform no unnecessary tasks on the day of rest (Exod 20:10). What was Adam and Eve doing? Harvesting fruit, and thusly, failing to honor the Sabbath!

(5)    “Honour thy father and thy mother.” With that command, Adam and Eve did a great sin, for it is THE one than would result in longevity: “That thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” Hidden within that promise is eternal life. How is that? Because we know from Revelation 21 that New Jerusalem will come down to the promised land. In order to have eternal longevity, fathers and mothers must be honored. By disobeying God, both Adam and Eve dishonored their Supreme Father supremely. Dishonoring parents is a great sin, and both Adam and Eve did that and deserved death!

(6)    “Thou shalt not kill.” That should be easy to dispel. Did Adam and Eve kill anyone? Did they harm the Serpent? Did they kill God? First off, hatred is as murder (1 John 3:15). I don’t believe that Adam and Eve emotionally hated God because they were sorry later that they had offended him. However, they did “kill” God. Since God (Jesus) died for the sins of all mankind (John 3:16), and that Adam and Eve sinned, they were accomplices to God’s crucifixion. Their sin was even greater than Pilate’s. Jesus said that, “He (and her) that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin” (John 19:11). All people delivered Jesus unto Pilate because he died for all our sins. Yes, Adam and Eve killed Jesus, and later Adam, who was responsible for the willingness to sin (Eve was beguiled), was pardoned by grace (Gen 3:15). Since the reason for Jesus was original sin, Adam was the first man who killed God. Scripture even says that: “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Rom 5:12). That “one man” was Adam, and one person of “all men” is Jesus. However, not because he sinned, but because Adam did!

(7)    “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” Neither is the sin of adultery obvious. Some theologians somehow believe that sex was part of original sin. One reason is because they immediately covered their genitals with an apron of fig leaves (Gen 3:17); that was not sufficient, so God covered all their flesh with a coats of skin (Gen 3:21). It seems that this sin may have been missing! However, God refers to flirting with other gods as fornication (Exod 34:15). Why would that be adultery? Because Adam and Eve had just become one flesh, and already, Eve was hearkening unto Satan. Not by coincidence, adultery from the Hebrew can also be defined as “idolatrous worship.” Who was it they were appeasing? It was themselves; their own flesh. Adam and Eve experienced self-love for the first time ever, and fornicated against God. Rather than even loving each their mate, they loved themselves. That flies in the face of “loving others as thyself,” the corollary to the Greatest Commandment. (It is not looking good for our antecedents, and not for us either, since each sin we do is as if all the Commands are broken!)

(8)    “Thou shalt not steal.” This violation should be easy: Whose fruits were on the Wisdom Tree? They were God’s, and they were entirely good. God commanded that those fruits not be eaten, and then Adam and Eve did just that. They stole from God who had provided all the nourishment that they needed for sustenance. They did that because the fruit of the forbidden tree looked better than the twelve fruits that God offered on the Tree of Life. Those two stole fruit from God, and at the same time, humiliated Him by rejecting His fruit for what on the surface appeared to be better fruit. Adam and Eve were the first Epicureans as those who Paul admonished (Acts 17:8). Just like the Greeks in apostolic times, when Adam and Eve stole from God to appease their senses (idols or flesh), they suddenly forgot (sic) just who their God Is! Like the Greeks, their God became unknown gods, but they were themselves. Shortly, God straightened them out in regard to their new evil philosophy; that they were not really gods, but He Is.

(9)    “Thou shalt not bear false witness.” Eve lied! How so? First off, God gave the command to Adam before Eve was even created. God didn’t tell Eve anything, but she said, “God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die” (Gen 3:3). She exalted herself in the first breath, then said something that God did not say: “neither shall ye touch it.” That was an outright lie, even if God had spoken to her. Eve lied to herself and to the Serpent. Satan was pleased with that. The first lie would lead to many more. The “false witness” was Eve saying something that God had not said. She said something that she had not witnessed, and what she said was entirely false. Strike ten for Eve. How about Adam? He was part of the coverup. He stood by and listened to the false witness, and said nothing. He as well as lied himself because he stood silent to a falsehood!

(10) “Thou shalt not covet… any thing that is thy neighbour's.” The specifics that I left out are unnecessary. “Any thing” coveted that was not theirs was sin. What occurred before Eve picked the fruit to eat? She coveted it. What did Adam do as she ate. He coveted it as well. People always seem to covet the forbidden things. Coveting is to desire intensely. Both the two wanted the fruit so badly that they risked their immortality for a moment of pleasure. Coveting is a negative attribute (sic) of mankind that Satan uses to his advantage. He tempts because he knows that human beings are prone to desiring things intensely to satisfy the senses. Effectually, everyone are Epicureans, even Stoics, because they satisfy themselves with asceticism. Satan uses the flesh to provoke people to sin, and that’s why the flesh must be crucified. The crucifixion of the flesh is cutting off the desire to covet anything that gets between people and God. What stood between Adam and Eve and God? Seemingly better things than what God provided!

  I rest my case; Adam and Eve broke all Ten Commandments, and they would have died except for God’s grace! All Ten were accounted as one sin, but effectually, just as the first of the key verses says, they broke them all! God’s one act of love covered all their sins as if they were one (the second key verse)! Whenever anyone sins even one sin, they as well have broken them all. Since obedience to God’s “Ten Words” are how to demonstrate love (John 14:15), then disobedience to them exhibits hatred toward God. Ironically, breaking any one of the Commandments is breaking the First Commandment (hating God), and that is what Adam and Eve did by original sin.

THE GREATEST COMMANDMENT IN TEN WORDS (CREDIT: Msgr. Charles Pope)