Instead of saying, “Ye shall not surely die,” what he said in effect was, “Ye certainly shall not die. Why, that is just absolutely impossible!”

He questions the love of God and the goodness of God: “If God is good, why did He put this restriction down?”

The serpent implies that God is not righteous when he says, “You will not die.” And he questions the Holiness of God by saying, “You’re going to be gods yourselves, for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”

The thing that Eve did was to add to the Word of God. The liberal and the atheist take from the Word of God, and God has warned against that.

The cults (and some fundamentalists, by the way) add to the Word of God, and God warns against that.

There are those who say that today we are saved by law. They argue, “Yes, it is by faith, but it is faith plus something else”—and they are apt to come up with anything.

The Word of God says: “Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent” (John 6:29).

 

How important this is!

The serpent very subtly contradicts God, and he substitutes his word for God’s word. The Book of Romans teaches the fact of the obedience of faith.

Faith leads to obedience, and unbelief leads to disobedience. Doubt leads to disobedience—always.

Genesis 3:4-5 KJV

[4] And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

[5] For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

Genesis 3:4

And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

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Ye shall not surely die — He proceeded, not only to assure her of perfect impunity, but to promise great benefits from partaking of it.

This proclaims an outright denial of the Word of God; as God had preached to Adam, Satan now preaches to Eve; Jesus called Satan a liar, which probably refers to this very moment [Jn. 8:44].

The first part of the book of Genesis is general history (also called primeval history). As Moses introduced new people or nations throughout this section, the emphasis very quickly moved to the person or entity that he intended to feature at that point.

For example, the accounts of the first sin and the first murder are set forth in Genesis 3 and 4.

After drawing the woman, later named Eve, into a conversation about God’s restrictions for their food, the serpent now flatly contradicts God. This creature—Satan in a serpent’s form—rejects God’s warning that the humans would die if they ate fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

This conversation serves as a prototype for temptation to sin. The serpent’s strategy begins with starting a conversation about it, then subtly questioning the fairness of the command, then candidly calling God a liar.

To this day, every temptation to sin is, at some level, a question of God’s character using that same path: Did God really make that statement…is God really telling the truth…should I trust what He says…don’t I actually know better…shouldn’t I choose my own way?

These are the questions, and the path of pride and sin, through which the serpent will lead Eve.

One key aspect of the serpent’s strategy, of course, is that he never fully lies. Compelling deception is always built on half-truths about God’s intentions and restrictions. As we’ll soon see, Adam and Eve did not instantly die physically after eating fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

However, they did die as a result of their decision, both spiritually and physically. They began the “slow dying” of the aging process and they immediately lost their deep connection to God. They became spiritually separated from the source of all life.

In the New Testament, Paul will describe this as being dead in our sins, the state of spiritual death each of us continues to be born into (Ephesians 2:1–2).

Genesis 3:5

For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

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your eyes shall be opened — His words meant more than met the ear. This caused Eve to be inquisitive. In one sense her eyes were opened; for she acquired a direful experience of “good and evil” – of the happiness of a holy, and the misery of a sinful, condition.

But he studiously concealed this result from Eve, who, fired with a generous desire for knowledge, thought only of rising to the rank and privileges of her angelic visitants. This suggests the attainment of higher wisdom.

This, in effect says, “You shall be Elohim.” It was a promise of Divinity. God is Omniscient, meaning that His knowledge of evil is thorough, but not by personal experience. By His very Nature, He is totally separate from all that is evil.

The knowledge of evil that Adam and Eve would learn would be by moral degradation, which would bring wreckage. While it was proper to desire to be like God, it is proper only if done in the right way, and that is through Faith in Christ and what He has done for us at the Cross.

Here the serpent continues his deception of the first woman. His goal is to convince her to disobey God by eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. In the previous verse, he flatly called God a liar for His warning that Adam and Eve would die if they ate the fruit from that tree.

Now Satan reveals what he wants Eve to believe: that God’s true motive for His rule is selfishness. According to the Devil, God just wants to scare them away so they don’t become like Him. God is competitive and jealous. He can’t be trusted to give commands for their good.

In fact, the serpent says, eating that fruit will open their eyes. They’ll finally see the world as it really is, knowing all things: “good and evil,” just like God. As in the previous verse, this deception contains a partial truth.

Looking ahead a few verses, we see that mankind’s eyes are opened. They do come to know good and evil. But that knowledge brings them neither God’s power, nor His wisdom, nor His ability to love.

Knowledge without corresponding maturity brings perversion. Humanity is not equipped for this knowledge, and so it brings them shame, fear, and pain. They come to know good by abandoning it. They gain the knowledge of evil by committing it for the first time in human history.

The power in the serpent’s temptation was his attack on God’s character and motivations: Don’t obey God because He is neither good nor loving nor trustworthy. The Devil says God wants to rob us of experiencing true power, from gaining full understanding.

This assumes that mankind is in a position to judge the character of God. That lie continues to drive humans toward sin and away from the good God who loves us.

I hope that you have really enjoyed this post,

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