Why did God place the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil?
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April 07, 2024 |
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 “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.’” (Genesis 2:16-17)
1. Free will to choose between good and evil
Humans cannot tell the value of happiness until they experience misfortune. Only by experiencing illness, sadness, and pain can they realize the true value of health, joy, and peace and be grateful for them. For them to understand this relativity through human cultivation, God placed the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden.
God commanded Adam not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, saying, “In the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.” As a long time passed, however, Adam forgot God’s warning and chose to eat the forbidden fruit at his own free will.
Some may ask why Adam sinned although he had no evil within himself. He ate it and sinned not because of his evil but out of his free will. When created, he was given by God free will to choose between good and evil. Angels were only created to obey God’s commands so they have no free will to choose on their own. Man was formed in His image and had free will to discern and choose whether good or evil.
When his wife Eve ate the forbidden fruit and gave it to him, Adam chose to eat it at his own free will even though it was forbidden to. Thus, he disobeyed the word of God. As he violated the law of God, he was guilty of sin as written in 1 John 3:4, “sin is lawlessness” and evil began being formed within him.
The process in which evil entered Adam can be easily understood through the planting of evil in a little kid. Let’s say a kid makes a habit of hitting others. But he doesn’t from the birth although he inherits such a form of evil from parents. It is not planted and formed until he chooses to do it and repeats it in action. The kid sees another hitting someone else and begins to follow it once or twice and then takes delight in it. The kid will end up enjoying hitting others habitually.
2. What happened to Adam who ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil?
God said to Adam, “In the day that you eat from it you shall surely die,” and when he ate from it out of his free will, his spirit died and could no longer communicate with God. Since then, he and his offsprings continued sinning and resulted in falling under the control of Satan.
It is because Romans 6:16 says, “Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness?” Not only Adam but all his descendants became slaves of sin and children of the devil.
After Adam sinned, all his authorities to conquer the earth and rule over all living things were handed over to the devil. That is why the devil said to Jesus, “I will give You all this domain and its glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever I wish” (Luke 4:6).
The devil, since the authority over this world was handed over to him, tainted the world with sins and evils more and more, and humans became more wicked with the passing of time. The devil brings disease, poverty, disaster, tears, sorrow, and pain to those who commit sins, and then ultimately drags them into hell, eternal death.
When God created man, however, He never wished humans would sin and fall into hell. The reason that God created man was for them to experience relativity with their free will on this earth and to enter eternal kingdom of heaven as His well-cultivated children.
For that reason, God, although He knew in advance that Adam would eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and all men be destroyed as a sinner, predestined the way of salvation of mankind even before time began, which is Jesus Christ.
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