The Serpent’s Other Lies
December 28, 2003
Dear Friends,
Everyone who has even a passing interest in the Scriptures knows the Serpent’s Great Lie: “Ye shall not surely die.” Amazingly enough, the Great Lie is almost universally believed, but that is another story. What few are aware of is the Serpent’s other implied lies.
The serpent goes on to share the reasoning behind his statement that they will not die. He says “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.”
There are actually two implied lies in this short little statement by the Serpent based on spurious reasoning. The more egregious of the two is the implication that God does not want us to be like Him and be “gods.” The Serpent seems to want Eve to think that God is somehow like a little child that doesn’t want to share. Is this what God is all about? Is God trying to keep His glorious nature all to Himself? Quite to the contrary, God wants mankind to attain to his nature. The Apostle John tells us this is true. “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.” (1 John 3:2) Furthermore, the Apostle Paul agrees. “For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.” (1 Cor. 15:52,53) Even more to the point, it is God’s desire that we should repent of our sins and avoid the penalty for failing to do so. “The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9)
Many people still buy into this false premise. They feel God has somehow hidden His will such that they can only understand the will of God by some sort of divination. Others think that God’s plan for this world is not contained in the Bible at all and is completely unknowable. Still others think that even if we could discern what God wanted for us, we could not attain it anyway. This is not the God describes by Paul in Romans 8. “What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” No, the God of the Bible is not concealing His will or holding us back from salvation. He is doing His part if we would only do ours.
The second lie is the implication by the Serpent that God does not want our eyes opened to sin. People often assume that Adam and Eve were somehow amoral creatures (i.e. not knowing the difference between right and wrong) before the fall. This cannot be true. How can a moral God give a moral law (do not eat of the tree) to an amoral man and then hold him accountable for his sin? It makes not sense. What does make sense is that God only had ONE law for Adam and Eve (do not eat of the tree) and this was the only law they understood. When they ate of the tree, they didn’t all of a sudden gain a sense of morality, they became aware of many other laws. They understood good and evil in a much greater context than they had before.
The mind of the serpent wants us to think that God would leave us ignorant of sin and its devices. On the contrary, in Christ, God has freed us from the power of sin. He has also provided us with the tools to make us aware of sin and the power to overcome it. Far from wanting us to remain blind to sin, God sent His son to make us see. As Jesus explains to the self-proclaimed “sighted” Pharisees, “For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind. And some of the Pharisees which were with him heard these words, and said unto him, Are we blind also? Jesus said unto them, If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth.” (John 9:39-41) Again the world clouds the clarity of sin so much today with its humanistic approach that even the word “sin” is fast fading from the world’s vocabulary. The Bible has been discounted as myth and hence morality in an absolute sense is completely unknowable. God has NOT left us in the dark concerning morality. He has given us the “light of the world.” (John 8:12 AV)
The lies of the Serpent are alive and well. “For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. (2 Cor. 11:2,3 AV)
Have a great week!
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