The Knowledge of Good and Evil

Someone has said that every major doctrine taught in Scripture can be found in the first eleven chapters of Genesis. Without question, the roots of human frailty are found there. Genesis three is the pivotal point where humankind goes from innocence to depravity. Let me begin by saying that I believe we must understand the Garden of Eden as a real place and Adam and Eve as historical persons. It seems to me that if we make the garden story an allegory, we are forced by logic to discount the historicity of much of what follows in Scripture, including the literal incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. In the Gospels, Jesus Himself alludes to the Genesis account as a real event as does Paul on numerous occasions. We can still learn from an allegory, but in this case, I believe we lose too much if we put the fall of humankind in that category of literature.

That said, I have been thinking recently about the meaning of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God spoke its name and the prohibition against eating from its fruit in Genesis two. In the next chapter, the serpent, later revealed as the devil himself, repeats the “good and evil” pairing, although he deceptively raises questions as to the real results of eating the fruit. I am satisfied that most readers of Scripture have a decent understanding of what good means. Where I think we need to dig deeper is into the meaning of evil.

When we think of the word evil, we generally go toward synonyms like sin, wickedness, and bad behavior. While these are not incorrect meanings of the original Hebrew word, it has a broader sense that does not necessarily imply unrighteousness. I first discovered the wider meaning of the word often translated from Hebrew as “evil” when studying Isaiah in Bible college. I wrote a paper based on Isaiah 45:7 called “Creator of Evil.” Since we know God is holy and cannot be involved in any way in anything sinful, the verse bothered me. I learned that the word Isaiah used can mean distress, calamity, or unpleasantness. With that in mind, it seems clear that Isaiah was quoting God as saying that He brought about calamity to chastise Israel and bring them back to faith in Him.

If we see the tree in the garden as the bearer of distress, calamity or unpleasantness it puts the story in a different light. Add to this the fact that the word used for knowledge in the Hebrew text carries the idea of intimate, experiential knowing. (The word is used in the next chapter to say that Adam “knew” Eve and children were the result. That’s intimate knowledge.) Together this reveals that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was forbidden because it would cast the eaters into distress, calamity, and unpleasantness. God was trying to protect His family from that. No doubt, it was also a way of testing them to see if they would remain obedient. Without many such tests, obedience would be robotic and invalidate the idea of humans choosing to obey God of their own free will.

Seen in this way, I think we can learn some valuable lessons. First, God’s prohibition was protective. He wanted to keep Adam and Eve from the dire consequences of failing to obey His commands. It is not as if God was trying to keep them from having a moral sense; that would necessarily have been part of their created nature as imagers of God. They would need to know right from wrong from the beginning, or else they couldn’t be held accountable for disobedience. Note also that the devil used the same illegitimate desire that brought about his demise: you can be like God. The enemy was steering Eve away from the idea of right and wrong by tempting her to want the forbidden fruit. She had to have a moral sense to know that she was supposed to obey God’s commands. The devil was able to distract her by focusing on her desires.

Another lesson we learn here that seems self-evident but is too often ignored is that failure to follow the rules has inevitable consequences. Even true believers will sometimes go out of bounds and use euphemisms like coloring outside the lines or sowing wild oats. What they fail to realize is that coloring outside the lines ruins the picture and wild oats will eventually contaminate the good crop making it difficult to harvest. The sinful nature we all inherited from Adam is all too evident as Paul points out in Romans six and seven. Doing the right thing is made difficult if not impossible when we focus on our desires.

The good news is what Paul recites in Romans eight. We are no longer bound by the sinful nature of Adam if we are in Christ. “Now if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit gives life because of righteousness.” (Romans 8:10 CSB) Whereas Adam made all humanity subject to the ravages of the knowledge of good and evil, Christ’s work on the cross removes us from the family of Adam and adopts us into the family of God. “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear. Instead, you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father!” The Spirit himself testifies together with our spirit that we are God’s children, and if children, also heirs—heirs of God and coheirs with Christ.” (Romans 8:15-17 CSB)

Another important lesson we can draw from thinking about good and evil beyond the strictly moral meaning is that even though believers are righteous in Christ, we still have a responsibility to use our spiritual senses to discern between right and wrong. The writer of Hebrews says, “But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have trained their faculties for the distinguishing of both good and evil.” Among the many synonyms the Greek lexicon gives for good and evil (καλου and κακου), there is one for each that stand out in this context. Good can mean “such as it ought to be,” and evil can mean “not what it ought to be.” Mature believers are called to see things as they “ought to be,” fitting nicely with the idea that sin is anything that is “not what it ought to be.” Righteousness brings order (ought) and anything else brings chaos (ought not).

When Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they left behind “what ought to be” and plunged humanity into “what ought not to be.” So, with this “knowledge,” it is easy to see how our purpose on earth is to help return things to what they were originally intended to be – what they ought to be. This means Christ as king and His followers as obedient subjects. “Bringing the Kingdom” means reestablishing the rule of God over His creation: “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” This will not be fully accomplished until Christ’s return at the end of the age, but we are called to make preparations now for that glorious future day.

Now you have the knowledge; wisdom is knowing what to do with it. And getting to it.

Related posts: The God of Demonstrations; Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing; Christian Responsibility; Digging Trenches