This passage has been a puzzle to many Christians and the subject of much criticism from unbelievers. The question often asked is why would an all-knowing God put the Tree in the Garden if He knew Adam would disobey and bring the Curse on all of creation? If there were no tree, Adam could not have eaten of it so would not have sinned by disobeying God. No tree means no Fall, no Curse, and no history of death in the world. In other words, if God knows everything, why didn't He just not put the tree in the garden and spare the world generations of misery?
Critics sometimes exaggerate the dilemma, hoping to raise doubt on the omniscience of God or the plausibility of the Bible. Such criticism could have a chilling effect on the gospel. It tries to make it look like God made a mistake and then had to come up with the cross as a way to fix it. Jesus was a sort of “plan B.”
There are a few bad assumptions behind this criticism. First, it's completely non sequitur as an argument for atheism. I'm not sure exactly how it follows that, because people die, there can be no God. You could try to make a case that He's not a loving God or that He's not the God of the Bible but there's no reason we must necessarily conclude that death means there's no God. It goes back to a point I made a few months back: people have a false idea of how God should act and, when they can't find a god that acts they way, they conclude there must be no god at all.
The other flaw in this criticism is the assumption that eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was the only sin Adam could have committed. Removing the tree does not necessarily mean Adam could no longer sin. Adam still had free will and so could have disobeyed God in other ways. For example, God also commanded Adam and Eve to multiply; Adam could have refused. We have to ask if it is even possible for God to create a creature with free will but not the ability to choose to disobey Him? It's sort of like asking if God could create a square circle.
I certainly can't claim to completely understand God. Indeed, if a finite, simple man like me could completely understand Him, He wouldn't be a very big God. But after having thought about this and looking into His word, I think I have an inkling of why things are they way they are.
We like to say that God can do anything. Of course, there are things even God can't do. God cannot lie, for example. He cannot even be wrong. And here is another very important thing – God cannot stop being God. He will always be the Infinite One, the Eternal One, the Perfect One. Logically speaking, it can be no other way.
Isaiah 46:9-11 says, “Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me, Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure: Calling a ravenous bird from the east, the man that executes my counsel from a far country: yea, I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed it, I will also do it.”
Like this passages says, there cannot be anyone like God. In logic, there is an interesting paradox called the Irresistible Force Paradox. Essentially it says that irresistible force and an immovable object cannot exist simultaneously. One must yield to the other. The same is true for God. Not only must there be only one supreme power, He must also have supreme authority. You cannot have 2 beings with free will unless the will of one them yields to the other. Think about it – what would happen if one god says, “this will be blue” and the other says, “no, this will not be blue”? One of them must yield to the other.
When God made man, He could have made us like robots who only can do what He programmed us to do. That isn't what God wanted. He wanted someone with whom He could have fellowship - someone who would have emotions and reason similar to His. So, He created in His image. Yet, even though we are like God, we cannot be just like God. God wanted us to have fellowship with Him. He created us with free will and the ability to genuinely love Him. But by giving us free will, it was inevitable that we would disobey him. If we have free will, there will come a point that what a man wants will conflict with what God wants. Obviously, God would have known all this.
God is love (1 John 4:7-8). Because of His perfect love, He desired an object to love. However, His perfect justice would not allow Him to suffer the disobedience of His creation. So when He purposed to create us, He simultaneously would have had a plan to reconcile us to Himself again, once we disobeyed Him. His plan was the cross!
Revelation 13:8 refers to Jesus as, “The Lamb, slain from the foundation of the world.” In dutiful obedience to the Father, Jesus created the entire universe and shaped man with His own hands, knowing that the cost would be His own blood. It's overwhelming to think about it. It reminds me of a moving passage from that famous hymn:
And
when I think of God, His Son not sparing
Sent Him to die, I scarce
can take it in
That on the Cross, my burden gladly bearing
He
bled and died to take away my sin
God didn't make a mistake. He didn't create us without realizing the cost. Jesus wasn't plan B. He was always the plan!
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