Judgment on Sin and Grace to Sinners
Genesis 3:16-24
The wages of sin is death … there’s no way to sugarcoat that awful reality. It has been like that since the Fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. There are always consequences for our sinful choices. What might seem pleasurable for a moment ultimately ruins our relationships, causes pain, and leads to bondage. Adam and Eve experienced shame, fear, and guilt when they sinned. They hid from God because sin immediately resulted in spiritual death, a broken relationship with God.
However as we saw last week, when Adam and Eve sinned, God graciously sought them, confronted them, and offered the promise of deliverance through the seed of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent. God showed grace. Adam and Eve deserved judgment, not a promise of deliverance.
Today, in this last part of Genesis 3 we will see how God pronounced His judgment on the woman and the man, then He showed grace to them in clothing them and sending them from the garden of Eden. As I said last time, Genesis 3 shows God to be both a God of justice and a God of mercy. God did not strike Adam and Eve physically dead on the spot as His holiness alone may have allowed. Nor did He just excuse their sin and pretend it did not happen. God dealt with their sin as a serious matter. He imposed the judgment their sin required, but He also demonstrated grace to them. God paved the way for men to be restored to a right relationship with Him.
I. Judgment on Sin (Gen. 3:14-19)
A. On the serpent (Gen. 3:14-15)
Last time we covered the judgment God pronounced on the serpent and the hope God gave of victory over Satan through the seed of the woman, Jesus Christ, Genesis 3:14-15:
14 So the Lord God said to the serpent:
“Because you have done this,
You are cursed more than all cattle,
And more than every beast of the field;
On your belly you shall go,
And you shall eat dust
All the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her Seed;
He shall bruise your head,
And you shall bruise His heel.”
God cursed the serpent, but promised a deliverer who would bruise the serpent’s head.
Today we start with God’s judgment,
B. On the Woman (Gen. 3:16)
To the woman He said:
“I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception;
In pain you shall bring forth children;
Your desire shall be for your husband,
And he shall rule over you.” (Genesis 3:16)
God does not directly curse the woman (or the man either) as He had done the serpent. But He does impose penalties for their disobedience. These penalties affected not just Adam and Eve, but the whole human race that would come from them. The judgments on the woman grow out of her roles as co-image bearer and helper to her husband. So they affect her roles as mother and wife.
First, in her role as mother she will carry and give birth to children who bear the image of God. But that role will no longer be free from pain and sorrow. God says to her, “I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception.” Down through history, many women have suffered and died in childbirth. In spite of modern techniques, childbearing involves pain. And on top of the physical pain of giving birth (which Kathy tells me is considerable), this verse also speaks of the sorrow of bringing children into a sin-cursed world. Mothers would experience the sorrow that comes from seeing her children hurt, rebel, and die.
God mercifully tempers the pain with the great joy which children give. As Jesus said, “A woman, when she is in labor, has sorrow because her hour has come; but as soon as she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world” (John 16:21). If the joy wasn’t there to lighten the sorrow, there would surely be a lot more one-child families. But because of the fall, you can’t have the joy without the risk of pain and sorrow.
God’s judgment on the woman not only affected childbearing, but also her relationship with her husband. Instead of the perfect, open, unashamed, one-flesh relationship that God designed marriage to be, God now declares there will be continual conflict between the man and the woman.
God says (Gen. 3:16), “Your desire shall be for your husband, And he shall rule over you.” That word “desire” is rare in the Old Testament. It is only found in two other verses. Both may give us a clue to understanding Genesis 3:16. It is used in Song of Solomon 4:7, “I am my beloved’s, And his desire is toward me.” There it speaks of the husband’s affectionate desire for his wife. But even closer to the context here in Genesis, that same word “desire” is used in a parallel way in Genesis 4:7. There God is speaking to Cain, warning him about the sin he is about to commit, “If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.” That last phrase, “its desire is for you, but you should rule over it,” is almost identical to the one in Genesis 3:16, “Your desire shall be for your husband, And he shall rule over you.” In this case the word “desire” has a note of rebellion in it; and the phrase “rule over” has overtones of tyranny about it. As sin desired Cain, the woman would desire her husband. As Cain should rule over sin, so the man will rule over the woman. It may mean something like, “You will have a desire to usurp your husband’s headship, but he will dominate you.” If this is the correct view, it alerts us to the inherent tendency of the fallen nature of each sex: of the woman to control her husband; of the man to dominate his wife. Both militate against the beautiful “one flesh” relationship that existed before the fall (Gen. 2:24). Thus Paul ordains (Eph. 5:22-33) that to recover that intimacy, the wife must submit to her husband, and the husband must sacrificially love and lead his wife.
The headship of the man in the marriage and family is not because of the fall. Adam was the head before sin entered the world. The consequence of sin was the added strife in the marriage relationship. God pronouncement here does not justify the abusive dominance of men over women; nor does it lend support to the egalitarian view, in which it is claimed that there are no gender-based role distinctions because Christ overcame the curse. It means that godly women must now fight the tendency to control their husbands, and godly men must fight the tendency to dominate their wives. Both must learn to love one another in the context of the proper roles ordained by God. With God’s help, competition and envy can be replaced with sacrificial love and mutual respect.
Next God speaks judgment,
C. On the Man (Gen. 3:17-19)
17 Then to Adam He said, “Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it’:
“Cursed is the ground for your sake;
In toil you shall eat of it
All the days of your life.
18 Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you,
And you shall eat the herb of the field.
19 In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread
Till you return to the ground,
For out of it you were taken;
For dust you are,
And to dust you shall return.”
God starts by listing Adam’s crimes. Adam sinned not only by eating the forbidden fruit, but by allowing his wife to have dominion over him. First God says, “Because you have heeded the voice of your wife” (Gen. 3:17). What He means is, “You listened to her when you should have listened to Me. You gave up your role as head of the home and submitted in her disobedience. She led you when you should have been leading her.” Pay attention here, I agree that a wise husband should often listen to the godly counsel of his wife; we have many good examples of in scripture and in life. But that he cannot follow her when she contradicts God’s word.
Second, Adam directly disobeyed God’s command. He ate when God specifically said, “‘You shall not eat of it.” Eve was deceived but Adam sinned knowingly and willingly. Men, listen up. Adam sinned by failing to lead. The woman sinned because she acted independently of her husband, forsaking his counsel and protection. The man sinned because he abandoned his leadership role and set his wife above God. In the first sin there is a total role reversal. Because he abdicated his responsibility to lead his family, both of them suffered the consequences. Scripture clearly holds the man responsible for his wife and children.
The judgment is once again two-fold: God cursed the ground; and He imposed physical death. First, the curse on the ground meant that man will suffer unending frustration in his work. God said to Adam, “Cursed is the ground for your sake; In toil you shall eat of it All the days of your life.” Adam’s life will be marked by trouble, toil, pain and difficulty. Nothing will come easily to him. It’s not just that he will work hard; it’s that there will be many obstacles and little lasting satisfaction. God continues saying (Genesis 3:18-19a), “Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, And you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread.” As Paul explains in Romans 8:20-21, “the whole creation was subjected to futility” and needs to be delivered “from the bondage of corruption” because of sinful man. Everything in creation that is opposed to man and harmful to him is a result of this curse. But listen, it is because of this curse that the promise of Christ is so precious when He said (Matt. 11:28), “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
Second, physical death now becomes a reality for Adam. God said (Genesis 3:19), “In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread Till you return to the ground, For out of it you were taken; For dust you are,
And to dust you shall return.” God confirms the death sentence for man’s sin. He came from the dust and to the dust he will now return. Since the fall, death is the enemy of every person. Every graveyard and every funeral home and every hearse reminds us of the truth of these words. No one escapes and no one postpones it forever. It is the one appointment we will not miss (cf. Hebrews 9:27). If we learn nothing else from this message, let us be clear on this point: The Word of God is certain and sure. The wages of sin is death. That has never been canceled or changed in any way.
But as terrible an enemy as death is, even it has its side of blessing: It forces us to come to terms with God and eternity. Very few of us would do that if we didn’t recognize our mortality. Death shouts at us that we desperately need to be right with God.
God allows us to suffer consequences for our sin. Sometimes those consequences are directly related to some sin we have committed; at other times we just suffer the consequences of living in a cursed, fallen world. It daily reminds us that God takes sin seriously. The good news is that even though we suffer the consequences of sin, there is also,
III. God’s grace to sinners (Gen. 3:20-24)
We see God’s grace to sinners when,
A. God provides a covering (Gen. 3:20-21)
After God pronounces the sentence of death in Genesis 3:19, you might expect something like, “Now Adam called his wife’s name the Grim Reaper, because she was the mother of all the dying.” But instead we read, “And Adam called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.” Adam calls her “Eve,” which means “life-giver” even though she has not yet had any children (Gen. 4:1).
What does this verse reveal? I believe it is Adam’s response of faith to God’s promise to send a Savior through the seed of the woman (Gen. 3:15). Adam heard and submitted to God’s penalty of death (Gen. 3:19); but he also believed God’s promise that there would come forth from the woman one who would bruise the serpent’s head. And so by faith Adam named her Eve, the mother of all living, before she had conceived.
Salvation is now and always has been by faith in God’s promise. Before the Lord Jesus Christ came into the world, a person’s faith looked forward to the promised Savior. Since Christ, faith looks back to the promised Savior. But God always has granted salvation in response to a person believing God. Adam believed God’s word.
God responded to Adam’s faith by providing a graphic object lesson of salvation (Genesis 3:21), “Also for Adam and his wife the Lord God made tunics of skin, and clothed them.” It is a beautiful illustration of what God would do through the Lord Jesus Christ to provide salvation for all who stand before Him, naked due to their sin. This verse shows us four things (Steven Cole following the outline of James Boice, Genesis [Zondervan], 1:189-192):
(1) Man needs a covering for his sin. The thought of standing with our sin exposed before the light of God’s presence should be more intolerable than the thought of going stark naked for a job interview. We all need some sort of covering for our sin.
(2) Man’s attempts at covering himself are inadequate. Adam and Eve’s fig leaves wouldn’t do. Man often tries to cover his sin with the fig leaves of this world: good works, religion, philosophy, science, busyness, substances—nothing can cover our sin.
(3) Only God can provide the covering we need for our sin. God takes the initiative in properly covering man. Adam and Eve did nothing; God did it all. We cannot receive God’s salvation as long as we offer Him our fig leaves. We must let Him provide everything, as He has in fact done in Christ.
(4) The covering God provided required the death of an innocent substitute. An animal had to be killed to provide animal skins for them to wear. Perhaps Adam and Eve learned what the Bible later teaches, that without the shedding of blood there is no covering for sin. In His grace God did not immediately kill Adam and Eve but He provided a substitute. Of course the blood of animals cannot ultimately take away our sin, but only the blood of Christ, to whom the animals sacrifices pointed.
The only way to eternal life is to accept the covering God offers through the death and resurrection of the Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God.
Finally we see God’s grace to sinners when,
B. God guards the tree of life (Gen. 3:22-24)
Having clothed Adam and Eve, God expels them from the garden. Genesis 3:22, “Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”” By eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, man had become like God “to know good and evil,” but not in the way that God knows it. God knows good because He is good and evil because He is not evil. Man knows evil because he has become evil by doing it. The implication of God’s unfinished sentence (Gen. 3:22) is that if they had stayed in the garden and eaten from the tree of life, they would have lived forever in their sinful bodies. So God banished them from the garden (Gen. 3:23-24):
23 therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. 24 So He drove out the man; and He placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.
Once sin had entered, to live forever would have been hell on earth. To set us free from sin and death, the Savior had to come who could open the way again to the tree of life (Rev. 22:2). Jesus said (John 14:6), “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” And, (Rev. 2:7), “To him who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God.”
As we come to the Lord’s table today we remember the sinless Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, and His death on the cross. It is His blood that covers our sin. It is by His resurrection life that we have eternal life. What Adam could not do, Jesus Christ the Son of God did. He perfectly obeyed His Father and willingly died the death that we should have died for our own sins. God accepted His perfect sacrifice and raised Christ from the dead. Now to everyone who believes in Christ, God gives the gift of eternal life.
If you have not yet trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ, to save you from sin and death—do it today. Turn away from your sin and from trying to cover it up yourself. Turn to the Savior who died for you. Believe in the Lord Jesus who lives for you. Only those who have received forgiveness of sins new life in Christ have a place at the Lord’s table.
If you have trusted in Christ, do you have unconfessed sin that you need to take to the cross today? Christ died for all your sins: past, present and future. He is faithful and just and will forgive your sin and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. Come to Him today.
