When the Lord God created Adam and placed him in the Garden of Eden, man was given the commandment to subdue the Earth. This meant that Adam had to use the mind God gave him to manage creation. When the Lord saw that man was alone and that this was not good, God took a rib from Adam’s side and made woman, a helper for the man, so that together man and woman could function as caretakers of the Garden of Eden.
God and humanity working in harmony with one another in a relationship of love. In order to be successful in this work, the Lord endowed Adam and Eve with knowledge, wisdom, and understanding. This being proven by the Bible where it states that humankind was created in the image and after the likeness of God, male and female created He them. As all believers know, God is by nature good, wise, all knowing, and the very definition of the word love. Going further, the scriptures teach that God himself IS love. So if man was created with the attributes of the all holy, wise, and loving God, just think of the blessed state Adam and Eve shared with their creator before the fall.
But since God’s plan for humanity was for us to live on Earth and have dominion over nature, we in turn were given responsibility and accountability. Along with the blessed state of mind, Adam and Eve were given free will and a very famous rule which in its transgression would ultimately change the course of the very nature Adam and Eve were given and the world their descendants were destined to inherit.
The rule God gave Adam and Eve that they would later break was very simple. All fruit bearing trees in the garden were fit to eat from, except for the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil which grew in the midst of Eden. The breaking of the covenant through the subtleties of the serpent, shifted the world into an alienation from life itself. Remember God said, “The day you eat of its fruit you will surely die.” Mankind was created to live forever, but by taking the fruits in the aspiration of becoming wise and to become gods, death entered into the world. Now remember, Adam and Eve were already formed in the image and after the likeness of God, so what would possess them to eat of this fruit that they knew was forbidden and would lead to death?
The answer: Pride, the sin of Lucifer the archangel who in his conceit, desired to take the place of the Almighty, and as a result of his vanity was cast down out of Heaven like lightning and by his rebellion against Holy God, this once beautiful archangel became the father of lies; that age-old serpent, called the Devil and Satan.
So because man chose to listen to the devil over the voice of God, sin entered into the heart of every living man and woman from Adam and Eve to each of us now in the present and to everyone to come after us in the future.
But hope for fallen man came in the person of Jesus Christ. Christ came to seek and to save, not to condemn. He came to bring mankind back to Eden, back to Paradise, and back to God. The Four Gospels contain the very words of Christ. These words are life and give life. The teachings of Jesus Christ found in the Holy Gospel give us guidance in all aspects of our lives. Christ taught through His actions. His teaching in word was backed up by His works, and His works proved that His word was truth. And that truth which Christ taught and demonstrated will set us free, releasing us from the bondage of sin and death and from all the machinations of the evil one.