Jeremy Caris

Every person alive has been born into a narrative that began long before them. It is a story of design, rebellion, rescue, and transformation. Most people are living in the middle of this story without ever understanding its beginning. And if you don’t understand the beginning, you will misunderstand everything that follows.

In this first part, we go back to the garden, to God’s original design for mankind. We will see the purpose for which you were created, the authority you were given, and the environment of delight and pleasure that God intended for you. Then we will face the devastating reality of what went wrong: how sin corrupted everything, releasing death, pain, and futility into a world that was never designed for it.

But the story does not end with the Fall. It never did. God was already moving toward the rescue before mankind even knew they needed one. Through Jesus Christ, God paid the ransom for our sin, opened a way back to Himself, and made available a salvation so comprehensive that it touches every part of who we are: spirit, soul, and body.

By the end of these four chapters, you will see the big picture clearly: creation, fall, salvation, and the radical new creation that results. This is not background information. This is the lens through which everything else in this book, and in your life, makes sense.

What if everything you know about the beginning is only part of the story?

Many of us have heard some version of the creation account. God made the world, put two people in a garden, they ate some fruit they weren’t supposed to eat, and then everything fell apart. But on closer inspection, we find that it’s far more than just an origin story.

It gives us the framework through which we understand the worldview presented in the bible. God’s intelligent design shines through and provides clarity about the world around us, the past, the present, the future, and the very purpose of our own lives.

Before the beginning, there was God, the uncreated One. He always has been and always will be, and He does not change. At a certain point, He chose to create us and all we know, out of love. And when He did, He revealed many stunning things about Himself, so I encourage you to actively look to see God throughout it all.

The Way God Wanted It

Before we talk about what went wrong, we need to understand what God intended.

The plan of God didn’t begin with a problem. It began with a purpose.

In the first book of the Bible, Genesis, we read the story of creation… how God formed the earth, the sun, the moon, the stars, and all living things. But the crown of His creation was not the mountains, the oceans, or the stars. It was mankind.

God formed, or fashioned, man with His own hands and breathed His own life into him.¹ That detail alone should tell you how significant you are to God.

“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’” Genesis 1:26

Man is unique in God’s creation because human beings are the only living things created in His own image, with the authority and power to carry out His will. This sets mankind apart from, and also above, all of creation, carrying with it the demands and requirements of that greater responsibility.

We were made with a purpose and for a purpose, made for more than mere existence. We were designed to rule under God’s authority, to carry His image into the world, and to exercise the dominion He delegated to us. That’s the way God wanted it. That’s what God intended.

A Man-kind’s World

In Genesis 1:26, God is the one who names us “man.” The Hebrew word for “man” is adam, which is why the first human being’s name was Adam. As God brought every living creature before Adam, he named each and every one.² But among all these living creatures, none was found to be a helper and companion suited for him.

“And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man. And Adam said: ‘This is now bone of my bones And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.’ Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.” Genesis 2:21-25 (NKJV)

We’re all descended from Adam, so we’re all “man-kind.” Adam called his wife “Eve” because she was the mother of all living things.³ “Eve” sounds like a Hebrew word meaning “life-giver” and also looks like the word for “living.”

Now, we know that Eve was formed after all of the other living creatures already existed, and she was obviously not their mother in the sense that she gave birth to them. However, by calling her the mother of all living things, the Bible reaffirms that she shared in the authority God gave Adam over all of creation.⁴

From the beginning, this was God’s design: shared authority, shared purpose, and a relationship at the center of it all.

God’s Delight

There’s something deeply meaningful about where God placed them.

God planted a garden in Eden, which was the perfect environment for mankind to live and thrive in. Eden is a Hebrew word that indicates pleasure, delight, and luxury. God placed man in a place of His cultivated pleasure and luxury.

Since the beginning, God has desired to surround mankind with His delight.

Let that sink in. God didn’t create a testing facility. He didn’t build a boot camp or a classroom. He created a place of pleasure and luxury for the people He loved. That is God’s character and His heart toward you.

In Genesis 2:15, it says that God placed man in Eden to work it and keep it. There was great fulfillment for Adam and Eve as they maintained and extended the garden. There was no toil in their work. As a reward for their labor, they could eat of every tree in the garden except for one: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.⁵

They had purpose in life and found fulfillment in carrying out their purpose. Their effort was rewarding and the fruit of their labor was abundant. Work was not a curse. Work was a gift. Toil was the curse. But the curse came later. In the beginning, work and reward flowed together seamlessly.

Created to Trust & Obey

This brings us to another significant point: we were created to trust and obey.

The fact that God forbade them from eating of this one tree is extremely significant for several reasons. They had never evaluated for themselves whether things were good or evil. They simply did what God told them to do and trusted that He had their absolute best interest in mind. They lived a life of happiness because they lived in loving obedience to their Creator, who delighted in them. They had no need to concern themselves with knowing right and wrong. They needed only to trust and obey.

Even in the garden, before sin entered the picture, the pattern for mankind was grace through faith. God provided everything. Adam and Eve simply trusted Him and walked in His provision. This is not a New Testament invention. It is God’s original design.

God’s command not to eat of this one tree was also a test of stewardship. He entrusted all of the trees of the garden to them as stewards, but told them not to eat the fruit of this one. All that they had was God’s, and He gave it to them to steward. But when Adam and Eve proved to be poor stewards of what was entrusted to them, God’s blessing was removed.

God’s people are still tested with stewardship today. The principle hasn’t changed. What He gives us is still His. We are still His stewards.

A Twist in the Story

This next part of the story is absolutely fundamental to understanding where we’ve come from and why things are the way they are. We are introduced to another character: the crafty serpent. Revelation 12:9 identifies him:

“And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.” Revelation 12:9 (NASB)

The devil was an angel created by God who had rebelled against God and led other angels into his deception. Being punished by their Creator, they were thrown down to the earth.⁶

Now the serpent was scheming to deceive the whole world. He knew that God had given mankind authority in the earth over all living creatures, and that he was therefore subject to them. Since he knew that he could not force mankind to give him control, he would trick them into rebelling against God, and as a result, transfer their God-given authority in this world to him.⁷

This is important. The devil didn’t overpower Adam and Eve. He couldn’t. He had no authority to. Instead, he deceived them into voluntarily handing over what God had given them. And Scripture is clear about the consequence:

“Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?” Romans 6:16

“Jesus answered them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin.’” John 8:34 (NASB)

The Strategy of the Serpent

The serpent questioned Eve, subtly twisting the truth of what God said. He asked her, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?’” Yet, God had said they could eat of every tree except one. When Eve engaged him in conversation, the serpent grew bolder in his deception.

Eve said that they could eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden except the one, and that they were forbidden to even touch it, lest they die.⁸ But look at what God actually said:

“Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.’” Genesis 2:15-17 (NKJV)

He didn’t say anything about touching—only eating. The subtle influence of the crafty serpent began to affect Eve’s conversation as well. Although it may not have been intentional, she began to distort God’s word by adding to what He actually said.

The serpent then caused her to question God’s purpose by saying that God knew if they would eat of the forbidden fruit, their eyes would be opened and they would be like God. Engaging with the serpent’s manipulation proved to be a tragic error.

Remember that God had not only created them in His image and given them His own authority and power to rule and reign on the earth, God had also never withheld any good thing from them. Up to this point, Adam and Eve had always simply trusted that God’s commandments were for their best.

They were not living for their own pleasure, but for His. As a result, they could not have been more showered with pleasure and delight than they were when they obeyed Him. Yet now, Eve began to allow lies to draw her heart to desire self-fulfilled pleasure without God.

“So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.” Genesis 3:6-7 (NKJV)

Selfless to Selfish to Chosen

Instead of being selfless lovers of God, they now began to live their lives as lovers of their own selves. They became self-focused, selfish to their core. They immediately began to do what seemed right in their own eyes, covering their nakedness and hiding themselves from God’s presence.⁹ This reveals the process of death which had begun to take effect.

When the glory of God that had rested upon mankind fell away, they realized that they were naked, ashamed, and empty without God.

They traded immortality for death and were soon banished from the garden—the very place of God’s delight, pleasure, and luxury. Everything they had known was lost. The fulfillment, the purpose, the unbroken intimacy with their Creator. All gone. Not because God stopped loving them, but because they chose to define reality on their own terms rather than trust the One who fashioned them.

But God was not caught off guard. Not by the serpent’s scheming, and not by mankind’s failure. God came and judged the serpent, Eve, and Adam for their rebellion. Yet, included in His judgment of the serpent, we see the first indication that God was already preparing a way for mankind to be restored to the full relationship with Him for which they were created.

He would do this by sending a Savior, Jesus Christ, the eternal God born as a man, who would live in perfect obedience to God and open up a way for fallen humanity to live before God eternally without fear or shame.

“And I will cause hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.” Genesis 3:15 (NLT)

This wasn’t an afterthought. Scripture tells us that God “…chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him[.]”¹⁰ And, Jesus, “…was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you who through Him believe in God[.]”¹¹

In creation and in Christ, God forever ties His own identity to mankind.

He didn’t create us and distance Himself. He didn’t set things in motion and walk away. From the very beginning, even before the Fall, His plan was to dwell with us and in us. The restoration was not Plan B. It was always the plan.

The Current State of Things

So where does that leave us now?

“…[T]he god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” 2 Corinthians 4:4 (NASB)

This confirms that the devil was successful in taking authority in the world that was rightfully given by God to mankind, and he is now using it to keep people in darkness. But as we will discover in the coming chapters, God has restored mankind’s authority through Jesus Christ, shining like a light in the darkness.

When we live our lives to selfishly pursue our passions and desires without God, the Bible says that we also die. This speaks of being spiritually dead and without a relationship with God who gives us life.

“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” Ephesians 2:1-3

Jesus did the very opposite of what Adam and Eve did by fully living in trust and obedience to God.

Jesus modeled dependence, not independence.

Therefore, the Bible calls Jesus the second Adam.¹² Where the first Adam brought death through disobedience, the second Adam, Jesus Christ, brought life through perfect obedience. And then everything changed for mankind when He willingly sacrificed His own life in our place.

As we will explore, the story that began in the garden does not end with the Fall. It continues to unfold with restoration. It unveils a Kingdom. It crescendos with a King who returns for His people.

That’s where we’re headed. But first, we need to understand what happened in the aftermath of the Fall, what sin actually is, and what it has done to us.