Did Adam and Eve Sin Before the Bite?

[Music] welcome to a new week on the a special John podcast with longtime author and Pastor John Piper first up this week we have question about the original sin that was committed by Adam and Eve and it's an insightful follow-up question to something that you have said hello pastor Jonathan for taking my question my name is Alex from Dallas according to your sermon at passion 2017 you said the ultimate essence of evil in the Garden of Eden was not eating the fruit you said they lost their taste in God so they send before taking a bite can you explain this please I thought there was a difference between temptation and giving in to sin let's clarify two things one the difference between the essence of sin on the one hand and sinful actions of the body on the other hand and two let's clarify the difference between temptation and sinning seems like those the two levels of Alex's question first there's a difference between the essence of sin and the outward act of sinning the essence of sin is not what muscles do it's what the heart does and by the heart I mean the inner Faculty of willing and desiring that give rise to actions if some very strong person took hold of your arm against your will and by force caused you to stab somebody while you resisted with all your might you would plead that you did not commit wrong but if your heart move your arm to stab somebody you you would have done wrong and you know it so the essence of sin is not the movement of the physical members of your body but the desires and purposes of the heart external muscular movement or morally evil only insofar as they are expressions of an evil heart so when Adam and Eve used their biceps and triceps and hand muscles to reach for the forbidden fruit and then use their jaw muscles to bite it those outward acts of the muscles were evil precisely because they were expressions of a heart that had lost its taste for the superior satisfaction of God and had become dominated by desires for something more than God and that sinful condition of the heart preceded the muscles and their movement and the biting that was the point that I was trying to make now the second clarification Alex seems to think that that distinction that I just made somehow contradicts the distinction we usually make between temptation and sin so let me try to give a couple biblical glimpses of how to understand temptation and its relation to sinning first we know from Luke 4:2 and Matthew 4:1 that Jesus was tempted in the wilderness by the devil it said explicitly he was tempted and we know from Hebrews 4:15 that though he was tempted he did not sin now my conclusion therefore just from those few facts is that Satan's temptations are very often external offers of pleasure which if we embrace them would be sin but hearing and seeing the offer is not sin so in Adam and Eve's case there were things about the tree the fruit that offered pleasure was an objective offer and Satan was boo thing it perceiving that external objective offer is not sin Jesus saw it he heard it Adam and Eve saw it they heard it perceiving the offer of pleasure which if we embraced it would be sin is not sin but Jesus did not embrace it he thrust it away by the Word of God Adam and Eve tasted and embraced it savored it preferred it over God and acted on it in savoring it the offered pleasure became so compelling that the desire for it was greater than the desire for God at that point the essence of sin had happened in their heart then the muscles kicked in and made it visible now I'd like to just stop right here because I think that's relatively simple straightforward distinction between temptation and outward sinning but as so often the case in Scripture James won't let us stop here he makes things more complicated so we got to deal with James chapter 1 verses 13 to 15 because James bores in let me read what what he says he defines temptation differently than what I have just said here's what he says let no one say when he is tempted I'm being tempted by God for God cannot be tempted with evil well and he himself tempt no one but each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desired now there's a key difference from what I've said so far he continues then desire when it has conceived literally becoming pregnant then desire becoming pregnant gives earth to sin and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death Wow that's complicated so here's here's what James seems to be doing he's digging down into the heart to analyze what happens between the external offer of pleasure that I've called temptation and the moment when our internal desire becomes pregnant with a preference for that pleasure I think James realizes that there are often good desires in the heart which do correspond to the desire being offered in temptation which are not yet sinful for example if somebody offered you a thousand dollars to lie to the police about something you had seen and your wife and children were starving because you couldn't afford food you would feel a desire for a thousand dollars that could buy food oh yes a one a thousand dollars buy food for my family that desire that you feel and that moment need not be sinful even though it corresponds to the evil pleasure being offered you because you draw a line you draw a line and when that desire starts to cross over to a preference for the bribe more than trust in God in his way you cut it off you cut it off with the Word of God you put it to death with the Word of God I think that's exactly what Jesus did the Bible says he was hungry he hadn't eaten for forty days good grief he was hungry and Satan offered him bread no doubt Jesus felt a huge desire for bread in other words his desire corresponding to the pleasure that was being offered in the temptation but Jesus never allowed the desire to become a preference for bread over the will of God now what James says is that each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire and I think he means that this alluring and enticing at some point crosses the line into sin and he describes it as becoming pregnant pregnant with sin because that's what you give birth to you give birth to what you're pregnant with gives birth to sin the reason I think this is because he says God cannot be tempted well wait a minute we know Jesus was tempted so James is defining temptation to include the point of allurement and enticement that crosses over into sin that's why God cannot be tempted in that sense Jesus couldn't be tempted in that sense so here's the upshot sorry to make it so complicated but that's just what we're stuck with is God God is entrusting us some glorious things here in his word ordinarily we understand temptation to be the external offer of a pleasure which if we embraced it would be sin and guess the ordinary use of the meaning of temptation we may experience desires that correspond to that pleasure which are not yet sinful like Jesus hunger in the wilderness but sometimes the New Testament understands temptation to include the crossing of the line between an innocent pleasure that we experience that we have that we desire and the preference of that pleasure over God and God's will and therefore how vigilant we should be indeed the utmost vigilance thank you Pastor John for this deep exploration of the complex relationships between our affections and our temptations and our sins and that is a really great follow-up question Alex thank you for sending that in and thank you for listening and making this podcast a part of your day three times a week we publish and you can subscribe to our audio feeds to keep up with the new episodes and you can search our past episodes in our archive and reach us by email with a follow-up question you may have about something you've heard Pastor John say or something he's written in the past you can do all that through our online home at desiring God org forward slash ask Pastor John well many of you are probably familiar with the desiring God's slogan that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him you could hear all the entailments of that in this episode today but you may not be aware of the history of the slogan and how it came about and the listener has asked to hear the back story and John Piper will share with us on Wednesday where did the D G slogan come from and how did he write it that's Wednesday I'm your host Tony ranky thanks for listening to the podcast we'll see you then you

Channel: Desiring God

Views: 10,687

Rating: 4.884058 out of 5

Keywords: Desiring God, John Piper, God, Jesus Christ, Christianity, Christian Hedonism

Id: BFDwW6xMjU0

Length: 12min 20sec (740 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 17 2017