Results of the Fall

Relationship with God

The first thing that happened was that human beings found they had smashed their friendship with God and separated themselves from him.

Suppose you had a great friend, and one day you played a particularly mean trick on him or her.  The next morning, when you are out you, see your friend coming along the road in your direction.  Now it so happens that at the moment you catch sight of your friend you have just reached a side road.  What would you do?  Turn down the side road as quickly as you can.  That is to say, your wrongdoing, your sin, parts or separates you from your friend.

So it was that the sin of human beings separated them from God.  As the Bible says, Adam and Eve “hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden” (NRSV, Genesis 3:8).  They wanted to get away from him.

Human beings now found that, once having fallen away from God, it was quite impossible for them to go on doing right.  They could no longer go straight, as we say.

If you’ve ever watched people playing a game of bowls, you’ll have noticed the odd way that the big black balls roll.  They swing away from one side or the other.  This is because each has a bias, that is, a piece of lead in it which makes one side heavier than the other.  The result is that it’s impossible for it to go straight.

So human beings found that they had a bias, not to the right or the left, but to evil.  Not only were they unable to do right, but very often they didn’t even want to.  So human beings told their first lie – Adam told God that he was hiding because he was naked.  That was not true because he had made clothes of fig leaves.  Notice, too, how Adam and Eve didn’t take responsibility for the choices they made.  Adam blamed Eve, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit from the tree, and I ate” (NRSV, Genesis 3:12).  And Eve said, “The serpent tricked me, and I ate” (NRSV, Genesis 3:13).

The end of human beings’ life on earth was very different now from what is would have been.  When they died their bodies turned to dust.  As God said to Adam and Eve, “…you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (NRSV, Genesis 3:19).

The old happy world was no more.  This is represented in Genesis by Adam and Eve no longer being able to stay in the Garden of Eden.

This first sin of the human race, when they fell away from God, we call the Fall.  Since the Fall a race of human beings altogether different from that before the Fall now lives on the earth.  Each of us is now born with this bias to evil (known as original sin), and that is why we all find it so hard to love God and do the right thing.

Relationship with other human beings

The Bible makes the point that the sin of Adam and Eve disrupted human relationships – their sin led to the first murder (Genesis: chapter 4). (1)

Relationship with the environment

In the story of Adam and Eve, God gave Adam responsibility for looking after the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:15).  However, in eating the forbidden fruit Adam and Eve spoilt their relationship with the natural environment – they exploited it for their own ends, instead of acting as stewards. (2)