The Gospel & Salvation: The Consequences of the Fall - Part 2

Relational Consequences of Sin

Genesis 3:16

 We are studying God’s word with a special emphasis on learning the gospel and the work of salvation. I am burdened to teach this because I am burdened for your souls. As one who has the duty to watch over your souls, it is imperative that I help you examine yourselves. This is an imperative command Paul gave to the Corinthians in 2 Cor. 13:5. He said, “Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves!” It is important to examine ourselves against the truth. Only the truth will set you free from sin and its deadly and eternal consequences. Misconceptions about the work of salvation may be wholeheartedly believed, but a distorted gospel will not save.

We have been focusing within this series on the consequences of sin. We must understand the problem salvation solves. We have gone back to where sin originated, in Genesis 3. Let’s read Genesis 3 together.

We have learned that sin started as early as verse 1. When Eve willingly entertained the question of Satan she revealed that she did not love God as she should. God’s moral law requires that we love God with all our being. If she loved God in that manner, she would have soundly rejected the serpent’s challenge of God’s word. This tells us that the bar of God’s righteous requirements are set very high. God’s law is the tutor that leads us to Christ because we cannot measure up.

Last week we saw the spiritual consequences of the original sin. There was the awakening of the conscience. This was signaled by the feelings of guilt and shame. My firm conviction is that this is where the grace and mercy of God first appears also. The awakening of the conscience is the gracious work of God because it reveals to man that something is wrong. There needs to be repentance. Our conscience is the warning system God gave to tell us of the need to turn away from sin and be restored. Adam and Eve did not respond to the guilt and shame as they should. Rather, they hid themselves from the presence of God. God’s question regarding where Adam was, was not for the purpose of learning of his location. It was for the purpose of revealing to Adam his condition. This was another opportunity for Adam to confess his sin. He would not. He was alienated from God. Sin had separated the sinner from holy God. The sinner wanted nothing to do with God.

Even when asked if he had eaten of the forbidden tree, Adam’s sinful nature is on prominent display. He now has the victim mindset. The victim mindset comes from the unwillingness to accept responsibility for what we have done. Adam’s now sinful nature produces an unwillingness to confess sin. It blames someone else. Adam blames God. “The woman (blame) whom You (blame) gave to me (victim).” It isn’t my fault. I’m the victim.

The spiritual consequences show us that man is sinful and corrupt. He cannot see the truth. He is evasive with his answers. He is deceptive, self-protective, self-justifying, and he is shifting blame to anyone other than himself. He will not take personal responsibility and cry out to God for mercy. The sinner is not interested in restoration, forgiveness and reconciliation. The sinner’s lack of love for God has come to fruition.

We see no hatred for sin and for what sin has done to them. They don’t have any desire to turn away from sin and turn to God. The only way the problem is going to be solved is if God graciously releases the man and woman from the bondage to their sinful condition.

Is there hope? We know there is. We have seen in this text that there is reason for hope. There isn’t any hope from anything we have seen in the response of man, but there is hope based on what we have seen from God. Man’s only hope is found in the fact that God is, as He revealed Himself to Moses, gracious and merciful and abounding in lovingkindness.

Grace was seen in the feelings of guild and shame. God graciously designed this internal warning system. These are gracious provisions of God to reveal the need for repentance and restoration. Grace was seen in the withholding of the immediate sentence of death. God would have been perfectly justified in killing the first couple on the spot. Rather than instant death we see God’s desire and intent to initiate reconciliation and restoration. God’s grace was seen clearly in holy God seeking the fallen, hiding sinner.

God does not take sin lightly. Sinners don’t fully realize just how serious the issue of sin really is. If it is not resolved, the results are eternal destruction. The weight of the punishment should tell us something. The consequences are severe because sin is such an egregious affront to a holy God. Yet, this holy God is a gracious God. The grace is even seen in the consequences. The consequences should compel us to seek the cure. The cure is Christ.

As we move from spiritual consequences to relational consequences, we are looking at God’s curse on the woman and the man. It is difficult to comprehend the weight of these consequences by simply reading the text. It is also difficult for those of us who live in a modern, western culture to fully appreciate the weight of these consequences because these consequences have, to some degree, been mitigated by advancements in medicine. If we step away from our easy, ordered, abundant lifestyle, and see the affects of these curses from the perspective of all of human history, there is no denying that these were devastating consequences. 

As we understand these verses we are seeing the impact of sin on human relationships. We saw something of the impact of sin on man’s relationship to God.  Now we will understand the impact on man’s relationship to one another. We might find it easy to forget the consequences of sin in regards to our relationship to God. He is Spirit. We know Him, but we are not looking Him in the face every day. I think if we are honest, it is sometimes too easy to forget God in the course of daily life. It should not be that way but I think we must admit that this can be true.

This is not the case with other relationships. We cannot overlook the consequences of sin when we look at one another. The curse of God on the sinner, and its impact between sinners, is the consequence we are reminded of each and every time we look at another person. We must never forget that they are also reminded of the impact of sin on others as they look at us. Relational consequences of sin are our most prevalent reminders of our need for a solution to the sin problem.

We see sin’s impact on relationships and God’s curse on man directed at human relationships because life for humans is relational. The animal world does not experience relationships like humans. I know this upsets you pet lovers but they don’t relate to one another, or to humans, in the same way humans relate to humans. God designed the life of humanity to consist of very intimate, life-long relationships. In fact, life could very well be defined as just a series of relationships. The curse of God on sinners has set us up to experience struggles in these relationships.

Why relationships? To illustrate the pervasive impact of sin. We cannot live life outside the context of relationships. We exist because our parents were in a relationship. We were born into that relationship with our parents and probably some siblings. We grew and developed other relationships. We found that special someone whom we expected to make us happy for life and we entered the marriage relationship. It didn’t take long to figure out that we married a sinner. It didn’t take our spouse long to figure it out either. Life is one continual string of different relationships with other people. One thing is blatantly obvious. Relationships between people are relationships between sinners. We cannot escape the certain reality that sinners need to be reconciled to God and to one another.

If you doubt sin’s impact on relationships look no further than verses 12-13. We have already identified how these sinners were unwilling to acknowledge their own culpability in what has happened. They both play the blame game. Adam blamed the woman and God who had given Him the woman. Eve blamed the serpent. The tendency to blame others and refuse to acknowledge personal responsibility reveals that the sinner’s biggest problem is either an inability, or an unwillingness to see him or her self as the source of the problem.

Sin has changed man from an orientation toward God to an orientation toward self. This orientation toward self is seen in every act of selfishness seen in man. Selfishness is at the heart of every sin. Selfishness is certainly at the root of every relational problem. You watch carefully. The next time you get into any kind of conflict with another person, or if you watch a conflict between two people, you will see that neither is willing to accept responsibility for the problem. We are all experts at self-justification and blame shifting. I am never surprised when I see someone dealing with problems of their own making, and the first thing they do is to blame someone else, or something else that is seemingly beyond their control. I must admit that I am not immune from this same tendency. I am guessing that you probably aren’t immune either.

So let’s look at just how impactful these relational consequences are. For now we are going to skip the curse of God on the serpent and Satan. These are found in verses 14-15. We will come back to them in a later message. So we read first about God’s curse on the woman. This is found in verse 16. “To the woman He said, ‘I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth, in pain you will bring forth children; yet your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.’”

There are consequences that apply to the two most important relationships in a woman’s life. What are a woman’s most prominent and important relationships? Of course, her most important is her relationship to God, but we are talking only about human relationships here. Her two most important relationships are the relationships with her husband and her children. Hands down these are the priority relationships for most women. God’s curse on the woman applies to these two relationships.

God first sentenced the woman to greatly multiplied pain in childbirth. Before the Fall of man into sin there was no pain. I’m not sure what the birthing process would have looked like before the Fall. Any suggestions would be meaningless speculation because there were no births before man sinned. That doesn’t mean that there was no physical relationship between the man and his wife, just that she had not conceived. Now that the woman has sinned, there will be pain and the pain of childbirth is, as I have been told, among the greatest pain a person can experience.

The idea of greatly multiplied pain is the emphasis of this curse. Now, not only will childbirth be painful, but this indicates that the births will be multiplied. Think about this. Before the Fall, there was no death. If births happened in that setting, and no one ever died, it would not take long to fulfill the command to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. It is conceivable that in a relatively short time, compared to the situation where people die, the earth could be filled. It is purely speculative, but maybe the woman would not have conceived but once every hundred years or so.

The idea of multiplied pain in childbirth expresses the idea of multiplied pregnancies. The pain of childbirth is multiplied because births are multiplied in the fallen world. In most cultures, in most times, and in most places in the world, this has been the experience of women. Birth control is a relatively new concept. Depending on the nursing practices of a woman with child, it is likely that a woman would find herself pregnant in as little as a year after giving birth to a child. Her life would consist of pregnancy after pregnancy after pregnancy. Birth after birth after birth would be the pattern of her life.

In most cultures women do not have the rights they enjoy in our culture. They are considered property of their husbands. They exist to satisfy the demands of the man and to have and care for the children and handle all the domestic duties in the home. In far too many cases the man is not able or willing to provide adequate resources. So the woman is left to deal with these demands with inadequate food supplies, or other critical resources.

The multiplied pain also includes the heartbreak and sorrow of dealing with children who do not survive. I read that in the course of human history there have been far more children that have died in birth or infancy that those who have survived. I can’t confirm that but it would be a statistic that would not surprise me if it was true. The children that do live beyond infancy are sources of concern for a woman. My mom has often said, “once a parent, always a parent.” I just turned 69 years old and I am still her “little man.” I think she needs to get her eyes checked. I’m not so little any more.

This does not mean that there is no joy in children. Certainly children are a blessing from the Lord. Happy is the woman who has plenty. And I said that we must be careful to examine the curse on the woman from the context of the woman’s experience throughout history. It has been tough for her. Largely because of the influence of Christianity, some pain has been mitigated by medical advancements. Woman can use pain medication in childbirth. There are ways to prevent pregnancy that never existed in previous cultures. I’m not advocating the use of any of that. I wish our own culture placed a higher priority on having children, especially Christian parents.

When you think about the historical struggles of women in childbirth and child rearing, wouldn’t it be nice if she always found support and loving encouragement and understanding from the other prominent relationship in her life? History tells us that man has done very little to alleviate the pain the woman endures. In fact, he is the cause of much of it. She is a sinner. She is giving birth to numerous little sinners. To make things worse, she has to live with a grown up sinner she calls her husband.

The relational struggle of the woman in greatly multiplied pain in childbirth is only one aspect of God’s curse on her. Look at the last part of verse 16. “Yet your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” This is where we see sin’s impact on her other most significant relationship. What does this mean? Much of the sorrow and struggles of her life are because she is married to the man. Because she is married to a fallen sinner, the man has little concern for her needs. He is selfish. He cares more about his sexual desires being satisfied than the impact of multiplied pregnancies which result. Historically, men have shown little concern, compassion, or understanding. Men have controlled woman and suppressed them and subjected them to domination, sometimes just because he is bigger and stronger. Historically, men have expected everything from the woman, and have offered very little in return. Because she is fallen also, she wants to rebel against this.

Some have suggested that the statement about her desire speaks of sexual desire. This could not be what it means. The fulfillment of the command to be fruitful and multiply before the Fall into sin means that sexual desire was part of their marriage relationship. She was not cursed by being given a physical desire for her husband. This indicates a negative change that will be the source of struggle and conflict. This is something with negative consequences.

The word “desire” means “control.” God was saying that the woman would seek control over her husband, but yet he will rule over you.” This would be the initiation of the battle of the sexes. Woman has long sought to rule over the man and man has a long history of dominating and degrading women. If you turn over to Genesis 4:7 you find another place where the same word “desire” is used and the context here gives us a clear indication of the meaning. “…sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you.” Clearly sin was seeking control of Cain. God sais that Eve, and all women subsequent to her, would seek to control their husbands, but he would rule over her.

Eve stepped out of God’s designed authority structure when she was tempted by the serpent. She took the lead, she acted independently, and usurped the role of leadership. When she acted on her own, she overturned the divine order. By taking control and usurping authority in the marriage relationship, she forfeited it forever. She could have and should have sought her husband’s counsel at the moment of temptation. She could and should have submitted to his authority. She did not. The legacy is one of ongoing conflict. It is a struggle for control. 

Throughout the vast majority of human civilization man has ruled the woman with domination and oppression. For the most part he lacks understanding of the woman. He shows little compassion or sympathy for her struggles as a mother. Historically, men have abused women. Women have been treated as property and forced to submit to the whims and desires of the man. The word “rule” means “to dominate, or to reign.”

I have never noticed this before I studied it this time. It is fairly obvious. This is as much a curse on Adam as it is on Eve. The curse impacts the husband/wife relationship. It is impossible that only the woman would have to deal with the effects of this curse. The desire of the woman and the rule of the man will inevitably produce conflict. The conflict will be a constant reminder of their need for a cure.

Adam, and husbands since Adam, have had to deal with their wife’s desire to rule over them. She usurped his role and led both of them to disobey God. She took the leadership and he followed. Because he neglected his duties as the leader of his family, he was sentenced to have to deal with that rebellious tendency on a permanent basis. And because the man is a sinner, he exercises his authority without the proper balance of love, compassion, tenderness, or understanding.

I don’t expect that it was very many days, maybe not even very many hours into this new relational paradigm, before Adam and Eve woke up to the seriousness of their sin. Sin caused the first couple to sacrifice paradise. The sweetest aspect of that paradise would have been the harmony, love, unity, peace, and beauty of a love in a marriage where selfishness did not exist. There was no sin, therefore no shame or guilt. There was no selfishness, therefore no conflict. Before they sinned, this couple enjoyed perfect harmony, selfless love, and peaceful unity. The Fall of man brought about a tragic end to those perfections and produced devastating relational consequences.

My hope is that all this bad news is making you ready to hear some good news. I have good news for you in regards to the work of salvation and the relational consequences of sin. We must save that for later. Maybe a good approach to addressing the cure will be to see how the cure provides solutions to the consequences.

I think it has been good to look at these relational consequences because we all live in relationships. Every relationship we have is affected by sin. Relational consequences serve as a constant reminder of our need for sin’s cure.

All we have to do is look at ourselves to see that the relational struggles of this curse are real. Raise your hand if you are married. Keep your hand raised if you have never had conflict or difficulty in your relationship to your spouse. Not many hands remained raised. Not even one. This is our reminder of our need for the solution. Christ is our hope.

Let’s pray.