Lesson 1: Education in the Garden of Eden
The premise of our lesson this week is that the Garden of Eden was a school for learning. Adam and Eve had great potential for growing and learning. Ellen White writes, "they were innocent and sinless, in perfect harmony with God" (Church Triumphant, p. 28).
They were "put into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it" (Gen. 2:15). They treasured it! The word shamar connotes the beautiful idea of appreciation. Adam was to "cherish" or "treasure" the Garden of Eden, "prize" it highly.
God was their teacher and He taught them about Himself. Love is eternal. Love has its source in God, for the Bible says that "God is love" (1 John 4:8), and He is eternal. And even love of man for woman and vice versa is a gift from God, for "God created man in His own image. In the image of God created He him; male and female created He them" (Gen. 1:27).
Those simple one-syllable English words convey a wealth of meaning: our maleness and femaleness are in the image of God, and since God is love, our male/female love is of God. It is God intended, God-given. But such love is regulated by law, just as electricity is regulated by law. Transgress the law of electricity and you have disaster. Transgress God's law of male/female love, and you have disaster instead of the happiness that the Creator/Redeemer has intended for us.
And what is the law of male/female love as God intended? It is built-in to the very nature of love itself: love is eternal. Therefore love makes infidelity impossible. The 7th commandment of God's ten has its own inherent promise: Adam and Eve will not, cannot, commit adultery!
In the Garden of Eden their First Teacher, the Creator, had plainly told Adam and Eve that if they should sin, "in the day" of their transgression "you shall surely die" (Gen. 2:17). He said exactly what He meant. It was the devil, a substitute teacher, who flatly contradicted Him, telling them: "You will not surely die" (Gen. 3:5).
This error was the common idea of the natural immortality of the soul, the teaching that one cannot really die, that what we call death is merely an immediate release to another level of life. As a host of physical ills can result from a simple vitamin deficiency, so this basic error borrowed from ancient paganism, but handed down through Christendom, triggered a chain reaction of confusion in my understanding.
In effect, the tempter, the false teacher, was voicing the teachings of paganism and of much so-called Christianity when he said that there is no such thing as death itself. No man can utterly perish. The soul possesses a natural immortality.
This idea became not only the cornerstone of pagan religion, but from thence it infiltrated the doctrine of many Christian churches. The error may seem innocent enough at first thought; but consider what it does to our understanding of the cross of Christ:
It effectively contradicts the Scriptural statements, "Christ died for the ungodly," and "Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:6, 8).
In other words, the way Satan wants us to understand it, Christ didn't really die for us at all. He merely endured physical pain in which He was sustained throughout by the assurance that He had nothing to risk, nothing to lose, since He could not really die. If He had nothing to lose, He therefore had nothing to give of any value beyond the endurance of physical pain.
This error of the natural immortality of the soul is intended by its author to cast a suspicion of make-believe into the story of Calvary--just enough to paralyze the devotion of those who profess to follow Christ. If their appreciation of Jesus' cross is beclouded, their love will be stifled, and their devotion hobbled.
The sufferings of Jesus were incomparably greater than the endurance of physical pain, or the torture of any of the martyrs. There was no sham or make-believe about the burden He bore. Scripture says, "The Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all" (Isa. 53:6).
--Paul E. Penno
Notes:
Pastor Paul Penno's video of this lesson is on the Internet at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lu3VqTehDY
Many of Pastor Penno's sermons are on YouTube in Spanish. Just type pastor paul penno en español in the search bar.
"Sabbath School Today" is on the Internet at: http://1888message.org/sst.htm
| RR |
