Banishment from the Garden

Because Adam and Eve's disobedience caused them to forfeit their privilege to live in the paradise garden where God placed them, He drove them out of it.

An oncologist (cancer doctor) knows about cancer intellectually. My friend Elisabeth knows about cancer experientially. We are all thankful for doctors who know about cancer, its treatments, and possible cures. But there is a big difference between knowing about cancer and experiencing the pain and anguish of cancer as it destroys your body. Like the doctor, Adam and Eve became like God in knowing about good and evil.

After God provided coverings for Adam and Eve, He said, “Behold, the man has become like Us in the sense that he knows about good and evil now. And he could keep eating from the Tree of Life and live forever—” The fact is that holy, sinless God knows about sin intellectually—not experientially, while Adam and Eve knew evil by personal experience and were contaminated by it. Their fall from innocence would now drastically affect their quality of life. God did not want Adam and Eve to live forever in their new sinful state. Knowing that, God did something that was at the same time an act of judgment and an act of mercy: He drove them out of the garden. Then He set an angel as guard with a flaming, flashing sword to the east of the Garden. God didn’t want man to eat from the Tree of Life and live forever in this sinful state.

Satan had spoken a half-truth when he told Eve she would be like God. When Adam and Eve disobeyed and their eyes were opened, they became more like God in that they knew the difference between good and evil. But they actually became less like God because they had experienced evil which permanently tainted their nature. God is holy and has never sinned. They were created innocent and had not sinned. Now that was over. Now they were sinners.

So God sent Adam out of the garden to cultivate the land from which he had come and set a guard so that living forever in sin could not be an option.