The Love Story of Eve

The woman said,

“The serpent deceived me, and I ate”

Genesis 3:16

After hearing a new-to-me perspective of the Fall of Man, I’ve been pondering.  And it resonates. Eve was deceived. God created us women to have trusting hearts, to feel wide open. With that, comes risk of deception as subtle and harmless as it may seem.  Delicious-looking, sweet fruit, with a side of wisdom? Why yes, thank you.

I think I have imagined this scene as one with a delay in effect: Eve takes and enjoys the fruit…(delay in effect)…and offers its deliciousness to Adam, who also exclaims how good it is. Then, they both realize together what they have done.

Digging deeper, I wonder if there wasn’t a delay in Adam and Eve realizing what she had done. *I wonder* if both she and Adam knew exactly what they lost when Eve took the first bite:

They were suddenly separated by sin.

Eve was made from Adam (see Genesis 2:22-23). She came from him. It’s the one male that can relate more fully to a mother’s bond with her child. Part of you had to be given, sacrificed, to allow them to be full of their life.

Adam did not fully comprehend the practical curses that would unfold but he knew he needed her. She was a part of him and he was now looking at her like from afar. Like a glass wall a foot thick between them. And having to watch her suffer in unknown anguish.  Alone.

She needed him.

She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Genesis 3:6

Before you say what I thought at first, “You can’t blame her. He took it.”, ask yourself, what was his motivation to take it and eat it?

Adam wasn’t deceived – look again at verse 16 – Eve did not say the serpent deceived us, she said, “me”. Adam had to make a choice: be separated from Eve or separated from God. To choose God was to leave Eve utterly alone, unprotected, and toiling independently from him while he would remain in the Garden of Paradise.

He loved her and chose her. He gave up this life of perfect commune with the Lord, for her.

Isn’t this what Jesus did for us? Seeing us separated from Him by our sin, He came, to smash the impenetrable wall that separates us from Him? He took the sin of our choices on Himself, to give us back a choice: to choose full communion with Him again. To restore what was lost in the Garden.

Adam foreshadowed Jesus’ choice of sacrifice. Jesus knew He had to be separated from God to take on our heavy sin.  He had to give up the complete commune He had with His Father. But the love He has for us, won out. He chose to die with the sin that separates; that deceives us into thinking He is an unfeeling, controlling, irrelevant being. Yet this is the love story that our heart-depths desire.

Why do we love a good love story that the hero is willing to risk – even lose – his life for his heroine? It is the very soul yearning of our being to have a hero willing to die for us.  To love us that deeply. To be cherished that fully.

May I gently say, you do have a hero that is not only willing, He has. With a better ending. He comes back to life and is waiting for you to embrace Him.