Lesson 1 — What Happened to Us? | Genesis and the Fall
Updated: 5 days ago
Taking the Hard Questions to Jesus — One Lesson at a Time
How can so many innocent lives be ruined by murder, abuse, cruelty, and other terrible things?
If God is good, why does He allow bad things to happen?
Before we try to answer every mystery surrounding suffering, I believe we need to begin where Scripture begins:
In the beginning.
Come sit with me awhile, and let’s learn from Christ and the Word of God together.
God Created Good
The Bible does not begin by telling us that God created mankind evil.
God created man in His own image.
“So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God created he him;
male and female created he them.”— Genesis 1:27 KJV
When God looked upon everything He had made, He called it very good.
“And God saw every thing that he had made,
and, behold, it was very good.”— Genesis 1:31 KJV
Evil, suffering, abuse, murder, and death were not presented as God’s good design for mankind.
Something happened.
Sin Entered
What Happened to Us After Sin Entered?
To understand what happened to us, Scripture takes us back to the beginning.
God gave Adam a command and warned him plainly:
“But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it:
for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”— Genesis 2:17 KJV
The serpent deceived Eve.
Adam disobeyed God.
Sin entered—and death came through sin.
“Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world,
and death by sin…”— Romans 5:12 KJV
Immediately after they sinned,
we begin to see what happened inside the human heart.
Adam and Eve experienced shame.
They tried to cover themselves.
They became afraid.
They hid from God.
When God questioned them,
Adam blamed Eve—and indirectly blamed God:
“The woman whom thou gavest to be with me…”
Then Eve blamed the serpent.
See Genesis 3:7–13.
Sin led to shame.
Shame led to fear.
Fear led to hiding.
Hiding led to covering.
And when truth came near, blame followed.
Before Cain ever murdered Abel, the human heart had already begun hiding from God, covering itself, and resisting the truth.
Sin Lieth at the Door
In Genesis 4, we see how quickly the corruption of sin begins to spread.
Cain became angry with his brother Abel,
but God warned Cain before Cain committed murder:
“If thou doest well,
shalt thou not be accepted?
and if thou doest not well,
sin lieth at the door.
And unto thee shall be his desire,
and thou shalt rule over him.”— Genesis 4:7 KJV
God did not command Cain to murder Abel.
God warned him.
Cain chose not to heed God’s warning,
and he murdered his brother.
Murder appears almost immediately after mankind’s fall.
That begins to help us understand the question:
How can people do such horrible things to one another?
Scripture does not tell us that God created mankind to murder, abuse, deceive, and destroy.
Scripture shows us what entered the world through sin
—and what proceeds from the fallen human heart.
Jesus said:
“For from within,
out of the heart of men,
proceed evil thoughts,
adulteries, fornications, murders,
“Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit…”— Mark 7:21–22 KJV
Jeremiah tells us:
“The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately wicked: who can know it?”— Jeremiah 17:9 KJV
This is difficult truth,
but it is truth we need if we are going to understand what happened to us.
Lord, Is It I?
It would be easy to read these Scriptures and think:
Look how horrible those people are.
But Scripture does not divide humanity into all the terrible people over there
and all the good people over here.
“For all have sinned,
and come short of the glory of God.”— Romans 3:23 KJV
That includes me.
This is where the question of the disciples becomes so important:
“Lord, is it I?”— Matthew 26:22 KJV
Before I look at the darkness in somebody else’s heart,
Jesus teaches me to examine my own.
Why do I hide?
Why do I cover?
Why do I blame?
Why does my flesh try to protect itself from the truth?
“Lord, is it I?”
This keeps the teaching from becoming condemnation of everyone else.
It brings every one of us to the foot of the cross.
We all need Jesus.
Mankind Hid—But God Came Looking
After Adam sinned, he hid from the presence of God.
But then we read:
“And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?”— Genesis 3:9 KJV
Adam was hiding.
God called.
What a beautiful glimpse of the Gospel.
Mankind sinned.
Mankind hid.
Mankind covered.
Mankind blamed.
Sin entered the world, and death followed.
But God did not abandon mankind in hiding.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son,
that whosoever believeth in him should not perish,
but have everlasting life.”— John 3:16 KJV
God did not call sin good.
He did not ignore evil.
And He did not leave fallen mankind without hope.
He gave us Jesus Christ.
The First Foundation
We have not yet answered every question about suffering.
We have not yet studied spiritual blindness,
Satan’s deception, human responsibility, God’s judgment,
or why those who belong to Christ still experience suffering and physical death.
Those questions deserve careful time in the Word of God.
But this is our first foundation:
God created good.
Man disobeyed God.
Sin entered.
Death entered through sin.
The human heart began hiding, covering, and blaming.
And that same fallen nature still shows itself in the world around us
—and within us.
Yet God so loved this fallen world that He gave us Jesus Christ.
The Bible does not begin its answer to evil by asking us to look at everybody else.
It takes us back to the human heart that hid from God
—and then shows us the God who came looking.
There is hope in today.
His name is Jesus.
Christ is the Teacher; I am a fellow learner.
Thank you for sitting with me awhile.
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