Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis. This is study #30 of Genesis, chapter 3 and we are going to read Genesis 3: 22-24:

And JEHOVAH God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: Therefore JEHVOAH God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

I will stop reading there. Up until this point, we have seen that Adam is used by God as a type and figure of the Lord Jesus Christ. He can also relate to or represent the body of Christ and, of course, Adam was a man that did sin, so Adam can also typify unsaved man that has rebelled against God. Here, in verse 22, it says, “And JEHOVAH God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil.” When God commanded Adam, “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,” Adam had knowledge of evil in the sense that he had intellectual understanding of evil. He knew that what was good was to obey God. He actually had experiential knowledge of “good” because for a time he did obey God concerning the tree, but he also understood that evil would be to disobey God’s Word by eating from the tree. That would be evil. However, it was not until Adam actually ate of the tree in disobedience that he experienced “evil” by committing it. Then he came to know it.

Often in the Bible “to know” means “to experience.” For instance, when we were looking at the Scripture, “But of that day and hour knoweth no man,” we discussed that in regard to the judgment of God, no man had yet experienced it at the time the Lord Jesus made that statement. Neither had the (fallen) angels because Jesus had not gone to the cross when Satan would be bound and experience the judgment of God. As it says in Mark 13:32, “Neither the Son,” because Jesus had not yet experienced the wrath of God while bearing no sin, but He had already experienced the wrath of God while He was laden with our sins from the foundation of the world; that is when He suffered and died and paid the price the Law demanded for sin at that time. But, this was a different matter because He had entered into the world to demonstrate or to make manifest those things He had accomplished at the foundation of the world, so in the Garden of Gethsemane He was beginning to be in agony as He fell down and He was beseeching the Father that the cup might pass from Him. Yet, He had to endure the wrath of God, all the while experiencing it for a demonstration, which is a completely different thing than He had done from the foundation of the world when He actually paid for sin. So, we can see that the Son did not “know” the day or the hour because He had not yet gone to the cross.

But, the statement is made in Genesis 3:22, “Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil.” Adam had sinned and transgressed the boundary of God’s Law and broken the commandment. He was guilty and he now had experienced evil and, so, too, had the Lord Jesus Christ already experienced it. Let us keep in mind that God is giving us an historical record of events that took place in 11,013BC and it was 11,006 years before the birth of Christ in 7BC. That’s when Adam was created and Eve was formed from his rib. They sinned not too long after that (and we do not know exactly how long), but they sinned against God and they experienced evil over 11,000 years before the Messiah would enter into the world. Yet, already God said, “Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil.”

According to God, “one of us” has already experienced the evil and, again, has come to know evil in a very intimate and personal way and that can only be because before the world began and God created all things Jesus was laden with the sins of all His elect. We know the Bible does tell us that God predestinated before the foundation of the world all those elect He would save, so their names were known. The Bible also tells us that Jesus was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, so He took all the sins that these people would ever commit upon Himself and it was a tremendous, ugly mass of sin that was laid upon Him, according to Isaiah 53:4-6:

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and JEHOVAH hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Isaiah 53 was written about 700 years or so before the birth of Christ, but God is using the past tense – He “was” stricken, smitten, afflicted, wounded and bruised for our iniquities. This is because it had already happened.

Someone asked me if God made reference to Christ dying from the foundation of the world in the early chapters of Genesis and our verse is an excellent proof of it: “And JEHOVAH God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil.” According to God one Person of the Godhead already knew it. We wonder why God would say “one of us,” but remember what it said back in Genesis 1:26:

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…

These are plural pronouns, such as “us” and “our.” Even the word “God” is “el-o-heem,” a plural word for God. And, yet, the translators did right in translating it in the singular because the Bible insists that the God of the Bible is not three Gods, but one God. It says in Deuteronomy 6:4:

Hear, O Israel: JEHOVAH our God is one JEHOVAH…

There is one God. There are not two. There are not three. There is only one JEHOVAH and, yet, in Genesis, chapter 1 and in many other places in the Old Testament He calls Himself “el-o-heem” to instruct us about the nature of the Being of God. He is one God and, yet, He reveals Himself in the Scriptures as three Persons. He has a triune nature: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So, He said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and God (el-o-heem) made man." He made Adam. So we read in Genesis 3:23, “Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil.”

When we speak of the Triune God, this mysterious Godhead, or when we speak of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, it is just what the Bible says in 1John 5:7:

For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.

When God speaks of these things and we read about it in the Bible, we have to be very careful. We have to be extremely cautious because of our creature limitations. We are just finite creatures and we are less than “insects” when compared to the God of the Bible who inhabits eternity – He is from everlasting to everlasting. That is His dwelling place and He is the great I AM, the ever-existent One.

You know, if we were “good” little, finite creatures that were obedient and trustworthy, and so forth, we would still have difficulty in understanding this infinite everlasting Being called God. But we are not good and we do not have a faithful and trustworthy heart and we do not have a sound mind naturally. We have fallen into sin and we have been spiritually dead in trespasses and sins. Our physical bodies have seen corruption and it taints our minds, so we can easily think erroneous things and come to wrong conclusions. So here we are as little fallen creatures with the tiniest of brains and we look at ourselves and we say, “Well, I am one person and not three. My brother and my neighbor are also one person and not three and every person in the world is one person, not two or three or more. Therefore, God is one God and one Person. You see that was not hard, was it?” That is what some people say because they are so caught up in their natural reasoning: “One is one. One is not three. That makes no sense. It is illogical and unreasonable.” But, remember that God warns us: “Trust in JEHOVAH with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” So, we do not lean upon our own understanding or our own reasoning and logic because we are finite beings and we are extremely limited creatures. It is utter foolishness to look to ourselves and our creature limitations that were placed upon us by the Creator and to reason from that perspective and say, “Since I am one person, then God must be one person.” We apply our own creature limitations to the Creator and we place our finite bounds upon the Infinite One. It is just what we would expect to come out of the mind and mouth of a fallen, sinful creature. Our reasoning has been perverted, tainted and ruined and we cannot trust our own reasoning.

We must look to God, the Infinite Creator, and the one who knows Himself and we must allow God to define Himself. And He does. He tells us and insists, “I am one JEHOVAH.” That is unmistakable. The Bible will not permit anyone who claims to be a believer to say that there are two Gods or three Gods or more. There is one God, but the same Bible insists that there is God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit and these three are one. We have to acknowledge our limitations and a child of God will acknowledge his own limitations and his feeble ability to fathom the Person and Being of God. We say, “I do not trust myself. I do not trust my own thinking. God’s thoughts are higher than my thoughts and His ways than my ways, so I accept what the Bible says even though I do not understand. It is mysterious and I do not understand how it can be that one God is three Persons and, yet, it is so.” It is submission and a humble acknowledgement of our own limitations and our limited ability to comprehend the great God of the Bible.

Of course, humility is not man’s strong suit. Humility does not come naturally to fallen man, but pride and arrogance comes naturally to the fallen man and that is why we have people that are always trying to think they understand the Trinity or they say there is no Trinity. They say there is only one God, but not three Persons. Men are “brilliant” in their variations of the truth; that is, they are brilliant in their lies. Man is extremely clever in a deceptive way. That is really true. We are sometimes amazed at how smart mankind can be in wickedness. They are wise to do evil and they can think out all kinds of scenarios for their wickedness.

The child of God knows that God is simply greater in His Being than we can understand. Here is an example for those that say, “Well, God must be like us. If we are one person, then He is one person.” You and I were born into the world. Look at your neighbor. Look at your family. Look at people all over the earth. Everyone you and I know have been born into the world and that means that each one of us had a beginning. None of us are eternal. Not a single human being upon the face of the earth has always existed prior to their conception in their mother’s womb. We all have a beginning. It is true that in the case of God’s elect, we will live forever, but none of us have lived in eternity past. If we apply that same kind of reasoning we would say to God, “I had a beginning. My neighbor had a beginning and everyone in this world had a beginning, so you must also have had a beginning. You cannot be eternal and you cannot be that great I AM that always existed and you must have had a beginning like me and everyone else.” Again, the problem is applying our limitations to one who is unlimited in power and might. God said Ephraim did this, in the Psalms. They limited the Holy One of Israel. We are not to place limitations upon God. God will tell us of any limits with Himself and there are limits. For example, God has placed Himself under His own Laws. But as far as being eternal, He is eternal in nature. He is not like the creature.

We had a beginning and we are reading about the beginning of mankind in Genesis. Each of us has had a beginning in conception and birth, but God is not like that. I am one person and you are one person, but God is not like us. He is three Persons. He is above us and greater than us. He is tremendously superior to us in the greatness of His Being. He is a far greater Being than man.