Quote:
Originally Posted by KSA
The tree of knowledge gave man something that only God had - God said "Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil" (Gen. 3:22). Don't you think that this verse contradicts Lee's teaching that God is life, but knowledge of good and evil belongs to Satan? God knows good and evil, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil expresses this attribute of God. This tree has nothing to do with Satan.
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You need to answer this
Paul M. If it was the nature of the tree, "the knowledge of good and evil," that caused man to die, then God too must die, because He knows good and evil.
KSA is correct. Man died because he chose to disobey not because of some "nature of the tree."
God told Adam not to eat of the tree. Maybe as Adam became more mature, God would have said one day that he was mature enough to have the knowledge that tree would give. Just like we do with our children. There is a time and place for learning certain things and it is dependent on their maturity. Children need to trust and obey, just as Adam should have done. (The N.T. speaks of discerning between good and evil as something for mature believers.)
Sometimes our children learn the hard way and we have to allow this. This is not the preferable path to maturity, but sometimes it is the path children choose.
All of mankind has learned a very hard lesson, the hard way. We all face the results of disobedience to God every day. Like the prodigal son, one day we woke up and realized we were in the pig sty eating pig slop. We came to our senses and start looking for home. I guarantee you that the prodigal son, once restored to his father, did not exercise his freedom to go out again.
Why? Was it because the father injected the returning prodigal with some processed father drug that enabled the prodigal to stay home?
No, it is because the prodigal having learned the consequences of leaving his father would never choose to do so again. He would stay of his own volition, not because he was drugged with his Dad's nature. Staying with his father meant that every single need would be met. That is what grace is. Grace is not like a bio-drug that changes us biologically, intrinsically, organically, or whatever automatic sounding word you wish to use.
Grace is God's full and complete provision for us that is available to us as His children when we ask. Just as our choice to disobey opened the door for the the power of the spirit that works in the children of disobedience to control us, our choice to believe in Christ opened the door to the power of the Holy Spirit to energize us. We ask and He gives. Day by day this is how Christ lives in us. We will remain for eternity beings with freedom to choose to go out on our own, but we will never, never do this because we know what that means and because we have seen and known the love that God has towards us.
Thankful Jane