Why weren't we made to be sinless?

We are hard-wired to fall, just like Adam and Eve

“…For there is no man that sinneth not” — 1 Kings 8:46

An “Eve’s Apple” is a temptation our human flesh cannot ignore.

Even when we know better, sometimes an opportunity is so enticing, sometimes the fruit is so ripe, sometimes the sin has been explained away so eloquently, that we just take the bite, and live with the consequences.

As far as Adam and Eve knew, when they ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they were biting into certain death.

But they did it anyway. They violated the human instinct for self-preservation, along with God’s one-and-only commandment. Why?

At the moment they ate the fruit, Adam and Eve wanted the benefits it offered more than they feared the consequences. They believed the juice was worth the squeeze.

Filmmaker Woody Allen famously said “the heart wants what it wants.” This he said to justify marrying his ex wife's adopted daughter.

The same holds true for other body parts. And all those desires start in the same place: Our brains.

Weeks ago, I asked: Why did God let Adam and Eve fall? “Free will” was the most common response.

But there’s so much more to it than that.

Why are we even capable of sin?

Why weren’t we made more or less the same, God’s little Model Ts? (“And God said, ‘you can be any color you want, so long as it’s black.’”)

There’s a reasoning to God’s methods that free will doesn't account for.

Nor can God be said to be neutral in human affairs. He’s not some kind of cosmic libertarian who hopes we do right, but whose non-aggression keeps him from making it so.

God elevates kings and brings men to their knees. He orders men killed and raises them up. God hardened Pharaoh’s heart so it would be more glorious when he, God, delivered Israel from Egypt.

God couldn’t have kept Adam and Eve away from the tree? Cut it down? Never created it? Hired security? C’mon. Not only did God let Adam and Eve fall, he needed them to.

“Free will” treats God as the operator of wind-up dolls. Once he winds them up and sends them off, he’s not ultimately responsible for where they go.

But God does care where the dolls go — where the people go. He does believe there is right and wrong. He rewards right and punishes wrong.

So why, then, did he create people capable of wrongdoing?

Martin Ralph De Haan offers a strong answer in “Portraits of Christ in Genesis,” a book version of the Radio Bible Class he taught on Michigan’s west side until his death in 1965.

De Haan wrote:

“God permits evil to come in order that out of it may come some greater revelation of Himself….

Had Adam not sinned, there would have been no need of redemption. Without Adam’s sin, we would never have known the plan of salvation, would never have known the love of God for a sinner, or the grace that could save the vilest sinner.”

What Satan (and man) intend for evil, God intends for good.

The pattern repeats itself throughout the Bible.

Jacob’s family needed food and security in a time of famine. His son Joseph, governor of Egypt, took the family in.

The Israelites became prosperous in Egypt. Too prosperous, in the eyes of Pharaoh.

After Joseph’s death, the Egyptians become jealous, and suspicious, and enslaved the Israelites.

But for Joseph’s help in famine, his family, the people of Israel, might not have survived. But for slavery in Egypt, there could be no exodus.

Nobody likes reading about the crucifixion of Jesus. It’s graphic violence, carried out against someone you care about.

You wish it hadn’t happened. But you also know that death was a necessary condition for the story of Jesus.

As Jesus himself said in Luke 24:26: “Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?”

But for his death, Jesus could not have been resurrected. And the cross wouldn’t be the symbol of the world’s most-subscribed faith. And the year on your calendar would not be 2022.

You are hard-wired to fall, just like Adam and Eve. When you do, that’s not just free will in action.

It’s your path back to God, beginning to show itself.