Many people reject the Bible because they view its contents as contradictory or false, including God’s statement to Adam in the Garden of Eden compared to the outcome of Adam’s (and Eve’s) willful disobedience.
Genesis 2:16-17 states, “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.’ ”
Genesis 3:6-7 states, “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.”
Genesis 3:22-23 states, “Then the Lord God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever’— therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken.”
Genesis 5:5 states, “So all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years; and he died.”
Based on the fact that Adam ate of the forbidden fruit yet lived a total of 930 years, with most of them lived out after he sinned in the Garden of Eden, did God lie when He told Adam he would die if he ate of it?
No, God did not lie, because the death He spoke of was spiritual death and eventual physical death, which were both impossible for Adam before he sinned. But when Adam chose to willfully disobey God, he immediately died spiritually, having his intimate fellowship and relationship with God severed because of sin.
Adam was also expelled from the Garden of Eden, which removed his access to eat from the Tree of Life, which would have sustained him physically for eternity had he remained sinless. Therefore, Adam’s expulsion from the Garden brought eventual physical death because his sin caused and catapulted him into a realm of decay and death that ultimately claimed his life 930 years after he was created.
Consequently, God’s warning to Adam that he would die if he ate of the forbidden fruit (Genesis 2:16-17) was exactly what happened when Adam chose to rebel and sin.
I hope this answer provides you with a better understanding of God’s warning to Adam and how death ultimately entered and impacted his life.
