How it all began ?
All that God created in this world was good and perfect. There was enough to eat and drink for all life. It was in this blessed and pleasant setting that Adam and Eve, the first man and the first woman, lived. God told them that as long as they live obediently, they would live forever, but in the case of disobedience they would surely die.
God wanted them to be his friends, to take care of the earth and all that it contained. God had given them a precious gift: free will. He did not create them like robots or machines that love him and obey him automatically. True love is always a free choice. This gift of free will is one of the main differences between men and animals. This means that men and women can voluntarily choose between the true and the false, the good and the evil. They can choose to love one another or not to love one another, to do what God wants or to do as they please, to live for God or to focus only on self.
In the case of Adam and Eve, they deliberately chose to disobey God. They wanted to rule their own lives, make their own choices without outside interference, especially from God. They became lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.
Why did they do it?
Evil has for its father the devil, who is also called the Evil One. Although we all believe in the existence of evil today, the belief in the existence of the devil is clearly in decline. We think of him as the cartoon character: a comic monster with horns and a forked tail!
The Bible exhorts us to take the devil seriously. Far from being a comic character, the devil was a glorious angel in heaven. His name was Lucifer, which means “the bearer of light.” Later, he became proud and jealous to the point of wanting equality with God. It was because of this that he was banished from God’s presence and since that day he has been doing everything he can to divert men and women from God.
It was the devil, commonly called Satan, which means Deceiver, who tempted the first man and the first woman to evil and led them to disobey God.
And so sin and evil have entered into our world and at the same time spread to all humanity.
At the beginning, Adam and Eve walked in close communion and love with God. Once their disobedience began, sin became a barrier between them and their Creator. A great gulf now separated them from God. This is what we call “spiritual death”. It was because Adam was already spiritually dead, that he also died physically some centuries later.
Following what happened in the Garden of Eden, since then, we are all born separated from God. The Prophet David wrote, “Behold, I was born in iniquity, and my mother conceived me in sin” (Zabur, Psalm 51: 7). God is holy and we are sinners, so we are separated from him. “But it is your crimes that put a separation between you and your God; It is your sins that hide his face from you “(Isaiah 59: 2).
From the moment people choose to listen to the devil’s lies, they only follow his evil and self-centred path. This explains all the crimes, wickedness and suffering that are spreading in this world. That is why there is so much evil, so many broken relationships, so much selfishness and greed. By nature, we are all self-centred rather than God-centred. “There is no distinction. For all have sinned and are deprived of the glory of God “(Injil, Romans 3:23). We are all affected by this spiritual ‘disease’, which does not affect us alone, but affects all those with whom we come into contact. The Bible calls this disease: sin. That’s what’s wrong with this world, and it concerns you, as well as me.
So, by nature we are separated from God. And this was an inevitable consequence of our disobedience. Every man is a sinner in his heart. Even if sometimes someone has an appearance of outward piety, he does not escape the sins he commits for inward motives, words or thoughts.