God’s Word for You

Genesis 2:17 The negative command

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Tuesday, August 25, 2026

17 But you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day that you eat from it, you will surely die.”

There was only one command that said “no” to the man: Do not eat from this one, and only this one tree. There was nothing else that was withheld from the man. Joseph experienced something like this when he was promoted in Egypt. During his temptation he said, “My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?” (Genesis 39:9). There was no other commandment, in a manner of speaking, for Joseph, yet he recognized that if he broke that one command, he would have betrayed his master’s trust and violated the will of God. He would, in fact, have broken both tables of the Law of God even though the law would not be given for another three or four hundred years after Joseph’s time.

So it was here for Adam. All of the commandments are hidden here under this one command.

• Since this was the will of God and the word of God, to avoid the fruit of the one tree was the same as having no other gods (the First Commandment).
• To use God’s name rightly is part of knowing God’s law, and keeps the Second Commandment.
• To give honor and worship to God rightly, even before there was any ordinance about a Sabbath day, would keep the Third Commandment.
• Adam’s role and obligation to instruct his future children in this holy precept would keep the Fourth Commandment.
• To eat the fruit meant death, and so keeping this command fell under obedience to the Fifth Commandment.
• After Adam’s bride was created and instructed (as we see that she was, during her temptation), Adam’s love for her and his respect for his marriage meant that he should have guided her and shown his place of authority in their marriage when she was tempted in order to love and honor her and keep the Sixth Commandment.
• To take the fruit or touch it, as Eve applied the command during her temptation, was taken to be a statute not to steal what did not belong to them (the Seventh Commandment).
• To misapply the command of God would have been giving false testimony, breaking the Eighth Commandment.
• Everything about the temptation of Eve can be summarized by the word “covet,” which would be breaking the Ninth and Tenth Commandments.

And so we see each of the Ten Commandments, and both tables of the law underscored as well. Had Adam never sinned, he would never have needed any other laws.

God was showing his love for man by giving him this command. It was a barrier around man’s faith. For sin is not the product of man’s mind: “He who does what is sinful is of the devil (1 John 3:8).” Sin, when it entered into the world, was not the creation of God, nor would it come from man, except that the suggestion came to man, but through coaxing and persuasion from outside man. Professor Quenstedt (1617-1688) said: “The first and principal external cause of this sin is Satan, acting not through an inner impulse, nor through outward force, but through pure outward moral persuasion.” We might term this a psychological persuasion today. Therefore the commandment of God was there as a warning of a danger, the danger to sin against God and his holy will. Sin is lawlessness (1 John 3:4), and so a law was required, at the very least as a warning, a fence, a flashing light: Beware! “The sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so” (Romans 8:7). Therefore this law in the Garden was both a warning and a kindness. It was God teaching Adam that there was potentially a danger, and at the same time giving him a way to conform to God’s holy will in every way, and to worship God.

To turn again to one of our Lutheran fathers, Pastor David Hollaz (1648-1713): “A sinner is a rational creature, endowed with a free will and subject to the divine law, who deviates from it in what he does or does not do.” Therefore Adam, who was a rational creature and endowed with free will and who was subject to divine law, needed this warning and this ability to keep God’s law.

But we should not become skeptics of the Word of God just because we know what is coming. Do not let the devil hiss the same lie in your ear that he hissed into our Grandmother Eve’s ear. “You will surely die” is certainly combined with the words, “on the day you eat from it.” But would that make God a liar if death did not come? And we don’t need to arm-wrestle the text into saying, “Ah, but the sentence of death was spoken, so that death was on its way.” God is certainly capable of saying what he means without us doing grammatical calisthenics to fit the rest of the Bible’s words. The death sentence would certainly come. They should have died when they ate the fruit (for by now, no one who is reading the Bible should wonder whether they did or they didn’t fall into sin). So what happened? God himself will explain, and he will explain to the devil: “The offspring of the woman will crush your head.” God would rescue his treasured people on account of his compassion and grace. The death sentence was grabbed by someone else. “I will go,” said our Savior, the Son of God. “I will die in their place when the time is right. Until then, let them live out a life, a life of repentance and faith and spiritual rebirth.”

So, “When the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons” (Galatians 4:4-5). The law would be disobeyed, but the penalty would be obeyed in the only way that would rescue mankind. Praise be to God! Do not skip too quickly over these familiar words: “His mercy endures forever.”

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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