God’s Word for You
Genesis 3:22-23 expelled
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Friday, September 25, 2026
22 The LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil. Now, so that he does not reach out his hand and take from the tree of life as well and eat, and live forever—” 23 the LORD God sent him out from the Garden of Eden to work the soil from which he had been taken.
It’s well worth noticing that Moses describes the Almighty as “The LORD God.” Now, wherever “the LORD” (in all capital letters) occurs, it is the name of God, “Yahweh” or “Jehovah.” His name means “I AM” (Exodus 3:14). When this name of his is used, either as “the LORD” or “the LORD God,” it always presents God as the covenant God, who makes and keeps Gospel promises. Besides this, God once again speaks of himself in the plural, as we saw in Genesis 1:26.
This cannot be God speaking with angels, nor angels speaking about God. The LORD God would not use the pronoun which is emphasized here, “Us,” as if he and the angels were one and the same; nor would the good angels ever speak about God as if he were one and the same with them. No, this is God speaking and in communication with God alone. This reminds us that God is triune; three persons yet one and only one God. Moses is speaking this way to teach us that God, who is all-powerful, unchangeable and eternal, is also unchangeable in his mercy toward man, even though man has fallen into sin. God has been speaking about man in mercy and judgment since the fall, but here we have something else; something new. God the Holy Trinity is speaking in a divine counsel. We hear the concern of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit for his creation.
The sad fact was that man had come to know good and evil through his own experience. It was not only or solely an intellectual knowledge, but something that was now a part of their nature. Good was now something that man had lost. Evil was what he had gained, if that is the word for what had happened.
This led God to drive man from the Garden. I cannot help but think of the ellipsis in the Gospel, where Jesus says, “So that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins…” (Matthew 9:6), but then he breaks off and does not finish his sentence; he simply performs a miracle. Here he does the same thing. The Word of God proclaims that in order for man not to eat from the tree with damning results… and then he does not finish the sentence, but simply performs the miracle of driving Adam and Eve from the garden.
This was an act of love; God did not want Adam or Eve or any of their descendants (who would now be born sinful) to eat from the tree of life and live, deathless and forever, in their sinful condition. The tree of life was not a magical tree, but its gift of life was something very similar to, and perhaps we should say identical with, a sacramental giving of life, since it was the power of God connected with the word of God and this earthly element. Our sacraments give, according to the words of the Holy Spirit, the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation (Matthew 26:28; Titus 3:5). How? The word approaches the element, and there is the sacrament for our forgiveness, life, and salvation.
As a result of the fall, man no longer had the perfect image of God. The likeness man had was now wretched, twisted, and perverse, precisely what the devil had hoped. But Adam had also heard the gospel promise of what was coming; and who. Adam did not know the name of Christ, but he knew the promise that this was the one who would come from their line: “The image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation” (Colossians 1:15).
Just as we observed when we were meditating on the rivers of Eden (Genesis 2:10-14), we can see that this was an act of law and gospel at the same time. For the rest of their lives, whenever Adam and Eve would talk about the garden to their family or to each other, the glorious beauty of Paradise and their sin and the promise of the Savior, they would be able to look up and point to where they had come from. Whether they were close by or far away, they could point upstream, to the place where the great rivers came from. That is where they had sinned and now they were banished. That is the law. But that is also where they heard the gospel promise, and they were kept from condemning themselves further by eating the fruit of the tree of life and living without dying, in their condition of sin. That was God’s compassion. And that was the gospel, too.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.