The Highway Forums General Discussion Devotional Knowing God’s Holiness

For the believer, God uses everything; good, bad, easy, difficult—for our good. This means He never allows anything to work against us but for us (Ro 8:28). How can evil be used to benefit any saint? Evil manifests God’s holiness! It wasn’t until Adam and Eve partook of the Tree that “the eyes of them both were opened,” (Gen 3:7).

John Gill: “Their eyes were opened to see that they had been deceived by the serpent, that they had broken the commandment of God, and incurred the displeasure of their Creator.”

Albert Barnes: “They knew that they were naked—this effect results immediately from the consciousness of guilt. They now take notice that their guilty persons are exposed to view, and they shrink from the glance of every condemning eye. They imagine there is a witness of their guilt in every creature, and they conceive the abhorrence which it must produce in the spectator. In their infantile experience they endeavor to hide their persons, which they feel to be suffused all over with the blush of shame.”

It is my opinion that Adam and Eve would not have known “evil” had they not partook of the Fruit! They already knew what right and wrong was (Gen 2:16, 17) but was yet to learn what good and evil meant; and without knowing good and evil they were ignorant of the holiness of God.

I believe that God desired Adam and Eve to understand what holiness meant, which answers for the “Tree of Knowledge of good and evil” being planted along with the “Tree of Life” which was “in the midst of the garden” (Gen 2:9). It’s not like God didn’t have foreknowledge of them eating the forbidden fruit, He had His reason for it!

I believe God knew man would learn only through good and evil. Concerning sin, I believe it was part of man's nature so we could learn from it. Before they committed the first sin it was evident in them why they sinned. Eve "saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise" (Gen 3:6); all of which manifested they had the sin nature. I think when God said it was all good, He meant how He was going the make it all "work together for good" to the believer.