Adam was not deceived but chose to eat of the forbidden tree. Why?

I've never started any serious threads before, so just going to put on my helpmet and crash gear and throw it in there.... And ooo, look at the typo I just happenstanced to make! helpmet? hmm...It's like 'helpmeet' in past tense where I meant to write 'helmet' but... WEll, I can't bring myself to go back and erase it. It's all too fitting for this topic! So...

I've learned there is a school of thought that goes something like this: since Adam was not deceived, he chose death for Eve's sake...

But however romantic this seems to me, for some reason I've found it difficult to fully accept it as anything more than speculation as to why he would, apparently, chose death if he didn't believe what the serpent said, 'surely, you will not die...'

Eve was deceived, yes, as scripture says outrightly, So, I guess I'd have to do a deeper study of the meaning of deceived to get an idea of actually transpired in this event.
Basically, she was deceived because she believed a lie, which is the closest definition I have of it to this point, and we know where that lie came from. However, we also know that Eve was not yet created when God commanded Adam of what trees he may and may not eat (ge 3:16). This is key in distinguishing between Eve's vulnerability to deception in contrast to Adam. Imo, because Adam knew exactly what God said, he could not be deceived. He didn't choose Eve, after all, he threw her under the bus, and henceforth rule 'over' her rather than reigned 'alongside' her, which is love as it is meant to be. He outrightly judged God to be a liar and chose to eat of the tree. So then, it is my position that his sin is greater because he chose 'unbelief' in God's direct word and exchanged it for the serpents lie, and that is how sin entered in through Adam.

Though, as I said before, the former theory that Adam did it for the love of Eve is so very romantic.

You obviously have no idea how difficult it is to turn down a naked woman with food.

This only supports my argument that his motivation was simply self-interest.

2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; 3 but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, GOD has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’
“
She didn’t say “Adam told me God said…”

Adam was not deceived. This means he KNEW what God said was true, and that he would die. This indeed makes his sin graver, however KNOWING that this was the result of his sin, he STILL chose to accept the same fate as Eve.

Once he did that, his mind was altered, as overwhelming fear took over, as he now existed in a fallen, corrupted state, and he BLAMED his wife.

So we have to look at what his motivation was to be disobedient, BEFORE he disobeyed, and sinned.

Dear Mem Good morning! *clears throat" Well, from where I am sitting this lovely day with the birds chirping and my early morning coffee at the ready, what comes to mind for me, always, with this subject is Hebrews 2:15 Yes, yes, this presents quite a conundrum. Why? Because if Adam and/or Eve feared death he/they could have simply eaten from the Tree of Life! But since when do men make sense?

Now since the children have flesh and blood, He too shared in their humanity, so that by His death He might destroy him who holds the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.

Fear of death is here identified as the cause of bondage to sin. Adam and Eve were of the natural world, after all...

Hi, Mem.

Yeah, I noticed that typo immediately and thought the same thing that you apparently did, so I'm glad that you didn't correct it.

In relation to Adam's motive, I honestly believe that we should consider the following:

"And when the woman 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, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. " (Genesis 3:6)

If we stop reading here, then it appears that Adam was merely standing there in the garden with Eve, and that she just handed him the fruit after she had eaten it, and then he likewise ate of it himself. However, if we continue reading just a bit, then we have the following to consider as well:

"And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;" (Genesis 3:17)

Here, we learn that Adam hearkened unto the voice of Eve while partaking of the forbidden fruit, so this implies that Eve somehow urged him (I want to say NAGGED HIM) into eating it. Anyhow, just another variable to consider.

As far as your comment regarding Adam "ruling over" Eve as opposed to "reigning alongside her" is concerned, seeing how God ordained marriage to be a natural reflection of the spiritual union between Christ and the church (Eph. 5:22-33), God always ordained for the husband to be the head of his wife even as Christ is the head of the church. I wrote a rather long post on that very topic in which I explained exactly what that does AND does not mean my first time through here as "Live4Him", and you can read it by following this link if you're interested in doing so:

https://christianchat.com/bible-discussion-forum/should-women-teach-should-you.198735/#post-4547539

I had copied this song below to my pasteboard, and thought, I wonder if Magenta would like this. I came bck here, and there you are, perhaps not an appropriate reply but it is a reply.


God bless you Magenta.

PS, I think this may be somewhere in Canada, the very beautiful.

The Romantic explanation is baloney. Absolute garbage. (I know you're not claiming it to be true.) Man sinned because believed the lie and brought sin to all mankind.

Had man NOT sinned after woman ate the fruit he would have become her savior by giving up his life for her. God had already pronounced them "one flesh", therefore, God could not take woman away from man and preserve man at the same time. Yet, death was required for the payment of sin. Man would have been resurrected and woman, through faith in man, could have likewise been restored to eternal life. Mankind would have had, then, a righteous king as their patriarch and the history of man would have looked quite different.

1 tim 2:11A woman is to learn quietly with full submission.a 12I do not allow a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; instead, she is to remain quiet. 13For Adam was formed first, then Eve.a 14And Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and transgressed.a

Maybe there were women at Ephesus who were falling for the false teachings that Paul talked about was going on there.

And maybe their husbands were trying to tell them not to fall for it but they were telling their husbands that they were more spiritual than they were and that their husbands should listen to them and agree with them, but the elders and their husbands were insisting that they were wrong and should abandon these false teachings.

Maybe Paul was telling that if they would listen to their husbands and submit to them they would learn that God was trying to help them but they needed to quit usurping authority over their husbands and humble themselves and quit trying to teach the nonsense that these deceivers had been feeding them.

Maybe Paul is reminding them of the age old issue in the Garden and to see themselves as listening to the serpent with these false teachings they had gotten caught up with and they should quit teaching that nonsense and submit to the leadership of their husbands who along with the elders were telling them to stop teaching this stuff.

Now I know it is speculation but so is most of what else I have heard about these verses. The question is who is doing the best job of identifying authorial intent.

One thing I know. That there are plenty of women in the churches today who are caught up in questionable fads that come and go in the church and seem to be the ones that make it popular. These women are always emotionally excited about some new interpretation and they try and teach it to you but the whole time you are wondering if their elevator goes all the way to the top, but you dare not say it because you don't want to hurt their feelings. It is so very common that I must believe it has always been this way even in the Ephesus churches in the 1st Century.

Was Paul addressing some previous correspondence from the church at Ephesus about certain women who were teaching one another nonsense that was being fed to them by their favorite celebrity false teachers? And their husbands were telling them, "you need to quit teaching that, it is not the correct interpretation" And these wives were like "I am the prophetess, didn't you hear me give a prophesy in church? This is secret information that the angels give to the elite." and the husbands were telling them they were deceived and need to submit to their authority and it would help them extract themselves from these false teachers.

But these silly women ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth are all over the place in the churches today. One fad after the other. They can't be corrected. They are always claiming supernatural revelation even if scripture does not support it.
When their husbands tell them they are cuckoo they usurp authority over them and say that their husbands don't have as close of a relationship with the Holy Spirit as they do and that they should be the authority on the subject.

This explanation is the closest I've heard of yet of Adam coming anywhere close to possessing the nature of Christ, if he would've died for Eve without sin.

.
The fruit made no difference to the woman on her own. It wasn't till her husband
ate it that she experienced changes in the manner of her existence.

FAQ: Why wasn't the woman effected by the fruit on her own?

REPLY: It's difficult to discern in modern English translations, but the pronoun
"thou" in Gen 2:16-17 singled out the man whereas Eve's pronoun "ye" in
Gen 3:3 expanded God's command to include herself.

That grammatical difference may seem a trivial point but it's consistent with
God's decision that if sin and death were to come into the world, they would
come via a lone male's actions just as life and righteousness would later be
offered to the world via a lone male's actions. (Rom 5:12-21)
_

Semantics. We know what one believes by their actions: we live what we believe. The end of Man's sin was rebellion but he acted according to what he believed.

Thank you all for your thoughts, and I regret I only have a fleeting moment reading over and even less to address them. I look forward to giving my full attention to them given more time. It's going to be a looong weekend at work for me. I appreciate your thoughts.

And more importantly, IMO, God's response had already been determined by bringing Woman out from Man and calling them "one flesh". God could not have taken Woman from Man and acted righteously toward Man. Had Man acted on THIS truth they both would have been saved and Adam would have been the righteous king forever.

he had listened and hearkened to the voice of his wife who had been deceived and passed it on to him

there’s a chain the serpent deceived eve and she ate the. She told Her husband about it and he ate

“And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;”
‭‭Genesis‬ ‭3:17‬ ‭KJV‬‬

The first two links are here

“And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, ( 1) thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: …

Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”
‭‭Genesis‬ ‭3:14, 16‬ ‭KJV‬‬

from the serpent to eve to Adam the deception is what Happened to
Mans mind and heart and sin is what the result of that corruption became

Yep.

Another strike against Adam was that he was with Eve when she was tempted and ate. Instead, he could have exercised authority over the serpent (perhaps killing him for attempting to deceive his wife) and protected his wife.

You must have a death wish!

yeah I find it interesting that they were both recognized as Adam before the fall and eve was named after the fall.

it says he was with her but then it says “ because you hearkened to the voice of Thy wife and transgressed “


To me it seems as if satan created the first false doctrine and eve spread it which caused the fall into captivity within our mind and heart to sin