Every part of the human personality had been undetermined by this satanic propaganda. satan had appealed to the whole man, spirit, soul and body but his method of approach had been from circumference to center; from body through soul to spirit.
Let us examine God's Word to see how satan achieved his success.
Genesis 3:1, "And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?"
A subtle insinuation is couched in these words which was intended by the tempter to arouse suspicion of God's goodness. "Did God really tell you that you couldn't eat of every tree in this garden? Wasn't the garden made for you? Are you not laboring to dress it? Then haven't you a right to its fruit?" The devil did not come to Eve at once with a glaring accusation of God's unkindness but merely with a subtle insinuation. He knew that harmony reigned in the garden of Eden and that Adam and Eve were perfectly adjusted to each other, to their environment and to God. satan laid hold upon the only thing he could in their external environment and used it to cause disruption in their relationship with God. satan's aim was to create doubt first and thus gain a foothold by disturbing the inner harmony of Eve's moral being.
The reply of Eve showed that the devil's insinuating question had had the desired effect. She acknowledged God's goodness in granting them the liberty to eat of the fruit of he trees in the garden and admitted the one and only restriction. But in so doing she omitted from God's gracious promise the words "every" and "freely" and added to the prohibition the words "neither shall ye touch it," thus revealing a secret acquiescence in the serpent's insinuation against God's goodness. Doubt of God's goodness was at work in her heart so the devil grew bolder.
Eve not only stated the restriction made upon their liberty but also God's explicit warning of the penalty of death in case of disobedience, varying it however by changing God's Word "thou shalt surely die" to "lest ye die." Then satan made a bold, shocking assertion, an out-and-out denial of God's Word, "Ye shall not surely die." This was immediately followed by his final and fatal appeal.
Genesis 3:5, "For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."
The bold blasphemy, the cunning deception, the seductive allurement of his sugar-coated lie, were worthy of the source from which they came. satan implied in this diabolical statement that God was maliciously robbing man of knowledge which he not only had a right to possess but which would raise him to an exalted position hitherto undreamed.
"Your eyes shall be opened and ye shall know." Was not the desire to know a lawful one? Was not the ambition for self-improvement through the pursuit and acquisition of knowledge a legitimate one? Eve had been daily coming into a larger and fuller knowledge of God and His universe no doubt and now, if by merely eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil she could at once obtain a knowledge as limitless as God's own and be assured God's penalty of death would not be enacted why should she not eat of it?
satan had reached the acme of evil when he had said, "I will be like the Most High," and now in some modified form suited to the innocence of the sinless pair he tempted them to a similar aspiration, "Ye shall be as gods." He held out to them the luring possibility of advancement in knowledge even to the plane of the divine and unseen.
In the appeal of Genesis 3:5 the tempter assailed the whole personality of the woman; intellect, emotion, and will. "Do not be such fools as to believe God's word when it is so evidently against all right and reason; do not be such dupes as to be cheated out of something you rightfully should have; do not be such cowards that you fear to assert your own will in this matter."
"Thus it is seen that at the back of the method of the devil is an aspersion cast upon the character of God. Man was made to question the goodness of law. Appealing to the intelligence of man, the enemy created an aspersion, which was calculated to change the attitude of his emotion, and so capture the final citadel, that namely of his will. He declared that man's intellectual nature was prevented from development by this limitation. By this declaration he created in the mind of man a question as to the goodness of the God who had made the law, and thus imperiled the relation of the will to God, as he called it into a place of activity outside,and contrary to the will of God."
~Ruth Paxson~
(continued with # 13 - "The Sin of Adam and Eve and It's Effect Upon Themselves")
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