GENESIS: 2: 16-17
“And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, thou mayest freely eat: But, of the tree of knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.”
Here God delivers his first ever “Command” to his newest creation Man.
God tells man, you can eat of every plant and tree that I have created for you here in the garden, but, you are forbidden to eat from this one tree, which God names the tree of knowledge, of good and evil. God also tells man that if you eat from this tree you will surely die.
To a person with even limited knowledge, that kind of command and warning of death should have been enough for any normal man to stay far away from such a tree.
One has to ask oneself what God meant when he tells man that “Thou shalt surely die.” God was referring to dying spiritually, because to God, sin meant that the spirit became dead to God.
This becomes obvious as we read that Adam lives physically to the age of 930 years of age.
Had Eve not coerced Adam they might have eaten from the tree of life and be still living today.
Such a command by Almighty God causes bible students and theologians alike to pose many unanswerable questions about Holy God the creator.
God being God, Did God not know already the outcome from such a command?
Why would God create such a tree and then forbid the consumption from it?
God told man that man would die if he ate from this tree, did man fully know what death was, what death meant?
Had man first eaten from the tree of “Life” which was also in the garden would man be immortal? Would God then have to end man’s life?