Bibl105

Genesis chapter’s one through eleven gives us a great deal to think about in terms of the human condition. Genesis opens with the creation account, when God created all things out of the nothingness that was the universe, then goes to tell stories of people, places, and events that range over an incredibly long period of time. However, Genesis is not just a history textbook, to be read in scholarly pursuit but rather, Genesis is part of the living Word of God, and offers insight into the natural world before and after sin tainted it, the nature of human relationships, how civilization functions and, of course, human nature.

In the book of Genesis there is a lot that can be learned about the natural world and man in our sinful state. Before the fall, Adam and Eve didn’t have a sinful nature, and they were not enslaved to sin the way that we are today. R.C. Sproul writes in the Reformation Study Bible, “God made the first man (Adam) representative for all his posterity… This divinely chosen arrangement, whereby Adam determined the destiny of his descendants, has been called the ‘covenant of works.’” When Adam and Eve sinned and did the only thing that God had commanded them not to, they were enslaved and bound to sin in such a way that it would be passed on to their descendants for however long the earth may last. “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” (Genesis 6:5). The nature of man is, first and foremost, an evil nature that desires sin over the things of God (Romans 3). Another thing that can be gathered about the nature of man from Genesis is that we are deceived by sin. “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate…” (Genesis 3:6a). This verse says that we desire for what seems good to us at the time, regardless of if it...