“And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?” (Gen. 3:11)
If you truly want to repent of sin, you must understand what sin is, the foundational cause of it. When the Lord asked that question of Adam and Eve, He was not looking for an answer to the question, He knew before the foundation of the world what would occur on that day, and on everyday after it. He was offering them an opportunity to repent.
Adam had free will before that moment, and he had the exact same free will after it, nothing in that area of his existence had changed. He knew good but could not recognize it as good because that was all he had ever known, everything was good, but now he had within the framework of his mind the knowledge of evil. All we are told in the Scriptures is that they hid themselves as their first action, but that would infer that at the exact moment that he took that bite and rebelled, the Almighty’s presence in the garden was recognized, but I contend that a part of the account has been purposefully left out of the Word of God for our own personal contemplation when we sin, that of the moment of temptation and the moment after acquiescing to it.
I offer validation of this statement from Genesis 3:17, “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.” Those words of Eve are not recorded for us, but today that is not the context of this poorly written letter to you, this is, that the Lord offered the very first human beings ever the opportunity to immediately repent, and then be forgiven.
Hast thou eaten can just as assuredly be translated to, “Adam. I know what you did, you disobeyed my one and only commandment to you, you cannot hide that fact from Me, but I love you, and I am ready right now to forgive you of this sin against Me if you will just tell me the truth.”
It has always intrigued me that the woman spoke first, usurping her husband’s responsibility as head of the family to stand as the accountable party in the household, but as Adam stood there and listened to her, perhaps contemplating her response as it was being spoken, another new thought came into his mind, one he had never experienced before, that of the excuse.
The Lord did not pronounce judgment upon Eve before Adam spoke, before he gave his excuse, if He had Adam’s answer may have been quite different. Perhaps he would have offered the truth, accepted not only the consequences of his rebellious action, but just as soon received mercy from Him whose mercy endures forever. (Psalm 136:4)
This is the initial response of all mankind when it comes to sins against the Most High that we commit, it is not repentance, it is not offering the truth of the matter to the Lord and seeking His forgiveness, it is the excuses that we formulate in our minds, deceiving ourselves and attempting to deceive God as well. David excelled at these excuses for almost a year after his adulterous affair with Bathsheba, after killing Uriah so he could have his wife. “But if ye will not do so, behold, ye have sinned against the LORD: and be sure your sin will find you out.” (Numb. 32:23)
God already knows, not one excuse will avail you anything, you will pay for that sin in a way that best teaches you not to perform it again, if indeed you are a child of the Most High God. The Almighty could have just as easily said to Adam, “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” (Isaiah 1:18) There are singular moments in time that can alter the paths of our lives forever, one is repentance, the other is the life lived in excuses.