How Humanity gets Deceived: the First Temptation (Genesis 3)

 How Humanity gets Deceived

In the beginning humanity was created sinless. Creation was called very good.

There was no death, no pain. All was perfect and complete.

God, the giver of every good gift, had done it so.

But a tree had been placed in the garden of Eden that would be a test for humanities loyalty. Would they follow in the footsteps of the father of sin and transgress a simple command? Or would they remain loyal to God in love for Him? God had even given a warning to keep them from this tree. If they eat it from it, they would die.

Now one day the woman went alone and was close to this tree.

Satan, the arch-deceiver, saw his chance and decided to give his deceptions a try. This is the first temptation recorded in Scripture and it serves as a good template for how many people are deceived today. We have to know our weakness and the genius of Satan. Knowing our enemy serves as a better way to fight him.
Satan came in the form of a serpent, the most cunning beast of the field. Satan is smart and understands our psyche very well. Since that day he has had thousands of years to practice and optimize his deception.
But it is possible to see through him and resist him. God can give us wisdom and His words serve as an excellent sword.

[Gen 3:1 NKJV] 1 Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, "Has God indeed said, 'You shall not eat of every tree of the garden'?"

Already a kind of deception has been made. God is misrepresented. Satan presented God as if He had commanded them to not eat of any tree. But He had only denied them one. 

Still Satan uses this tactic today. He misrepresents God and exaggerates what He said so people get alienated from Him.

The woman knew this wasn’t what God had said. She knew what God had commanded.

[Gen 3:2-4 NKJV] 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.' " 4 Then the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die.

First Satan used a misrepresentation of God and depicted Him as putting more restraint on humanity than what He actually did. Now he moves to another extreme and even denies men would die in the first place if it ate from the tree.

Often these switches between extremes makes the mind unbalanced. A reaction against one extreme, even if it is small, serves to move people to another extreme.

The same can be seen in keeping any commandment of God today. God's commandments is exaggerated and put in a wrong light. The reaction some people have is to reject God’s commandments all together. 

It goes the other way too. Some have seen grace being abused. They are the words ‘justified by faith alone and grace alone’ being used as a slogan for sinning. And thus they hastily run towards legalism as a reaction where they deny these things altogether.
The same is seen with, for example, the rejection of catholicism. Catholicism had abused much of its power in the middle ages and it is still doctrinally dangerous.

But some have immediately moved to another extreme and rejected all Christianity. Or they dislike any concept that seems Catholic, like the Trinity.
By moving their dislike to one deception, Satan tacitly moves them to another deception while both are from him.

Though this method did not seem to have much effect in this temptation in Genesis 3, we can assume that it did something to throw Eve off and make her a bit more unbalanced. At least, Satan thought it would work.

These principles must be kept in mind and we should always have a strict desire for truth, for how God sees things. Let us not be unbalanced in mind because of so many of these extremes in the world.

Another thing Eve should have avoided is arguing with this misrepresentation of Satan in the first place. Had she walked away then and there she would not have been deceived. But she let herself entertain the deception of sin. She may well have thought that she had it under control, but she was already losing it while she listened.

When Satan tempts us we should use the clear words of Scripture to give it a blow and flee from it. Do not entertain it by arguing with it. Give no space to the devil.

But the deception was not complete. Satan combined a whole bunch of tactics:

[Gen 3:5 NKJV] 5 "For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

This is portrayed as the reason why they would not die. 

Technically this was true. Later, when men had fallen, God says:

[Gen 3:22 NKJV] 22 Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever"--

They became like God in the sense that they now knew and experienced evil. But Satan portrayed it as a good and glorious thing. As a grand new experience. He portrayed it as something desirable and as a reason for why they would not die. 

Thus something that is technically true was used for a very direct opposition of God’s word.

Thus Satan adds flattery to imbalance. Flattery and half-truths is another very effective way to deceive. 

Combined with this was that the fruit of the tree actually looked tasty. 

The deception was complete. Eve had listened. Confusing extremes, direct lies, half-truths, flattery, lust and the desire for a new experience were all combined in a very attractive-looking deception. 

She had lost faith in God’s word and now believed that an experience of evil would be a good thing.

[Gen 3:6 NKJV] 6 So when the woman saw that the tree [was] good for food, that it [was] pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make [one] wise, she took off its fruit and ate. She also gave it to her husband with her, and he ate it.

Adam was pressured by his wife to eat it too. So have many men been tacitly pressured by women to sin. Men are often vulnerable to this and it is no accident that this was the way the first deception went. 

And so Satan still deceives today. We have to have our eyes open for it and be careful of all these tactics. They work even better than at that time when Adam and Eve were still sinless.
God has made an escape by Christ. He is the light that exposes deception. But we have to be well aware of these tactics.
Let us have discernment between light and darkness so that the light can shine in our hearts and remove all deception.