I was thinking about this and whether it is pride or unbelief, and I was thinking it might be pride, that pride is what is behind unbelief when a person doesn't want to trust in Christ for righteousness?
Any thoughts?
What does scripture state?
For example, we know
the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. It's the desire, or lust, of money - not money itself - that is a "root." What other roots might there be beside love/desire/lust? Are there desires for other things that serve as roots of evil? Should we equate evil with sin (and sin with evil)? If we went all the way back to Adam and Eve we'd have to question the matter of money because money hadn't yet been invented.
And disobedience had not yet occurred, and sin had, therefore, not yet entered the world (Romans 5).
Some Christians infer lust within Eve because of what is stated in Genesis 3:6. She "
saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise," so - according to some - she was lusting. According to others her deception had already begun because they think the observations false. I, however, believe her observations were correct. The fruit of that tree was good for food. The fruit from that tree stated by God to be good (
Gen. 1:31), so it
must have been pleasant in appearance. The fruit did make one wise after a manner of speaking, but the "wisdom" it bestowed was not a wisdom God wanted Eve to experience and that right there is where the rub occurs because she knew no matter what the tree was or was not it was, above all else, forbidden. How then, could a good and sinless creature made in God's image, looking at a good piece of fruit act in disobedience?
Keep in mind that most of the scriptures describing both the human creature and sin do so in and about a post-disobedient creature living in a post-disobedient world. So, for example, when scripture states "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks that might be applicable to a pre-disobedient person living in a pre-disobedient world but at the time Jesus utters those words he is speaking about sinful man in a sinful world. This is very important because 99% of the mentions of "flesh" in the Bible are about sinful flesh. That is the overarching, pervasive context unless the text specifically alludes to the pre-disobedient flesh. Very little is said about the pre-disobedient flesh in the Bible.
It's a huge mistake to apply post-disobedient conditions to post-disobedient conditions. The two are not identical or interchangeable.
So how does Eve, a good person living in a good world, manage to disobey God if she has no untoward desires or lusts? At a minimum we could say any action is based on a choice and any choice is based on a set of beliefs and thoughts predicating and precipitating the subsequent choice and action. Yes? If that is correct, then Eve reached out as a good and sinless person and became the first sinner because of something
good within her! But we must also conclude there was also something not-good within her because she chose to act in contradiction to what she knew
(or at least believed to some degree) = it is okay to partake of this fruit even though God told me otherwise. It's either that or she's thinking something like, "
Screw, God, I do not care what He said, I don't believe Him or, if I do believe Him, I do not care, and I am going to eat this thing any way." I do not find that premise supported by whole scripture. She was a good and sinless person committing the first act of disobedience because something within her gave her license to do so.
Or she was deceived, and her thinking was therefore corrupted and her actions a product of a reasoning and volition that was already corrupted.
None of which applies to Adam. Eve was deceived. What Adam did, he did while in possession of all his God-given, sinless and good faculties. His act of disobedience was, therefore, more conscious and consciously deliberate. While we can learn something about the "root" of sin in a state of deception
(which is what we all now live in), the example of Adam poses the prospect of an entirely different root. Perhaps Adam was prideful but I think that too big an inference given what is stated. Perhaps he observed the separation occurring in Eve the moment she disobeyed but, while that might be consistent with whole scripture, that too is a big inference to make. What we do know is that the good and sinless Adam acted in conscious disobedience and begat the first sin that rendered himself and the world corrupt.
Lastly, for now, the answer to your inquiry is also going to be contingent on a correct understanding of sin. Too many Christians proof-text
1 John 3:4 and incorrectly think sin is
only lawlessness. Even were that the only definition provided by whole scripture we would have to define the first sin by the laws that existed in Eden and not the Mosaic code
(because the Law of Moses did not yet exist in Eden). The law that did exist was 1) the blessing of be fruitful, multiply, subdue and rule, and 2) don't eat the forbidden kiwi. It escapes many that had Adam obeyed the first rule he never would have violated the second
. Adam (and Eve) was given all the power and authority they needed to rule over the creatures in the garden and the serpent was a creature in the garden. Had he ruled over the serpent (and his wife) we wouldn't be having this discussion
. So.....
We might say any abdication of our divinely mandated authority and power is a root of sin.
That being said, scripture also defines sin as any lack of righteousness (
1 Jn. 5:17). It also defines sin as anything not done in faith (
Rom. 14:23). There are a few other places we could look to define sin apart from 1 John 3:4 but these will suffice for the purposes of this post and this op. Why would the good and sinless Adam act unrighteously? The answer to that inquiry will necessarily be speculative because scripture is silent on that matter. However, the matter of unfaithfulness is something scripture expounds upon aplenty and diversely. Let me clarify a critical point, first because there is a problem of ambiguity to be addressed. Having faith and being faithful are not identical or synonymous terms. Faith begets faithfulness. Faith is existential, whereas faithfulness is behavioral. Faithfulness is works. Having faith, Adam need to act in accordance with that faith. He need to operationalize his faith, to make his faith be evident in his faithfulness (consider Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac and the crediting of righteousness to him because of his faith, not his also-existing faithfulness). Adam
knew God, and he
knew what God had said. He heard it with his own ears. He did not solely believe; he
knew. Despite his knowing, and despite his being good and sinless, and despite his having the ability to rule over the entire scenario, he willfully reached out and disobeyed God. What was at the "root" of that disobedience. I will suggest he failed to believe what he knew.
And we, therefore, might also say the root of sin is willfully disregarding what we know (think Romans 1:18
ff).
So.....
It might be a mistake to reduce the inquire to a single root and, instead, reword the question itself to "
What are the roots of sin?" and discard the notion of a single sin "behind" all other sins. There are multiple roots to sin and all of them can be framed in antithesis (what is not believed, thought, chosen, or done) rather than something proactive. This makes a certain sense because sin is an antithesis, not a thesis. Sin is the
absence of something. What then is the root of an absence is what is being asked. And since the pre-disobedient world was much different than the post-disobedient world it also serves us well to make sure we're identifying which category we're discussing when we ask, "
What are the roots of sin?" and "
What is the sin behind all other sins?" There is no sin behind the first act of disobedience that brought sin into the world. There is an uncountable amalgam of sins behind every sin committed today
(in this post-disobedient world in which we live).
Lastly, remember the serpent is just as dead in sin and enslaved by sin as any other creature. He is not a free agent in the garden. He's a fool, a cunning fool, but a dead slave, nonetheless. We do not build a sound hamartiology on Satan.
