I found this interesting article about the Ten Commandments in the Garden of Eden.
Many Christians, including myself a while ago, believe that God first made His Ten Commandments known on mount Sinai. However, in this blog post, we are going to show that God ‘covertly’ revealed the Ten Commandments in the beginning, in the Garden of Eden to Adam and Eve, our first parents. It is a Revelation by Grace!
But how was this discovery made? Ironically, we discovered it in the last book of the Bible, in the book of Revelations 3:14-22, the letter to the church of Laodicea.
In the letter to the church of Laodicea, Jesus Christ addresses the church of today, the last church period in church history, the church of Laodicea, and states that it is naked and needs to buy of Him white raiment to cover the shame of its nakedness.
So the question we have to ask is, how did the church of Laodicea become naked in the first place, and what is this white raiment Jesus Christ strongly recommended as the remedy to our state of nakedness?
After going through the Bible, we discover there’s a similar situation of nakedness and white raiments in the book of Genesis in the story of Adam and Eve. Meaning if we study what occurred in the Garden of Eden that caused Adam and Eve to become naked, we can understand why the church of Laodicea is naked today. But wait a minute? How were Adam and Eve clothed at their creation in the first place before they became naked? From
Psalm 8:5 and
Isaiah 61:10, we learn that at their creation, God clothed Adam and Eve with glory and honor in garments of light (white), which represented the righteousness of God. So basically, God clothed Adam and Eve just as He and the angels were, in garments of white or light.
So the next logical question is that what then is the Righteousness of God? From
Psalm 119:172,
Isaiah 51:6-7,
1 John 5:17 and
1 John 3:4, we learn that the Righteousness of God is His everlasting covenant, the Ten Commandments, which is His Holy law. Not the Mosaic law! There’s a difference between the two.
This means that in the Garden of Eden, God clothed Adam and Eve with His Holy Law, which was represented by the white garments, and when they sinned and disobeyed Him, they lost that robe of righteousness and became naked! By eating the fruit of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which God commanded them not to eat, Adam and Eve sinned and broke the Ten Commandments in the Garden of Eden, therefore losing the garment of white, which is the righteousness of God.
Now that we are on the same page, we can now proceed to tackle the question, which of the Ten Commandments did Adam and Eve break? The answer is the full monty, all the ten at once!
“Thou shalt not eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” cannot be found in the 10 Commandments, however, in the simple statement, “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,” God places all the principles of the 10 Commandments.
The purpose of this blog post is to show by eating of that fruit, Adam and Eve broke all the ten commandments.
The first point we have to consider is the Bible’s definition of sin found in
1 John 3:4 “Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law,” meaning whenever we sin, we transgress an element of the Ten Commandments.
The second point to note is that the law of God is spiritual, according to
Romans 7:14, where Paul states, “For we know that the Law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin.” Why is the Law of God spiritual? We find the answer in Jesus’s conversation with the Samaritan woman in
John 4:24, “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” Since the Creator of the universe and author of the 10 Commandments is Spirit, it is just natural that the document He authored is also in Spirit.
Usually, when we think of the 10 Commandments, we look at it literally as a list of 10 to do things. However, when we look at it from a spiritual point of view, we see that it’s more than ten and more profound than we can imagine. The number 10 in the Bible symbolizes ordinal perfection in the totality of God’s government.
Psalm 119:96 states, “I have seen an end of all perfection: but thy commandment is exceeding broad.” It is limitless and encompasses every sin under the universe, and the angels are also subject to it just as we are. It is similar to the parables of the ten virgins (
Matt 25:1-13), the ten lepers (
Luke 17:11-19), the ten talents (
Matt 25:14-30), and the ten minas (
Luke 19:12-27). The number ten used in all these parables are prophetic and symbolic of the totality of the faithful.
Also, the law being Spirit should not be surprising because even laws written by humans is said to be in letter and Spirit. Constitutions of nations and governments are argued both in letter and spirit, so how much more the law that was written by God, who is Spirit? The Spirit of the law is the profound purpose, intention, and reasoning behind the letter of the law that we see. It is the part of the law that we do not see, but the more critical component of the law. Whenever we change the letter of the law it means that we have also changed the reason and original intent, which is the foundation upon which the law sits, which is the most critical aspect of the law. That is why the Lord warned us in
Proverbs 22:28, “Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set.” An example between letter and spirit of the law at home when your parents tell their teenagers not to have premarital sex until they are responsible adults. The teenager may not be happy and understand because they want to experience it. However, the spirit behind the law is that the parent is protecting their adolescent child from getting teenage pregnancy, which could derail their education and future stability or contracting an STD, which could end their life.
Part 2 to follow…