Created in God's image, fallen in the garden

🎯 Objectives

By the end of this lesson you will be able to:

explain what it means that human beings are created in the image of God;
describe the stages of temptation and the consequences of the fall in Genesis 3;
recognize, in the middle of judgment, the first promise of redemption.

📖 Receive

Read calmly, in one sitting, Genesis 1:26-31, Genesis 2:7-17 and Genesis 3:1-24. Then read Psalm 8, which is like a poetic meditation on Genesis 1.

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” — Genesis 1:27 (KJV)

As you read Genesis 3, try marking every time God’s word appears: what God said, what the serpent says God said, and what the woman reports. You will notice that the whole scene revolves around one question: whom should we trust?

🔍 Examine

Why start in the garden

Systematic theology gathers what the whole Bible teaches on a subject and arranges it clearly. In this course the subject is salvation: theologians call it soteriology, from the Greek sōtēría, “salvation”. But you cannot understand a salvation unless you understand what you are saved from. A doctor does not prescribe a cure without a diagnosis.

That is why we begin with Genesis. The first pages of the Bible are not a preface to skip: they contain the diagnosis on which everything else rests. Paul himself, when he explains the Gospel in the letter to the Romans, goes back to Adam (Romans 5:12-21).

Created with dignity

Before the fall there is creation, and before sin there is blessing. God creates human beings “in his image and likeness” (Genesis 1:26). What does that mean? The Bible does not define it in a single sentence, but the context gives us three clues:

dignity: only of human beings is it said that they bear God’s image. Psalm 8 says God made them a little lower than himself and crowned them with glory and honour. Every human being, of whatever age, condition or people, has a worth that does not depend on what they do;
relationship: human beings are created to know God, listen to him and answer him. God speaks to them, blesses them, entrusts them with a task. And he creates them “male and female”: relationships between people also reflect something of God;
responsibility: humanity receives the task of “having dominion” and, in Genesis 2:15, of working and keeping the garden. Not the rule of a master, but the care of a steward.

📌 The image of God: an idea that changes how we see others

If every person bears the image of God, no one is “waste”. James uses exactly this argument: with the same tongue we bless God and curse people, who are made in God’s likeness (James 3:9). The doctrine of creation immediately becomes ethics.

Two trees in the garden

In the middle of the garden there are two trees: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:9). God’s command is surprisingly generous: “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat”, except one (Genesis 2:16-17).

The prohibition is not a whim. To eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil means claiming to decide for yourself what is good and what is evil, independently of God. The tree of life, on the other hand, represents the life you receive by remaining in fellowship with him. The command is a boundary set by love: inside it there is life, outside it there is death. It is the same choice Moses would set before Israel many centuries later: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19).

The anatomy of a temptation

Genesis 3 describes temptation with striking precision. We can recognize four steps:

Doubt about the Word: “Yea, hath God said…?” (Genesis 3:1). The serpent does not deny straight away; first it insinuates.
Distortion: the question exaggerates the prohibition, as if God had forbidden all the trees. The woman, in her answer, in turn adds a “neither shall ye touch it” that God had not said.
Open denial: “Ye shall not surely die” (Genesis 3:4). Now God’s Word is contradicted.
Suspicion about God’s goodness: God is hiding something from you, he does not want you to become like him (Genesis 3:5). Sin is born when we stop believing that God is good.

The diagram summarizes the path: each step moves a little further away from trust in the Word, until the action.

flowchart LR
  A["Doubt about the Word"] --> B["Distortion"] --> C["Denial"] --> D["Suspicion about God"] --> E["Act: sees, takes, eats"]

Then comes the act: the woman sees that the fruit is good, pleasant and desirable, she takes it, eats it and gives it to her husband, who was with her (Genesis 3:6). John describes the same dynamics when he speaks of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life (1 John 2:16).

The consequences: everything cracks

The serpent had promised open eyes, and their eyes are indeed opened: but onto shame and nakedness (Genesis 3:7). From that moment every relationship cracks:

with God: the man who walked with him now hides and is afraid (Genesis 3:8-10);
with each other: Adam blames the woman and, implicitly, God himself (“the woman whom thou gavest to be with me”); the woman blames the serpent (Genesis 3:12-13);
with creation: the ground becomes hard work and produces thorns and thistles (Genesis 3:17-18). Paul will say that the whole creation groans, subjected to futility (Romans 8:20-22);
with life itself: “dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (Genesis 3:19). Death enters history, first as separation from God, then as physical death.

Notice the order: the break with God comes first and gives rise to all the others. That is why biblical salvation is not merely moral or social improvement: it begins by restoring the relationship with God, and from there it heals the others too.

graph TD
  P["Sin: break with God"] --> A["With others: blame"]
  P --> B["With creation: toil"]
  P --> C["With oneself: shame"]
  P --> D["With life: death"]

Grace in the middle of judgment

And yet Genesis 3 does not end in darkness. Even before pronouncing the consequences for the man and the woman, God announces to the serpent that the woman’s offspring will crush its head, while it will strike his heel (Genesis 3:15). Since the earliest centuries Christians have called this verse the “protoevangelium”, the first announcement of Christ’s victory.

And there is a tender gesture: God himself makes garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothes them (Genesis 3:21). The fig leaves were the human attempt to cover themselves; the real covering comes from God. It is an image that runs through the whole Bible, all the way to the righteousness of Christ with which the believer is “clothed”.

🔗 Connect

The garden of Eden is the beginning of a story that the Bible brings to completion:

Romans 5:12-19: through one man sin entered the world; through one man, Jesus Christ, grace comes. We will talk about this in the next lesson.
Matthew 4:1-11: Jesus is tempted too, but in the wilderness, not in a garden. Where Adam doubted the Word, Jesus answers every time: “It is written”.
Colossians 3:10: in Christ the image of God is renewed in knowledge.
Revelation 22:1-3: at the end of the Bible the tree of life returns, and there will be no more curse.

The whole of Scripture moves from the lost garden to the city of God, and at the centre of that journey stands the cross.

🙏 Apply

Take a few minutes, on your own or with your group:

Think of a person you find it hard to respect. What changes if you look at them as a bearer of God’s image?
Reread the four steps of temptation. Which do you recognize most in your own experience: doubt about the Word, or the suspicion that God does not want your good?
Adam and Eve hid and blamed others. What “fig leaves” do we use today to cover sin?
Thank God because, even when people hide, he comes looking for them.

📚 Go Deeper

Read Psalm 8 and Psalm 139:13-16: two prayers about human dignity.
Compare Genesis 3:1-7 with Matthew 4:1-11: what similarities and differences do you notice between the two temptations?
Reread Genesis 3:15 and Galatians 4:4: how does the “offspring of the woman” connect with Jesus, “made of a woman”?

In the next lesson we will tackle a decisive question: why have all sinned, and what does it mean to “come short of the glory of God”?