Imagine perfection.
Imagine you have more than what you'd ever, ever need. Imagine no danger ever. Imagine the feeling of beauty, tranquility, peace, love and life, health and super-contentment in all of your being. Imagine the perfect love relationship with Someone who couldn't love you more. Imagine the cool of the evening. Imagine just being. This is paradise. This is Eden!
Would you give it up?
Adam did!
We should probably read Genesis 1-3 taking into account God's character. Remember He explained His exact character to Moses in Exodus 34:6 saying יְהֹוָה, יְהֹוָה God, merciful and gracious, patient, and abundant in goodness and truth, and manifested fully His character in His Beloved Son Jesus, Emanuel, now living in you and you in Him.
The point of this?
God is good.
God made everything good [ṭôb or טוֹב the word picture depicting surrounded secured house].
God declares seven times during His act of creation that God saw that it was good. Seven is the number of perfection. Even when he created man and gave His provision, He declared behold, it was very good.Gen 1:31
My point is this. Man (and woman) knew only good up to Genesis 2:25.
Man, man knew only Good. Man knew only Grace - each and every good and perfect gift!
Oh, what perfection!
With the first man Adam up to this point, there existed no knowledge of evil or bad or setback, or accident, or tribulation, or trial, or affliction, or anything contrary to good.
Man kind lived fully in and from God's Grace, His goodness. He had dominion on earth and ruled as a king. He was in Eden [עֵדֶן, the pictograph is reveal door life], in the garden [גַּן with the pictograph lift up life], eating from the tree (provision), receiving life [חַי the pictograph depicting revealed Hand]. Straight from God's Hand!
There was no need to know anything else.
Man had it all
In his original design, man had full executive authority with a precious gift called free choice and will - being perfectly in the image of God. Intimacy with, the Lover of man, required one thing only - eat (believe, trust and find love) only of Goodness, Life Himself. Not an adulterous mixture between Himself and something contrary! But Goodness only.
And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: 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. Gen 2:16-17
Adam was in the perfect place and in the perfect position.
But man was made to believe different
Why would he choose anything different?
Genesis 3 tells the sad story of how this perfect being, Adam, living in perfect Goodness of Life, made a choice against perfect Goodness, Grace and chose THE LAW.
How do you make perfect Goodness better? If you add anything to it, you mess it up!
So, what is the Tree-of-the-Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil?
God's perfect created being, the man Adam, up to this point knew only good. God is Good. It is His Being. Everything He made was good. But man chose to know Good AND evil.
Simple!
There exists, through all the ages, in any and every culture and dynasty and civilization and grouping of people of whatever kind, only one way to know bad from good, evil from good. How, would you ask? By means of the law.
Not trusting in the good that there is, requires a set standard for all to follow.
Not trusting fellowship with God, Good only, Grace only, Provision only, Love only, man went ahead and chose the law for himself!
The seemingly good fruit that comes from the wrong tree, the Tree-of-the-Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil IS, in fact, from the tree of the law!
... to add your own works to the perfect Good ...
And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die Gen 3:4
Man chose to live by rules (own works), by the law instead of a pure Love relationship.
The problem, now?
The law is ruthless and without leniency. There is NO Grace in the law!
The law also demands a verdict. It demands precise execution of justice. It demands a just ruling and full payment accordingly.
So, being apart from God as a good and perfect being there remained by virtue of pure justice, only one verdict for the man-in-the-law should he trespass - darkness, meaning to be away from the Light Himself - death.
When God said thou shalt surely die in Genesis 2:17, this is exactly the separation, the verdict He referred to. The phrase surely die is in the intensive form. The intensive form of the word die (מוּת) is obtained in the Hebrew by the doubling of the word, thus מוּת מוּת. Look at the word-picture or pictograph. It depicts chaos secured sealed.
Man brought upon himself a sealed verdict of secured chaos - death!
It goes against the original design of man
Man was not designed to know good from evil. Man was not designed to be measured and trailed and executed. Man was not designed to know death. Only good. Only life. But the enemy knew this. And he lied.
Man was already like God, created in His very image to rule and have dominion on earth and with a space inside of him to receive and have communion with Love.
Yet, man keeps on making the same wrong choices
In a freedom trip from bondage to the promised land God's treasured possession, once again at Sinai, willfully chose not to have intimacy with Him and to go for the law instead.
... so that God had to make the choice
It was not until the Second Adam, Jesus, the perfect substitute offering, that the whole of the law was fulfilled.
He did the unspeakable and the unthinkable 2000 back in His story (in fact, before creation) and paid in full what the law demands from everyone, forever so that we may now have the relationship with Him that He so deeply desires.
In fact, we died on that very day to the law, but was wondrously resurrected to our new Husband Rom 7 & 8. See here.
But the enemy keeps on depending on us for his deception plan
Even today we are deceived into the lie the enemy wants us so badly to believe - to taste from the Tree-of-the-Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil.
The Bible is not a book of law. Read Hebrews chapters 7 to 10. The Bible is God's love letter to you. It reveals ultimate Love, ultimate Goodness, Ultimate Grace - Jesus!
Jesus Christ served onto justice because of the law so that you could become the righteousness of God to have fellowship with the ever-loving good God.
Now you you can just freely receive perfect good love and be in relationship with your Father who couldn't love you more. You have it!
You can eternally walk with Him in the cool of the evening.
He never leaves nor forsakes you.
You can just be.
This is paradise.
Receive from His open Hand.
You are in Eden!
But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God Heb 10:12