Lesson 2 · Unit 1 · God & Me
What's Wrong with the World
Sin is not an item on a checklist. It is a broken relationship.
Open
Eleven at night. You finish the last news item and lay your phone face-down on the table. War, fraud, another case so ugly you have no words for it. You sigh: something is wrong with this world. But the same evening, the next room is still warm from the argument you had that afternoon — and you were the one who slammed the door. Be a little more honest: in some corner of your heart there are a few things you hope nobody will ever find out. The world is not right, home is not right, and I myself am not right. Could these three actually be one thing? The Bible's answer begins under a tree in a garden.
Scripture
This is the first sin the Bible records. Watch two things as you read: the first moves the man and the woman make after they eat, and the first words out of God's mouth. (Genesis 3:1-13, WEB)
1Now the serpent was more subtle than any animal of the field which Yahweh God had made. He said to the woman, “Has God really said, ‘You shall not eat of any tree of the garden’?”
2The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees of the garden,
3but not the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden. God has said, ‘You shall not eat of it. You shall not touch it, lest you die.’”
4The serpent said to the woman, “You won’t really die,
5for God knows that in the day you eat it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
6When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took some of its fruit, and ate. Then she gave some to her husband with her, and he ate it, too.
7Their eyes were opened, and they both knew that they were naked. They sewed fig leaves together, and made coverings for themselves.
8They heard Yahweh God’s voice walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Yahweh God among the trees of the garden.
9Yahweh God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?”
10The man said, “I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; so I hid myself.”
11God said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
12The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
13Yahweh God said to the woman, “What have you done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
Centuries later, Paul summed up the whole human race in a single line:
Romans 3:23World English BibleOpen in the Bible23for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God; (Romans 3:23)
See
What broke was not a rule, it was trust
The serpent's opening line is not "go and sin." It is a question: Has God really said...? It gives God's word a small twist, turning a generous God — help yourself to any tree in the garden — into a stingy one who seems to have forbidden everything. By the time Eve answers, the command has already changed shape inside her. Sin does not begin the moment teeth break the skin of the fruit. It begins earlier, when a heart believes something: God is holding out on me, and he cannot be fully trusted. The word the Bible most often uses for sin is the Greek hamartia, and it originally meant a missed shot in archery — off target, short of the mark a human being was made to aim at. Genesis 3 lets us see what that bullseye is. It is not a list of rules. It is trust between a person and God.
Hiding, covering, passing the blame
The fruit goes down and the sky does not fall in. Something else falls. Their eyes are "opened," and the first thing they see is that they are naked. Then three moves follow, one after another: they sew fig leaves to cover themselves; they hear God's voice and hide; and when they are questioned they pass it along — the man blames the woman, with a jab at God tucked inside the sentence ("the woman whom you gave to be with me"), and the woman blames the serpent. From beginning to end, no one says "it was me." We know these three moves far too well. Managing an image is covering. Avoiding the true sentence is hiding. Hunting for someone else's fault the moment something goes wrong is passing the blame. "Fall short" in Romans 3:23 names exactly this condition: not a few wrong things done now and then, but a whole life lived below what it was made for, like an account that is permanently in deficit.
God's first word is a search
The verse most worth slowing down over is verse 9. After the two of them hide, the first thing God says is not a thunderclap of judgment but a question: Where are you? A God who knows everything certainly knows which bush Adam is crouching behind. The question is not a manhunt; it is a knock at the door — a chance for someone in hiding to come out on his own feet. Hold on to that order: before any repentance happens at all, God has already come looking. There is something in this scene that reaches much further, too. God promises that the woman's offspring will strike the serpent's head (3:15), and then with his own hands he makes garments of skin and clothes the two of them (3:21) — the first blood shed in the garden is the price God pays to cover a human being. Many years later that offspring came. He told a story about a father who watched the road every day, waiting for a child who had been hiding a long time to come home.
Deeper
Sin (hamartia)
the word means a missed shot in archery: off the target a human life was made for. Sin is first of all a turning away in a relationship; the behavior is only the symptom (Rom 3:23).
Original sin
after Adam, people are born inside the break and lean away from God by nature (Rom 5:12) — which is why nobody has to teach a child to lie.
Shame and covering
the first thing sin produces is shame, and the first move is to cover (Gen 3:7-8); fig leaves are the ancestor of all image management.
God seeks first
"Where are you?" is the first thing God ever says to a sinner (Gen 3:9): before there is judgment, there is a search.
Story
Old Nie is fifty-six. He spent half his working life as a senior manager at a manufacturing company, and his colleagues consider him the most reasonable man they know. At home the picture is different. He and his wife speak less and less each year; his son tested into a university in another province and now hardly comes home. He has always been certain the problem is out there — a bad market, a wife who is too emotional, a son who was spoiled. Then one Lunar New Year's Eve his son threw his chopsticks down at the table: "Dad, you have never once been wrong. The wrong one is always us." Old Nie sat in his study that night until the sky turned light.
Later a friend pulled him along to a Bible study, and they happened to be reading Genesis 3. When they reached Adam's line — "the woman whom you gave to be with me" — his back went damp. Wasn't that him? For thirty years he had handed off every failure to somebody else, and he had gotten skillful at it. That day he prayed for the first time in his life. It was four words: "God, it was me."
Respond
Reflect — alone, or talk it through together
1Read Genesis 3:7-13 again: from the bite to the questioning, how many separate moves do Adam and Eve make? Which one has your own shadow in it?
2"Sin is a broken relationship, not an item on a checklist" — how is that different from the picture of sin you were carrying? What does it explain that the other picture cannot?
3God knows the answer and still asks, "Where are you?" If he asked you that tonight, which bush would you step out from? What is your honest answer?
Saved on this device only — visible to no one but you.
Pray together
God, I say often enough that the world is not right, and I never dare say that I am not right. Today I heard that call of yours in the garden. I do not want to keep covering myself with busyness, with excuses, with other people's faults. I am stepping out from behind the tree to tell you: it was me. Thank you for coming to look for me before I ever repented, and thank you that you had already prepared the price of covering me. In Jesus' name, amen.
Walk
This week's actionabout 15 min
Find a stretch of time when no one will interrupt you, and write on paper three things you have been covering up and will not admit — for God's eyes only. Read them out loud, one at a time, and after each one add a sentence: "You have already seen this, and you are still looking for me." When you are finished you can tear the paper up.
Mark it when it happens — this week, at your pace.
Spiritual practice
This week, notice every impulse to pass the blame — onto a person, the circumstances, your luck. Stop for three seconds and say to God, quietly: it was me.
Memory verse · Romans 3:23
forallhavesinned,andfallshortofthegloryofGod.
Walk further
The life of Adam, the full account of the fall, the theme of sin, and "Who is Satan?" — the darkness behind that serpent.