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We learn from Scripture that God is holy, just and loving. The characteristic of holiness is hard to condense into a few words but ultimately it means that God is set apart from us, He is pure and perfect; He is the creator and He has set a standard of behavior we call the moral law. To break the moral law is an affront to God and is in effect saying that we know better. Because God is holy and just He will not stand by as his commands are disobeyed, there has to be a response. We are grateful when we think acts such as murder, torture and cruetly will be met with God’s justice but are less excited when we think of acts a little closer to home such as lying, envy and greed. All sin, however, calls for justice.

God created Adam and Eve (and all of us) to be in a loving relationship with Him and to trust, worship and obey Him. The ability to choose who to worship, trust and obey was given to Adam and Eve. They chose to disobey God’s command not to eat from the tree of good and evil and the consequences that followed are the response of a holy God. Just because God knew they would sin does not lessen the consequence that the act deserves. We can picture this with a parent who knows their child will disobey them, because they are naughty, yet still warn them of the consequences out of love for them. When the child does disobey, they show the child the wrong they do and that there is a consequence and response (punishment). We can accept that good parents do this because they love the child, want him/her to understand that their commands are to be trusted and that there are consequences to doing the wrong thing. In a similar way God wants us to know that there is a just consequence to sin and that we can trust God’s commands.

God’s response to sin doesn’t end with the banishment from the Garden of Eden and the consequences describe in Genesis 3:14-21. There was also a promise that one day an offspring of woman would crush the serpent (v15) – this was pointing to Jesus. So when He responded the way he did He showed that He is a loving God by appropriately punishing Adam and Eve, and by ultimately restoring the relationship between us through a Savior.