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Answer:

While it seems that we would be a lot better off if God could have stepped in and prevented Adam and Eve from eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, it sets up a relationship dynamic He did not intend to have with us. We are made in God’s image, capable of responsibility and choice, to reflect Him. We were not made to be robots or sustained in an infant state where we do not understand the consequence of our decisions. This prevents us from experiencing God and ourselves to the full. If He stepped in each time we were about to make a sinful choice we would be rescued from the experience of weighing the situation, wrestling with the moral law and choosing whether to follow God or not. In effect we would not experience what it is like to truly obey God, to honor Him with a choice, to even know what it is like to receive His assistance in helping us make what might be challenging choices. This also therefore affects the relationship between God and us.

God is loving and the greatest display of His love was at the cross, when Christ was crucified for Adam and Eve’s sin, as well as our sin so that our relationship is restored. This is an eternal relationship and carries on beyond the earthly one we experience now; in this relationship we are most fully ourselves, in healed and sin-free bodies and where we see Him in His perfect glory. God didn’t stop Adam and Eve because He wanted us to have this future.