The Greatest Sin

At the time that Adam and Eve had sinned, what was the greatest sin that they had committed? Was it eating the forbidden fruit? Or was it something greater? John 1:1 sheds some light on this question.

In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.

The very authoritative spoken word of God was there in the beginning, His word, powerful enough to create all things in existence! The greatest sin that Adam and Eve had committed was not simply that they ate the fruit, but that they disobeyed the authoritative word of God. Genesis 2:16 says;

And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree of the garden, ¹⁷ but you must not eat^[m] from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die.”

This is the same word that spoke nature into existence and binds life together! God is the reason for the uniformity of nature as it says in Colossians 1:17

He is before all things,
and by Him all things hold together.

We see the echoes of this sin in both Jeremiah and the book of Joshua. In Jeremiah 42:9-17 it says:

⁹ He said to them, “This is what the Lord says, the God of Israel to whom you sent me to bring your petition before Him: ¹⁰ ‘If you will indeed stay in this land, then I will rebuild and not demolish you, and I will plant and not uproot you, because I relent concerning the disaster that I have brought on you. ¹¹ Don’t be afraid of the king of Babylon whom you now fear; don’t be afraid of him’—this is the Lord’s declaration—‘because I am with you to save you and deliver you from him. ¹² I will grant you compassion, and he^[a] will have compassion on you and allow you to return to your own soil. ¹³ But if you say, ‘We will not stay in this land,’ so as not to obey the voice of the Lord your God, ¹⁴ and if you say, ‘No, instead we’ll go to the land of Egypt where we will not see war or hear the sound of the ram’s horn or hunger for food, and we’ll live there,’ ¹⁵ then hear the word of the Lord, remnant of Judah! This is what the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: If you are firmly resolved to go to Egypt and live there for a while, ¹⁶ then the sword you fear will overtake you there in the land of Egypt, and the famine you are worried about will follow on your heels^[b] there to Egypt, and you will die there. ¹⁷ All who resolve to go to Egypt to live there for a while will die by the sword, famine, and plague. They will have no one escape or survive from the disaster I will bring on them.’

This wasn’t just one warning against the move to Egypt, this was one of many warnings! But in the preceding chapters, Israel fails to obey the Lord, wrath and turmoil falls upon them which is reason enough for the book of Lamentations. In Joshua, we meet a fellow by the name of Achan who coveted a number of items retrieved from the first attack against Jericho. It was made clear to the Israelites that no one was to covet any items of value upon this first attack. Achan confesses his sin in Joshua 7:20-21

Achan replied to Joshua, “It is true. I have sinned against the Lord, the God of Israel. This is what I did: ²¹ When I saw among the spoils a beautiful cloak from Babylon,^[h] 200 silver shekels,^[i] and a bar of gold weighing 50 shekels,^[j] I coveted them and took them. You can see for yourself. They are concealed in the ground inside my tent, with the money under the cloak.”

But friends, this confession only came about after Joshua went through the entire house of Israel to know who coveted these items. Did Achan have time to repent? Absolutely! But his confession was not one of sincerity, but one of simply being caught in the act. Friends I hope that each and every one of us don’t have a confession like Achan’s on the Day of Judgment. We need not delay in coming to the Lord and confessing our every known sin to Him. We have all broken the greatest commandment, that is, true obedience to the Lord’s word. But let us not rest on the arm of laziness and let us not grow weary of doing good (Galatians 6:9). But let us press on, knowing that our Lord is good to save and to correct our footing back to the narrow path.