Did Adam and Eve Realize They Were Disobeying God?

Did Adam and Eve Know What Disobedience Was?

The short answer to this question is that you don’t have to be disobedient to know what disobedience is.

The short answer to this question is that you don’t have to be disobedient to know what disobedience is. God had told Adam and Eve what was good behavior and what was treasonous behavior that warranted the death penalty. They were highly intelligent beings from the moment of their creation, so they knew it was wrong to disobey. However, the long answer to this question is much more involved, but hopefully, you will find the answer below helpful.

What Was the KOGAE, and Why Was It Bad?

We are not directly told in Scripture much detail on this subject, but several theologians down through the ages have made some good biblically based hypotheses. Not everything the serpent said in Genesis 3 was a lie. This is common among those who wish to deceive: they sprinkle truth with lies. One thing the serpent said to Eve was that she would be like God, knowing good and evil. Notice that God never said anything about knowing good or evil until after mankind had sinned. Previously, there was just a pronunciation of the death penalty. True, the tree was named KOGAE, and the meaning was clear—to eat from it was to disobey God, to cause death, and to know evil experientially.

Mankind was created fully mature, with cognitive and language capabilities right away. When God told them not to do something or there would be a punishment (death), they knew what he meant, and they knew that they would be violating God’s command if they disobeyed. This does not mean that when this tree originally was created God had experienced any evil in his creation (because he created everything perfect), but God, being omniscient, foreknew that Satan, some angels, and mankind would sin and fall.

Was the Serpent Telling the Truth?

Was this pronouncement from Satan (influencing the serpent) in Genesis 3:5 true? After all, in Genesis 3:22, God confirms that man had become like God, knowing good and evil. By no means is this a fulfilled “prophecy” of Satan; rather, as Satan had sinned prior to tempting Adam and Eve, he already had the experiential knowledge of good and evil that comes from sinning. Satan—having fallen sometime between day seven and the temptation of Eve (probably only a couple of days or weeks at most) and having experienced real, tangible evil wanted to tempt Eve with the promise of this knowledge of good and evil, while lying about the devastating effects this experiential knowledge would bring. It is interesting to compare Genesis 3 with John 8:44. Satan is described as a liar and “murderer from the beginning” and the text of Genesis 3 bears this out.

When Adam and Eve sinned, they (and we) were subject to the same thing: a knowledge of the distinction between good and evil.

When Adam and Eve sinned, they (and we) were subject to the same thing: a knowledge of the distinction between good and evil. So, in that very narrow sense, they had become like God. This is to be distinguished from being or becoming God. God knew that it would happen beforehand and had already made the plan of salvation (1 Peter 1:20–21), but his will was reflected in his command that Adam and Eve should not eat of the tree of KOGAE.

God’s KOGAE vs Man’s (and Satan’s)

God’s knowledge of good and evil is different and based in his omniscience, not on any experiential basis. There are two kinds of knowledge—conceptual and experiential. I can know that a broken arm is painful by reading about the symptoms in a medical pamphlet, but I cannot “know” how painful it really is unless I were to experience it. God knows everything; therefore, he knows evil, but he is entirely good and has never (nor will he ever experientially know evil internally. Remember, God had told them they would “surely die” if they ate the fruit, so they knew what death was. Although they were innocent, they were not naive or ignorant. But mankind did not trust God and wanted to know things experientially.

Secondly, Eve, and then Adam, made a conscious decision to eat the fruit. It was this decision that was really the sin; the physical act of eating only solidified their decision and cemented their punishment. Those who use the strawman of “God is cruel to condemn man to death for eating fruit” totally miss the point. Like someone who has planned a terrorist attack—whether they are caught before they carry it out, in the act, or after committing the crime—they are still guilty of the crime just for plotting it, if nothing else.

Adam and Eve knew what God’s command meant and that it would have been wrong to disobey. They also conceptually knew what death was, even though they hadn’t experienced that, either. After the fall, they also had knowledge of good and evil, but it was experiential (and internal). Ironically, the lie by the serpent in the garden was that they would be like God, knowing good and evil (Genesis 3:5), but the truth was that after eating the forbidden fruit they would become unlike God because they now internally experienced evil and acted upon it.

However, God is good, and he can and does make good come out of evil circumstances (Genesis 50:20). Similarly, redeemed sinners can praise and glorify God in an even greater way because even though we know that we have sinned and deserve to be punished with eternal separation from him, God has saved us in Christ because he died in our place (Psalm 32:1–2; Romans 5:8–11; Ephesians 2:4–7; 2 Corinthians 5:21).