Biblical characters – Adam and Eve

His Holiness Pope Shenouda III reflects on the story of Adam and Eve, the first humans created by God, explaining their state before and after the fall and the spiritual consequences that followed. He presents a deep meditation on human nature, freedom, responsibility, and obedience to God’s will, emphasizing humility, obedience, and repentance.

Main spiritual ideas

1. Created in the image and likeness of God:
   Adam and Eve were created innocent and sinless, not born of human parents but made directly by God. They received blessing and authority over creation and lived in harmony with nature and animals before the fall.

2. The first sin was not a single act:
   The Pope explains that the so-called “sin of Adam and Eve” was actually a group of sins: doubt in God’s love, submission to evil, disobedience, pride, and blaming others.

3. The fall began with doubt:
   The serpent planted doubt in Eve’s mind, saying: “Has God really said?” Thus, sin began in thought before it became an act.

4. Failure of leadership and wrong submission:
   Eve submitted to the serpent, and Adam submitted to Eve, disrupting God’s order in which man was the head of woman and humanity had authority over creation.

5. Destructive knowledge:
   The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was not about lacking wisdom but about gaining knowledge of evil through disobedience — a harmful kind of knowledge. Thus began man’s inner struggle between good and evil, right and wrong.

6. Loss of simplicity and purity:
   After the fall, they realized their nakedness and felt shame. They covered themselves with fig leaves, but God clothed them with garments of skin — a symbol of the sacrificial atonement of Christ that covers sin.

7. Change in relationship with God:
   Love turned into fear. When God called, “Where are you?” Adam hid himself, showing that guilt breaks fellowship with God.

8. Blaming instead of repentance:
   Adam blamed Eve, and Eve blamed the serpent. True repentance begins when one admits guilt without excuses or blame-shifting.

9. Punishment and mercy:
   Though judgment came, God’s mercy appeared through the first sacrifice. It symbolized the beginning of redemption — the Cross that covers and washes human sin.

Final message
The story of Adam and Eve is not merely about the fall but about God’s unchanging love. Even in sin, He seeks man and calls him back. It is a call to every person to repent and return to God in humility and obedience, for salvation begins when we turn back to Him instead of hiding.

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