Genesis 2:17 “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”
There is no doubt that the Lord created this tree in the Garden of Eden.
Genesis 2:8-9 “And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.”
This tree of knowledge of good and evil was created by the Lord. One of the common arguments from atheists is that, if God truly loves His creation, then why did God create the tree of knowledge of good and evil?
If God is all-knowing, why did God create this tree, knowing that mankind would eat out of it and face disease, famine and starvation? This must not be a loving God, and if God created this, God should not be loved.
The Answer – God searches man’s hearts
God did not create this tree so that He can get a kick out of it and jump up in joy, hoping that mankind would sin. We’re going to look at the Lord God Himself who searches the things of the heart. That’s the type of God that we serve.
There is another problem. If we ask the question about why did God create the tree of knowledge of good and evil, then what about Lucifer? If God was truly a God of love, why would God create Lucifer? Knowing that Lucifer would fall and be Satan, and tempt mankind, the one who messes up all our lives? If he did not exist, then we would not face all this mess.
God is a God who searches the deep things of the heart. If God did not create these two beings, Adam and Eve would have had everything perfect in their world. All of mankind would live perfectly in this world. In such a perfect world, one cannot honestly say that mankind truly loves God. For example, it is easy to say that one loves Jesus when He blesses one with lots of money, and a roof over the head. It is easy to love Jesus and thank Him in this luxury and comfort. But when one goes through hard times; tears, death, sorrow and pain, health and financial problems, can one really say that one loves Jesus?
The Lord God set these two things in place to see if mankind truly loves God. One can’t say that Adam and Eve truly loved God without these two things to show what is truly in their heart.
If you were God who lived all of eternity, would you be happy living through eternity with robots loving you? You would prefer a real kind of person that has free will and free choice, who chooses to love you. We cannot blame God for creating man with a free will. This is why we are against Calvinists.
Atheists like to argue that man has free will to truly love God, but why does it have to be through creating Lucifer and the tree of knowledge of good and evil? Why is someone needed to tempt mankind? Why would this tree be deliberately right in front of their faces? Why would God do this to see if mankind truly loved Him? Why couldn’t it be through any other means?
Here’s a simple question. Would you in your right mind, in order to test if a person truly loved you, deliberately send a devil to tempt that person? To deliberately put something there to damage mankind for all his life and even in his eternity, and risk a soul to burn forever? We would never do that! But why would God do that? God must be a mean, sadistic person with a twisted type of love!
God is not the same as man
We must first understand that God is not the same as man. If man did this, then we would have a strange, messed up kind of love. This is because man is imperfect. As an imperfect man, one would have no right whatsoever to put a “Lucifer” or “tree of knowledge of good and evil” or anything drastic or dramatic like that, to see if another person truly loves.
This is because man is imperfect, and one might be doing it out of selfishness, for the wrong purposes. But will God ever do that? Absolutely not! Because God is perfect. Otherwise there would be no such thing as God. God would not be God unless He is 100% perfect.
As a 100% perfect God, are not all His ways perfect? Absolutely! In all His doings, God is 100% perfect, without sin. If God is going to show that one really loves Him, He is going to do it in a perfect manner that is 100%. The best way that can expose the heart of man who 100% loves God, is to bare it all open, and find the thing that causes man not to love God, and yet be willing to go through all of that mess, to see if mankind truly loves God or not.
That is why we have trials and sufferings in our lives. Christians become more holy and love God more through the trials. Do you know why? That is because that is the best thing to do to expose that one 100% loves Jesus Christ. If one had everything perfect in life and lots of blessings, that is not the way that exposes 100% that one truly loves God.
If man did this, it would be totally intolerable and unreliable. But God can do that, because He is perfect. He will never do wrong, He knows past, present and future, how it is going to turn out for the betterment. He is holy without sin. If God never did this type of test in love, and lowered the standards in this test, He cannot be God. Because everything that God does has to be 100% perfect.
While one would disprove the existence of God with a test of diminished standards, one would prove that God truly exists even more when He does the perfect test. God is a type who exposes and searches the deep things in our hearts, that is the type of God we serve. He is going to dig deep what one thinks and feels in one’s heart.
God will show a difficult situation and it will reveal what is truly in one’s heart. This is something that Christians understand and not atheists, because Christians have been through the Christian walk.
In a Christian’s life, one might think that they would never commit a type of sin, and what would God do? He puts one through such situations or circumstances until one realises that they were not that great a Christian to begin with.
Atheists would never think that, because they think that mankind is so good and proud of their actions. God would not put them in those situations because they never wanted that test to begin with.
1 Corinthians 2:10, 16 “But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.” “For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? but we have the mind of Christ .”
God is perfect, He is going to search everything, not just stop midway. He is going to expose everything in man.
We have no right to question how God does things, because man does not search the deep things, only God does. We do not even know our own hearts! There is a being who knows you more than you, that is God. God has a perfect right to use this method to see if one truly loves Him. This is the best way to expose 100% love.
When God uses these methods in a person’s life, one would fail miserably in loving Jesus Christ as much as one actually should. God is not satisfied with an 80% love, He wants your 100% love. He wants you to be holy like Him, to love Him 100%, for He has a perfect high standard. But guess what? Mankind fails and that’s why we all go to hell.
But God lets His son, Jesus Christ, pay for mankind and take care of our salvation. Then God wants all us to strive to be like Jesus Christ, 100% perfect, for the rest of our lives. God wants us to be like Him.
Notice that God exposes what is really in the heart of man when He lets Satan loose after the millennium. For a 1000 years, mankind lives happily and perfectly in the earthly kingdom in peace, prosperity and sinlessness where nothing can go wrong. Yet, God exposes mankind’s heart once more, at the end, that they are actually still very evil.
Revelation 20:7-9 “And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog, and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.”
Verses 7 through 9 show Satan loosed, and that exposes mankind’s heart once more. And through this, God exposed mankind’s wickedness once and for all. At mankind’s best, they are not capable of loving God, they are not holy, and they are wicked people. The greatest evidence can be seen in what God did in creating Lucifer and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. By doing that, God exposed mankind once more, that they are not as good as they thought they were.
When Lucifer was loosed for a while, mankind in their madness, decided to follow Satan and get deceived to go up against God. Why would mankind foolishly want to do that? It is because they are full of wickedness! It is in their hearts.
Proud atheists will never say that. So God will do things with us, to show what is really in our hearts.