When God created the earth, He created it perfect. The Bible says that He “saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good” (Gen. 1:31, NKJV). There was no stain of sin or evil anywhere. But He gave Adam and Eve the same freedom of choice He had given to Lucifer. He didn’t want robots on earth any more than He wanted robots in heaven.

 In fact, He went out of His way to make this freedom clear. He planted a tree in the Garden and called it the tree of knowledge of good and evil. He made a point of telling Adam and Eve about it because He wanted to make sure they knew they had a choice.

 Satan came to the tree, and as Eve lingered there, he told her: “ ‘You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil’ ” (Gen. 3:4, 5, NKJV). In other words, if you eat of this tree, you will enter a new sphere of existence. You will have excitement. You will have a thrill that you’ve never known before. Eve, God is keeping something from you. Here, take the forbidden fruit and eat it.

 When Eve and later Adam made that choice, they opened a door that God wanted to keep forever closed. It was the doorway to sin—the doorway to suffering, heartache, sickness, and death.

 Read Genesis 3:1-3 with Romans 3:23 and Romans 5:12. What do these texts have in common? Describe the ultimate results of sin that plague the entire human race.

 At its very core, sin is rebellion against God. Sin separates us from God. Since God is the Source of life, separation from God leads to death. It also leads to worry, anxiety, sickness, and disease. The suffering in our world is ultimately the result of living on a sin-ravaged planet. This certainly does not mean that every time we suffer, we have sinned. It does mean that every one of us is affected by living on this planet.