RSV Genesis 8, Job 8, Isaiah 8, Matthew 8, Acts 8, Catechism 71-80, Didache 8

This was a question posed to me by one of our listeners of the Nuntii Dei podcasts. I cannot truly answer for God. However, since I have been seeking to grow closer to God through Christ for 36+ years, and since I am a child of His through His grace, I will try to answer from my knowledge of Church Tradition including the Holy Scriptures and from my experience of walking with God.

When God gave the command, He also gave the consequence for disobeying it. The consequence of disobeying that first and only commandment given to our parents, the parents of us all, was that they would surely die. Even though Adam and Eve were made in the image and likeness of God, when they had Seth and Cain, Seth and Cain were born of Adam and Eve’s image and likeness too, and inherited their sin nature as did all people born after them.

However, the rest of the story is one of God working toward a solution of restoring our relationship to God. God’s greatest act of restoration was allowing a part of Triune God to become a man - Jesus Christ. The new testament contains the story of how and why Jesus came. His biggest reason for coming was to die for our sins and to be raised from the dead for our justification (i.e. for our being made right with God). So, God has provided a solution to the problem caused in the Garden by the choice of our first parents that brought sin into the world. And God is so incredibly merciful and gracious that He now extends forgiveness to any that turn to Jesus, because Jesus is the Way to the Father for any that believe that Jesus was the payment for their sins and choose to repent (i.e. turn away) from their sins and follow Him.

What’s even more incredible is that God gives divine power to live this way to those that want to live this way. We must also remember through all that has happened that God regards sin as a horrible thing, and that God insists on dealing with it. However, God is so incredibly merciful that God dealt with it personally through the incarnation (God miraculously becoming a man), death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.