In the Bible, we find God’s first-ever question to Man: “Where are you?” This constitutes our title for this article (Genesis 3:9). This was when Adam and Eve hid from God against a tree in the Garden of Eden after they discovered that they were naked when they had eaten the fruit that God had forbidden Man to eat. Of course, omniscient God knew where they were. But God wanted the question to Adam, whom he had commanded not to eat the concerned fruit. God wanted Adam’s self-realisation. God is just; so he asked the question to Adam, not Eve, whom he had given the commandment. That question was a rhetorical one for Adam as a self-searching question for Adam. Adam was to realise the peculiar situation in which he threw himself violating his Maker’s command.

God worked for five consecutive days to create a suitable environment for Man to live in and praise God for all his good work. Man had many fruits, etc for his food.  But even then he disobeyed God and ate the forbidden fruit... He ate the fruit at the behest of his wife Eve, who had eaten that fruit having been beguiled by the Devil represented by the serpent. The garden was once a place of beauty, joy and communion— a rendezvous for God and man, but it turned out to be a place of fear and hiding from God. Man, the crown of God’s creation, the chief guest of God if you like, became persona non-grata in the garden and they were eventually banished from Eden. Our first parents realised that they were naked. The blessed innocence that they had before the fall was lost. They had an altogether new kind of awareness of themselves and of each other in their nakedness. They had a sense of shame now. So, they made themselves some coverings with fig leaves that were only feeble and futile attempts to hide their shame, which only God could cover. Later on in the narrative, we find that God graciously clothed them with an effective garment for covering their shame (verse 21).

The first consequences of human sin were guilt and shame. Knowledge, disobedience and human frailty led him to an overpowering urge to be covered and to hide from God. The nakedness of Man was no cause of shame and embarrassment beforehand since they were innocent and without sin. But when their eyes were open to good and evil they realised their own evil, and they lost their goodness through disobedience to God’s Word. Adam never before hid himself from God. God did not have to ask about where he was. It is not that God did not know what happened to Adam. God wanted Adam to have the needed self-examination. Young children are asked about their condition even though their parents know the answer; they need to confess their wrongdoings.

Man needs to take responsibility for any wrong that they do. Paradise was lost because of man’s disregard for God’s Word... Man was given everything that he needed. Still, he disobeyed his master. This is exactly opposite to what Jesus Christ did in the wilderness thousands of years later when the Devil tempted him three times. He defeated the Devil by quoting the Scriptures and by remaining obedient to God’s mission in his life. We have the stories in Chapter Four in each of the Gospels recorded by Saints Matthew and Luke. Christ, the Second or Last Adam defeated the Devil while the first Adam (first man) came to be ruled by the Devil and plunged humanity into sin.

One thing needs to be spelt out right away: When God came to talk to Adam after he ate the fruit, he blamed Eve (and also God as he referred to the fact that God gave him his wife!); and when God asked her she gave the blame to the serpent. So, a blame game ensued. In our practical life, we also do the like. We do not like to own or take responsibility for things going wrong with us. We shift the blame on others. And often we have fig-leaf of excuses for our faults and wrongs. We blame others for our own losses. We like to be understood first, and not understand others first. This is part of the sin-nature or our proneness to sin that is implanted in us because of the fall of our first parents. Humans continue to be the image-bearers of God. But that image is tarnished by sin though that is not utterly effaced. God’s image or likeness in man is affected in its entirety. This means that everything in our personality is corrupted: our intelligence, will, emotion, thoughts, hopes and aspirations, all our doings etc. We are reconciled to God only through Christ, who is sinless.

We sin because we are sinners, not that we are sinners because we sin. Sin is missing the mark in conforming to the command of God. Man has an inner proclivity to disobey divine command. This is the seminal consequence of the disobedience of Adam discussed above. That is how we became enemies of God, rebellious against his holy will. We often need to self-search ourselves when we disobey God.
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The writer is a Christian Theology teacher and Church leader