What went wrong with the world?
Why do shame, fear, suffering and death mark human life?
UtG’s project, The Gospel Journey, explores the Bible to address these and other hard questions about the meaning of life, our failures, and our longing for hope. Wherever you are starting from, the Bible’s answers are here for you to examine.
The Journey began by discovering the God who made the world and the people He created in His image.
The Journey continues by taking us back to a garden at the beginning of time. In that garden there was one catastrophic act of human disobedience. Genesis chapter 3 recounts humanity’s first failure, explains the condition of the world today and introduces the only hope that can save us.
God had created a world that was “very good” (Genesis 1:31). Adam and Eve lived in harmony with their Creator, with each other and with their surroundings. They experienced God’s generous care and enjoyed His presence. In the garden there was one restriction: they were not to eat the fruit of one tree. Yet into that world came the serpent, identified elsewhere in the Bible as Satan, the deceiver and enemy of God.
His strategy was subtle. He did not begin by denying God’s existence. He questioned God’s word: “Has God said?” (Genesis 3:1). And so began a conversation that would lead to the harmony of Eden’s garden being shattered. Shame replaced innocence. Fear replaced fellowship. Hiding replaced honesty. And blame replaced responsibility. Nothing in creation would be the same again. Sin had come into the world, as the Apostle Paul explains: “through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin” (Romans 5:12).
Yet physical death is not sin’s deepest consequence. Adam and Eve were driven from Eden because guilty sinners could no longer enjoy an unhindered relationship with a holy God. God is morally perfect, completely pure and utterly separate from evil. He had not changed – Adam and Eve had.
The message was clear and unmistakable: humanity could not simply wander back on its own terms. No effort, wisdom, religion or achievement could undo what sin had done.
But even as God pronounced the consequences of sin, He promised that the woman’s seed would crush the serpent’s head, though His heel would be wounded (Genesis 3:15). Here is the Bible’s first promise of a Saviour.
Genesis chapter 3 tells a story that is devastating and hopeful at the same time. Sin entered, innocence vanished, and death began its reign. We became guilty people facing a holy God with no way back on our own. Shame, fear, suffering and death can be traced back to that moment. Yet God promised to act. The rest of the Bible reveals how He kept that promise through Jesus Christ.
Join us on The Gospel Journey as we ask the hard questions and explore the Bible’s central message: the God who made us entered human history in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ, who lived, died and rose again to deal with sin and provide forgiveness and new life.
Explore Gospel Journey at understandingthegospel.org/gospel-journey/
