“…in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.”

There are those who would like to take this Genesis passage and do with it what they have done in Genesis 1: create an issue with the word “day.” Though there are times in Scripture when the word can indeed be referring to periods of time, and not just 24-hour periods, I believe that Genesis 2:17 is not one of those times. The very specific “day” to which the Lord is referring occurs in the next chapter, 3:6. The sorry events of that chapter happened in one day.

Death is the end of a long process, the fruit of a horrible disease called sin. Sin entered the world through Adam. Since that time, all men enter the world dying.

The fact that Adam did not drop to the ground and begin returning to dust when he ate the forbidden fruit does not mean that the death process had not begun. If Adam had not sinned, he would be alive on earth today.

But he did sin. And the day that sin entered Adam, death entered also. He was effectively cut off from God’s fellowship. Herein is the very essence of death. You and I were dead in our trespasses and sins, in the same sense that Adam died on that fateful day. Separated from God, with no hope for renewal of the bond.

No hope but one. The Seed of the woman shall come and bruise the head of our enemy (Genesis 3:15). All who turn to God’s Son will have their sins blotted out, and the fellowship restored.

So there is no contradiction in the text. God promised Adam would die in the day that he ate the fruit. On that day he died. Immediately we see him filled with shame, then abject fear of God, His Friend of only yesterday. We watch as he becomes the accuser of his wife. He is cursed with a long life of difficult toil, and forced to wear the skins of animals who shed the first blood of the new planet, for him. As a final nod to his new status, Adam is removed from his employ as keeper of the Garden, and told to go make a place for himself somewhere outside of the Paradise of God.

Things have certainly changed for Adam. He is dead. Dead to God. Dead without God. Several hundred years later he will be buried, as a testimony to the power of sin and death in his life.