The LORD God called to Adam and asked him, “Where are you?”
It was not as though the Most High didn't know where Adam was hiding. Rather Adam was being given a chance to come forward and confess.
You have eaten, then,
from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat!
Even the accusation by God was given with the chance to reply, to own up to the sin, and to ask for mercy. But instead of doing that Adam did what we often still do: he made excuses.
The man replied, “The woman whom you put here with me
she gave me fruit from the tree, and so I ate it.”
It has become unpopular to believe that there is such a thing as sin. We prefer to think about 'mistakes' and 'learning experiences'. Culpable guilt is only something we're willing to accept in extreme, Hitler-level, examples. Because of this we try to explain our own culpable guilt away with excuses. And when we do so we end up impugning God, blaming him and implying that his provisioning and providence fall short. Such was the case with Adam when he blamed Eve, for in blaming the helpmate that God provided he was implicitly blaming God himself. Hence he blamed not just the woman but went on to say "whom you put here". He wasn't blaming Eve as much as God himself. But this attitude is inherent when we refuse to own up to sin. When we try to excuse ourselves, when we say we finally couldn't help it, whom are we implicating in our guilt if not God?
“Why did you do such a thing?”
The woman answered, “The serpent tricked me into it, so I ate it.”
The serpent tries to trick us as well. But when God had first spoken so clearly, believing the serpent was something to which Eve conceded by her own will, not something irresistible to which she would inevitably succumb. It was in fact a knot of disobedience that would not be untied until Mary, the new Eve, would do so with her own obedience to God's word, her fiat to his plan.
I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
He will strike at your head,
while you strike at his heel.”
We should not make excuses, but should bring our faults before the Lord in confession as soon as he prompts us to do so. There may indeed by factors that mitigate our culpability, factors which were unknown to Adam and Eve. Ever since the fall our flesh exerted a downward pull on us. It was no longer properly and perfectly ordered by our spirit, but would only obey, as Adam was told, by the "sweat of your face".
The more of a foothold sin finds, the more it can become a habit, and from there an addiction. And there is a sense in which addiction really lessen the guilt of one who struggles with it. How do we balance between a straightforward approach to sins we see in our own life and our desire to excuse them with mitigating circumstances, given that sometimes there really are such circumstances? The important distinction is to not blame God or others. Instead, if we see this or that sin as one which is hard to avoid or overcome we confess our own weakness as the reason. It is now perhaps beyond our full and absolute control. But the buck still stops with us. Yet this need not cause us to despair. The weaker and more imperfect we find ourselves to be the more we can do what Adam and Eve, who preferred to think of themselves as still untainted, would not do. We can entrust ourselves to the merciful love of God.
My heart is moved with pity for the crowd,
Jesus doesn't want the consequences of sin to keep us from enjoying his presence. He did not force the crowd to go forth and find bread by the sweat of their brows. Instead, his grace provided. It transformed efforts and abilities that were insufficient to the task to provide nourishment that was more than enough.
They ate and were satisfied.
They picked up the fragments left over–seven baskets.
Imagine if the crowds had instead spent their time bickering about why they didn't have enough food, blaming each other and ignoring the offer of Jesus to feed them. This is more or less what Adam and Eve did and what we ourselves sometimes still choose to do. But the bread of God's merciful love is always available. We don't have to sweat to earn it. So let us come to receive it, that we too may eat and be satisfied.
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