Why Would We Need to Be in a Fallen World to Fully Know God?

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Why Would We Need to Be in a Fallen World to Fully Know God?

July 21, 2025

Questions about why, if Adam and Eve were in perfect community with God, we would need to be in a fallen world to fully know God, and why God cursed nature after the fall.

* If Adam and Eve were in perfect community with God, why would we need to be in a fallen world to fully know God, and did God create a set of circumstances that would bring about a fallen world solely to reveal his other qualities?

* Why did God curse nature after the fall?

Transcript

You're listening to Stand to Reason's hashtag SDRask Podcast with Amy Hall and Greg Koukl. And today, Greg, we have some questions about evil and the fall and that sort of thing. And we're going to start with Andrew.

I have a question about God's goodness and creating humans. If Adam and Eve were in perfect community with God, why does it take a fallen world to fully know God? Does God in his sovereignty simply set up a set of circumstances that bring about a fallen world solely to reveal his other qualities? Well, the difficulty with this question is that it's a question that requires insight into God's mind to answer fully, all right? And we don't have that insight. What we can do is we can reflect and speculate based on some things we do know and then kind of use a sanctified imagination to fill in some of the gaps.

But ultimately, there is not going to be a complete answer. And therefore, the answer we give is not going to be completely satisfied because it's not complete, all right? If there is no fallen world, there's all kinds of characteristics of God's character that cannot be manifested in any way. So if there is no sin and no fall, then there can be no forgiveness.

There can be no long suffering. There can be no, I'm not sure about this, but in at least arguably no meaningful keeping of covenants because there would be no covenant that needed to be made if it was a perfect world in which there would never be any deviation from that. Covenants for the sake of organizing imperfection and working out a plan to deal with the problems, all right? And when God is faithful to his covenants, that's the Hebrew word, acid, that tells us something about himself.

When God judges evil, that is a manifestation of his justice. Now, there can't be a manifestation of justice if there is no evil to judge. So the question entails in part that, that element, and also the element of God's sovereignty working in a particular way in light of human free choices.

That's a very difficult element, I think, to cash out. I was even thinking about it driving here today. And the reason is I was listening yesterday to Alistair Begg, and he was talking about how God's plan in a certain sense was being worked out through Moses when the pharaoh demanded that the Hebrew children be killed and then Moses' mother kept him alive for a few months and then put him in a basket and put him in the river.

And then, of course, Moses was found by Pharaoh's daughter and raised by Pharaoh's daughter. So there were all kinds of things there that were related to individual decisions that people made. Moses' mother, Moses' sister, Pharaoh's daughter, and all kinds of other circumstances that all worked clearly into a sovereign purpose of God to advance his plan for the salvation of the world.

And so you have this unique interplay between clear human decisions that, from their perspective, and as we read, were decisions those individuals made for their own reasons. Yet at the same time, these were things that took place because God sovereignly decreed them to be so. Now, as I recall, you have a whole list of passages that make these points very clearly.

God acts, and they're acting, and their actions are commingled. So God is sovereign over them, and his purposes are accomplished, but the people, especially who are doing evil, get judged for the evil they do. In Jerusalem, and the text says that.

But Cyrus made his own decisions, and something good happens. So there are good things that God is involved in taking place like Moses, and there are other judgments that are involved where people are doing evil that fits in with God's purposes that he ordained in some fashion yet they're responsible for as well. So I don't know how to unpack that, personally.

I don't take this any further. You sometimes take it a little bit further, but even so, the point is there's a mystery here for everybody. And it's difficult then to, well, let me back up and put it this way.

In a certain sense, you're right. God ordained the world to unfold in a certain way, even though that ordination entailed free will decisions by, say, Adam, and even this case, that created problems that needed to be solved. And in the solution, God's character was revealed.

God's goodness. God's virtues were all revealed. And ironically, some of that entails judgment.

I was just looking for this reference in the new test, rather in the Psalms, and I made a notation in the margin I'm looking for. And I probably won't find it. But basically, when you read through the Psalms, and I was doing like a Psalm a night, it takes half a year, right? 150 nights.

When you read through the Psalms on a regular basis, it's amazing how many Psalms are dedicated to the theme of judgment. I was stunned when I read it. And not only is judgment proclaimed in the Psalms, it is celebrated in the Psalms.

And so the passage- In Revelation also. Yes. How long, O Lord, how long will you delay from avenging the blood of your saints kind of thing? But the one I'm looking for is where basically it's talking about the mountains and the fields and the rivers and the oceans rejoicing because God is visiting judgment upon the world.

And wow, that's pretty heavy. But you see this with some frequency in the scripture. So this is not a popular answer or element of the answer.

But nevertheless, it's the truth that God's goodness is manifest in his judgment of evil, and therefore he is glorified in it. And so looking at it that way, a world that has unfallen will not reveal the attributes of God as clearly and as thoroughly as a world that has fallen. And Andrew, you start off this question with, if Adam and Eve were in perfect community with God, why does it take a fallen world to fully know God? And I think it depends on how you're defining a perfect community.

You could have a really good relationship with someone and not fully know them just because you don't have any conflicts with that person. That doesn't mean that you fully know that person. In the context of that relationship.

Right. Right. So Adam and Eve could be with God and there are certainly lots of things about God that they can see without a fallen world.

And there are a lot of things to enjoy about him that they could see without a fallen world. But the evil, as you said, brings out aspects of God. And now this doesn't mean that the evil changes God.

It doesn't change God. And neither does it mean that we need the contrast. So we have to see something bad in order to see something good.

That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that there are certain things that God responds to in ways that reveals his character. There's a poem by Shel Silverstein where he says something about the land of happy.

And he sees this land of happy and everyone's getting along. Everyone's great. And at the very end he says what a bore.

And that used to bother me because I thought, well, I agree with him. But why do I agree with him? I know being in a land of happy is going to be great at the end. So why is it that now when I read books, I want to read a book with conflict? And it's not because I want the conflict in itself.

It's because when that conflict happens, you see the beauty of the response of the heroes in that book. That's what we want to see. So in the end, we will have seen that.

We will have experienced that. We will know about that. And we'll be able to enjoy people's stories forever that illustrate who God is.

But that comes out through God's response to evil. So did Adam and Eve know about God's grace? No. It didn't know about God's grace.

Did Adam and Eve know about God's love for his enemies? His forgiving grace is what you mean. Yes. In grace and provision.

That was... Oh, right. Yes. Thank you for it.

Yes. God was gracious in giving things to them. But they didn't know about his forgiveness.

They didn't know about that he had the kind of love where he would sacrifice his son for the sake of his enemies. They didn't know about that. So that's something.

And when you consider that this is all to the praise of the glory of his grace, then the cross is the pinnacle of how God revealed himself. I have a few verses here that talk about how the fallen world reveals God. This one Romans 3.5 says, Our unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God.

That's what you were talking about in the Psalms. Romans 3.25 and 26 says that God displayed Jesus publicly as a propitiation in his blood through faith. This was to demonstrate his righteousness because in the forbearance of God he passed over the sins previously committed.

Romans 5.8 says that God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. And Ephesians 2, 4 through 7 talks about how we were by nature children of God's wrath. He made us alive together with Christ.

So that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of his grace. So the surpassing riches of his grace. That's the whole goal here.

And Adam and Eve wouldn't have known about that. The richness of the grace is apparent in the contrast of his judgment. When we see God execute the judgment on the world that we deserved also, but escaped in virtue of the kind intention of his will, Ephesians 1, that magnifies our understanding of his grace, his mercy, his goodness in that regard.

Yeah. This all reminded me of a quote from Michael Reeves. And this is in his book, Authentic Ministry.

And I just want to read it. When the glory of God is displayed in the cross, we get to see all God's perfections. We see that God is not merely helpful to the weak, but long-suffering and infinitely merciful to great sinners.

We see the riches of his grace, his sovereign power to save, his holy justice, and his love. His bleeding makes our hearts bleed, and his shame makes us ashamed. In the cross we see a divine disgust at sin that makes sin appalling in our eyes too.

But more through the cross we see a love so fierce it pierces our apathy and overwhelmed desire for other things. At the cross we see the majestic goodness of Christ and the sweet security we can have in him. That is why it can transform the vicious, the sad, the despairing, and the selfish into joy-filled, radiantly generous and kind saints.

And none of these things would be evident without the cross and the cross would not be evident without evil. And God's purpose to bring mercy to evil doers. So hopefully that helps you make sense of that, Andrew.

Let's go to a question from CK. Why did God curse nature after the fall? I read Clay Jones quoting James Dunn that God did this because a fallen world was the appropriate context for fallen man, but I wonder if more can be said. I know this is a why did God question, but still would love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks. Well, she's onto it. I'm glad to hear that.

I don't know that I have any thoughts about that. Except that I'm trying to think of a parallel to underscore the consequence of sin. So, okay, this is what it's like he's saying these are the consequences.

I'm trying to think of a parallel. I have teenagers. So I should have a handy one, you know, because you did this.

Okay, now this is okay. No phone for a week. You know, I'm cursing creation there.

Something like that. But I think that what the what the speculation. No, of course.

But what the curse seems to indicate is the gravity of the sin. All right. That it didn't just affect human beings.

It affected everything. The entire created order. And it affected that in virtue of God's decision to to have that effect for sin to have that effect because I guess in principle, he might have said, okay, I'm not going to curse creation.

I'm just going to cause you more pain and child birth. You know, but what's interesting is, and I just had this thought now, if you think back to Genesis one, there is a Genesis describes how God made the world for human flourishing. And he gives humans a commission there.

He sets it up a certain way, male and female, he created them, be fruitful, multiply and subdue. Okay. So this is this is building a people who are doing meaningful work.

This is the way I look at it. I think that's entailed in there. And the sin results in a an impact in both of the areas of being fruitful and multiply.

We're going to multiply pain and child birth and subdue the earth, but the earth is going to fight back. Okay. So work is in part of the fall.

That was there in the created order. It's toil that is part of the fall unpleasant work as opposed to meaningful activity. And there's also a leadership struggle that is introduced as well.

You know, the man, your desire will be for him or for his place or for his authority, but he shall rule over you. So you've got these consequences in the major areas of the creation order that were designed by God for humans to flourish. And now they're not going to flourish as much because of the fall.

Now, of course, our sin and the devil's influence has aggravated that. Fortunately, there's so many things nowadays that are moral issues, fornication, adultery, of the sexual one, certainly, the gender and homosexuality, the gender issues, all of these are all related to unending or undoing the design that God has purposed for human beings, even before the fall. This one, the devil can't get at God, so he's getting at God's image bearers.

Because when he distracts people from those purposes, which are already marred in some measure because of the fall, then they fluoresce even less. And of course, we see this. So I think those are factors maybe in answering the question, but I more could be said, maybe.

Well, I'm not sure how you would bring about the curse on human beings without cursing the question of creation. Because if everything, if there is no toil, if there is nothing, none of that in the world, then how exactly are you? Are you going to increase the toil for the human beings? I just don't think you can separate them out from the rest of the creation. It is like naughty, naughty.

Now, welcome to Club Med. Yeah. No kind of thing.

If that thing even exists anymore, I don't know. But anyway. And it's sad that we are responsible for the fallen nature of all of reality.

I mean, that's, or all of, I shouldn't say all of reality for all of, I assume it's all the universe. I actually don't know for sure. But if I think it serves as an illustration of the ugliness of our sin, I think it also serves God's purpose in this, we talked about the purpose of suffering.

There are certainly lots of purposes in suffering and it also helps us to learn to depend on God. I think there's all sorts of ways that the fallenness of the universe serves the purpose of showing us who God is and humbling us, teaching us to depend on God, to see the ugliness of our own sin and the results of our own sin. I think there are a lot of reasons.

Now, in Romans 8, Paul does say something about this, but not really specific. He says that the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God, for the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will also be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. So without saying the exact purpose, it sounds there like the fallenness of creation is serving the purpose of ultimately setting us free.

So it's subjected to futility in the hope that the creation itself will also be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. So it's playing some part of the whole redemption plan. Even though it's not specifically explained there, I think we've given some options of how that could work.

All right, we're at a time, Greg. That one went really fast. Thank you, CK, and thank you, Andrew, for sending us your questions.

And we'd love to hear from you with your question. Either at str.org or on X with the hashtag SCRAsk. This is Amy Hall and Greg Coco for Stand to Reason.