The Fall of Adam and Eve

The fall of Adam and Eve is an extremely important and fundamental topic to Christianity. Literally everyone that has walked the earth has had to live with the effects of the fall. Yet, it is often misunderstood and I have personally had many questions about it. Today I want to discuss what significance the events of the fall have. These events are important because it is literally impossible to fully understand the Atonement without understanding the fall. And without fully understanding the Atonement... Well we are going to be missing an extremely large amount of blessings.

An important scripture that provides a lot of insight to the fall is Genesis 3:22 "And he Lord God said, Behold the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil:" Last week I talked a lot about how every one on earth has a sense of good and evil. Adam and Eve partaking of the fruit is the reason why.

But this scripture is insightful in other ways. It says that us knowing good and evil makes us like God. This makes since. We are children of God, shouldn't we be like him automatically? However the story of Adam and Eve suggests differently. Knowing good and evil and subsequently being like God was a choice. Adam and Eve made that choice by partaking of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil. This means that the fall of Adam and Eve was not a terrible mistake that needs to be regretted. Instead it was an opportunity that God gave us to be like him. But we don't have to think that this choice was forced upon us by Adam and Eve. We each in turn made this choice. In the premortal life 1/3 of the hosts of heaven did not make this choice and missed this opportunity.

Adam and Eve choosing to partake of the fruit and us choosing to come here to earth was a significant choice. However there are still thousands of choices that we make each day. Each of these choices varies in significance but each can do the same thing that happened with that initial choice.  God saying "Behold the man is become as one of us" is not limited to one point in time. With each choice we make we are choosing to be more like God or we are falling away from that. With our choices we are not earning our way to heaven and neither are we expecting it to be given to us. We are changing so that we can be ready for heaven. Brad Wilcox said "Scriptures make it clear that no unclean thing can dwell with God, but no unchanged thing will even want to." I am thankful for the fall. It has given me a chance to learn and grow and become more like God. I hope that all of us can recognize that event for the wonderful opportunity that it gave us and that we can take advantage of it while we are here in this mortal life.