In these verses, God identifies the problem: “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil” (3:22). But why is this a problem? Don’t we sing the chorus, “To be like Jesus, this hope possesses me?” The difference is this: in the eating of the fruit from this tree, man had become like God in the sense that good and evil would now be measured in relationship to human understanding. Only God is perfect, and able to truly measure all things. As a result, man had to be banished from the garden, the perfect place, as sinful man could not be allowed to continue to eat from the tree of life and live forever (v. 22).
This penalty from God, like the previous curses to Adam and Eve, contained good news. Donald Barnhouse wrote, “How often it is necessary for God to drive us out of an apparent good to bring us to the place of real good!” (Genesis [Zondervan], p. 28) With the introduction of sin into the world, living forever would have been the ultimate punishment! Now, with the reality of death, comes the promise of life eternal through the sacrificial provision of Jesus Christ. To provide redemption from the curse of sin, Jesus had to proclaim, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies” (John 11:25).
