God Cursed the Ground
Genesis 3:17–19
"Then to Adam He said, 'Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; Cursed is the ground because of you; With hard labor you shall eat from it All the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; Yet you shall eat the plants of the field; By the sweat of your face You shall eat bread, Until you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.'” (NASB 2020)
In a recent article, I wrote that God cursed the ground, but if we read this passage carefully, we see that the ground was cursed because of what Adam had done. So, there is deeper truth here that was not addressed in what I wrote earlier.
In Romans 5:12–14 we read, "Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all mankind, because all sinned—for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not counted against anyone when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the violation committed by Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come." (NASB 2020)
Adam's decision to trust the enemy rather than God allowed sin to enter the world. Once sin had entered, the entire dynamic of life changed. Rather than God being the One energizing humankind, the enemy (called "the god of this world", see 2 Corinthians 4:4) became the "dynamo" energizing humankind. He became what Ephesians 2:2 calls, "the prince of the power of the air,” and is referred to as “the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience."(NASB 2020)
So, the deeper truth here is not so much that God cursed anything, but rather that these things became cursed as a result, a natural consequence, of Adam's choice to attempt living by what seemed right to him in the flesh rather than what God said.
Adam’s choice is the reason “everyone is born with the knowledge of good and evil as their default belief system,” as Mark Maulding has said. It is the reason we all begin life living according to the flesh rather than according to the Spirit.
We see this reflected in Romans 8:20–22 “For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.” (NASB 2020)
God is Love. As such, He is not in the cursing business. At the same time, when we reject His plan and live in ways outside His design, things fall apart. Therefore, it was not necessary that God curse anything.
Romans told us that He subjected the world to futility, but that He did so in hope that it would be set free. Giving us the freedom to choose was necessary because love cannot be forced, or it isn’t love at all. The existence of free choice requires that choices yield results, that they have an effect.
The choice made by Adam came with its own consequence. Proverbs 14:12 and 16:25 state this truth with great clarity, saying, “there is a way which seems right to a person, but its end is the way of death.”
Similarly choosing to trust God brings Life and frees us from futility.
