Much could be written about Eve. She was the first woman, the first wife, the first mother.
However, the main theme I will deal with here is the nature of the temptation to which she
succumbed.

"And the serpent said unto the woman, You shall not surely die; for God does know that in the
day you eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods [or as God,
according to JND, NASB, and other translations], knowing good and evil. And when the woman
saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired
to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with
her; and he did eat" (Gen. 3:4-6).

The fruit looked good, good enough to eat; but its main appeal to Eve seemed to be its potential
for conferring God-like wisdom and knowledge. "You shall be as God, knowing good and evil,"
the serpent said. Eve’s main desire was probably not one for better fruit but a desire for
autonomy_the freedom to make one’s own rules and to be independent of God. Is it possible that
she and Adam had already felt some dissatisfaction with their roles as dependent creatures? God
knew everything and they knew nothing. Everything they wanted to know, they had to ask Him.
Here was a way to remedy that situation_"You shall be as God." So she took of the fruit.

Human beings still want autonomy. Some want autonomy in morals. God has revealed in His
Word all that men and women need to know about good and evil, but humans demand and assert
their right and ability to decide for themselves what is right and wrong. Some want intellectual or
religious autonomy. A neighbor of ours, an upright man in many ways_honest, faithful to his
wife, and generous with his time and money in helping those in various difficulties_once said to
me, "A man’s mind is his own business. God doesn’t have the right to tell me what to believe."

Human beings still want autonomy and Satan still uses the same temptation, "You shall be [or can
be, or should be] as God." This is more or less explicitly stated in such cults as Mormonism (we
will all be gods eventually), and in the New Age movement (we are all a part of god and should
develop our divine potential), or in what could broadly be termed "humanism" (we don’t need a
god to tell us what is right, we can decide for ourselves). It is implicit in much scientific research
(we will overcome all disease and even death itself; we will manipulate the genetic attributes of
humans; we will find the means to allow a woman to give birth after the normal reproductive age).
Not all scientific research is wrong; it is the refusal to be subject to God’s will and limitations that
is wrong.

What Satan said to Eve, he says to everyone today. What Eve wanted, all of us in our fleshly
natures want. It is only by the power of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us that we are able to
overcome the lust for autonomy. "The carnal mind is enmity against God:for it is not subject to
the law of God, neither indeed can be…. If you through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the
body, you shall live" (Rom. 8:7-13). Let us beware of the deadly intersection of our lust and
Satan’s suggestions. Let us become thoroughly knowledgeable of Scripture so as to refute Satan’s
suggestions, and seek to be totally controlled by the Holy Spirit so as to overcome our lust.

"Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh" (Gal. 5:16).