Genesis3:9

1

Notice that God called out to Adam, not to both of them. God appears to have seen Adam as the leader of the two of them, and He held Adam accountable as the leader. I know it is not popular these days to talk like this, but this theme occurs too many times in the Bible to ignore it. Some of the occurrences may be considered cultural, but ones like this cannot be cultural for it is God speaking before human cultures had developed.

2: “where are you”

The question was a “where” question, but the intent of the question seems to be “why?” This is one more thing that gives us the impression that God regularly walked and talked with Adam and Eve and did so at a consistent time of day.

As is the case several times during the life of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels, here Jesus asks a question even though He already knew the answer. He did this many times in order to give people an opportunity to choose what kind of response they would give Him. God is not in the business of forcing us into situations where we only have one option, rather He gives us a choice and allows us to exercise the free will He gave us.

I know that some of you have had such a dramatic conversion experience that you feel like you had no choice, God just reached down and saved you and there was nothing you could do about it. It is the emotional intensity of the moment that causes you to think that, however, to find that kind of doctrine taught in Scripture requires a great deal of what I call “gymnastics” – twisting, turning, jumping and reaching in order to find what you are looking for.

Don’t be surprised if the Bible seems to communicate things that are at opposite ends of a spectrum and seem impossible to wrap our minds around. God is just too big for us to fully understand and He refuses to fit in any of the boxes we try to put Him into. That is true of all the theological positions I have heard – they try to put God in a neat, organized, understandable box so that they can say, “Here is the way God works.” The problem is that none of those boxes work; God can and does choose to work in ways that spill out of our boxes. The nature of systematic theology is that it tries to create a system that is logical and well organized as a way to explain God. But God often does things that are illogical to us, and when He does – there goes our system.