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Genesis 3:12 The man said, "The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate."

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Sin - and death through sin - entered into the world through Adam (Rom 5:12), but the ability to sin was there from the start.

This self-consciousness/self-centeredness problem we all share becomes very uncomfortable when you stand in God’s presence.

When we’re confronted with our sin we instinctively scramble to soothe that discomfort. Sometimes we deny or hide from it, sometimes we justify it, sometimes we “normalize” it so that it doesn’t seem so bad, sometimes we think “but God will understand when He sees the extenuating circumstances I am facing.”

God played along with the blame game in order to lay everyone’s sin and guilt on the table.

When confronted with his sin, Adam deflected. He shifted the attention from himself to the woman. “Let’s see if I can divert God’s attention – maybe toward someone else, or maybe to my circumstances. Maybe He’ll empathize with my sin! I mean, how can He blame me given the circumstances? ”

Adam says, “Look God, You gave this woman to me. Maybe you messed that up a bit? Wasn’t she supposed to be my ideal helper?”

The answer of course is yes, she was created to be your HELPER. She wasn’t created to be your GOD. A husband must care more about what God thinks than what his wife thinks. Reversing that is sin. Your whole goal in life is supposed to be to please God.

On the other end, husbands and wives must never pressure their spouses to care more about their opinions than about God’s. Doing so tempts their spouses to sin.

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Genesis 3:13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?" And the woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."

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Since Eve’s eyes were also turned self-ward, she too was uncomfortable with God’s gaze upon her. She tried to redirect God’s attention, too - to the Shiny One.

There are no lies in these verses. Eve did give the fruit to Adam and he did eat. The serpent did deceive Eve and she did eat.

Adam and Eve didn’t try to lie to God. Who could lie to the all-knowing? The only hope they had was to try to take God’s focus off of themselves.

It seems to me Adam’s sin was worse than Eve’s. Eve was deceived. But Adam ate simply because the fruit was offered to him. He neither fulfilled his role as guardian of the garden (2:15) nor drew on Eve as his helper (2:18). Had he guarded the garden none of this would have happened.

The serpent was the only one who wasn’t asked why things happened, for he was already evil and did what he does. But Adam and Eve were God’s innocent children, devoid of evil until now. Adam and Eve essentially blamed temptation for their sins.

Temptation is serious. But temptation can never be blamed for our decisions. We may even be deceived, but that doesn’t excuse our disobedience either.

The process of looking at the creation (fruit tree) rather than the creator for significance ends in complete despair. Notice how this process is described in Romans 1:21-25. Paul said in v.20 that it began at “the creation of the world:”
“For even though they knew God,
they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but
they became futile in their thinking, and
their foolish heart was darkened.
Professing to be wise, they became fools, and
exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image
in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.
Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity,
so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.
For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and
worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever.”