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He said, “I heard Your voice in the garden and was afraid because I was naked, so I hid myself.” — Genesis 3:10

God Confronts His Creatures

God does not play the role of rescuing cavalry. Instead, He confronts His creatures as they try to cast blame on each other and their serpent co-conspirator (Genesis 3:7–13). Adam finds part of the fault in God for making him a very troublesome wife. All the while the pair is cowering behind leaves to cover their nakedness. The blessings of their covenant of life lie broken at their feet. Instead of sympathy, a stiff lecture, and a pat on the head, God pronounces doom, as He had promised He would if they disobeyed (Genesis 3:14–24).

God’s judgment included:

Cursed environment
They must leave paradise and face life and death on an unfriendly planet.

Cursed work
The task of the cultural mandate was not removed, but it would now be won only by  sweat and pain.

Cursed authority
Walls rose to separate people, animals, and plants. The mutually accepted role of headship had been spurned by Adam. A partnership of mutual blessing, with the husband leading the wife and following God, would now be replaced by a pattern of dissatisfaction
with the roles God had given the sexes.

Cursed relationships
This strife between men and women, of course, has an impact on marriage and other
interpersonal relationships, from Cain and Abel onward. Perhaps most painful is the
immense wall between people and their God.

Promised relaxation and praise
Notice that God did not take away the Sabbath blessing. As life becomes harder and God
more distant, the Sabbath takes on new meaning in resting from labor and praising
God and hoping for the full renewal under God’s promise. That renewal comes in a new
covenant to replace the broken covenant of life.

Remember that God will not—cannot—do what will make Him less than infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. Suddenly the awful situation becomes clear. God would have ceased to be God had He simply waved a wand and cleaned up after His willful creatures. For, in fact, it was the sin of Adam and Eve that they wanted to be apprentices to Godhood. That option was not open to them.

What was the providence of God toward man in the estate in which he was created?
The providence of God toward man in the estate in which he was created, was the placing him in paradise, appointing him to dress it, giving him liberty to eat of the fruit of the earth; putting the creatures under his dominion, and ordaining marriage for his help; affording him communion with himself; instituting the sabbath; entering into a covenant of life with him, upon condition of personal, perfect, and perpetual obedience, of which the tree of life was a pledge; and forbidding to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, upon the pain of death.

Westminster Larger Catechism, Question 20