Genesis 3:17 “you shall surely die”:
“… but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.” (Genesis 2:17)
Have you ever wondered as I did why, when the man ate of the fruit from the knowledge of good and evil why he did not die. For that is what the scripture days, “for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.” Not in a future day, not in a day coming, not in a thousand years (for a day is like a thousand years to the LORD, but in that same day the man will die.
So the question is, “Did the man die on the day he ate of the fruit?
You say, “he fathered Cain and Abel, he could not have died.”
I say that, as the scripture says “he died on that day.”
You say “Explain.”
I say “OK, take a walk with me to the book of John and the third chapter.” In this chapter we find a Pharisee named Nicodemus. Not wanting to be seen by his fellow Pharisees, Nicodemus comes to Yeshua at night. Yeshua says to him that he unless he is “born again” he cannot see the kingdom of God. He makes a comment that he cannot enter his mother’s womb again, so how can he be born again. Yeshua explains that he is not referring to a physical birth where you would enter into your mother’s womb again, but of a spiritual birth.
I believe that it is the spiritual birth is of that part of man that did die on the exact day that he ate of the fruit. When that part died, he had to separated from GOd and removed from His presence. It is the birth, that Born again reality, that has to happen to each of us as individuals that will allow us to spend eternity walking, as the man un Genesis did, with the Father in the cool of the evening.