A question came my way not long ago and I thought it, and the answer, was worthy to be shared…
If God knew Adam and Eve would fail, why put the tree there just to tell them they can’t eat it?
My answer is this:
There’s a difference between what God knows and what God demands. Free will, I suppose, is at the root of the answer to this question. God knew they would fail, but He still gave them a command not to eat because He didn’t want them to eat from it. God defined that as sin. Just because He knows you will sin (free will) doesn’t mean He’s not going to forbid you from doing it.
That’s the simple answer, but you could easily spin this off into another discussion about “Why did God put the tree there in the first place?” A person might think God was tempting them, but no: God didn’t tempt them; God commanded them. SATAN tempted them. God was forthright with them: “See that tree; don’t touch that one.” Satan was the one who used subtlety and lies to get them to do what God commanded them to avoid.
It was good that the tree was there; it established God’s expectations for His people. It defined the boundary between right and wrong, which is the point of law. Adam and Eve weren’t ignorant. Sure, they had never sinned before, but they didn’t need to: God told them what sin was: “Eating from THAT tree is sin.” That’s it. That’s the definition. Transgressing God’s Law is sin. The reason they sinned, despite knowing it was bad, was because they didn’t trust God. They listened to the Devil and convinced themselves that the thing they wanted was better than the warning God gave them. They trusted in themselves more than God.
At the end of the day, that’s the template for all our sins.
Would you rather learn the stove is hot by the word of your loving parent or by touching it and getting burned? God warns us. Satan tricks us into touching it. One kind of “knowledge” comes through faith in God. The other is learned the hard way by disobeying. Adam and Eve had a kind of knowledge before they sinned, one that was solely dependent on their faith in God (they knew eating from the tree was bad by faith, because faith gave them the evidence of a thing not eaten). After they ate, they gained a different kind of knowledge, one God never wanted them to have. They learned about sin the hard way, and set in motion the need for God to save us from our sins through the sacrifice of Christ.
~Matthew