Recently, my sister-in-law Tonya, sent my wife an interview; Steven Bartlett in conversation with Wes Huff. It was about two hours long, and like we often do with thought-provoking material, my wife and I paused it regularly to talk through what we were hearing.
Toward the end of the conversation, the topic turned to artificial intelligence and the potential for widespread job displacement. As we paused to think through the implications, I made a comment that, at the time, felt more instinctive than fully formed. I said that this was yet another area where we can feel the encroachment of the world, and even the subtle influence of the enemy, pressing in on how we understand our place in creation.
But as I tried to explain what I meant, something deeper began to surface.
I told my wife that over the years, I have come to see the effects of the curse in Genesis 3, not merely as punishment, but as a kind of restrained judgment. A form of divine forbearance. Adam and Eve deserved immediate death. God had said plainly, “for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:17, ESV). And yet, when they sinned, they did not fall dead where they stood.
Instead, God gave them something else.
In the effects of the curse, He gave them a world marked by toil, pain, frustration, and eventual death, a life lived under the steady weight of consequences that would unfold over time rather than all at once. These were not random hardships, but God-ordained realities that would continually bear witness to the seriousness of sin and the certainty of death.
And the more I have thought about it, the more I am convinced:
That was not only judgment. That was kindness.
Something is shifting in our time. Not in the truth of Scripture, and not in the condition of man, but in our awareness of it.
We are increasingly surrounded by a world that works tirelessly to soften, delay, and obscure the realities that once confronted every generation with unavoidable clarity. Pain is managed. Aging is resisted. Weakness is hidden. Death is moved nearly out of our sight, sterilized and pushed to the margins. What earlier generations could not escape, we now work diligently to minimize.
And in doing so, we may be dulling something God, in His wisdom and kindness, gave us so we would never forget.
We may be dulling the kindness in the curse and the punishment for original sin.
More Than Punishment
As a kid in church, the curse—at least on a Sunday school felt board—seemed purely punitive. Pain in childbearing. Toil in labor. Thorns in the ground. And the eventual return to dust: “for you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19, ESV).
But to stop there, without deeper reflection, is to miss something profound.
If the curse were merely the immediate execution of punishment, Adam and Eve would have died on the spot—something more akin to what we see later with Ananias and Sapphira in Acts chapter 5. Instead, God does something altogether different.
He judges—and yet, He also speaks a promise.
In the midst of the curse, God gives the first glimpse of the gospel: the promise that the offspring of the woman would one day crush the serpent’s head (Genesis 3:15).
This tells us something critical.
God did not give Adam and Eve what they most immediately deserved. Instead, He gave them a world in which the consequences of sin would be experienced over time—a world where every sorrow, every frustration, every sign of decay would serve as a witness.
A witness to what had been lost.
A witness to what was coming.
A witness to the reality that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23, ESV).
The curse ensured that humanity would never be able to fully forget the fall.
And that is a kindness.
A World Without Reminders
But what happens when those reminders are muted?
Modern sensibilities, shaped by secular assumptions and accelerated by technology, are increasingly oriented toward minimizing the experience of these realities. We are not removing the curse, no one can do that, but we are becoming remarkably effective at distracting ourselves from it.
We build systems to manage discomfort.
We cultivate expectations of ease.
We avoid weakness, hide suffering, and resist any confrontation with mortality.
And while there is nothing inherently wrong with alleviating suffering, indeed Scripture calls us to mercy and compassion, there is a subtle danger when suffering is not only relieved but forgotten entirely.
Because when the reminders of the fall fade from view, so does our understanding of our condition.
A world with less visible suffering can easily become a world with less perceived need for redemption.
The Loss of Lament
Many years ago, I wrote about the absence of lament in modern worship. I observed how we often begin in the wrong place; like seed that springs up quickly on rocky ground, we rush toward celebration without ever passing through mourning (Matthew 13:5–6, ESV).
But that absence is not accidental.
We do not lament because we are uncomfortable with suffering. And we are uncomfortable with suffering because we have learned to live in a way that avoids facing it honestly.
Lament is the natural language of a people who understand they live under the weight of the fall.
The Scriptures are full of it.
The Psalms cry out in anguish: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1, ESV).
Job sits in dust and ashes (Job 42:6).
Jeremiah weeps over a fallen city (Lamentations 1:1).
And even our Lord is described as “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3, ESV).
Lament is not a failure of faith. It is an expression of it.
It is what happens when we bring the reality of our fallenness into the presence of God; refusing to ignore it, refusing to soften it, and refusing to pretend that things are as they should be. It is the honest acknowledgment that we are not whole, and that we need someone to deliver us from this body of death (Romans 7:24, ESV).
The Cross and the Curse
Thanks be to God, the story does not end in Genesis. What was introduced in the garden reaches its fullest expression at the cross.
Because Christ did not merely enter into a fallen world; He came to take the judgment for our sin.
In 2 Corinthians 5:21 we find the truth that, “for our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (ESV). He bore our wrath. The curse that began in Eden culminated in wrath being poured out on Him, as He stood in the place of His people and endured the full weight of what our sin deserved.
“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13, ESV).
This changes how we understand suffering.
For the believer, suffering is no longer punitive in the same sense that it is for the unbeliever. The wrath we deserved has been satisfied. Our judgment has been carried out on Christ. And, “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1, ESV).
Yet, the effects of the fall remain.
Our bodies still weaken.
Pain still intrudes.
Death still comes.
But now, these realities serve a different purpose.
What once testified only to judgment now also testifies to what Christ has accomplished and to whom we belong.
Sharing in His Sufferings
This is why 1st Peter 4:13 can say, “but rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when His glory is revealed” (ESV).
This is not a call to find joy in generic hardship. It is a recognition that, for the believer, suffering has been transformed. It is no longer simply a reminder of what we deserve—it is also a means by which we are conformed to Christ and prepared for glory.
The curse still reminds us. However, unlike unbelievers, to whom it points backward to the fall only. Now, for those in Christ, it also points us forward to our hope.
This matters because:
If we succeed in insulating ourselves from the realities of the fall, we risk more than discomfort—we risk misunderstanding the gospel itself.
If we do not feel the weight of sin, we will not grasp the necessity of the cross.
If we do not understand the curse, we will not long for redemption.
If we do not lament, we will not worship rightly.
Because all true worship begins in the wilderness.
It begins in the recognition that things are not as they should be.
It begins in the honesty of mourning.
In Matthew 5:4, Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (ESV)
Mourning Into Dancing
The promise for the believer is not that mourning is avoided, but that it is transformed.
God does not call us to pretend the effects of curse are not real. He calls us to bring all our anxiety to Him.
To feel the effects of sin.
To confess it.
To lament it.
And then, in His presence, to be reminded of who He is and what He has done.
Because the same God who pronounced the curse also made a promise.
Christ who bore our wrath has also secured our future with Him.
One day, “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more” (Revelation 21:4, ESV).
Until then, even the ache is a mercy.
Even the struggle speaks.
Even the curse, in the hands of God, is a kindness.
Add comment
Comments