Wisdom vs. Slavery

I had not thought of making wisdom and slavery opposites before reading Genesis 2 today, but these 2 ideas are opposites.  The Lord speaks to the Man and gives him the command to eat freely of everything in the garden except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Obviously, for this command to make sense, the Man already had some head knowledge of both good and evil.  What he did not have is experiential knowledge of evil.

If Man had stayed forever away from the experiential knowledge of evil, he would have grown in wisdom and knowledge before the Lord and enjoyed great harmony in the Garden.  Wisdom means applying godly knowledge to life, thereby learning more about God and life.

Yet, we know that the Man did not follow the course of growing in wisdom; instead, he took the forbidden fruit and fell into the experiential knowledge of good and evil.  This fall was not innocent; it brought guilt and judgment.  Indeed, it brought death.  So, the picture is clear from Genesis 2 that the way of obedience is the way of wisdom, but the way of disobedience is the way of being trapped into death.  The freedom of life and the slavery of death are always on the line in the matter of obedience.