Note: From, Making Sense of Creation and Fall (P&R, 2026). Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Citations have been omitted.
The Task of Man: The Theme of Human Stewardship
God assigns tasks for man in the garden of Eden:
The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Genesis 2:15-17)
Man’s Tasks: Working and Keeping
Three main tasks are mentioned: (1) work the garden; (2) keep it and (3) do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In addition, man has permission, one might say even an invitation, to eat from all the other trees of the garden.
The tasks of working and keeping the garden are the specific initial expressions of the larger task of the cultural mandate of dominion, given in Genesis 1:28-30. Chapter 11 has already discussed the cultural mandate, and it need not be repeated here. The themes of the cultural mandate are present in the rest of Scripture.
The first two tasks are complementary. Mankind is to exercise creativity and develop the earth by working it. And he is to conserve, “keep,” what God has already put there. As observed under chapter 11 and the cultural mandate, God grants to humanity a task with respect to “nature” and the environment that differs from the extremes that fallen humanity advocates or practices. On the one hand, there is to be no selfish exploitation and ruin of the earth, as sinful people are tempted to do in sin. On the other hand, God does not expect human beings merely to serve nature, as some radical environmentalists would have it. Nor should human beings merely leave the world of plants and animals exactly as it already is. Human beings are meant to bless the world around them as stewards of God, respecting what God has given but also thoughtfully developing it.
The Hebrew word for “keep” can also mean “guard.” It describes the responsibility of priests to guard the holiness of the tabernacle and later the temple. They are to guard against intruders, keeping the tabernacle precincts holy.
The Levites shall keep guard over the tabernacle of the testimony. (Numbers 1:53)
In Genesis 3:1-8, the serpent intrudes into the garden with blasphemous words, totally unfitting for the garden of Eden as “the holy mountain of God” (Ezekiel 28:14). Adam should have guarded the holiness of the garden and of his wife, and expelled the serpent. The later laws specify that “if any outsider comes near, he shall be put to death” (Numbers 1:51). Adam should have killed the serpent right then and there. Because he did not, it falls to the “offspring” of the woman (Genesis 3:15) to crush the serpent’s head. Later history, in providence and redemption, includes continued attention to both working and keeping. In providence, human beings work to develop the environment around them and also to keep what is already good. But both tasks are now contaminated by sin.
In redemption, Christ worked to accomplish our salvation. This redemption when fully worked out eventually includes the transformation of the cosmos (Romans 8:18-25). During his earthly life, he also kept and guarded the holiness of God and the holiness of his own obedience to God, and did so perfectly. He is now ascended. He works by ruling over all things (Ephesians 1:21-23) and continuing to maintain, preserve and honor the holiness of God. The people of God, both individually and corporately, are under obligation to work faithfully to serve God and the Lord Christ as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free (Ephesians 6:6-8).
We are to be holy as individuals and as a community, the church:
But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” (I Peter 1:15-16)
Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple. (I Corinthians 3:16-17)
The Forbidden Tree
In addition, God forbids eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Chapter 16 has already discussed the significance of the two special trees, indicating how the themes expressed in these trees are present in later Scriptures.
The penalty for violating God’s prohibition is death (Genesis 2:17). To modern cultural sensibilities, the penalty may seem horribly severe. But the fruit itself is not the problem. The problem is disobeying God, in the midst of a situation in which there is every motivation not to disobey him. And to disobey God, who is the infinite authority of the universe and the Most Holy One, is tantamount to trying to be God oneself; the rebel wants to be an ultimate determiner of good and evil. He is trying to destroy God. The penalty for trying to destroy God is to be destroyed – to die.
Genesis 2:17 is a weighty verse because it presents in its clearest form what in later history in the Bible are covenantal obligations of man before God. Accordingly, even though the word covenant does not explicitly occur in Genesis 2, the idea is there. As a result, interpreters have spoken of the command in Genesis 2:17 as a key aspect of the covenant of works, the commitment between God and man in the initial situation in the garden. This covenant is distinct from the later redemptive covenants, with Abraham, Moses and David, and also the “new covenant” of Jeremiah 31:31-34. The first covenant is called a covenant of works, in contrast to the redemptive covenants, which are covenants of grace. At the same time, this first covenant does correspond at many points to the later covenants between God and man. It is the breaking of the first covenant that leads to God’s establishing covenants of grace with people who deserve the opposite on account of their sin.
The gist of the two covenants – though not the word covenant – can be found in Romans 5:12-21. Adam is the representative head of the human race. When Adam sins, the whole race becomes guilty and sinful. Christ is the “last Adam” (I Corinthians 15:45; see 15:44-49, 20-23). He reverses the fall of Adam and its effects. He is the representative head for all believers, who are united to him by faith. In Christ they are justified; in Christ they die to sin and live for righteousness. Every human being in Adam is under the covenant of works. His sins mean that he is cursed and dead in sin. Every human being united to Christ is in the covenant of grace. He is saved by the grace of God in Christ.
Taken from Making Sense of Creation and the Fall by Vern Poythress ISBN 9798887792705 used with permission from P&R Publishing Phillipsburg, NJ
Vern Poythress, professor, Westminster Theological Seminary
