Genesis 3:3-5
Now the serpent was more cunning than any animal of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, "Has God really said, 'You shall not eat from any tree of the garden'?" The woman said to the serpent, "From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die."' The serpent said to the woman, "You certainly will not die! For God knows that on the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will become like God, knowing good and evil."

Have you ever noticed that in most arguments, it's the words or the way people use words that is how people determine the worth or value of something? They qualify the importance and ultimate concern of something by how they frame the question. The entire exchange is decided by framing long before anyone takes a bite.

Here in the garden, the serpent does not open with an accusation against God or a direct command to disobey Him. In fact, he doesn't directly accuse God of any wrongdoing. He instead opens with a question that already tilts the ground on which their understanding stands. And the ultimate goal of this exchange is to intimate an idea about God. The idea being that God is doing harm to his creatures by withholding information. The serpent never has to say "God is unjust" or "God is lying." He only has to get the woman to entertain the idea that God is harming her by keeping something back.

Now, over time this strategy will prove false, because rational thinking will reveal that God in fact wants the best for His image-bearers. So He prohibits them from being exposed to information that will ultimately destroy their relationship with Him. But in the moment, in the fresh exchange of words, the woman is self-oriented. She isn't considering her future state of being. She's living in the moment. She's reacting to a situation. And she makes an uninformed choice based upon her own sense of sovereignty.

This is the beginning of what has become the modern, "my body my choice" movement. The parallel is real at the level of the heart’s reasoning, even if the modern slogan is a later expression of it. In the garden the woman is not weighing the long-term consequence God had already named; death, which is the rupture of life in His presence. She is answering instead, from her gut, the immediate pressure of the exchange. The serpent has tilted the frame of thinking so that God’s prohibition now feels like harm is being done, and the forbidden fruit now feels like the path to a better self.

This is the very same lie that is being sold in the minds of women today who will frame an unborn child's body as not that child's body based solely upon geographical location. The continuity is in the method of valuation. In the garden the serpent never has to deny that the fruit exists or that God has spoken about a restriction and consequence. He only has to change the frame in which the fruit and the command are seen, until the woman evaluates both by her present sense of what serves her. It is the same with the child in her womb, when the moral status and value of the unborn is settled by geography rather than by what the organism is or even what it represents.

In the garden the given realities are already present. The tree exists, God has spoken about that tree and a specific restriction with a named consequence, and the woman knows both.

The serpent does not erase those facts. He doesn't hide any of that information.

Instead, he changes the descriptive framework until those facts are evaluated by the woman’s present sense of what serves her rather than the actual reality of the situation. This is the same framework employed when dealing with the unique life developing within her body.

In the case of the unborn child, the biological realities are already given. A distinct human organism with its own genetic identity is already present. This is not a hypothetical question. The human child is present and developing. The reframing of the information does not usually begin by denying that organism. Though many do try to suggest that this developing human is merely a parasite or maybe a dogfish. But those foolish clearly irrational people aside, in most instances the argument begins by making location the decisive qualifier. The child is "inside" the woman's body and therefore does not have independent worth or value, let alone sovereignty. This is the elevation of location to the decisive qualifier. Human rights are set aside due to the fact that the mother is unwilling to frame the child's own worthiness according to anything other than her own bodily autonomy. Once location is elevated to the decisive qualifier, the independent reality of the child is subordinated to the mother’s present claim.

This sort of thinking began in the garden with a forbidden fruit and an idea that God has created something that she cannot control. Likewise in the womb, though her body provides the location and chemistry for the creation of a new unique human life, God is the Creator. It is not any of her doing that created the forbidden fruit nor is it her doing that sparks life. Neither belongs to her. But the serpent suggests that it should belong to her. And that she has a right to believe this. The suggestion is that, in the garden and in her womb, what God has made and bounded should be treated as belonging to the creature for her own disposal. The fruit was not the woman’s creation. It stood in the garden by the word and act of God, already given under a clear limit. And her sense of what would make her more like God outweighed the boundary the Maker set. Likewise, the same suggestion reappears when the life in the womb is treated as belonging to the woman for her disposal. Her body supplies the place and the conditions; that is real. But the spark of a distinct human life, the genetic identity that is not hers, and the continuation of that life are not her doing. They are given. She is invited to regard the life as something she has a right to end because her assessment of her own good outweighs the reality that the life is not hers to originate or to own absolutely.

The serpent’s logic in the garden is the claim of a right that the creature does not possess. It's an outrageous lie. Likewise, when bodily autonomy is argued to murder an unborn child, it is a downright and disgusting lie.

The claim of a right the creature does not possess is the core of the suggestion in both places, and both remain false claims.

In Genesis 3, God's word does not use the later language of murder or bodily autonomy. But what it does show is the first acceptance of an outrageous claim against righteousness. The right to seize what was never the creature’s to choose. And the result in the narrative is death and alienation.

Every later instance in which that same claim of autonomy and right is used to end a human life that was never the claimant’s to originate or to own absolutely continues the lie that was first accepted when the woman acted on the serpent’s suggestion. The reversal of this rebellion remains the last Adam (Jesus Christ), who refused every such claim and received the Father’s gifts and boundaries as given rather than as subject to His own disposal. He did not esteem himself to be equal or greater than God. The last Adam does not esteem His own assessment or His own desire above the Father’s word. He refuses the suggestion that what the Father has made and bounded should be treated as subject to the creature’s disposal. In that refusal the pattern that began in the garden is undone by trusting the word of the One who gives life and who alone possesses the right to set its limits.

That's the crux of the matter.

Amen 🙏🏼