In Augustine’s “City of God” He explores the nature of the first sin. He points out that there wasn’t necessarily anything bad in the fruit itself; it was only created fruit. It was bad because it came from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and that was the tree God had said not to touch. But of course we can’t say that the tree was bad. God created it to be in the garden, and we know that God wouldn’t create something that is contrary to its own environment, i.e. ‘not good.’ And what about eating? Was eating itself a sin? Well of course not. But the disobedience was.

The sin of disobedience therefore, had to have begun before the disobedience was actually committed. In other words, in order for Adam and Eve to eat of the tree they must have already desired what God forbade and thus already sinned in their heart. In the end Augustine identifies the first sin to be pride. Because Adam and Eve rejected what God gave and wanted to supply themselves. They rejected the true light, that is the truth, and wanted to judge truth for themselves. Thus the first sin, and the sin that is at the root of all sin is pride.

When we take the crown off of God, the only one who is capable of ruling us and the world, when we seek to be our own light of understanding while we reject the only light and only knowledge which comes as a gift from the Father of lights, and also when we depend on other physical, relational and emotional gifts as ‘idols’ to supply us with the stuff of life, that is, its fullfilment,that is sin, and necessarily death. Truly this is humbling, and it shows how serious our pride is. It’s not just a symptom of sin, it is our sin. How difficult it is to lose sight of ourselves. To not even be concerned with what we are or aren’t but only with what Christ is and what he desires to be in us. And yet, someone has described the Christian life as a child, stumbling through the mud; it’s messy, we get dirty, but the Lord is gracious in not allowing us to sink, but in making us stronger in the struggle till we are with him in his perfection. For we know that the struggle, so long as it is not the willful acquiescence to sin, is part of our identification with the sufferings of Christ for the sake of our salvation. Praise the Lord!