20. Satan lied to Eve about God's trustworthiness.
“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” {Genesis 3:4-5}
Satan, cloaked in the body of the serpent, lied to Eve about God and His trustworthiness. First, he claimed that God had lied when He told the human pair that they would die if they ate from the forbidden tree — “You will not surely die,” said the serpent. In other words, Satan claimed God was lying to them.
Then, he went on to make false charges about why God was supposedly lying to them: “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” There are at least three lies in that one sentence. First, that God knew what He was doing in lying to them and was purposely holding them down from some sort of better existence. Second, that God had somehow created them as somehow “less” than what they could have been, and if they would just eat this fruit, they could unlock this higher existence. And third, that in attaining this higher state of existence, they could actually become gods, too.
To “be like the most High,” doesn’t that sound familiar? It was the very thing the Bible says Lucifer aspired to in his heart when he began the war in heaven. It’s no surprise, then, that the very lies he initiated up there, he carried right down to Earth.
If you want to dig deeper—
Matthew 3:16–4:3
John 8:44
2 Corinthians 11:3