It is obvious that the forefathers, having disobeyed God and bowed down in obedience to the devil, made themselves strangers to God, made themselves slaves of the devil. The death promised to them for the transgression of the commandment immediately seized them: the Holy Spirit, who dwelt in them, departed from them. They were left to their own nature, infected with sinful poison. This poison was imparted to human nature by the devil from his corrupt nature, full of sin and death. The first sinful sensation of the forefathers was the feeling of shame, in which there is an involuntary and sorrowful consciousness within the living sin, which replaced in them the former inhabitant – the Holy Spirit. They realized that they were naked, and immediately made themselves girdles of fig leaves, in order to cover the unseemly ouds of the body, in which they did not see any ugliness before the fall, just as infants, who are strangers to sinful lust, do not see it now. "Adam's soul was put to death," says St. Gregory Palamas, "having been separated from God by disobedience: for in body he lived after that (after his fall) until nine hundred and thirty years. But death, which has befallen the soul through disobedience, not only makes the soul useless and brings a curse upon man, but also the body itself, having subjected it to many infirmities, many infirmities and corruption, finally puts it to death" [1480]. "Adam," says Blessed Theophylact of Bulgaria, "being alive, was also dead: he died from the hour in which he ate (of the forbidden tree)" [1481].

Omnipresent naturally to God. He was also present in paradise at the time of the transgression of the forefather; but he discovered this presence by walking in paradise at noon, when the forefathers had already committed a crime. Probably, around noon, they ate the forbidden fruit: for at that hour the God-Man stretched out His hands on the Tree of the Cross, atonement, by nailing His hands to the Tree, the daring outstretching of hands by the forefathers to the fruit of the forbidden Tree. The forefathers were honored with freedom; in freedom, the Spirit of Divine wisdom was given to them as a guide: justice demanded that freedom be allowed to express itself at will. She expressed suicide. Scarcely had the forefathers inflicted an ulcer on themselves, when the merciful Lord appeared to them to heal the plague: Adam and Eve heard the voice of the Lord God, walking in paradise at noon [1482]. Hiding from each other with fig leaves, the forefathers tried to hide from God in the thicket of the trees of paradise: so they were suddenly darkened! The Lord called Adam with the words: "Adam, where art thou? [1483] According to the explanation of the Holy Fathers [1484], these words are words of the greatest mercy and condolences. They mean: "What a calamity you have fallen into! What a deep and miserable fall has befallen you; Adam, where art thou? The darkened sinner does not understand the voice that calls him to the recognition of sin and to repentance of it. He tries to justify himself, and by justification he stipulates: "I have heard the voice," he says, "walking in paradise, and I am afraid, for I am naked, and I have hid myself" [1485]. Being caught, he again does not confess, does not repent, and with boldness says to God: "Woman, whom you have given with me, she has given me from the tree, and I have poisoned" [1486]. These words, as a certain Holy Father remarked, have the following meaning: "The misfortune that has befallen me has been brought upon me by Thee: woman, whom Thou hast given with me!" [1487] From the hardened Adam the Lord passes to his wife, and with mercy says to her: "What have you done this? [1488] But the wife does not repent, does not ask for mercy, tries to justify herself by accusing the serpent. Deeply damaged by the knowledge of evil, which penetrated like lightning into the mind, into the heart, into the soul, into the body, not confessing their sin, proudly and boldly justifying themselves, the forefathers were subjected to the judgment and punishment of God. God's judgment fell, first, on the serpent, as the instigator and head of the crime; then he punishes the wife as the first transgressor of the commandment and the culprit of her husband's death; finally, he strikes the husband as having rejected obedience to God in order to obey his wife. The serpent-devil is finally rejected [1489]: he is completely left to his malice; the grace of God renounced touching him with any good thought, worthy of heaven. Thou shalt walk on thy forehead and belly, God hath declared unto him, and thou shalt tear down the earth all the days of thy life [1490]. Enmity has been established between the devil and the woman, between the seed of the devil and the seed of the woman, that is, on the one hand, between the devil and his seed, the angels dragged by him into destruction, between the devil and his seed, sin, and on the other hand, between the woman and the seed of the woman, that is, the God-man, Who according to mankind is exclusively the seed of the woman, and the people who believe in Him, clothed in the whole armor of God. At the establishment of this enmity and warfare, it is proclaimed that the Seed of the woman – the God-Man – will blot out the head of the serpent; when establishing this enmity and battle, the followers of the God-Man are commanded to guard the head of the serpent, that is, to recognize and reject all the undertakings of the devil in their very original thought [1491]; the devil is allowed, as one who has acquired the right to voluntarily subjugate people to him, to slander the Seed of the woman during his earthly pilgrimage, to keep his heel. And the devil watches over this heel of every righteous man in Christ, from Abel the righteous to the righteous of the most recent times; he did not stop, darkened by unbridled malice and insolence, to slander the God-man. Many illnesses are entrusted to the wife, and mainly the diseases of childbearing; she is enslaved to her husband; Adam is entrusted with the labors of obtaining food, the earth is cursed for his sake. The field for these sufferings is assigned to the entire earthly life, and their end is bodily death. After the pronouncement of the sentence, Adam and Eve were expelled and cast down from paradise to earth [1492].

Death of the soul

But the essential punishment of fallen man consisted in spiritual death, which struck him immediately after transgressing the commandment. Then man was deprived of the Holy Spirit that dwelt in him, which constituted, as it were, the soul of the whole human being, and was left to his own nature, infected with sin and entering into communion with the nature of demons. From subjection to death and sin, the constituent parts of man have become separated, they have begun to act against one another: the body opposes the soul; the soul is in a struggle with itself; its forces are at odds; The person is in the fullness of the disorder. The power of desire has painfully turned into a sensation of insatiable lusts; the power of courage and energy has been transformed into various kinds of anger, from frenzied rage to refined rancor; the power of literature, alienated from God, lost the ability to control the power of will and the power of energy and to direct them correctly. This is not enough: the soul itself has become enslaved to sin, offering it unceasing sacrifices through deceit, hypocrisy, lies, and self-conceit; it struggles and disputes within itself, with itself, agitating the whole being of man with various wrong and unbridled thoughts, arousing the most painful sensations, vainly denounced by the consciousness of the spirit or conscience, devoid of both power and truth. The image and likeness of God in man, after his fall, changed.

The similarity, which consisted in the complete alienation of evil from the qualities of man, by the knowledge of evil and its communication to these qualities, was destroyed; with the destruction of the likeness, the image was distorted, became useless, but was not completely destroyed. "Let us know," says St. Demetrius of Rostov, "that the image of God is also in the unfaithful man's soul, and the likeness is only in the virtuous Christian: and when a Christian sins mortally, then he is deprived of the likeness of God, and not of the image: and if he be condemned to eternal punishment, the image of God is in him forever, and the likeness can no longer exist." And the Church sings: "I am the ineffable image of Thy glory, though I bear the wounds of sins, but raise me to the likeness of the ancient goodness" [1494].

Man's Subjection to the Devil

The terrible fruit of the fall was man's enslavement to the devil and his unavoidable confusion with him. St. Macarius the Great speaks about this sorrowful enslavement in the following way: "The kingdom of darkness, that is, this evil prince, having taken man captive from time immemorial, has so surrounded and clothed the soul with the power of darkness, like a man, according to him: For they shall make him a king, and clothe him in royal garments, and let him wear royal garments from his head even to his feet. Thus the soul and its whole being were clothed with sin by this evil ruler, defiled it all, and took it all captive into his kingdom, that he did not leave any thoughts, nor reason, nor flesh, and, finally, not a single part of it free from his power; but all her blankets in the chlamys of darkness... The whole man, soul and body, was defiled and disfigured by this evil enemy; and He clothed man with the old man, defiled, unclean, ungodly, not obeying the Law of God, that is, He clothed him with sin itself, so that man does not see as he wills, but sees evil, hears evil, has feet swift to evil, hands that do iniquity, and a heart that thinks evil... Sin and the soul are mixed together, but both of them have their own nature." "As during a gloomy and dark night, when a stormy wind breathes, all plants waver, tumble, and set in great motion: so man, having been subjected to the dark power of the night, the devil, and in this night and darkness, spending his life, wavers, is troubled, and agitated by the fierce wind of sin, which pierces his whole nature, soul, mind, and thoughts, and all his bodily members also move, and there is not a single member, neither spiritual nor bodily, free from the sin that dwells within us" [1495]. After the fall and until our very Redemption by our Lord Jesus Christ, "the enemy possessed man with violence and torment," says the Monk Abba Dorotheus, "so that even those who did not wish to sin involuntarily sinned, as the Apostle says on our behalf: For if I do not desire good, I do, but if I do not desire evil, I do it" [1496]. The devil acts upon us, imbuing us with his thoughts, deceiving us with dreams [1497], arousing sinful sensations with thoughts and dreams, agitating and inflamed the blood, absorbing with these waves and burning with this flame all the common sense of man and all the power of his will. The actions of all passions are connected with the movement of various blood; where there is movement of blood, there is the indispensable action of passion, there is certainly the action of demons. Such an action is incomprehensible to a person darkened by the fall, who remains in his fall: evil thoughts and dreams act so subtly and cunningly in the soul that they seem to it as if they were born in itself, and by no means the action of an evil spirit alien to it, both acting and wishing to remain unnoticed.

What was the essential sin of the first-created? Outwardly, it consisted in eating from the forbidden tree. It acquires both greater gravity and greater significance when we define it as a violation of the Creator's commandment to creation, the opposition of the creature to the will of the Creator. It acquires even greater significance when we recognize in it man's attempt to become equal to God. And it is precisely this attempt that God points to in the words filled with ineffable compassion, uttered by Him at the expulsion of the forefathers from Paradise: Behold, Adam was as one of Us, who understood good and evil [1499]. "Adam of old lied (was deceived)," declares the Holy Church, "and God willed to be, and it did not come to pass" [1500]. The devil communicated his sin to a deceived person. But the sin of the devil was his own creation; he conceived in himself to become equal to God [1501], worked on this idea, strove to put it into practice, communicated it to a multitude of other spirits, persuaded them to be of one mind with him, and finally clearly rebelled against God; man's sin was an inadvertent infatuation.

Man's sin was prepared not by design, but by improper and insufficient practice and preservation of paradise. No less than that, by his sin, man became an accomplice of the devil and his prisoner. As a fallen man by infatuation, along with the utterance of execution, redemption and a Redeemer are promised.

Earthly life

The Lord, having expelled man to earth from paradise, dwelt on it directly the sweetness of paradise [1502], so that he, constantly turning his eyes to paradise and at the same time nourishing himself with the hope of returning to paradise, would dwell in unceasing weeping of repentance. The direct indwelling of the paradise of sweetness shows that Adam was given a living memory of paradise, and the earth itself, with its beauties, preserved to some extent even after its curse, resembled paradise. The earth is appointed as a place of repentance for the forefathers and for all the human race that came from them. The earthly life of each person is a time given to him for repentance. All mankind on earth must be immersed in repentance, in inconsolable weeping. It must travel on it, not clinging with its heart to any objects with which this hotel is furnished, but constantly thinking about its heavenly Fatherland and striving with all its might to return to it. Labor and suffering, the indispensable companions of repentance, and the parents of humility, which gives rise to repentance, must rule on earth, according to the very decree of God. A person must constantly remember that the Lord has appointed him in the sweat of his brow to eat not only his material, but also his spiritual bread; Man must constantly remember that he is on earth in temporary exile, that he is earth, that he must return to the earth from which he was created. Everything on earth constantly reminds him of this. He is in incessant and varied suffering, in the struggle with his own malice, in the struggle with the malice of his neighbors, in the struggle with the elements, in the struggle with the earth, which is cursed for his sake and obeys him only when bloody sweat is shed. His brethren constantly remind him of this, being snatched away one after another by an inexorable death. From the earth he is permitted to use only that which is most necessary, necessary for our earthly pilgrimage, by no means superfluous, which separates thought from eternity. All the righteous of the Old Testament Church, who wandered on earth, beginning with Adam, spent their earthly lives in accordance with the purpose given to them by God. They lived on earth as in the land of exile, as in the land of weeping and repentance, nourished by the hope of the promised deliverance, watching with the eye of faith eternity. The Apostle says of them, they are destitute, sorrowful, embittered: the whole world is not worthy of them, wandering in the wilderness, and in the mountains, and in caves, and in the abysses of the earth. And these thou wast obedient in faith [1503]. By faith I all died, not accepting the promises, but seeing from afar, and kissing, and confessing, that strangers and strangers are on earth [1504].

World

These words of the Apostle can be applied to few people; few of them spent their earthly lives in accordance with the purpose given to them by God. The fall of man has damaged him so deeply that, having rejected the life of weeping on earth, he has chosen on it a life of pleasure and material progress, as if triumphing and celebrating his very fall. To this life of carnal pleasure and prosperity, which kills life for God, some of the children of Adam have already begun to incline, paying little heed to the story of paradise and the spiritual state of man, finding in the land of exile full food and satisfaction in their bestial and bestial passions. The grandchildren of Adam strove even more towards the development of material life on earth with a forgetfulness of eternity. Here, at last, all his descendants, with the exception of a few chosen men, rushed here, considering the legend of paradise a fable, an invention of a superstitious imagination. In vain death reaped people from the face of the earth: they continued to live and act, as if eternal on it. The maintenance of bodily strength by eating the necessary amount of simple food turned into delicacy and satiety with exquisite viands. Quenching thirst passed to the enjoyment of various drinks and to drunkenness. Covering one's nakedness with leather vestments was transformed into adorning oneself with rich clothes and utensils. Modest dwellings for shelter and protection from the elements and beasts that rebelled against man began to be replaced by huge and magnificent chambers. Luxury appeared, with its innumerable demands, which turned into an inexorable law in the midst of a society of fallen men. The lawful copulation of the sexes for the reproduction of the human race has changed into insatiable fornication, which opposes the reproduction of men. This is not enough: people, inflamed by unbridled desire, completely deprived of the right aspiration, have invented unnatural sins. The power of spiritual energy began to overcome the insatiable desires and demands of sin-loving man: quarrels, insults, murders, robbery, robbery, war, and conquest appeared. The verbal power of man is wholly used to bring him earthly benefits and advantages, it is used to assist sin: lies, deceptions, deceit, hypocrisy appeared. Thus, immediately after the fall of man, a world hostile to God began to form on earth, and in the course of time to receive greater and greater development from its very beginning.