Right and wrong, as principles, are established by divine law. The world today is filled with crime, chaos, and suffering because God’s laws, his standards of right and wrong, are ignored and denied. While man was endowed with a conscience, the conscience itself is not aware of what is right and what is wrong unless it is furnished with this information from an authoritative source, which in the world today is the Word of God, the Bible.

Knowing that Adam possessed the ability to understand facts communicated to him, God placed a test of obedience upon him, defining the law which was involved. The Creator had provided our first parents with a wonderful home “eastward in Eden,” possessing “every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food.” (Gen. 2:8-17) There were the trees of life, and another which is described as “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” The Lord commanded Adam not to partake of this particular tree, and informed him that the penalty for disobedience would be death. “In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” The Creator had a right to demand obedience of his human creatures.

This demand of obedience was a divine law. And since God informed Adam that death would be the penalty for disobeying, we can say that by information he knew the result of transgression. He knew that disobedience would lead to death.