text: Gen. 2:16\nFor the human family to be genuinely happy, they must have a good relationship with God—one that is voluntary, not forced. (Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Joshua 24:15) Jehovah wants obedience and worship that come from the heart, out of love. (Deuteronomy 6:5) So in the garden of Eden, God. made a restriction that afforded the first man an opportunity to prove his heartfelt loyalty. “From every tree of the garden you may eat to satisfaction,” God told Adam, “but as for the tree of the knowledge of good and bad you must not eat from it, for in the day you eat from it you will positively die.” (Genesis 2:16, 17) It was a simple test. Jehovah forbade Adam to eat the fruit of just one tree out of all the trees in the garden. That tree symbolized the all-wise Creator’s right to decide what is good and what is bad. The first man conveyed this God-given command to his wife.\n\nGen. 2:17\nThere is only one true Source for standards of morality—the Creator of mankind, Jehovah God. Soon after creating the first man, Adam, Jehovah God laid this command upon the man: “From every tree of the garden you may eat to satisfaction. But as for the tree of the knowledge of good and bad you must not eat from it, for in the day you eat from it you will positively die.” (Genesis 2:16, 17) Jehovah God gave the tree that unique name to denote his exclusive right to decide what is good and what is bad for his creatures. God’s standards of good and bad thus became the basis for judgment, or evaluation, of a person’s deeds, outlook, and personality traits. Without such standards we could not correctly distinguish right from wrong.\n\nThe command concerning the tree of the knowledge of good and bad set before Adam and Eve a choice—to obey or not to obey. For them, virtue meant obedience to that command. In time, Jehovah further revealed what pleases him and what displeases him, and he had this recorded for us in the Bible. Cultivating virtue, then, entails our conforming to Jehovah’s righteous standards set out in the Scriptures.