What the Gospel of Christ teaches us is – while we were still sinners, Jesus died to save us from our sin. Most people grasp this concept fairly easily; however, it becomes more difficult when we dig further and understand that now that we are saved, we are to be holy.

1 Peter 1:13-16 – So think clearly and exercise self-control. Look forward to the gracious salvation that will come to you when Jesus Christ is revealed to the world. So you must live as God's obedient children. Don't slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn't know any better then. But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy. For the Scriptures say, “You must be holy because I am holy.”

You see, the point that most people miss is that Christ died to break the power of sin over us. Jesus' death on the cross, represents the death of our sins – our sinful self died with Him at the cross. When He rose from the dead, this represents our holy self being resurrected with Him. In Christ, you are now a Saint. This is the whole and complete point of the Gospel of Christ. If we do not teach this, we are not teaching the truth of the Gospel of Christ.

God wants us near Him, but in order for us to be near Him, we must be holy, because a holy being can not be near sin. Consider what would happen if a piece of tissue paper came in contact with the sun. The tissue paper represents sin and the sun represents God. A sinful person would be disintegrated if they came in contact with such a holy God. This is why there was a perimeter around Mount Sinai and Moses was the only person allowed to cross it.

But, I don't feel like a Saint; instead, I still feel like a sinner? All Christians struggle with this (if they say the don't they are liars). Satan will continue to work to convict us, using our sinful nature to make us believe his lies. Our desires of the flesh will continue to call out to us, begging us to worship them instead of God. But the plain and simple beauty of the Gospel of Christ says – when we truly believe in Jesus, sin has no power over us. This is what it means to believe in Christ. We were slaves to sin, now we are slaves to Christ. We were worshipers of sin, now we worship Christ. We were sinners, now, we are Saints in Christ. So, now we must start acting like one. Now that we believe Christ died to save us and made us holy, our new life begins. We must no longer believe satan when he says to us, 'you are still a sinner.' Believe instead, what Christ said about who we are as His disciples.

We will suffer due to our flesh calling out to us and tempting us with desires and pleasures it has for us, but we must not listen. We must take control of our flesh. When we give in to our flesh, we are saying to God – I prefer these pleasures over those you have for me. Rest assured, the pleasures of the flesh are nothing compared to what God has in store for us when we believe in Him. So don't short change yourselves. Suffering for doing what is good and what is right, will be greatly rewarded by God. Jesus shows us a picture of that very clearly on the Cross.

As our sinful nature dies and our holy nature grows in maturity, satan will work to make us look down on others and judge them. Do not fall into this trap either. Always love the sinner as Jesus did and help them to see. We show our love for each other by washing each other, just as Jesus taught us in John 13.

 

There was once a beautiful girl named Annette, who was lovingly called Nettie, by her younger sister. Nettie was very talented – she made beautiful poems and drawings that could bring tears to anyone's eyes who saw or read them. She was brilliant in school – she never had to bring a book home to study because her memory was perfect. She had what you would call a photographic memory and proved it many times with a perfect recall of any number in the phone book.

At fourteen, Nettie fell into the wrong crowd of friends and began to drink alcohol. At fifteen, she was an alcoholic and a high school drop out. At sixteen, she was a drug user and pregnant with her first child. By the time she was 24 years old, she was on her third marriage and pregnant with her third child. Her oldest son was 13 when he was first molested by one of Annette's drug using boyfriends.

Annette never had a job, yet she easily pulled together enough money from the state and local churches to feed and cloth her family. In fact, she had enough money to purchase expensive drugs on a regular basis. By the time she was in her early to mid 30s she was staying high pretty regularly. When she ran out of money, she would load the boys into the car and drive around to all the local churches to ask for more money. She was very successful at getting the churches to give her cash. Her story was very believable and they fell for it every time. She was almost guaranteed to get a minimum of $50 from each church she visited, which she would then use to purchase crack. The cash from the generous givers was transformed into crack, which was then shot into her veins to make her high.

The last time she did this was on July 3, 2004. On this day, her heart could not take the abuse any longer and it stopped beating. She was 39 years old.

God instructs us to be wise and not foolish many times in the Bible. And certainly Jesus told us that it is more blessed to give than to receive, and our lives should indicate that we believe this with our whole hearts. But I believe giving money to people in certain circumstances is not being generous or loving at all; instead, this type of giving is being foolish and even murderous.

I understand this, because Annette was my sister. She was only 13 months older than me, so we were very close, until the day the alcohol began to pull her away from me. Shortly after this started, I no longer recognized my sister. The sin of her flesh consumed her. She worshiped the things that made her high. She needed to disappear. I don't know why. I don't know what caused this beautiful creature to so disparately need to crawl into a hole and escape from her life. I don't know why she didn't consider she had any value. She never told me these things. All I know is that satan got a hold of her and she began to worship being stoned and out of her mind, instead of worshiping God, who could save her. God was trying hard to get her to her knees so that He could deal with her, but generous gifts kept getting in His way.

Our generosity can become wrong and not biblical, if we are not careful and wise in our giving. God blesses us through our finances and expects us to help those who truly deserve our generosity and giving. Giving to those who do not deserve our generosity is stealing from those who truly do deserve God's gifts. But not only that, when we make it easy for people to continue sinning, we are getting in God's way. This was the case with my sister. She did not have to rely on the people who truly loved her and wanted to help her, because she was so brilliant at getting money from do-gooders who didn't really care about what happened after she left their sight.

For people like my sister and those folks who stand on the side of the road and work to get money from passers by, they have other avenues (missions, shelters, etc.), which God has blessed for this type of help. These organizations ensure these folks get the help they need via our contributions. These organizations do not give out cash, because they understand how destructive it is in the wrong hands. Instead, they work to understand the needs of these folks and then work to help them in the best way they can.

Giving can also become destructive when parents freely give to there children without thought. This type of generosity creates selfish, materialistic and ungrateful teenagers, who believe they are deserving. This is the wrong attitude to teach our children, but we do it, we think, out of love. However, teaching our children to love material things and teaching them that they are deserving is leading them to destruction and certainly not how God wants us to raise our kids. Teaching our children to wait is teaching patients, which is Godly. Teaching our children that they deserve hell, but because of the grace of God they are saved as believers in Jesus Christ - is Godly teaching. Teaching our children to know and love God, is loving our children. Spoiling them with material things and teaching them to love worldly possessions, is not love at all. Teaching them they deserve the best and most expensive things is not Godly and is leading them to destruction.

We should certainly be extremely generous, but we should also be wise in doing so. If our gifts lead God's people in the wrong direction, they are not Godly and they are not wise. On the surface, blind giving looks generous, but beneath the surface, it is not truly generous at all.

Satan really enjoys confusing us. He loves it when our gifts from God go to do his work instead of God's. When we are wise, we see satan's tricks and we don't fall into them. When we are foolish, satan gets away with his trickery. This is why God warns us so many times not to be foolish.

So, how do we understand? How do we become wise?

When we truly seek God and ask for wisdom, he joyfully gives this gift. But God can always see our heart and know whether we are honest or not. If we want these gifts for ourself, we will not receive them. If we ask for wisdom because we want to help others, God will bless us with great gifts and give us the abilities to bless and help others.

Recap (Genesis 1-3): God created the heavens, earth, sun, stars, plants, animals, man and woman. He had placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. God gave them only one rule to abide by - stay away from the tree called the Knowledge of Good and Evil located in the middle of the garden. God had told them not only not to eat it, but not to even touch it. If they did, they would die. However, satan enters the scene and temps Eve to eat the fruit and she chooses to trust satan over God. She convinces her husband to eat it as well. Immediately after eating the fruit, they feel ashamed and naked. They had previously been cloaked in God's love and protection, but now they had turned their backs on God by disobeying Him. Their disobedience caused a separation from God, which made them feel naked for the first time.

Why do you think God gives us laws? Is it to put us into bondage or give us freedom? What was if for Adam and Eve – freedom or bondage?

Let's examine all of the behavior of Adam and Eve in this scene with the serpent. They were hanging out near the tree, which God had instructed them to not even touch. Why do you think they were hanging so near a tree, which God had told them would kill them? Do you think they took God's instructions seriously or lightly?

Genesis 3:6 NLT – The woman was convinced. She saw that the fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her. So she took some of the fruit and ate it. Then she gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it, too.

If we choose to hang out in places which are not Godly, we need to be prepared for satan to tempt us. If we are not strong in our faith and love for God, satan will find a way in and his goal is to take us from God's protection by convincing us to do what is wrong in God's eyes.

There is another important question we should ask ourselves about the scripture above – where was Adam and why did he allow Eve to lead them down this sinful path. The scripture says he was there too, but he certainly was not the leader in this situation, was he? Besides touching and eating the fruit, what is Adam's sin here?

The visual image we should get in our mind when Eve bit this fruit goes like this – a black chalkboard with a table drawn with white chalk. The table's purpose is for keeping score. The top left column of the table is for keeping God's score and the right column is keeping satan's score. Satan's laughter is loud and he has the chalk. He spews these words at God as he marks his winning mark on the board – They bit the fruit you forbid them to eat! They turned their back to you, so they are mine!

When we refuse to obey God and go contrary to His will in our life, we are removing ourselves from His protection and we no longer belong to Him. If we are not allowing Him to be our supreme authority, our behavior is proof that we love something else more than Him.

― C.S. Lewis (Author of Mere Christianity) “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”

This quote from C.S makes the point that we were created for another world and that this world can not satisfy us fully, no matter how hard we try. This is because the emptiness we feel inside us is where God is supposed to be. Yet we make choices everyday that separates us from Him. It is only when we realize the emptiness comes from being separated from God and He is all we need to be fulfilled that our character begins to change. It is only when our eyes open and we see the sin in our lives that we can ask for forgiveness and begin to start healing. Satan works hard to blind us, but it is our responsibility to dig into His Word and diligently seek understanding of what His will is for our lives and where we are being disobedient. The point is - so we can change and become more like Jesus and therefore get closer to our Father in Heaven.

When Jesus died for us on the cross, He did not create a gray area to allow us to float through life considering that we are forgiven and therefore we don't really need to worship God supremely. Jesus didn't go to the cross so that we could continue to worship ourselves over God. When we do that we are diminishing God and saying we are more supreme than He is. This was exactly what was going on in Eve's heart when she bit the fruit – she didn't want to worship God, she wanted to BE God. If you only look at the surface of this sin, you will not see this. You must look deep into our hearts, which are exactly the same as Adam and Eve's, in order to truly understand this sin.

― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain “A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.”

Imagine Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. It was perfect and beautiful and they had all they could ever need or want. Why do you think God created this paradise for Adam and Eve? Consider the reasoning behind you creating a nice place for your own family. You do it because you love them and you want to take care of them, of course. You do it because you want to protect them and provide for them.

But paradise can not exist without an opposing evil. There can be no good without evil. So satan came along and tempted them with the one thing they did not have – God's wisdom. Adam and Eve trusted satan, instead of God; they followed satan's truth, not God's. What their heart said, in that moment when satan was tempting them was – I don't need to worship God, because I can become God. This is what our hearts say every time we sin. When we do this are we truly loving God or are we loving ourselves? Is this what Jesus meant in the scripture below where He says to deny ourselves and follow Him?

Luke 9:23-24 (NIV) Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.”

After leaving Eden, mankind was cursed by God as a punishment for not obeying His commandment.

Genesis 3:17 – And to the man he said, “Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat, the ground is cursed because of you. All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it”.

Adam and Eve had the first set of brothers, Cain and Able. Cain murders Able because of anger and jealousy over God's acceptance.

Genesis 6:5-6 NLT – The LORD observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth, and he saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil. So the LORD was sorry he had ever made them and put them on the earth. It broke his heart.

God floods the earth to destroy the evil people. In Genesis 6 we are introduced to Noah, who God considered the only righteous man on the whole earth. When you read the story of Noah and the Arc, you should get a picture in your mind of just how detestable sin is to God. Why do you think sin is so detestable to God? Is it because He is holy and a holy being can not be near sin? The picture that best describes something holy coming in contact with something unholy is this – consider what would happen if a piece of tissue paper (unholy) came in contact with the sun (holy). If you think of it like this, it is easy to see how we, who are unholy, can not be near God, who is holy, while we are sinning.

But how do we stop sinning? A large portion of our Christian brothers and sisters believe it is impossible to stop sinning. They believe satan's lie that they are condemned sinners due to the sin of their father Adam. But if you believe that, you are following the roll model of Adam. God did not intend for Adam to be a roll model; instead, Adam was intended to be a warning from God. God wants us to understand that our sin is what separates us from Him and in order for us to be close to Him and under His protection, we must stop sinning.

Noah was one of the roll models God gave us as an example to follow. Abraham will be the next roll model we discuss. These men trusted God and had great faith God would do what He said.

As we study these stories, we will work toward understanding which are roll models and which are warnings. Make no mistake, satan is always working to condemn us and convince us that we can never be close to God. Do not believe satan's lies. Jesus says in John 17 that our trust and faith in Him distinguishes us from this world and we no longer belong to it. If you truly trust and believe Jesus, you understand that satan has no power over you.

 

Science gives us such great examples to see and understand how God designed us to work. Take a simple electric circuit, like the one above. Consider the power source is God and the light is us. When we are disobedient to God we separate ourselves from Him and the switch is off or open, disconnecting the circuit and preventing the energy from flowing through the wires (left picture). However, when we line ourselves up with God and do our best to be obedient to His will instead of our own, the switch turns on, completing the circuit and allowing our light to shine bright.

Let's do a deep dive into the original sin and work to understand what was going on in Adam and Eve's heart when they disobeyed God.

In Genesis 1, God begins to create order, structure and goodness out of disorder, chaos and darkness. He does not create the world, plants and animals as infants; instead, He creates them mature – plants and trees are fully grown, mountains are formed and man and woman are adult age. Many times during this creation, God describes His work as good or in the Hebrew translation, it was shalom. God created all things and they were shalom and His favorite of all His creation was man, which He created in His image.

What we should get from Genesis 1 is that God was very pleased with His creation. He created it all and it was very good. Keep this in mind when someone makes the comment that, “I'm only human.”, and consider this a serious insult to God and His creation.

Genesis 1:26 – Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.”

The important point to grab hold of from Genesis 1 is that God created us to be like Him. He created us to be sin free and perfect, just as He is. He gave Adam and Eve everything they could ever want or need and placed them in the Garden of Eden. He created them from the dirt and set them up in paradise and all He asked was one thing of them. Do you know what that was?

Genesis 2:15-17 - The LORD God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it. But the LORD God warned him, “You may freely eat the fruit of every tree in the garden – except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat this fruit, you are sure to die.”

God clearly explained how they were to live and He gave them only one rule to follow – do not eat the fruit from that tree or you will die. Was God working to protect Adam and Eve? Yes, He certainly was. His desire was to keep them close to Him, so that He could protect them and love and be loved by them. However, in order for God to make a creature capable of true love, He had to create them with free will. He did not want robots, He wanted us to truly love Him and come to Him freely.

So here is where we need to discuss hell for a few minutes. Our God is an infinite God with infinite love for us. In order for God to have this infinite love or goodness, He also had to create an infinite evil and badness. His intention was not for us to become engulfed by the evil. His intention was always to have us in paradise, just like in the beginning. But a sin against an infinite God has a just punishment that is equivalent to hell. When God created our world, He created it perfect in goodness or shalom, but in order to have perfect goodness, you also must have an equivalent badness. Consider this the laws of the universe and exactly the reason God gave us laws to live by – so that we could understand how we were designed to live and so He could keep us free and continue to protect us.

Genesis 3:4-5 - “You won't die!” the serpent replied to the woman. “God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.”

Here is the fork in the road – the original sin. Satan tempted Eve with the one thing God had not given them – His wisdom. This was the very first coveting sin. Eve didn't trust what God had told them – eat of that fruit and you will surly die. Instead, she trusted satan and bit the fruit. This was not a loving choice, this was a choice based out of greed and covetousness.

Genesis 3:6-7 – The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful and she wanted the wisdom it would give her. So she took some of the fruit and ate it. Then she gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it too. At that moment their eyes were opened and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness. So they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves.

What caused their shame? At the moment this happened, they became separated from God. They had previously been clothed in God's love and protection, but their disobedience caused them be be separated from God. This separation made them feel completely naked and vulnerable.