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IN THE BEGINNING |
I spent a long time in my life wondering why it was that Jesus Christ had to live and die in order for me to have salvation and in order for my sins to be cleansed. I always believed that this was so, I just always wondered why. It took many years of wondering before someone showed me that the Bible surely answers that question. "Where in the Bible?" I asked, and I was told, "It begins at the very beginning..."
Genesis 1:1-2
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. [2] And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
First some important background: God created the heaven and the earth to give us a place to live. But then Lucifer (the angel of light) destroyed it because he was jealous and greedy and wanted God's throne for himself. So he started a war in Heaven and eventually he got his butt kicked and lost everything.(We haven't seen the last of him, though.) At any rate, after the war, the earth was without form and void, and God had to go about creating everything as the verses of the first chapter of Genesis show. The records in that first chapter that we are interested in are those of the history of man.
After making all the animals and fishes, God made, formed and created man; male and female.
Genesis 1:27
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
Genesis 1:28
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
God planted a nice garden for his people to enjoy:
Genesis 2:8
And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden;and there he put the man whom he had formed.
Then, Adam and Eve were to take care of the garden:
Genesis 2:15
And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.
Then God gave Adam and Eve one little bitty rule to follow:
Genesis 2:16-17
And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: [17] But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
Then a little problem slithered upon the scene:
Genesis 3:1
Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
The subtil serpent spoken of here is referring to the once angel of light, Lucifer, who had by this time, challenged God to his throne and had lost everything. Since he had nothing left, he took the form of a serpent to try to trick Adam and Eve out of what they had. You may notice that he misquoted God. God did not say, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden. What He said was, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it.
Genesis 3:2-3
And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: [3] But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
You see here, Eve is having a problem remembering exactly what God said.God never said not to touch the tree... He said not to eat of the tree. And he didn't say "lest ye die", he said, for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. As you can see, it is important to remember exactly what God says, or we might get tricked into believing the wrong things. That's exactly what happened to Eve. She got confused about what God had really said, so that when the serpent contradicted God, she assumed he was speaking truthfully.
Genesis 3:4
And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
Now, some people might say to themselves at this point, "The old serpent has a point there, Adam and Eve certainly didn't die after they ate." But those people would be wrong. To understand how man died that day one must understand how man was originally made.
Genesis 2:7
And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
First God formed the body of the man out of the dirt, then he made him have a living soul by breathing into his nostrils. He formed the body and made the soul. But this is not all that God did.
Genesis 1:27
So God created man in his own image, in the imageof God created he him; male and female created he them.
What is God's image? Does God have a body like ours? The Gospel of John tells us what God's image is.
John 4:24
God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.
God's own image is spirit. So the Word of God says that God formed man's body out of dirt, which is but one part of man. He then breathed soul life into man, which is the body's breath life. Finally, he created man in his own image... he created in man spirit, which is the body's spiritual life. Therefore, Adam and Eve were body, soul, and spirit -- formed, made,and created. This spirit was what made man like enough to God to have direct communication with God. They were created in His image so that He could have fellowship with them.
After the serpent beguiled Eve, however, they became simply body and soul.It was no longer available for them to have spirit. It died, along with the ability for direct fellowship between God and man. God did not lie, theydid die that day... they died spiritually.
Genesis 3:6-7
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. [7] And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together,and made themselves aprons.
Eve didn't keep God's Word in her heart. She let the serpent trick her into thinking that nothing really bad would happen if she ate. The snake had her believing that God just didn't want her to know all that He knew. She just had to eat. Does verse 7 make it sound like their lives would be easier now that they had eaten of the tree? I don't think so. Suddenly, they had to start sewing clothes because they were ashamed of their nakedness.Thus, the beginning of the age old question, "What am I going to wear today?"
Then, when God came into the garden to speak with Adam about what he did,naturally, the man blamed everything on his wife.
Genesis 3:12-13
And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me (Adam also felt that he should remind God where this woman, who was to blame, had come from in the first place), she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.[13] And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.
Now some pretty rotten consequences came about from this first sin (It was the first sin because it was the only rule that God gave them. You can't break a rule if there isn't a rule to break. Adam and Eve were free to do anything they could think of to do, nothing was a sin except for to eat of that particular tree. So, until they ate, they had never sinned. Thus, it was the original sin, and because of it, there arose a need for rules because without perfect communication with God, God had to make rules for people to follow so that they wouldn't hurt themselves too badly. The more rules there were, the more sins there were... but I digress... I was talking about what the consequences of the original sin were.) First and foremost, man died spiritually. Because of this spiritual death, people became sinners by nature (no matter how much a person tried, they could not help but sin sometimes), they were condemned to death (if this sin had not ever occurred, Adam and Eve would have lived eternally), they no longer had a perfect spiritual connection with God (if God wanted to talk to them, He had to find a way to communicate so that their physical, non-spiritual bodies could understand), they gave away their dominion over all living things (the dominion spoken of in Genesis 1:28), and they had to leave the Garden of Eden.
What a problem! God formed, made, and created people just so He could have them as companions and to bless them, and what happens? Man blows it. All of the blessings that God wanted his people to have were tricked away from them, they could no longer communicate freely with Him, and they were condemned to death. Well, God did not want things to be this way, but he couldn't just take back what Adam and Eve had given to the serpent. God had given it all to Adam, and if Adam chose to give it to the serpent, then God had no legal right to take it back from the serpent. So, God made a plan. There had to be a man who could make up for what Adam did. A man who would also be tempted like Adam and have the choice, as Adam did, of whether or not to ever sin. However, this time the man would resist the serpent and live a perfect life, right up to his death, thus gaining back all that Adam lost. Jesus Christ would be that man.
God first revealed this plan in Genesis:
Genesis 3:14-15
And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: [15] And I will put enmity between thee and the woman,and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
The details of how his plan worked are in Romans:
Romans 5:10-21
For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. [11] And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement. [12]Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: [13] (For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law. [14]Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come. [15] But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God,and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. [16] And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto justification. [17] For if by one man's offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.) [18] Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. [19] For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. [20] Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound:[21] That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.
Now, in order for the plan to be completely legal, God could not simply take back what Adam and Eve had given to the serpent. Even after Jesus Christ lived the perfect life and was crucified for his trouble, legally, God could only give His spirit, and all that goes with it, to those who believe. God's spirit is only available to those who believe that Jesus Christ bought it for them. John 3:16 states For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. This everlasting life has a slight stipulation, you see. It is only available to whosoever believeth in the Son. He bought back holy spirit through the giving of his life (the life he gave was worth so much because he had lived it without ever sinning). This giving of his life purchased back for us all that Adam and Eve had in the beginning but gave away when they were tricked. His life and death purchased the pardon of our sins and removed all of the laws that came about because of Adam's original sin. Without a law, there is no sin, without sin, there is no death. Rather, we are righteous. Rather, we have eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. By laying down his perfect life for us, Christ also bought back that fellowship and communication with God that can only be had through the holy spirit that Adam and Eve gave to the serpent. So if any man believes, he gets that holy spirit that will give him all that the original man lost: salvation from the condemnation of sin, perfect communication with God, and eternal life. Romans 10: 9 gets a little bit more specific about what it is about the Lord Jesus that we need to believe.
Romans 10:9
That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
Verse 10 explains why we need to do these things.
Romans 10:10
For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness;and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
So, the answer to my question, "Why did Jesus Christ have to live and die in order for me to have salvation and in order for my sins to be cleansed?" was easily answered by the Word of God. Jesus Christ lived and died so that I could have what Adam lost. So that anyone who believes Romans 10:9 can have what Adam lost. A new beginning that offers holy spirit, salvation,and freedom from sin and death.
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