"Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us."
For today's lesson, I want to go back to the above quote from the third chapter of Thessalonians.
I feel there needs to be a distinction drawn between what is sin in the eyes of mankind and what sin actually is in the sight of God.
To do this, we must go back to Genesis and determine what Adam did that caused himself and all of mankind to be condemned to die in the spirit and eternally separated from the presence of God.
Adam blatantly disobeyed a commandment that had come straight from the mouth of God; "The LORD God commanded the man, saying, 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: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." (Genesis 2:16-17)
We all know that Adam did indeed eat of that forbidden fruit and was subsequently declared dead in the spirit and totally separated from God until such a time as he would partake of the fruit of the "tree of Life"; "And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life." (Genesis 3:22-24)
The "tree of life" is Jesus Christ now crucified, risen, and ascended.
We must understand that before Adam disobeyed God there were no such thing as sin in the flesh so far as He and Eve were concerned. They could have invited the folks from the land of Nod and had a huge drunken party with everyone dancing around naked, and there would have been absolutely nothing wrong in God's eyes.
You may by now be thinking I'm crazy, but we must remember, Adam and Eve only had to obey one rule, they could not eat the forbidden fruit, everything else was fair game.The bible even tells us that Adam and Eve had no shame for their nakedness until they disobeyed God, ate of the forbidden fruit and became aware of good and evil.
Those of us whom have accepted Jesus Christ as savior, who have placed our faith in Him have eaten from the fruit of the tree of life, have allowed the righteousness of God's only Son to be our own righteousness, have had the sin of Adam erased form our spiritual inner man/woman, and are essentially back in the Garden of Eden where there is no sin that will be charged to our souls. It is impossible for the spirit of a saved person to commit sin; "Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God." (1 John 3:9)
Once the soul of a person is saved it is sealed by the Holy Spirit until the until Jesus returns to claim His own; "And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption."~
No comments:
Post a Comment