original sin

You Best Believe in Love Stories, Because You’re in One.

What was the happiest moment in human history?

The most glorious, victorious moment would be when Christ paid for our sins on the cross and then rose from the grave, conquering death.

But, what was the happiest moment in history?

To answer that question, what is your happiest memory, excluding your salvation?

Ask this question to the general public, and you will find that most people’s happiest memories involve their families and loved ones. Such memories involve weddings, the birth of children, family reunions, Christmas celebrations with the family, or just the memory of how you used to spend time together.

Our best memories involve the ones we love, and those times are often the happiest times of our lives.

With that in mind, what was the happiest memory from human history?

Genesis 2:15-20 records how God spent personal time with Adam, having placed him in the Garden of Eden to keep and dress it, and creating animals for Adam to name. Genesis 3:8 records how Adam and Eve heard the voice of the LORD walking in the garden in the cool of the day, which gives you the idea that those walks were common, if not daily.

Reading between the lines of Genesis 2-3, you get the idea that life was good. God and man dwelt together, spent time together, created things together, and even dreamed together. Before the fall of man, there was no sin in the world, no illness, no problems. Life was just good.

For us, this sounds like a dream! Obviously, this was the happiest time in human history. However, when it comes to the happiest time in God’s memory, this would also be it.

God created man for that fellowship, a fellowship that came from a gratitude and a recognition of God’s blessing, but by man’s choice (hence the tree in the garden).

When man sinned in the garden, that fellowship was broken, death entered in, and the problem filled life we know today emerged. God was no longer physically present, and could no longer dwell among His people. Paradise truly was lost.

However, God loved us so much that He refused to let the story end there. Though man ended the relationship by taking a tangible step to remove God from his life, God undertook a centuries-long project to reconcile with man, and to redeem His creation so that He could once again dwell with His people.

It’s God’s desire to live with His people that motivated Him to order the construction of the Old Testament Tabernacle. Situated in the middle of the camp of the Israelites as they lived in the wilderness in Exodus-Deuteronomy, God’s presence filled the tent, and thus He literally dwelt in the midst of His people.

When the Lord became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14), God once again was able to dwell among His people, this time in a more personal sense than when He dwelt in the Tabernacle.

In the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), we see the Lord’s love for His disciples, His compassion for people, and His frustration at the impact their lostness had on them. In John 17, we find Jesus in prayer in the hours prior to His crucifixion. In that prayer, we can see the heartbreak He experienced, not over His own death, but His pending separation from His disciples.

Having only lived His biggest dream for a few years, the Lord was about to undertake the redemption of all mankind so that He can once again live with us.

Once our redemption was completed on the cross, Jesus continued to advocate for us in Heaven. To this day, that advocacy continues, along with His ministry to us through the Holy Spirit, and His reaching out to us with the Gospel through His ministers on this earth.

All of this is building to the day when the Lord will return, and we will be reunited with Him forever, and that day will come when the last man on earth to accept the Gospel does so.

God’s love for us is so profound, that He sacrificed Himself, giving His only begotten Son for us, so that we can be reunited with Him upon our belief. There is no higher love than that.

And the center of this love story is our Lord, but the object of that love us you… so you best believe in love stories, you’re in one.

Why the fruit was a big deal, and why the tree was even in the garden

As creation and Christianity are debated between believers and skeptics, two questions often arise. The first is why God put the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the garden, and the second is why eating of that tree carried the death penalty.

In the below-posted video, Pastor Leland Acker makes the point that to fully give Adam and Eve life, they had to have the choice, the free-will to decide whether to follow God or reject Him.

When God formed man from the dust of the ground, and man became a living soul, man was gifted with the highest form of life. Far beyond existing, man was given self-awareness, consciousness, the ability to reason, to create, to problem-solve, to dream, and to cultivate. God, having created man in His image, bestowed upon man many of His own divine attributes.

Creating man to be a living soul, God wanted him to have the fulness of life. In order for man to be able to reason, create, solve and dream, man would also have to be given the choice of whether to trust and obey the Lord. God so wanted us to have the fulness of life, God gave us the choice.

So, to create the opportunity for that choice, God placed the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the midst of the garden of Eden. While one may wonder why knowledge would be a bad thing, keep in mind that this knowledge is an experiential knowledge. By eating the fruit, man would not be suddenly indwelt with endless information, rather he would come to learn good and evil by experiencing both. This knowledge would be gained apart from God, without His help and leadership.

Pursuing knowledge in this way would amount to a complete rejection of God.

So, man had a choice. Trust that God is good and live forever in His presence, or doubt God’s goodness, overthrow His presence in man’s life, and strike out on his own. The former carried with it the promise of eternal blessing. The latter carried a risk of death and eternal judgment.

The serpent (a.k.a. Satan) tempted Adam and Eve with just that. In his speech to Eve in Genesis 3, Satan said, “You will not die. For God knows that in the day that you eat thereof, you will be as gods, knowing good and evil.”

Genesis 3:6 records the logic Adam and Eve used when deciding to eat the fruit. It says, “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.”

The logic was, “It’s good to eat, it looks good, and it will make us wise (as gods.)” They ate so they could experience the pleasures of everything, take power over their own lives, and eject God from the life that He gave them.

This was not a simple mistake or a poor food choice. It was an all-out rebellion against God. They cut themselves off from God, Who gave them life.

And when you cut yourself off from the source of life, you die.

This would be a good time to pause and reflect. God said, “In the day that you eat of this fruit, you will surely die.”

Satan said, “In the day that you eat this fruit, you will be as gods.”

The question arises, “Where are Adam and Eve today?” Based on the answer to that question, who was telling the truth, God? Or Satan?

If you’ve ever attended a funeral, you know the answer to that question. There is good news, however. In the same chapter, God offered a way of redemption. By promising that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent, while suffering a death-blow Himself, God promised a savior, a redeemer, who would come and save His people from the death that comes as a result of sin.

That Savior was Jesus Christ, who both defeated Satan and suffered death upon the cross, and obtained final victory through the resurrection. Belief in this brings salvation and eternal life, and wins God’s favor.

The result of that salvation is being welcomed into His eternal Kingdom, where God will have restored life to what He intended on it being in the Garden.

So, with all that in mind, trust that God is good. Trust in Him, and place your faith in the death Jesus died on the cross for your forgiveness of sin. Then leave that sinful lifestyle behind and follow Him.