Our Weekly Devotionals

In the beginning ...

In the beginning (Genesis)…

When I narrated my testimony in part 1 of these series, told you that on the day that I got saved: “here on earth, it was a day like any other day, but in heaven - the angels celebrated when the plan of God for my life - put in place before the beginning of time.” How is it that the day I got saved had been part of God’s plan from the beginning? To understand this, allow me to re- present to you in summary the re telling of the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis - how humans begun, how we ended up falling (into sin) and thus the need to be picked up from the mud where we had fallen (salvation).

Well, in the beginning, God created man and made him perfect. He gave him a perfect home. In that home, called Eden God was in continuous fellowship with the man and his wife – Adam and Eve, they were called.

They saw God’s face and did not die.

Many of us in today’s “modern world” are not sure if God exists and if he does, we wonder what he looks like. A few know this fact about God from later scriptures, he told Moses: “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” (Exodus 33:20). So today, if you and I saw God’s face, we would die, because his glory encountering our sinful nature would cause instant death …. AND YET in the beginning, Adam and Eve saw God’s face and talked to him. How far we have fallen from how it was in the beginning!

In the beginning, man fell because God gave the man (Adam) every good thing except with one warning: “You must never eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil; for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.” (Genesis 2:17). The enemy of man and God (in the form of a serpent) came and deceived the couple (Adam and his wife Eve). They disobeyed God - ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and that day, they died.

Physical vs. spiritual death

Satan, that ancient enemy of God manipulated our first parents Adam and Eve to fall for a lie. When he told them that if they eat the fruit they would not die, he told them a partial lie. True, they would not die physically, at least not immediately – but he did not tell them that they would die spiritually, IMMEDIATELY and he did not tell them that spiritual death is infinitely worse than physical death!

Because God is holy and just, justice must be done. A perfectly just God had to then judge man for the sin of disobedience and the punishment for sin is death.

Why is the punishment for sin death?

Many people think it’s pretty harsh that God punishes sin through eternal damnation in hell. The reason this is so is because to God, one tiny sin is the same as committing all the sins in the world and because he is holy, in his righteousness he CANNOT STAND sin and so he MUST punish it and because sin in God’s view is EVER present, meaning it never ends (eternal), the punishment for it must also be eternal – meaning it lasts forever and ever.

A perfectly just God - merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands and forgiving however also realised that man could never meet his perfect standard of holiness - so he offered a redemption plan.

This really is the Good News of the bible – God’s redemption plan for us!

This redemption plan started unfolding the day the man and his wife rebelled. God started this redemption by spilling the blood of an innocent animal to cloth them with animal fur to replace their leaves. After that, men in those days multiplied in number and languages were born, cities were built, inventions created, unfortunately with good came evil, for now man was inherently sinful – meaning sin was part of our DNA – and this sin was passed on from father to son and so on and so forth, meaning it could end up lasting forever!

So, how would God solve the “dilemma”? The dilemma of sin having infected his originally perfect seed? God knew that the plan of salvation would take time, but in the meantime – he needed a temporary solution. What was that solution?

To be continued…

Your brother in the Lord and a servant of Jesus.

D E Wasake