Obeying God Pt.2

The arrival of Eve must have been a rude awakening for Adam. Through her he came to know the sin in his heart. Adam must have been shocked to learn what was in his heart. No wonder he ran off and hid himself from the presence of God!

Still, he did not know half the story…. The extent of the rot in his heart is conveyed in the “defense” he brought up before God: “The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree…” (3:12). It is called passing the buck. Evil trying to cover up evil!

Within minutes, the first man had “openly” sinned twice. It was quite an experience!

I am sure God gave Adam an opportunity to “carry the Cross”, as it were – to humble himself and repent. But he, being “earthy”, could not. We, on the other hand, have been born of the second Adam who is “from heaven”, and should find absolutely no problem confessing and repenting of our sins and our bad heart attitudes.

Like Adam, we too would probably never have known the extent of the “sin” in our hearts had we not met the specific people or situations that God allows into our lives. God uses them to reveal the condition of our hearts, after which He gives us the choice to do away with that sin. Unlike Adam, however, we have the power to do exactly as God requires us to. The Bible says: “There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven” (1 Cor. 15:44-47). The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the “power of God” which enables us to obey God!

When I married my wife and things began going wrong in our marriage I could have decided that I could not live with that kind of woman, that “she was not God’s choice for me”. I could have divorced her and married another. I was free to choose any road I wanted to take. But, somehow by the grace of God, I saw the pride in my heart and decided to humble myself and accept that my heart needed healing.

If you think you are a “good” person, it is probably because you are spiritually naïve. After serving God and “carrying the cross” for many years in his life, the Apostle Paul probably thought he was standing at the gates of perfection – until someone slapped him physically in the mouth –Acts 23:1. ( Someone once slapped me in the face and I know the potency of such an experience, although I forgave him a long time ago).

It is interesting how much we throw scripture about without stopping to think the power those words ought to have in our own lives. But Paul never once put down the Cross, and its power in his life is revealed in the fact that when confronted he was able to humble himself and ask for forgiveness. Such a man could tell the Corinthians, rightly, “Follow me as I follow Christ.”

God wants us to realize how much we need Him. We desperately need Jesus, and Him crucified – and resurrected – in our lives! We must be truly patterned after the second Adam, Jesus Christ, by walking in the revelation of the Cross. Only then can we know true obedience. Only then can we please God.

Obeying God Pt.1

(I have made this post into a two-part series for ease of reading.)

“Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared; Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him.” (Heb. 5:7-9).

The keyword here is “obedience”. It is truly humbling that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, would be taught to obey God! But Jesus came to earth specifically to do that: to obey God as an ordinary human being so that we, too, might obey Him.

When God created Adam He created him “humanly” perfect, but Adam was not a spiritually perfect being. (Had been spiritually perfect he would not have sinned in the first place). The Bible says he was “of the earth, earthy” (1 Cor. 15:47), so that makes it clear that Adam was not spiritual.

In fact, Adam had a very serious spiritual problem, and God wanted to fix it.

The other day I was watching a movie where one of the characters was warned not to mix in a certain chemical during an experiment, and guess what – the minute he found himself all alone, the guy wanted to try out the chemical that he had been specifically told not to use! Needless to say, the results were catastrophic.

This man desired to do something which he knew was wrong. That is mankind’s basic problem. That was what God wanted to reveal to Adam: that he was a rebel by nature. And God wanted to deal with that.

We should never wonder what kind of human being Adam was. He was just like you and me. Only, the opportunity had not presented itself for him to know the real nature of his heart. Then along came Eve – only one additional person – and everything began to go horribly wrong. What followed after, as more and more ‘Adams’ and ‘Eves’ came up, was an endless cycle of one evil generation tumbling after another evil generation, and today we are probably the worst generation of them all.

Naturally, we are tempted to wonder why God would not make Adam spiritually perfect right from the start. No way! The Bible clearly states that God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Gen. 1:23). God wanted Adam to be like Him in free will, which is the highest privilege God could have given him. In other words, God must have told Adam, “Man, I want you to be free as we are. You are free to choose the kind of life you want to live.”

He gave him a choice in becoming perfectly righteous as God Himself is. It had to be a choice. God always gives us the freedom to choose. That is the nature of God. (No one, therefore, will have any excuse on that Day).