Hello faithful friends,<\/p>\n
I am going to deviate from my normal format of Bible Study today if that’s OK.\u00a0\u00a0I have been mulling over our study a lot while I have been incapacitated.\u00a0 And one thing I have realized is that I have been missing yet another component in my understanding of what God was doing in developing man’s faith in the Old Testament.\u00a0 I have been missing the element of God’s relationship with man.<\/p>\n
So, while I have been sitting for long hours in my Lazy Boy, I have been back-tracking and reviewing the role God’s relationship with man plays into what we have been talking about regarding learning to walk by Faith.\u00a0 So, in this email, I would like to just go back to the beginning and look at a few things in relation to God’s relationship with man.<\/p>\n
Let me start with a few questions to get you thinking, then I’ll share what the Lord has been teaching me.<\/p>\n
When God created us in the very beginning, He did create us to represent Him and to display His image on earth.\u00a0 But, God also desires for us to be His friends.\u00a0 He didn’t need us, He was perfect and complete without us.\u00a0 But, He created us so he could have a relationship with u.<\/p>\n
What makes a good friendship?<\/p>\n
After God created Adam, He did not say, “Adam, I created you.\u00a0 I am your Lord.\u00a0 Now you have to serve and worship me!”\u00a0 He did not demand that Adam follow and obey Him nor did God demand man be thankful and praise me!”\u00a0 God did not say any of that. He could have.\u00a0 He was after all their creator, and as creator, he was technically their owner, and had the right to do with them as he pleased.\u00a0 But, God desired a relationship, not a dictatorship.<\/p>\n
After God created Adam, God placed him in the garden, maybe even in front of the Tree of Life, and told him to freely eat of all the fruit of the trees in the garden, except one.\u00a0 He therefore encouraged them to eat from the Tree of Life.\u00a0 God’s desire was to have a relationship that lasted forever!<\/p>\n
Man was created and placed in the garden for the purpose of sharing a true love relationship with his creator God.\u00a0 A necessary component for a true love relationship is free will.\u00a0 By definition, true love cannot exist apart from free will.\u00a0 Unless we have the ability to choose, there is no capacity for true love.\u00a0 Love is not an emotion.\u00a0 Love is a choice, a decision, to put the object of your affection’s desires above your own.\u00a0 God gave man the ability to choose – to choose to love God by putting His desire for relationship above their desire to eat the fruit of the one tree God had forbidden them to eat from.<\/p>\n
The tree provided them with an opportunity to choose.\u00a0 With this one tree, this one rule, the one little ol’ tree, in the middle of their paradise home where they were told they could eat everything else, they now had the awareness of right and wrong, they had a boundary that God as their creator had given them, and they had a choice.\u00a0 The choice is what made willing love possible.\u00a0 The fact that the tree was in the garden, made continual love possible through the continuous choice they had to make.<\/p>\n
This was man’s choice.\u00a0 God was not forcing man to choose.\u00a0 He freely allowed man to choose.\u00a0 God made the consequences of their choice clear.\u00a0 But, God was not forcing them to choose, nor would he prohibit them from making the wrong choice.\u00a0 That is love.\u00a0 God loved them enough to allow them to make the wrong choice.\u00a0 Ultimately, God desired for them to choose to love Him back, completely out of their choice and not because they were obligated to in any way.<\/p>\n
Was this a condition on God’s love?\u00a0 NO!!\u00a0 God’s love was constant.\u00a0 He loved them regardless of their choice!\u00a0 The choice enabled a reciprocal love relationship with Adam and Eve.\u00a0 And, allowing Satan to tempt them, forced them to make a choice!<\/p>\n
God knew that their wrong choice would cost Him dearly\u2026<\/p>\n
Those were the consequences God faced by allowing them to choose.\u00a0 His love compelled him to allow them to choose him, out of their own free will, and not force them to make that choice.\u00a0 Love is a choice, it’s not something that can be required or demanded.\u00a0 That is the kind of relationship that God desired.<\/p>\n
God still desired a relationship after the fall.<\/p>\n
I have always heard and I have taught it myself, that the death described in Gen 2:16-17 is a 3 fold death.\u00a0 Death of the body and Eternal death and Death of the relationship.<\/p>\n
Now, as I look at this in light of a relationship with God, I think my understanding of #3 is not quite correct. Before God kicked them out, he provided a means of reconciliation\u2026 death of the animal\u2026 blood as an atonement\u2026 he covered them with the skin of the animal picturing that he was covering their nakedness, shame and their sin.\u00a0 The animal represented the future, when God would one day provide the ultimate sacrifice to take care of their sin debt once and for all.<\/p>\n
But, when Adam and Eve left the garden, was the relationship severed?\u00a0 Were they completely cut off from God?\u00a0 I don’t believe it was.<\/p>\n
Does it say anything about the relationship?\u00a0 (Genesis 3:22) “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil.\u00a0 He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and live forever..”\u00a0 God was having mercy on Adam and Eve, not wanting them to live forever in their sin.\u00a0 Yes, it did mean that they would die physically, and without God’s intervention, they would face eternal death and separation from God for eternity.\u00a0 But the same love the compelled God to allow them to choose, did not desire for them to live with those consequences for all eternity.\u00a0 Because He loved them, He had already chosen to provide a way to pay their eternal sin debt and to restore the relationship.<\/p>\n
While Adam and Eve chose to reject him, God chose to love them and to provide a way to pay for their rebellion.\u00a0 Ultimately, God still desired a relationship!\u00a0 When He removed them from the garden, He was NOT cutting off the relationship, He was providing a means by which the relationship could be restored, and by which they could be with him for eternity.<\/p>\n
As we learned from the illustration from Ian Thomas regarding the Grand Piano of our hearts; in the garden, God’s presence was with Adam and Eve, but His Spirit, I believe also dwelt in them.\u00a0 When Adam and Eve sinned, the Spirit could no longer reside in man because of their sin.\u00a0 So, they became spiritually dead.\u00a0 So, the 3rd death, instead of calling it the death to the relationship, should maybe be called, “Spiritual Death” seeing it was really the exit of the Spirit.\u00a0 But, God’s presence did not leave them all alone, the relationship was not completely severed.\u00a0 God still loved them and desired the relationship for which He created them.\u00a0 Because of the consequences of their sin, they now had a condition (the need to offer a sacrifice as a covering for their sin) in order to enjoy that relationship with God.\u00a0 That condition was a constant reminder of their wrong choice, and also a reminder of God’s loving choice to provide a means for the relationship to continue.\u00a0 The condition (the blood sacrifice) was a visual representation of man’s choice to love God and receive his forgiveness, in order to enjoy the relationship.<\/p>\n
The sacrifice was the means by which they received forgiveness, but it also represented God’s desire for a relationship with them.\u00a0 It displayed that, even though Adam and Eve had chosen to reject God’s offer for relationship, God did not give up.\u00a0 He provided a means of forgiveness, and through the sacrifice was offering a love relationship again.\u00a0 When they chose to bring a sacrifice, they were not doing so as a work to maintain the relationship, they were coming out of love, expressing their love for God in their desire to display his image.<\/p>\n
That is still God’s desire today.\u00a0 His desire is for us to understand just how deeply and passionately He loves us.\u00a0 That He does give us the ability to choose.\u00a0 He does not stop us from making wrong choices.\u00a0 He loves us regardless of what choice we make.\u00a0 But, for those who choose to love Him, He is there with open arms waiting to receive us and to fill us with His son.\u00a0 Today, what He gives us is much more than the provision of a sacrifice!\u00a0 He has given us the very life of Jesus Himself living in us!\u00a0 How can we not respond by loving Him and desiring for our lives to display His love to everyone we meet?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hello faithful friends, I am going to deviate from my normal format of Bible Study today if that’s OK.\u00a0\u00a0I have been mulling over our study a lot while I have been incapacitated.\u00a0 And one thing I have realized is that I have been missing yet another component in my understanding of what God was doing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":172,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[48601],"tags":[448],"class_list":["post-682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-dear-brothers-and-sisters","tag-ethnos360","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/172"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}