In the beginning God created man into his image. Man was a perfect copy of his nature. He was created for an intimate love relationship with God. God had not made a robot but a human being with a free will. He wanted to be loved out of free will and not by force. As a steward man should take care of all what God had created. He gave him dominion to reign over all creation (Ge 1:27 – 28, 31).
Man and God had a very intimate personal relationship. They were close friends. Man lived in paradise. Everything he needed was there in abundance. He lived in total harmony with God, his creator and with creation. He did not know evil. To protect him from all harm God had forbidden man to eat from the tree of good and evil. He wanted to preserve him to think, talk or do evil. He wanted to protect him from the consequences of evil. So he instructed him what would happen if he transgressed his command: Loss of intimacy with him, his creator, loss and perversion of dominion, loss of caretaking of creation and finally death.
One day Satan also called devil, an apostate archangel came in the bodily form of a snake. He seduced man to break God’s command. Man decided to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Now he was able to discern what was good and evil but the price was high.
He lost his intimate relationship with God, he lost his abundant food supply and was driven out of paradise, evilness, pain, sickness, guilt and death came into his world and he had to work hard to make a living.
Wickedness grew and finally filled the whole earth. God was deeply troubled in his heart. Evil was no part of his nature. He hated it to the core. In a worldwide flood he destroyed mankind only Noah and his family who loved God were spared. With Noah God made a covenant and promised never to destroy the earth through a worldwide flood again. The rainbow reminds us of this promise.
Despite of some flaws Abraham had and mistakes he made God found in him a man who fully trusted in him. God made a covenant with him. Abraham became the ancestor of Israel.
He chose Israel as his people. Through Israel the nations should come to know him. To Moses he gave the Ten Commandments and his law (the Mosaic Law). Israel should live according to this law. The purpose of the law was to show that it was impossible to Israel to serve God by her own strength. The law showed God’s standard of absolute obedience and perfection. It demonstrated his claim on man. Who ever wanted to be righteous by following the law had to perfect, totally obedient all the time. This was impossible. No one could reach that standard. Even the high priest who represented Israel before God had to offer a sacrifice for his own sins first and then for the sins of his people when he entered the holiest of holies. Year after year he did that once a year. This was a temporary and imperfect solution unable to solve the problem permanently. It was only a shadow to the future.
But how could this problem of sin which separated man and God be permanently solved? There was a dilemma. God loved man and desired to be in an intimate relationship with him again but he could not deny his standard. How could he, the personification of love, absolutely holy in all of his nature who hated sin to the core have intimate fellowship with man? How could he re-establish man in his original destination without breaking his own law and to become unfaithful to his own nature?
The solution was: God himself became man! Jesus came to the earth and took the bodily form of a man. He was born by the Virgin Mary. She became supernaturally pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Jesus was the only man who ever lived on this planet without any sin. He lived in such an intimate relationship with the Father as no one else before had. He was totally obedient to God all the time. He only did what the Father showed him to do. He completely fulfilled the law which God had given all the time. He freed us from the curse of the law. He paid the price no one could pay to reconcile us with God and to make us righteous. The price was his life. He gave it for all our unrighteousness, sin, lack of love and compassion, our bitterness and indifference against God and man.
Through his death he passed to us his righteousness in exchange for our unrighteousness. He made sinners to saints. He healed the broken relationship between God and man and man was put back in his original state and calling.
Now, everyone who accepts Jesus as his Lord and Savior and his sacrifice in simple faith will experience this.
This can happen in a simple prayer like that:
Lord, Jesus I confess to you that I lived a selfish life. I was indifferent towards you, your plans and your calling for my life. I lived my life according to my own ideas and not according to your will. I trusted in myself, my own efforts, in my good works to come into heaven. Please forgive me my selfishness. Forgive me all my sin against you and others. In simple faith I ask you Jesus to become my personal Savior and to take control over my life.
Amen.
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