MID-WEEK MANNA FROM PASTOR NAT’S DESK:
August 30, 2023
God’s Saving Enmity
Part 33
THE EXCEEDINGLY SINFUL AND EXTREMELY CORROSIVE NATURE OF THE MYSTERY OF INIQUITY REVEALED IN ITS TERRIBLE CONSEQUENCES
The story and history of the fall in Eden recorded in Genesis reveals this truth, among many others: all it took was just one seemingly “little sin,” each by Eve first, then Adam, to bring down the successive train of curses, woes, decay, and death (as it’s “wages”) upon mankind and whole earth itself.
As Paul wrote: “Wherefore, as by one man [Adam], SIN ENTERED into the WORLD and death by sin; and so DEATH PASSED UNTO ALL MEN, for that all have sinned.” (See Rom. 5: 12-19, KJV).
As a result since then, he wrote:
“For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in PAIN together UNTIL NOW. And not only they, but OURSELVES ALSO, which have the first fruits of the Spirit, EVEN WE OURSELVES GROAN WITHIN OURSELVES, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body” (Rom. 7:22,23).
Iniquity or sin, is “the transgression of the law” (1 John 3:4). Its first manifestation on earth was in the first disastrous experiment with disobedience of the creature towards his Creator’s command, even while in their yet original sinless, uncorrupted, innocent purity, “living, moving, and having their being” within the safe confines of their Eden home on fair earth.
Adam and Eve failed mankind’s first test of probation whereby the freedom of choice — based on their yet-untested power of the will, which is the governing power in the nature of man, having been created as a free moral agents to worship his Creator only according to the dictates of conscience. The plan of redemption “which was prepared before the foundations of the earth were laid,” instantly kicked in when man sinned and fell. So that “the moment there was a sinner there was a Savior.” This mercifully granted undeserving mankind the second and last probationary time, which will soon end as the signs of the times clearly warn all who will take heed!
God Creator’s very first recorded words immediately after the fall of Adam in Eden was not an inquiry seeking any knowledge, understanding, or explanations for the Omniscient “Word, who in the beginning was with God, and was God who made all things and without Him was not anything made that was made” (John 1: 1-3) infinitely knows and sees the end from the beginning, such that “His word is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there ANY CREATURE that is not manifest in His sight: but all things are NAKED and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.” (Heb. 4: 12, 13).
God’s first inquiry to fallen man, immediately revealing His divine love and mercy, was unrewarded. Notice: “And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?” Gen. 3: 9, KJV. But instead of humbly and quickly emerging from hiding in vain behind the trees of Eden because of their physical nakedness caused by their spiritual guilt and shame, repenting and confessing their sin and pleading forgiveness, which would have been instantly granted by the loving Creator, they quickly launched into self-justifying, blame-shifting, accusing others for their sins, in effect, blaming and accusing God Himself, “adding sin to sin, transgression to transgression.” Prayerfully and thoroughly study Gen. 3: 1-24 again.
Had not God immediately “put enmity between the serpent (Satan) and the woman (Eve) and her Seed who would “bruise the head of serpent,” and carry on this enmity, hatred, great controversy, and war between the respective “seeds” of Satan and the faithful followers of Christ down through the long centuries to this our day and time, culminating very soon in its prophesied stupendous climax—all mankind from the first Adam was hopelessly doomed to eternal damnation and death!
But “thank be to God for the victory in Christ Jesus,” the “second Adam” to whom all who have been genuinely and thoroughly re-born again by the twin baptisms of the water baptism of repentance, followed by the daily, fiery, purifying baptism of the Holy, can now retrace their spiritual genealogy, not to the first fallen man Adam, but to the sinlessly victorious “second Adam,” God incarnate in human flesh and blood in ultimate and infinite condescension, who was “tempted in all points as we are tempted yet without sin.”
He loves righteousness in perfection and hates sin with perfect hatred! See Heb. 1: 9. This is the only way we can “overcome even as He overcame” and “please Him” as the simple life testimony of Enoch’s 300 year walk with God resulted in His translation!
To be continued next MWM, God willing. Bless all, NMF.