Our Heavenly Father has done an awful lot to ensure that we have free-will agency and live according to the choices we make as a result of it. When Eve sinned and convinced her husband, Adam, to do the same thing, our Heavenly Father did not come down off His throne and slap the apple out of Eve's hand. It is extremely important that we understand this. God has all power. He can do anything, but He limits Himself according to His love. So, it is very consequential to our journey forward and upward to understand this aspect of God's sovereignty and omnipotence. He can do anything, but He won't. He's merciful and full of grace, but He will never violate the gift of free-will that He's given us.
Why humans?
Genesis 1:27-28(NLT) says, “27 So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. 28 Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.” In this passage, God shares His original intention and Will for humanity. He created us in His very own image. He has free-will and gave it to us as well. We are made in His likeness, so not only did Adam, the first man, have the empowerment to make his own choices, but he had no sin in his body, mind, heart, and soul, and he had no flaws—none whatsoever.
God is perfect and everything He does is perfect. When Adam and Eve sinned against Him, He could have said, “You guys are a bad batch. I'll cancel you out and make another batch of humans that won't betray me.” He could have done this, but He didn't. Why? He didn't destroy Adam and Eve because when He created them, He did it perfectly the first time. One time is all it takes for our Powerful and Sovereign God, and He proved this by telling us that after He created the earth for our habitation, and then created Adam, He rested because His work was perfect and complete. Genesis 2:3(NLT) says, “And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because it was the day when he rested from all his work of creation.”
Why paradise?
Genesis 2:7-8(NLT) says, “7 Then the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man's nostrils, and the man became a living person. 8 Then the LORD God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he placed the man he had made.” The garden of Eden was paradise. Every detail, every speck of dust or matter of any kind was glorious. Contaminates or imperfection didn't exist. Everything was alive with the vibrancy of our Father, and all of creation was a song of praise before Him. This is the place that Adam called home. It was a place where perfection lived in perfection, and this is what our Heavenly Father wanted.
Abiding in this bliss forever was not, however, what the first man and his wife chose. They used their free-will agency to distrust the Word of God. Instead of obeying Him, they bowed to the devil by trusting his deceptive lies above the truth our God had spoken. We might think to ourselves, “If I had been there, I would not have made the choice that Adam and Eve did.” The reality is that the first man and woman are representative of us collectively. Had we been in the garden of Eden, we would have sinned against God as well. This treasonous act wasn’t a surprise to our Heavenly Father, and it demonstrates His amazing grace. It reveals His patience to allow our spiritual growth and development through choice and not by force. He’s teaching us that this is the way love operates. Paradise proved the perfection of God. When Adam and Eve were banished from it, it also proved His allegiance to the gift of our free-will and to the consequences of how we use it. Paradise was His original Will and intention for His children thousands of years ago, and it still is.
Why sickness and death?
Romans 6:23(NLT) tells us, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.” This verse presents the result of two very opposite choices. The first is the choice to sin. When Adam sinned, it entered his physical body. Romans 5:12(NLT) says, “When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned.” Sin doesn't belong to God, it belongs to satan. It is from satan's realm, and nothing, absolutely nothing good can come from that realm.
Jesus Christ said in John 10:10 that the devil is in the world for three reasons, to steal, kill, and destroy. All of these, theft, death, darkness, deception, devastation, and destruction are the consequences that our sin allows. These are the wages or price of sin, and the enemy has a legal right to exact this cost from our lives when we enter his territory through sin. When Adam and Eve entered it for the first time, they lost the holiness, rights, dominion and authority that God has given them. This was the price they paid for making a sinful choice, and it was an extremely heavy one.
Jesus Christ also tells us why he came to the earth in John 10:10. He came to restore us so that we could get back to the paradise of perfect fellowship and relationship with God. This is the more than abundant life that Christ made available to us all. Sickness and death were the result of our rebellion against God, and eternal life is the free gift we receive when we accept Him into our hearts through Christ. Jeremiah 29:11(NLT) tells us, ““For I know the plans I have for you,” says the LORD. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.”” God has proven through the sacrifice and resurrection of His only begotten Son that despite our refusal to obey and to use our free-will for good, faith in the perfection of His love will make our crooked paths straight and cause us to live in the victory of Jesus Christ continually.■
Holy Bible, New Living Translation copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
“Why Humans? Why Paradise? Why Sickness and Death?”, written for victoryinjesuschrist.life. Copyright© 2024. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.
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