If Adam Had Not Sinned

“Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people” Romans 5:12

But what if Adam had not sinned?  Would that have guaranteed freedom from sin for the whole human race?  Would each of us been sinless for all eternity?  There are no clear answers to these questions, but here I posit some possible considerations.

Adam was made in the image of God, i.e. experiencing time, having personality, emotions, volition, intelligence, masculinity and femininity, i.e. a living soul.  But we know what happened: he ate from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil which Eve gave to him when she was deceived.  The only tree in the Garden from which they were forbidden.  So why did God put that tree there in the first place?  He gave them everything that was good, “very good,” in fact.  Why mess it up with a tree that posed a potential problem?

God did not want automatons who had to serve Him because there was no other choice.  By creating man with volition, i.e. will that was free, He was creating someone with whom He could relate; someone with whom He could enjoy fellowship.  He did not, nor does He now, need us or our fellowship.  Existing as the Triune One, He already had and maintains perfect fellowship within Himself: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  It is simply in His nature to share the love and holiness He enjoys, so here we are!  Created in His image, not as though He has hands and feet, but in our spirits sharing in a very small temporal way the grand and eternal characteristics that identify Him as God.

By creating man with volition, there always is a possibility of disobedience. (Keep this in mind.)  However, all Adam and Eve knew experientially was what was good.  The only thing they could learn from the forbidden tree was what was evil.  It all came down to trust, that experience God did not even know until He came to earth as the God-Man, Jesus, and had to trust His Father and the Holy Spirit in ways the Triune God had not experienced.

We know what happened to Adam and Eve, and each of us has experienced the inclination toward sin that originated with their disobedience.  We know to do good, but we find in ourselves an impotence to do it.  We know to avoid sin, but we find our sin nature pulls us inexorably into it.  We have no power to resist evil and do good within ourselves.  It is only through the redemption that Jesus provides that our once dead spirits are made alive by the Holy Spirit so that we no longer obey the world, the flesh nor the devil.  We are freed from sin’s power.

Back the original question: what if Adam had not sinned?  Imagine for a minute having parents who nurtured you perfectly, trained you in your growing years without unfruitful anger or selfishness, guided you with wisdom in making decisions until you were able to imitate them perfectly.  Imagine not being inclined to be selfish, yourself!  Seeing another child with a toy would not evoke jealousy or envy, because from birth you knew that if something was good for you, your parents would provide it.  Where would be the impetus to sin?  Why would you doubt the integrity of the God who walked with your parents and you every day and provided everything, not just good, but very good!?  Someone born into such a kingdom would be inclined to do the right thing, just as now we are bent to do the wrong thing.

However, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil would still be in Eden!  The tempter may have been vanquished with Adam’s and Eve’s obedience.  Perhaps the serpent, that liar and murderer, would not even have been allowed back into the Garden after Adam and Eve had children.  But the Tree would still be there  . . . and you and I would still have volition, free will.

Without the pull of someone evil trying to mess up our relationship with a loving God, we might never have touched that forbidden tree, as Eve would have taught us to obey.  Eating from the Tree of Life in the center of the Garden would have provided us with eternal life.  But free will would still be free.  Someone could decide to eat of that forbidden tree.  Through the thousands of years and billions of people on the earth, one of us may have decided to go our own way and try the forbidden fruit.

INSANITY, we cry!  Of course.  All sin is insanity in one measure or another.  Why would someone inject dangerous chemicals into his arms at risk of death just for a good feeling that will pass?  Why would someone steal what is not his just to gain a very small and temporary advantage over another?  Why would someone lie to save a moment’s embarrassment?  Why would an angel try to steal God’s glory and make himself God!?  Yet, Lucifer, living in the presence of all the love and holiness of God that he could experience, made just that decision!

I suspect God, infinite in wisdom, would recognize a “problem child” before he became a problem and protect the rest of humanity and the rest of the universe from one sinner’s sin, but He would not stop the exercise of free will.  So someone, even after Adam’s and Eve’s passage into faithfulness, could still decide to try life without God’s guidance.  Any one of us could have still sinned in the Garden and our path would have taken us and our progeny on the same road that we are now on, thanks to Adam’s and Eve’s choice.

So we are now faced with that same choice Adam and Eve faced: Will we trust The God Who Is There or will we trust our own perceptions and doubts about His goodness?  What if Adam had not sinned?  We would still face this choice: to do life our own way or to do life His way.  Even though Adam sinned, it is still our choice, the same as if he had not sinned.

 

What in the World is God? Part 6 – In the Image of God: Personhood

“Humans explaining the nature of God is like an ant trying to explain who dropped the sugar.” Trish O’Connor

Attributes of God can be enumerated in many ways and different lists come from scholars of various stripes.  Some of the lists, such as mine, are pretty basic and others include almost any activity of God.  My view leans toward looking at His essential nature rather than the way He interacts with us; e.g. mercy or mercifulness is included in many lists as one of His attributes where I consider it more an expression of His attributes of holiness and love, discussed in last week’s blog, June 25, 2018.

Besides this, there are likely attributes, that is, essential characteristics that are inherent in being God, that we will not nor cannot understand at our level of development and may never fully grasp even in the eons of eternity.  Remember always, He IS God, the Uncreated, and we are merely His creatures, created for His pleasure and glory (Revelation 4:11).

Consider Genesis 1:26: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”  So a clue to understanding what we are able to about God is found in looking at humankind and considering what we “look like.”  Clearly, as we have shown from Scripture (see June 17, 2018), God is a Spirit so this reference does not refer to hands or feet or body shape.  Yet He is not an impersonal spirit as some would construe, but He is a Person, with personality and intention to know and love and guide us.  Personhood is often overlooked as one of His attributes, and though He goes far beyond mere personality, our understanding of Him begins there.

We, too, are spirits as much as we are physical bodies.  A human is not one or the other, but as created in God’s image, our bodies carry in them the image of God in our spirits.  Our spirits consist mainly of mind, emotion and volition, and this gives us our reference for understanding that God is intelligent, emotional and willful.  As He is the designer and Creator of all that exists, we recognize that when we pray we are addressing a mind that encompasses the entire universe down to the detail of quarks and DNA and more.  Thus His omniscience is more than simply an awareness of existence, but a personal knowledge of each individual in His creation.

When we think of who we know, our minds can easily grasp the dozen or so close friends of our inner circles.  If we expand our view, we can think of hundreds of people we know by name and to whom we would say “Hello” in passing.  Further out, we can grasp the identities of perhaps a couple thousand people in an auditorium, but we cannot “know” them all.  Beyond this, the individuals become “lost in a sea of faces,” unidentifiable and unknowable to our small minds.  Yet, He knows each one, from the formation of the embryo in its mother’s womb to the old man resting down into his coffin (Psalm 139:13).

Very importantly, He feels.  Even before He came down into His creation in the form of Jesus, the God-Man, He felt the pains and longings of His people and wanted to develop a relationship with every man and woman. (Psalm 67; Ezekiel 18:23).  When God came to walk with Adam and Eve after they had disobeyed His simple command, He asked, “Where are you?”  When Adam identified his location, God then asked, “Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” (Genesis 3:8-11)  He was not lacking in knowledge, but rather giving opportunity for Adam and Eve to confess and turn from their disobedience, because He loved them and knew the only way to build the relationship was to be open and communicate.

He still desires that relationship that is more than just a formality.  He takes no joy in our subservient obedience to duty or regulation.  In fact, most of Jesus’ conflicts were with those who followed all the rules!  He feels love for His creation, both man and beast, both living creatures and the environment.

His emotions also extend to anger, disgust, grief and sorrow, but also to joy, delight, anticipation, calmness, and pity.  His experience of these emotions is something we can barely begin to understand, but each of these is mentioned at various times throughout Scripture.  We who are created in His image bear this emotional stamp and feel as well, although our emotions are often warped somewhat by the sin in our lives or in the world.

Most importantly, He is volitional.  He makes a decision and acts on it!  When the Bible says He never changes (James 1:17) it is referring to His character, not His activity.  At some point in time past, He said within the Trinity, “Let us make man in our image,” and He acted on it.  Adam and Eve, faced with a choice of trusting their Creator or the tempter who questioned His simple command, made their choice and acted on it.

Every day, you are faced with a myriad of decisions from what time to get out of bed to how to respond to others’ treatment of you.  Sometimes you must cooperate in decisions to act by voting, sometimes you must act alone, but you and I act!  We are volitional, willful, and express something of the attribute of God when we make decisions.  Again, many of our decisions are warped by sin, but it remains a reflection of His divine Spirit in us, that we are made in His image.

So when you consider What in the World is God, look for His interactions with you!  You matter to Him as much as Jesus, His own son does!  His holiness and love, expressing through His omnipotence and omniscience and omnipresence, offering guidance to us to let His Spirit lead us in our thoughts, emotions and wills, brings us into communion with The God Who Is There.

Keep in mind that my short list, May 27, 2018, June 4, 2018, June 10, 2018, June 17, 2018, June 25, 2018, barely begins to dust the snow off the top of this iceberg.  “He is great and greatly to be praised.” (Psalm 145)

 

 

 

 

 

In a couple of weeks, July 22, 2018, we will again look at how God loves us.