Adam And Christ Original Painting

Free Will – something so valuable – the right to choose what we want. God in his graciousness, empowered us with free will and He fully understood what He was doing and yet He knew it was better to create humans with free will than without the right to choose. Being omniscient, He also understood from the beginning, that He will have to pay for it with His blood, through Christ’ death on the cross. Adam chose to go against the one command that was given to him, a command that will test His ability to choose good over evil. He chose evil. He and his wife chose to believe in the lie of the evil one. Did God really say? Does God really know? Does God really care? What about me? Why shouldn’t I be more important? Lies that Satan spoke and Adam received. Lies that we continue to receive. Adam chose disobedience. Adam chose sin. “Sin” is a word that bothers us. Sin itself doesn’t bother us but the word “sin” does! What exactly is sin though? It is choosing to choose against what God desires for us. It is setting ourselves to be rulers of the moral good and bad. It is using our free will to sabotage the relationship between God and humanity. Thus sin is choosing anything that disregards God’s words on that matter. We often get uncomfortable with the word because we don’t want to feel guilty. “Don’t judge me”, we all say. We can take comfort in the fact that God sees and understands that not one of us is perfect. Not one human being is righteous. Thus sin isn’t something we should use to point fingers at others, ignoring our own sins. Replace Adam with Suki, and Suki would have disobeyed just as Adam did. Humanity continues to desire absolute control and continues to doubt the heart of God, if not today then tomorrow. If not Adam, then I and you. Through the sin and disobedience of one man Adam, death and decay entered the world. What was good and perfect began to unravel. Recognizing our sin is essential to understanding the gravity of the act that Jesus did on the cross. Jesus was fully human and fully God. Fully Human + Fully God, that’s significant. And His obedience to God (to the point of death) wasn’t because of His divinity. He obeyed God in His humanity. Jesus endured temptation like every human on the planet and consistently chose obedience over rebellion. Because He obeyed, sacrificing His life on the cross, we can have a right relationship with God and experience the new life He has to offer.

The cross seems mysterious and oftentimes, foolish. Jesus, had he wanted, could have chosen to not get himself arrested in the first place. His disciples were ready to fight. And yet, Jesus committed himself to the cross. He chose the path that had been prepared for Him from the beginning. He chose to obey. God, throughout scripture says, this is the way, the way of the Suffering Servant. The way of obedience. The way that seems counter intuitive – foolish even… and yet in the big picture, it is the wisdom of God.