The other day I was hanging out with my friend Becca and we were reading Romans 1:21-25.
We haven't gotten very far because I truly believe God keeps stopping us and teaching us his simple truths along the way.
Christians talk about sin all the time.
Whether we are overcoming a sin, struggling with a sin, or praising God that he has taken upon himself our sin, we are very fluent in sin.
We would all admit that Romans 1:18-32 is about the sinfulness of mankind.
Paul talks about how we have known God, yet did not give him glory or thanks.
We have exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones.
our minds suppress the truth and we worship created things.
But what is sin?
Whether we are overcoming a sin, struggling with a sin, or praising God that he has taken upon himself our sin, we are very fluent in sin.
We would all admit that Romans 1:18-32 is about the sinfulness of mankind.
Paul talks about how we have known God, yet did not give him glory or thanks.
We have exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones.
our minds suppress the truth and we worship created things.
But what is sin?
Its not that easy of a question.
As Becca and I were discussing what sin actually means we ended up in Genesis 2-3, where sin entered the world for the first time.
Genesis 2:15-18:
The Lord God took the mana and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man saying, "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you will surely die.
Later in Genesis 3:1-5, we see that the crafty snake tempts mankind, asking whether God really meant what he said. He tells them that God is a liar, that you wouldn't really die if you ate from the tree.
then sin enters...
Genesis 3:6:
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate...
Can you feel the weight? Sin is heavy... it is a burden...
This passage in Genesis tells us what sin is.
Sin is believing that your way is better than God's.
It is claiming to be god.
IT is believing that God is not good and that he is withholding from you, and therefore acting in rebellion of Gods good plan.
Our culture makes God sound mean.
And sometimes if we are honest with ourselves, we think he is mean sometimes too.
Sin says that God is stingy, he is uptight, he is unloving and a discriminator.
Sin says God doesn't want whats best for you, he is withholding good things from you, and you know yourself better than he does.
Sin says that God just cares about rules and restrictions, and he needs to loosen up.
But this is what God revealed to me about himself:
In Genesis 2, when God placed us in the garden in PERFECT relationship with him, he did not give us a bunch of rules to abide by. Instead he actually began with the freedom we have. God said we are free to eat from ANY tree in the garden. ANY TREE. ANY TREE.
They lived in a garden, and God told them to eat from any tree except one tree. ONE TREE.
God gives us gardens to feast off of and we want that one forsaken plant.
God isn't mean, he is good.
This is our plight Christians... to stand up and defend the goodness of the Creator.
Romans 1:28.. "and since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done."
Praise Jesus today,
because he took the wrath of the tree so you could eat from the garden.
Christians, feast from the garden today.
Because God is good.
