"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth... And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good..."
Genesis 1:1 and 31
In the very beginning, God made everything, and He made it GOOD. Not even an ounce of evil was present. God made everything and it was pure, it was good, and it was lovely.
The only command God gave His newly created people was to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
But Adam and Eve were deceived into disobeying this command.
"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, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths."
Genesis 3:6-7
At that exact moment, sin--evil--entered the world. Adam and Eve realized they were naked and felt shame, the first negative emotion to be felt by a human being. At that moment, everything was no longer GOOD. Adam and Eve desired to gain knowledge, but they failed to recognize the only knowledge they were gaining was the knowledge of evil.
Ever since then, humans have been born into a world and a nature of sin, and we have time and time again chosen to disobey God and go our own way.
One look at the world around you will prove this to be true. Things are not okay. The world we live in is far from GOOD.
And on our own, we could never make things "good" again. We are all sinful by nature and separated from God because of our sinfulness. Imperfect beings can't be with a perfect God or create a perfectly good world. Moreover, imperfect, sinful beings are worthy of God's wrath and punishment--we have disobeyed the Creator of the universe, and that is worthy of damnation. In other words, in the justice system, we would be found "guilty" on every account.
So we were helpless to change our situation. We needed God to fix the mess we made.
And so He did!
He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to live a completely perfect life in this sinful, fallen world. While Jesus was here on earth, He never once sinned or disobeyed God. Because Jesus was perfect, He didn't deserve punishment; He was innocent. Yet He chose to step in and take all of God's wrath that was intended for us on himself. He stood in our place and took our punishment. Jesus died on the cross a death WE deserved. And on the third day, He defeated death and rose again.
Now today, if we put our faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we can be saved from our sinful nature! He took the punishment we deserved so we could be made right with God, and He offers us the free GIFT of salvation and eternal life.
And while things on this earth still aren't "good," those who are saved can look forward to a better day, when God will make everything new and GOOD again.
#BeTheRemnant #ChosenByGrace #Scripture #Godisgood #salvation #Jesus #Jesuswins #faith #hope
