Genesis 3:9-10 ( NKJV )
Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?” So he said, “I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.”
Most of us know the story behind this statement. Adam and Eve were placed by God in the Garden of Eden as God’s representatives on earth. They were to be God’s family. Their whole purpose was to fill a void in God’s universe. God needed someone to love who could love Him back. The events in the third chapter of Genesis made the fulfilling of that purpose impossible. God is a holy God and man had committed sin. The type of sin he committed caused a change to come into his nature. (Eph 2:1-3)
Two things happened to man at this point. First he died. God had warned man that if he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil he would die. In fact God said it would happen in the day that he ate of the forbidden fruit. According to the biblical account he didn’t physically die for hundreds of years. In the Hebrew there is an explanation for this discrepancy. The literal Hebrew says “in dying you shall surly die.” Man suffered a death the day he ate and that death led to the death of his physical body some 900 years later. What was this first death? It was the separation of man from God on the level of his spirit.
Man was created in the image of God. God is a spirit, therefore man is a spirit. God does not live in a physical body as we know it, but God put the “spirit” man into a physical world He created for him. To live in that world he housed man in a physical body, but man was and is primarily a spirit. What happened to Adam and Eve that day was the death of their spirit. It did not cease to exist, that is impossible for a spirit, but they were separated from God who is life. As a result their physical body changed and began to die. As we read the full account in Genesis we find that the whole creation was affected as well. This was the greatest tragedy in human history, but God was ready.
At the right time God sent Jesus to pay the price for man’s sin. His death, burial and resurrection gave man the right to accept this sacrifice and gave God the right to undo what had been done in Adam. 2 Corinthians 5 tells us that if any man is in Christ he is a “New Creature” once again joined to him who is life. Anyone who chooses to believe in Jesus as Savior and Lord can live eternally in the presence of a loving God.
This is a wonderful truth but there was something else that came into man that day on a genetic level. When God came to Adam He hid. Man has been hiding from God ever since. Why? Because he is guilty and he knows it. Jesus paid the price for man’s sin but what about the guilt. It has followed us and colored our relationships, our point of view and our whole culture. Jesus paid for the sin, but is there anything we can do about the guilt. Praise God the answer is yes! 2 Cor. 5:17-21 tells us that we can be cleansed of that guilt and live free from it. How?
I’ll see you tomorrow.
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