We can go through life thinking that we're good - doing good, being good, etc., but the truth is that we were all born under a curse because of the sin of one man - Adam. Adam was the first human being created by God to inhabit His newly created earth and it was Adam who brought all of mankind under the curse of God's anger by the commission of one horrendous error. It was the same error that led to the once beautiful and powerful angel Lucifer's downfall - to his being cast out of heaven with all of his followers, and to his being known from then on as satan or the devil.
Father God had created the perfect environment for mankind to share with Him. There was no corruption, no death and no disease and everything was more amazing than I'm sure we could fully imagine in the garden that God created to place man in and walk with him there. God fed Adam and cared for him fully. He personally walked in the garden and talked with Adam ... until Adam repeated Lucifer's sin that has corrupted all of creation and has caused it to be destructively plagued ever since (which consequently answers so many questions about why we deal with so much suffering in the world we now inhabit. Sin has grown like a cancer, diseases entered with it and all of nature decays and grows restless under God's wrath). It all began when Adam allowed himself to question, reason, and ultimately choose to disbelieve what God told him.
God created the far lessor being of mankind for His own pleasure - to have someone to walk with, talk with and to share relationship with. Adam blew it for all of us with his most serious betrayal to God's heart - the same betrayal that God had already suffered from Lucifer's treason. Adam had basically called God a liar and in His righteous anger, Father God stepped back from His once close relationship with mankind that He created, rendered judgment against satan (who He referred to as a snake), Eve (the first woman), and Adam (which includes all of us following) and kicked the most ancient ancestors that we share out of the perfect garden God created to share with man.
"Then the LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all animals, domestic and wild. You will crawl on your belly, groveling in the dust as long as you live. And I will cause hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.” Then he said to the woman, “I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy, and in pain you will give birth. And you will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you. ”
And to the man he said, “Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat, the ground is cursed because of you. All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it. It will grow thorns and thistles for you, though you will eat of its grains. By the sweat of your brow will you have food to eat until you return to the ground from which you were made. For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return.” Genesis 3:14-19 (NLT)
We became estranged from God as a species - all of us convicted by the actions of the very first man Father God created. This is what it means when someone says that we "were born into sin" and it makes all of us even in a very real sense - one no better than the other and it also makes our future plight under God's wrath the same as satan's - to be cast into a lake of fire and tormented forever ... except for one very important possible reprieve...
...The God who reigns supreme over all that He's created still allows Himself to yearn for the relationship that He intended with mankind that He created. God is completely just, perfectly righteous and all-Holy, but He is also compassionate, merciful, and full of grace. So He planned from the beginning a way for us to be redeemed and restored to right relationship with Himself. Since mankind's fatal sin was unbelief, only belief could restore him and Father God made a way possible for every man's salvation. He took mankind's punishment on Himself and requires each man's belief in what God's done and said to save and free him from eternal condemnation and punishment.
There is only one unpardonable sin - and that is to die disbelieving what God has said and done. All others can be forgiven by believing in Christ Jesus as the Son of God, that as God He came to earth in the form of a man, sacrificed His own life on a cross to take our punishment on Himself, that He rose again from the dead - witnessed by many, is now seated at the right hand of The Father and is returning at the appointed time for those who truly believe Him - to forever have relationship with Him as God intended from before time. Salvation requires belief in these things, asking Christ's forgiveness for our sins and the turning away from them - repentance. Making our salvation available was God's merciful plan from the beginning, but the choice to sincerely believe and accept it is ours. God will not choose to send anyone to hell. If we were to find ourselves there, it will be because we chose to disbelieve what He's said.
There may be someone reading this who started out having accepted Jesus as their Savior and somehow find themselves now distant from where they started. There is forgiveness faithfully available for every sin with repentance save one and if you're reading this, it's still certainly available for you.
Those believing, with all desire and sincerity can say ""Maranatha", come Lord Jesus come and restore us fully to that sweet relationship with You in Your close presence."
It's what we were created for - our "purpose", "the meaning of life".
"No, O people, the LORD has told you what is good, and this is what he requires of you: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God." Micah 6:8 (NLT)
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