Forever Home in the Eternal Family of God

A Deeper Teaching by Kenton Cheek

A Biblical Perspective of Sin and Salvation
When God created Adam and Eve, He made them in His spiritual image. The first humans enjoyed perfect, uninhibited relationship with God and were blessed with free moral agency to choose between right and wrong. Elohim placed them in the paradise of Eden and gave them dominion over all the Earth. In the Garden were two trees, the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They ate from the Tree of Life and only knew total goodness.

God had forbidden that they eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, but Satan deceived and tempted them. The serpent did this by questioning God’s Word, the purity of His intentions and put the thought in their minds that perhaps God was withholding the good life from them. The tragic irony of Satan’s scheme is that they were already reflected the glory of God and lived in paradise, but the deceiver lured them with promises of godhood in their own rights and a better life outside of the will of God.
Adam and Eve gave in to this deception, sin entered the world, relationship with God was broken, and the corrosive effects of their prideful disobedience entered the world. Sin brought physical, mental, spiritual and emotional diseases which, when full blown, lead to death. Everything negative in the world is a result from the disobedience of mankind. “The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like.” None of these horrible things existed on planet Earth before the Fall.

Sin is prideful disobedience to the will of God revealed in the precepts and principles of His Word. For Adam and Eve, the sole precept they had been given was not to eat of the forbidden fruit and in breaking that rule they became idolatrous worshippers of themselves. All sin flows from this root of self-centered pride. In the Garden before the Fall, goodness is what came naturally for humanity. After sin entered the world, the natural tendency for every succeeding generation is self-worship. This original sin infects every son of Adama and daughter of Eve who has lived since the Fall. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

Many people struggle with how God who is love would allow so much hatred, turmoil, and tragedy in our world. He created mankind to glorify Him and enjoy healthy, life-giving relationship with Him. In order for that true love to exist, there had to be an alternative for mankind to choose. We can choose to follow God or go our own way. Humanity naturally chooses the latter and the result is the jumbled mess we find ourselves in. Yes, there is light, beauty and majesty on Earth and everything good comes from Him, but there is also so much darkness, ugliness and degradation. The world is not functioning as God intended and humanity’s forfeiture of their authority to Satan and his demons is the reason for Earth’s corruption.

When Adam and Eve sinned, their eyes were opened, they realized they were naked and were ashamed. Shame was a new sensation. Condemnation is not what God wanted for them, but it was a direct result of their choice. In order to attempt to cover themselves, they picked fig leaves and sewed them into the first religion. Man-made religion is the futile attempt to deal with a problem only God can solve. “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

There is no forgiveness of sin without the shedding of blood and so God killed an animal (some believe it might have been a lamb) and made robes of skin to cover Adam and Eve. This was the first prophetic foreshadowing of the atonement of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world. Until His coming, humans would have to bring sacrifices before the Lord in order to appease His wrath. This concept would eventually be codified in the Law of Moses which was summarized in the Ten Commandments given on Mount Sinai and unpacked in six hundred thirteen laws.

The Mosaic Law served to show mankind that they were sinful and in need of God. The basic concept of the Old Covenant was that God’s people would obey His Law and in return He would bless them. From the very beginning, salvation, which is being saved from sin and its effects, has been through faith. In the Old Testament, people were saved by following God as they looked forward in time to the coming of Jesus Christ. The Law of Moses and every Old Testament book are filled with types, shadows, symbols and prophecies of the coming Messiah. The Old Covenant would be fulfilled in the New Covenant. Ever since His life, death and resurrection, individuals are saved by looking back in time through faith in His atoning sacrifice. The Apostle Paul explained the purpose of the Law in his letter to the church gathered in Galatia:

Does this mean that the law works against God’s promises? Of course not. The law was never God’s way of giving new life to people. If it were, then we could be made right with God by following the law. But this is not possible. The Scriptures put the whole world in prison under the control of sin, so that the only way for people to get what God promised would be through faith in Jesus Christ. It is given to those who believe in him. Before this faith came, the law held us as prisoners. We had no freedom until God showed us the way of faith that was coming. So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.

While salvation has always been by faith, the Old Covenant required a complex sacrificial system in order to temporarily cover sins which pointed to the ultimate sacrifice that would be made by God the Son on the cross. In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit would rest upon certain individuals for specific purposes, but in the New Covenant the Spirit would dwell within the hearts of His people permanently. God spoke through Ezekiel the Prophet saying, “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.” Obedience was never meant to be a means to earn salvation, but rather to express love and reverence for God. In the New Covenant, obedience would flow from the Spirit in the heart of the believer.

This New Covenant was also foretold by the Prophet Jeremiah,
Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

The putting of God’s Spirit and His Law within our hearts is a reference to the new birth experience which is an event beginning the process of sanctification that culminates in the future goal of glorification. We are saved , we are being saved and we will be saved. The latter portion of this quote from Jeremiah describes a time when there will be no need for teaching one another because all of God’s people will be perfect. This is part of the glorification that will take place in the New Eden.

Perfect justice can only be satisfied by perfect punishment administered by a perfect God. I think of horrendous crimes people have committed against others such as the dark acts of serial killers, pedophiles, perpetrators of genocide and the like and there is no amount of torture that any criminal justice system could inflict to match what has been done to their victims. If a serial killer murders twenty people and receives the death penalty, their one life is taken for the balance of twenty which, while it might be the heaviest penalty available to mankind, is really imbalanced in the grand scheme of things.

There is only one individual qualified to take all the sins of the world upon Himself and pay the ultimate price and that person is Jesus Christ, the Son of Man and the Son of God. He is fully God who became fully man in order to be our Great High Priest who is able to sympathize with our weakness, but also lead a perfect life as an example to us of godliness and become the blameless Lamb of God; our Great High Priest became the Ultimate Sacrifice. “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” In the Old Covenant, sin was covered. In the New Covenant, sin is removed along with its effects.