Man’s Disobedience - What Happens Now?
The world is in chaos, so much violence, so much injustice.
How is it that God is described as being loving and is not stopping the terrible things that are going on?
This is one of the most difficult aspects of a Loving God and many people often ask “Why”.
The simple answer is that we have to trust Our God and believe that he has everything under control. This a most disturbing aspect of God that I need to address first before continuing on to explain how Man is ‘made’ in the “Image of God”.
Continuing from an earlier post it was stated that The Free Will of Man is the most important and central aspect of the Gospel. Also set out was the idea that true freedom can only work when there is something to be free to do or not do. In their perfect state Mankind was not able to choose right from wrong because they did not have the “Knowledge of Good and Evil”. There was only one ‘rule’, law that they were given.
“Don’t eat of the tree in the middle of the Garden”. We know that this tree was the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil” because in the day you eat of it you will die. Here is the catch 22. They needed the ‘Knowledge of Good and Evil’, but to make a free choice meant that they had to go against what God had told them. The depth of this concept is very deep and will need more expounding at a later time.
The question “What is God’s change of plan going to be” in reality is not considered because there was no Plan ‘B’ if Plan ‘A’ failed. God knew that the decision to eat of the tree had to have no implication of coercion at all. Man had to weigh up all that going down that path would bring and the great consequences that would accur. He had to do this, embracing the consequences that this decision would bring and follow that course which was the only way to fulfil their destiny of defeating “Evil”.
This mission that they were given could not happen in “Heaven” because although there is free choice in “Heaven”, there is some coercion just by the very Presence of the Glory of God. There needed to be a place where Free Choice could happen entirely on its own.
There was no second chance Our Heavenly Father knew that that was the only way. We see this clearly in passage of scripture; Jesus Christ the Lamb slaughtered from the foundation of the world.
You must have noticed in setting out the above concept that I used ‘Man’, ‘Mankind, they, their, and other expressions which refer to there being more than one person. So, what is the point of all this narrative? You will remember that I stated a second aspect that Man was ‘made’ in the ‘Image of God’. This is a most important part of this passage. You see God needed someone just like Himself to take on this challenge and being unable to go against His Own Nature, being Holy (separate from evil), that Mankind was called on to do this task.
So, lets unpack this point later as trying to put all the pieces here will only add confusion.
So next, we need to understand why Abraham is brought on the scene and how the Original Plan unfolds in his story.
PaulT.