Today I want to take the time to remind us of why we need Jesus.
The first sin
“God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.””
Genesis 3:5 NLT
The beginning of the fall of man started with questioning the character of God. The devil insinuated that God is holding back and keeping the best from us.
Prior to sin being planted in our hearts, the process of not trusting God has already began.
“At that moment their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness. So they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves.”
Genesis 3:7 NLT
Here we see the real details of the effect of sin on us.
They knew shame
Shame is defined as a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the knowledge of wrong or foolish behaviour.
For the first time the people became aware. They saw and they knew. They knew what it looked like to be less in comparison to our God, but not from a point of awe but of envy.
A concept that also arrives on the scene is self-awareness, the backbone of our generation. Self-awareness in the right dose is absolutely important. Adam and Eve prior to sin were aware of themselves in connection to being God’s creation and stewards of creation and each other.
You must understand yourself within the confines of who God made you as and to be all of which should be reflective of Him. Self-awareness has taken a shape of its own which is driven by a lack. We use horoscopes, tarot cards, our friends or psychedelics. We use everything but the Bible.
“Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
Matthew 22:37-39 NLT
Our love of others stems from the love we have for ourselves, the love we have for ourselves comes from the love we have for God, and our love from God comes from the love God has for us. To know self and to know others you need to know God. You can’t separate this.
2. They knew their nudity
When I first read this, I realised this is the first time they saw themselves naked. How often do we pass by the mirror and see ourselves and feel the need to cover it up.
This is what we call body dismorphia nowadays. We look at what we see and want to change it, we compare and are not satisfied with what we see. On a broader spectrum, sin introduced to us not being okay with just being God’s creation. It wasn’t enough for them to be created in God’s image.
It is the same for us now. It is not enough to look like God. We want to look like each other, God is too abstract for us to embody, Jesus is too ancient for us to follow in His footsteps. That is not true.
“In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. He existed in the beginning with God. God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him. The Word gave life to everything that was created, and his life brought light to everyone.”
John 1:1-4 NLT
The word and the Him in question is Jesus. Jesus is the beginning and source of everything, all of it. Jesus is everything!
Before I go on a tangent and get passionate, let’s go on talking about why Jesus coming into the picture is important. So from above we see that sin is on the scene. Corrupting the minds and hearts of God’s creation.
The process of redemption
So sin landed on the scene and we could not be with God, because God is inherently good, Holy and perfect. We are the opposite of that.
For reconciliation to happen, we had to die for our sin. An eye for an eye. However God saw that everyone would need to die because we would always fall short, hence came the sacrifices of animals or a sacrifice of some sort.
I sometimes wondered how does the blood of animals clean us of our sin, it didn’t clean us per se. However th faith they had in that God saw the sacrifices and was pleased is what cleaned us. Faith in God pleases God. How can this be?
Remember when the Israelites sinned and Moses had to mount a snake monument so that whoever looked at it and believed they were healed was healed. They had to give their sacrifices believing God forgave them because:
“Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see.”
Hebrews 11:1 NLT
and
“And it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.”
Hebrews 11:6 NLT
Enter Jesus
Now Jesus was the long awaited one. Jesus was and is the only One who can save us.
So when we sinned the Lord already set into motion Jesus coming, it was not a last resort. Why did God wait so long? I don’t know and if you have any ideas let me know.
Jesus is the son of God and is God. Jesus was the only one who could have died for our sins. There needed to be blood spilt for the sins of man, but no normal man could do it, it had to be a sinless man. This might seem like light work, but if you look at our day to day lives, we realise Jesus did an impossible and amazing thing.
Jesus’ death restored us with God. When God sees us, He sees the righteousness of Jesus. Our sin was taken up by Jesus so that we could be embodiment of Him.
Jesus being sinless was not because it was light work for Him, it was because He loved God more than Himself that He knew when temptation came, God’s no was better than whatever He thought.
I want to encourage us, our redemption is not our own to steward, it was given to us as gift: we did nothing to earn it and will do nothing to lose it.
Let us pray:
Our beautiful, good Jesus. Thank you. We will never be able to thank you enough, you did the most amazing thing for us. You invested yourself as the price for our salvation. Thank you for your obedience to our Father, because of it we are able to look forward to knowing you and spending eternity with you. We love you so much and may praise and gratitude remain on our hearts when we think of you.
Recommended Songs
Worthy of my praise- Dunsin Oyekan, Lawrence Oyor
Agnus Dei- Passion, Kristian Stanfill
Akatendeka- Sharon Mayonganise
Jesus what a Savior- Housefires
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