God calls us. Why would anyone would choose eternal separation from God over eternal glory with God, particularly when the only requirement for the latter is to place one’s faith in Jesus Christ? The answer brings us back to Adam and Eve’s first need after they sinned, and our first need as their spiritual children, who come into this world spiritually dead. When Adam and Eve sinned they lost fellowship with God and hid from Him. They needed Him to seek them out and draw them back. Because of their new fallen nature and dead spirits they would have never…
God has come to our rescue. Consider the significance of the condition in which we come into this world, not only bearing Adam’s guilt but also spiritually dead and with a sin nature. We’re not only unable to relate to God spiritually, but also, because of our sin nature, reject God and constantly seek after evil. Like Adam and Eve, our natural inclination is to hide from God and go our own way, relying on ourselves. Our focus is on ourselves, and we are driven by greed, lust, pride, and selfishness. Since we come into the world in the same…
We Inherit Adam and Eve’s Sin Nature Though created without sin and spiritually alive, their sin changed the default condition of man. They corrupted not only themselves, but us as well. Man is now born with a sin nature, bearing the guilt of sin, and spiritually dead. Though both sinned, Adam was the one officially held responsible. God created Adam, the first man, as His vice-regent on earth and the titular head of the human race. When Adam acted, he acted for all his future descendents. When he sinned, he brought all of us down with him. His sin was…
God Rescued Adam and Eve God could have left them in that state of spiritual death, and would have remained perfectly righteous and just if He had done so. He owed them nothing. He had created them as marvelous creatures in His own image and placed them over all the earth and every living thing upon it. He’d given them the opportunity to live forever, united with Him in perfect spiritual fellowship. And, he’d given them only one command: He forbade them to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They had rebelled and violated that…
Who are the Lost? Who are the lost? They are those who are in the original state we all come into the world, dead in sin, unable to be in fellowship with God. The only way out of that state is to be born again spiritually by placing one’s faith in Christ. In the beginning there was no such thing as being lost. Adam and Eve were created as children of God, in full fellowship with Him. They broke that fellowship for both themselves and us when they sinned. Now, natural man doesn’t come into the world as a child…
Another method Satan uses to advance his kingdom is to hold the lost captive. He uses a two-part approach. First, he keeps the lost from coming to faith, and second, he moves them to do his bidding. From a practical standpoint, a Christian’s need to be aware that Satan holds the lost captive is perhaps second only to his need to understand that Satan is the god of this world and the father of lies. Unless we understand that Satan holds the lost captive, we’ll be confounded and overly frustrated by the spiritual darkness around us. We’ll wonder why the…
Satan’s Kingdom has subjects. The first general Biblical evidence of Satan’s desire to be like God is the extensive teaching regarding the reality of Satan’s unholy kingdom. Satan can live and exploit the lie that he is like God partly because he has his own kingdom. Like God’s kingdom it has subjects. Satan’s subjects are the fallen angels and the lost. We’ve already seen how Jesus, anticipating His coming crucifixion, death, and resurrection, recognized Satan as the ruler of the world: “Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out.”Satan’s tempting Jesus…
Satan is the leader of all fallen angels and the lost We’ve seen that Satan the person is a fallen angel. He was created holy but fell from grace due to the sin of pride. He wanted to be like God. His first recorded act following the creation of the world was to deceive Eve in the Garden of Evil, resulting in tearing apart the perfect fellowship between Adam and Eve and God. That single deception, resulting in the fall of man, and its attendant separation of natural man from God, has been the cause of all suffering, heartache, and…
Satan is probably the “star of the morning” who desired to be like God. The Bible doesn’t give plain specific details regarding such things as Satan’s pre-fall history, or when and how Satan and his angel followers sinned and fell from grace. It’s an instance of the fact that the Bible provides all the information we need to know to be rightly related to God but doesn’t answer every possible question we may ask. Two passages probably, but not definitely, give insight into Satan’s early history. The first is Isaiah 14:12-17. It speaks of the “star of the morning,” who…
The Old Testament Declares Satan is Real Scripture declares the reality of Satan from Genesis to Revelation. The third chapter of Genesis (Gen. 3:1-5) tells the story of the serpent tempting and lying to Eve in the Garden of Eden. That encounter, followed by Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, led to the fall of man. Because of Adam’s fall, death, hardship, and suffering entered the world (Gen. 3:17-19), affecting not only man, but all creation (Rom. 8:19-21). Two main objections to this being a plain teaching of the…