New Beginning part 1
I like the creation story. Always have. And people sometimes ask me about it: "Do you really believe Adam was the first man on earth?" Like that's the point of the story. Look at Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." So if there was already God, then what does the Bible mean by "in the beginning"? I look at it like this--in the beginning of the story God created the heaven (mind) and the earth (body). In the beginning of YOUR story... God created YOU. We sometimes get so stuck on things that really don't matter that much. Adam was humanity's representative up until the cross. Before there was a before, and an after. Before the cross, and after the cross. A way things were, and a way things are. That's what's important. The first Adam was of the earth, earthy, right? He was made from the dust of the ground. And I've heard one preacher say that means Adam was a dirtbag. He couldn't do any better because he didn't know any better. He was tied to the earth realm. He did the best he could with what he had. But that was the problem. Because if you follow the creation story it goes on to say, "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters" (Genesis 1:2). God created you. In His image. But it was dark out. The deep calls out to the deep. What's inside of us always has been and always will be true. But there was darkness. We were made in His image, but we didn't know what that image was because we couldn't see. We were without form. There was a God-shaped (love-shaped) void inside of us. It wasn't until the cross that the light shined in fulness, and we were conformed to the image of God's Son. It wasn't until we got to the New Beginning that things started to come together. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1). The Word of God. Which is Jesus. Which is love. In the New Beginning God spoke that Word (that was with God, and that WAS God) and said, "Let there be light." Let there be love. He gave us His only begotten Son so that we might not perish--or keep stumbling around in the dark--but have life. The abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life of God. The abundant, eternal, everlasting, Resurrection Life of LOVE. That's what the cross was all about; Not God transforming us into something that He could finally love, because He already loved us. Always has, always will. Not God being mad enough to kill someone, but loving us so much that He would rather die than be without us. What the cross did was it filled us with the Holy Spirit--the Spirit of Truth that leads and guides us into all truth... the truth that God is love and He loves you--so that we might know and believe the love of God. So that we might live a new life as new creatures. So that we might live that life of God as God Himself lives it in us, and through us, and as us. The New Beginning was the death of the old and the birth of the new. The shift from death unto life. And that's what I want to focus on in this Rant series: We WERE dead in our trespasses and sins, but now we are alive unto God. Alive unto love!