Sleepwalking part 4
The wages of sin is death, right? But that doesn't mean "if we sin, then we die." That means that when Adam sinned we ALL died. Romans 5:18-19 in the Message Bible puts it like this, "Here it is in a nutshell: Just as one person did it wrong and got us in all this trouble with sin and death, another person did it right and got us out of it. But more than just getting us out of trouble, he got us into life! One man said no to God and put many people in the wrong; one man said yes to God and put many in the right." But don't get too down on Adam. He was doing the best he could with what he (thought he) had. He just thought he didn't have anything. GOD put man into a deep sleep. Because God didn't want man's effort. That's what we see in the story of Cain and Able, right? God didn't want what man could produce. God wanted a Lamb. So after GOD put man to sleep... Jesus came to WAKE man from sleep. To get us out of all that trouble with sin and death. And notice: We were never in trouble with God. God covered man's nakedness when man's (natural) eyes were opened and he was naked and ashamed. God has us covered. Your heavenly Father has your back. He has your best interests at heart. But since man was sleepwalking... looking for love in all the wrong places and trying to earn something that can't be earned... even though God swore He would never leave us nor forsake us... WE hid from the presence of God. WE ran FROM Him instead of running TO Him. He never changed though. He never wavered. We wanted "stuff" that wasn't good for us--a human king, an external law--because we were sleeping and those things were the best we could come up with. And God relented. For a time. Because He wanted us to understand that His way is THE way. I always go back to Psalm 90:3, "Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men." Man's choice was never to stay in the garden with God, or to leave. Man's choice was, "Now that you've left... come home." It's what we see in the parable of the prodigal son. It's what we see when the thief on the cross asked Jesus to remember him (or to re-member him, to put him back together). It's not something we could do, no matter how hard we tried. The Law was never given so that we might keep it. The Law was given as a school master to bring us to the end of ourselves and bring us to Christ. So that we might SEE the finished work and stop trying to finish the work. So that our eyes might be opened, and the light might shine, and we might wake up! Awake to our righteousness and sin not. And don't get it twisted--we don't "stop sinning in order to awake to righteousness." That's backwards. WHEN Jesus WOKE us up--He died both for us and as us so that we could have a second death, and arise to walk in newness of life--we stopped sinning by default. Because sin is unbelief. And by definition a believer cannot unbelief. Those born of God CANNOT sin. It's impossible. Sin and death were dealt with. Now we don't have to deal with them. Now we're awake. And alive. Living and loving. Not sleepwalking, but walking in newness of life!