Bjcorbin's Blog

I grew up with the story of Adam and Eve, and their exploits in the Garden, which seemed pretty basic at the time.  There was good fruit, bad fruit, and God’s clearly stated expectations.  Man disobeyed those directions, chose the bad fruit, and sin was introduced to the world. 

My take away was that life is pretty much a struggle between good and evil, that choosing evil is sin, and that sin is what separates us from God.  From that I derived that the mission was to do “good” and not evil, so that at the end of this life I’d wind up with the good folks in heaven.

Throughout my formative years, this was my conception of what “Christianity” was all about.  As I stepped into adulthood and made my own way in the world, I left the church life behind.  I suppose if you would have asked me, I still considered myself a Christian, just not a church goer.  I tried to be a good person, and to live by the golden rule, but there was little evidence of the belief I claimed.

Years later, as I reached my early thirties, the life I’d built began to crumble, which forced me to reconsider my conclusions both about myself and about God.  I remember hearing someone quote the Matthew 7 passage that says, “Not everyone who says to me Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven (vs. 21).”  That was scary, because it seemed to be aimed at people who counted themselves as followers.  Even more terrifying was the ending of the passage, where despite the good things they had done in His name, they were disqualified because He never “knew” them (vs 23).

This immediately challenged my concept of what God was after.  The folks He was addressing in the text seemed to believe in Him, and to be doing good things in His name.  As far as I knew, that was what we were supposed to be doing.  And these verses were clearly saying that there’s more to it than that. 

Something like panic began to rise up in me, and I knew I’d better read this book (i.e. the Bible) for myself.  What I found not only changed my concept of the mission, it redefined what I consider “sin”.

When I revisited the story of the garden, I was surprised at how different it seemed.  Most important, was the realization that the choice Adam and Eve faced wasn’t between the fruit of what is good, and of what is evil, it was fruit from the Tree of Life, or fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. 

The tree of life is pretty straight forward, it’s really just a picture of Jesus.  It offers us provision from the Giver of life, but like any fruit tree, we’ll need to come back daily to sustain ourselves.  He became our daily bread.  He is the vine and we are the branches.  The fruit is good because He is good.

Less obvious is the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil”.  After all, doesn’t God want us to know the difference between good and evil.  If life is really a battle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness, isn’t this essential information?  Why should God forbid that we eat of this tree?

It’s the serpent that answers this question.  He tells Eve that if they eat of the fruit, they will become like God.  In other words, they won’t have to rely on Him for this knowledge, they’ll be able to decide for themselves what is good and what is evil. 

Ultimately, it was the choice between being completely dependent upon God, and viewing truth through the lens of their relationship with Him, or living life on their own terms (i.e. independently from God) and by their own sense of what seems “good”.  Sin entered in when mankind chose the latter. 

The punishment wasn’t because God was mad at them, He was actually giving them the life they chose (i.e. the desires of their hearts).  A life lived by their own wits, and sweat, and sense of what was right.

I often hear people speak of sin in the third person, as though it is a separate entity, like a demonic spirit that tricks us into disobedience, or some stray cloud of evil that temporarily shrouds our vision, but that is deceptive.  The appeal of such an aesthetic is that it makes sin seem less personal, thereby making us seem less accountable. 

Like Adam, we want to rationalize that we’re not really disobeying God, as much as we’re just victims of an unfortunate set of circumstances (Gen.3:12).  But like him, we are making a definitive choice that has very real implications. 

As I read the whole of scripture, and have endeavored to walk with the Lord, it’s become clear that sin is much more than simply choosing to do evil or to disobey God’s commands.   Minute by minute we have the same choice as they did.  We can submit ourselves to the Lord’s leadership and live our lives through the context of His heart, or we can engage the world through the filter of our own perceptions, and persist in self-rule. 

God lets us know that His thoughts are much higher than our thoughts (Isa.55:9), that He can do exceedingly more than we could ever imagine (Eph3:20), and that the wisdom of men is foolishness to Him (1Cor.1:25).  Further, he warns that our perceptions are severely limited (1Cor.13:9), that apart from Him we can do “nothing” (John 15:5), and that the way that seems right to us will ultimately lead to death (Prov.14:12).  He literally sets before us life and death, blessings and curses (Deut.30:19).  But then He allows us to choose the path we follow (Josh 24:15).

Jesus said that He is the way, the truth and the life, and that no one comes to the Father except through Him (John 14:6).  He also let His disciples know that the way that leads to life is narrow, and that only a few actually find it (Matt.7:14). 

So, when we choose to rely on our own perceptions (i.e. thoughts, experience, knowledge, sense of justice, understanding, perspective, attitudes…) to guide us, we are willfully deviating from the way He made for us.  He is not distancing Himself from us, we are separating from Him.  I have come to believe that this is the very essence of sin.  Our penchant for choosing the way that seems right to us is fundamentally rooted in pride, which God detests (Prov.16:5).

This is why Jesus said that anyone who wasn’t willing to take up their cross daily (i.e. die to self), and follow Him (i.e. submit to the will of the Father) is not worthy of Him (Matt.10:38).  It is also why He said that the only way to find the abundant life He died to give us, is to surrender our life to Him (Matt.10:39).

Jesus demonstrated the life He’s calling us to when He expressed His unwillingness to do anything He didn’t see His Father do first (John 5:19), so that at the end of His life He was able to say that if you’d seen Him, you’d seen the Father (John 14:9).  He has destined us to be transformed into that same image (Rom.8:29).

Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross made a way for us, and His Spirit stands at the ready to share everything we need for godly living (2Peter 1:3), but the decision to yield our hearts belongs to us. 

Moment by moment, we can be driven by our own thoughts or guided by His thoughts (2Cor.10:5).  We can relate to people based on our feelings about them or we can manifest His heart for them (John 13:34).  We can view the world through the lens of current events, or from His eternal perspective (2Cor.4:18). 

If sin was simply about obeying commandments, then the rich young ruler should not have gone away sad (Luke 18:18-29).  But Jesus asked him to lay down the very things that identified him both as rich, and as a ruler, which was a price he wasn’t willing to pay.  I’ve no doubt He is asking the same of us. 

Yielding our mind, will and emotions to Him is ultimately the way to love Him with all our heart, mind, soul and strength (Matt.22:37).  At this point in the journey, I’ve come to believe that the mission is to keep my heart (i.e. mind, will & emotions) in step with His heart, which allows me to be available for whatever He chooses to do.

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