If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

When God created the Earth, He created a perfect Earth and perfect man. He gave man rules in which man was supposed to live by. This included not eating from the tree which gave the knowledge of good and evil. God revealed that the consequence of this action was death. When the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, were tempted by the serpent in the Garden of Eden, they disobeyed the decree of God and ate from the tree. This act of disobedience transformed man, who was created perfect, into an imperfect being and forced the wrath of the Creator who, being the epitome of good, necessarily was forced to keep His original decree, thus causing man to incur death rather than God’s plan of eternal existence. Since the two origins of man’s existence, the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, were now imperfect and sinners, all of their offspring and the generations to come will inherit this sinful affliction; this disease of imperfection.

How could the beings God created not be perfect? How could God create something that “goes bad’? The answer is quite simple: in order for humans to be perfect they must choose good rather than evil. God always chooses goodness because He, being the embodiment of goodness, cannot choose otherwise, but what about His creatures? Which is the more “perfect” creature, one who is forced to choose goodness, programmed as one would program a computer, or one who, given the choice, chooses to do good? To put it another way, which has a greater existence and is thus more perfect in being, the computer I am typing this paper on or Mother Theresa? Also, since God wanted to have a relationship with His creation, we were given this free will to satisfy the requirements of true fellowship. Who is a greater “friend”, the slave, required to do the master’s choice without any freedom, or the brother, submitting to the choice of his brother because of the love he has for him?

But man, who was not a slave, in an exercise of this free will, chose to rebel as a slave would rebel against his master and, in doing so, became imperfect and a slave to death itself. God, however, in His original desire and plan for His humanly creatures to have eternal existence, devised a plan in which the fallen man would be able to again rise to their intended purpose. This required redemption of our sinful nature by a perfect man but, since there were no longer any perfect men, this could only be accomplished by God himself, in the form of the second Person of the Trinity becoming a man and giving His life as payment for this original sin in the Person of Jesus Christ.

The person of Jesus was fully man and fully God. Jesus, because of His divine nature, never sinned and, being born without a human father, never inherited original sin, so was able to be the required perfect sacrifice for the salvation of humanity. There have been many suggestions as to how Jesus could be both fully man and fully God as the same time but many of them have included heretical teachings and led to many councils, where scholars have attempted to define the Biblical teachings on this existence. These councils were intended more to stop the spread of heresies than to define the Bible. The Biblical teaching was and is clear; human understanding cannot be. It is impossible for the finite human mind to fully understand the infinite God but oversimplifications of the Biblical teachings in an attempt to explain them, although intended for good, can turn out to warp the original teaching. Such was the case of the heresies the councils intended to refute.

When the incarnate God, Jesus Christ, the second Person of the Trinity, the second perfect man to ever live, died on the cross, He paid the price for our inherited corruption. One perfect man sinned causing future generations to be imperfect; another perfect man paid the price, allowing future generations to have perfection once again. But the acts of the Incarnation and Atonement did not automatically grant forgiveness to each and every man. To receive this gift from above, all one must do is to believe in it. The acceptance of this gift, however, proves the most difficult choice one could make. In fact, many would rather spend their lifetimes denying this gift than coming to the reality of it. Some would even quote fictional stories and fabricate others in an attempt to be able to “factually” deny this claim.

Internet Price Quotes