“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
“You shall have no other gods before me. | Exodus 20:2–3
On Sunday, Andrew made the statement that what Adam and Eve ate in the garden was not ‘magical sin fruit.’ In other words, it did not contain sin that was then passed like a parasite from the fruit to them. Instead, sin was in the act of betrayal. It was caused by Adam and Eve’s desire to be like God rather than worshipping Him as God. While this is a fairly simple idea, it has a profound impact on how we understand our place in this world.
- God is not the author of sin
A common question people ask is: if God created everything and sin exists, does this mean that God created sin? If the fruit itself was tainted, then sin would have come from God. But sin is the result of not following God- it took the choice of Adam and Eve to bring sin about. Some will point to the existence of the serpent and say: God created Satan, so the blame once again falls back on God. Satan only existed in his fallen state because he too wanted to be like God. While God did give us the ability to choose sin, it is not something that came from creation, but it arose from the choice to place something above Him.
- We cannot hide from sin
Since sin grows out of the heart, it is not something that you can cloister yourself from. The tactic of many Christians (and especially Christian parents) is to prevent their kids from interacting with secular culture with the hope that it will prevent them from sin. While it is true that different environments provide different temptations and it is wise to be discerning with the situations we put ourselves in; it is also true that since sin is not out there, you can’t get away from it. When we give off the idea that there are places that you can catch sin and other places that are ‘family friendly’ and safe from sin, we set ourselves up for failure. Instead, we must see everything as an opportunity to worship God as He deserves, or to worship something else (ourselves included).
- We can bring harmony to creation
If the very fruit was tainted, there would be very little that we could do to bring about change in this world. We are not the Creator, so we would be at the mercy of the universe around us, simply suffering from the effects of living in a tainted world.. Since sin is an issue of worship, we have the opportunity to bring the world back into order.
In the sermon Sunday, pastor Andrew used Augustine’s concept of ‘disordered loves.’ This is the idea that sin is not just doing bad things, but loving in the wrong order. When we love something more than we love God, our loves are disordered and this causes us to sin. This impacts every part of our life, as we set our lives up as a series of loves that are chaotic rather than in harmony. This not only leads us to ‘miss the mark’ but to cause destruction to the world around us.
We begin the process of bringing this world back to peace by relating to God as the supreme authority worthy of all praise and honor. Starting here allows the rest of our loves to find their appropriate place in response to Him. As Jesus described it in the Sermon on the Mount:
But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. | Matthew 6:33
A right ordering of loves begins with seeking first His kingdom. By allowing the Kingdom of God to become what we seek, we create a standard by which to measure value and where the other loves fit. God lovingly gives us His Word to help us realign what has been disordered.
He also gives us the opportunity to help others realign their loves. You can’t force people to love. You can’t argue them into it. The way to realign loves is to speak the truth and then to live out an engaging reflection of that truth. As people see a life that is lived in harmony with the Creator, it is attractive. This attraction can be used as a way to point people to the goodness of God. This is what God designed the church to do. As Paul describes it:
Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. | Ephesians 4:15–16
Instead of trying to avoid the magical sin fruit, we should be growing our love for Christ – through that – our love for everything else. God will use this love to undo some of what happened when Adam and Eve brought sin into this world. Through this, the body of Christ – His people – will grow in number and in maturity. They will be reordered. He will be glorified through it.