What if...
In Genesis 3: 16-19 God said this to the man and the woman after they were deceived and disobeyed God falling into sin. “To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply, Your pain in childbirth, In pain you shall deliver children; Yet your desire will be for your husband, And he shall rule over you.”
Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; Cursed is the ground because of you; With hard labour you shall eat from it All the days of your life.
“Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; Yet you shall eat the plants of the field; By the sweat of your face You shall eat bread, Until you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.”
This section of Genesis shows God’s judgement on mankind for falling into sin but this is a New Beginning when it could so easily have been an ending. If I were God I would have thought “If I make the man and woman infertile then this will be the end of mankind in one generation. If I shorten their lives to seventy years they will be a memory in only seven decades.” Experiment failed and experiment over.
Given the hard lives that sinful men live, the frightful way they treat each other, their propensity to sin, wickedness and war. Why did God decide to be merciful to mankind. Why did He let us live? Understanding how God hates sin and wickedness why would he fight so hard to bring about a pathway that would rectify the fall into sin? Why would He tolerate the carnage of mankind in sin as he laboured to save a remnant of mankind for another age?
Can it be that He loves mankind, that he feels responsible for us even though our ancestral Father and Mother chose to sin and disobey Him? Is it truly a case of the end justifies the means. to bring a chosen people out of sin, out of darkness and into His glorious light? To sacrifice a part of Himself, Jesus coming and living as a man, performing a ministry of truth and miracles, being rejected, beaten and crucified unto death and resurrected unto Eternal Life. That those of mankind who believe on Jesus Christ may receive eternal life themselves.
Then the Father sending not only the Son, but at the behest of the Son then sending the Holy Spirit to dwell within those who believe on Jesus Christ, still sinners, enabling the new believers to be baptised into the remission of sins and the newness of life with Christ Jesus. Hidden with Christ in God.
So we go from the possibility of a short life as a race, because that is what could have happened if God had taken the short option on mankind. To a covenant and pathway to restoration into the family of God. We are redeemed, unfallen and people of God’s own possession. A people belonging to God.
What an amazing God we have. Who so loved us that He gave His only Son, Jesus Christ, that whoever believes on Him; shall not perish but inherit eternal life. For we have all sinned, all fallen short of the glory of God. There is none righteous not even one. For the wages of sin is death but the freely given gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord. Hallelujah!
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