Monday, April 4, 2011
John 10:10 I have come that (you) may have life, and have it to the full.
YOU MAY HAVE LIFE
When Adam and Eve were created they enjoyed an intimate, loving relationship with God. Their lives in the original world were perfect in every way. Fashioned in God's image they had a perfect knowledge of God's holy will and were blessed with the perfect desire to glorify Him by walking in His commandments with joyful and grateful hearts. This was life as God intended it to be ... life to the full!
All that changed with the Fall. God had made it clear: "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die." When Adam and Eve sinned they died. They lost the perfect, loving relationship they had previously enjoyed with Him. They and all their descendants became subject to the ruinous effects of sin: sickness, sorrow, problems of every kind, and death. "The wages of sin is death."
Thanks be to God this isn't the end of the story! In His love for fallen mankind He promised to send a Savior to counteract and reverse the deadly effects of the Fall into sin. He sent Jesus His Son to restore God's holy image and bring us back into a loving relationship with Him that will never be spoiled again.
Christ, the Life of all the living, Christ, the Death of death, our foe,
Who, Thyself for me once giving To the darkest depths of woe,--
Through Thy sufferings, death, and merit I eternal life inherit:
Thousand, thousand thanks shall be, Dearest Jesus, unto Thee.
(The Lutheran Hymnal, 151:1)
