Last week’s sermon looked at the entry of Sin into this world; the event theologians call ‘The Fall of Man’. One of the helpful aspects of this tragic passage is that Genesis 3 gives us an excellent summary of exactly what Sin is.
To begin with, Sin is questioning God. Satan begins his temptation of humans small, with a simple question about God’s rules. Yet this quickly escalates into Satan claiming God’s word is wrong (‘you will not certainly die’), followed by questioning God’s motives (‘for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened’). The reason God put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden was to test whether Adam and Eve would follow God’s commands. Sin is always questioning God’s wisdom and/or motives.
Yet Sin is also demoting God. What does Satan mean by saying ‘you will be like God, knowing good and evil’? Adam and Eve already knew it was wrong to eat the forbidden fruit. God had told them so. As such, to ‘know’ good and evil meant to determine what was right and what was wrong themselves, rather than submit to God’s word. Once again, Sin is always declaring we know better than God.
Yet both these aspects of Sin can be placed under an umbrella category of dishonouring God. The reason God have humans the ability to reject God’s authority and sin is because if they didn’t have a choice (i.e. they were like robots, simply following their programming), then God would get no honour. Yet if Adam and Eve chose each and every day to follow God, because they loved God and believed His ways were best, God is enormously honoured.
May we remember that every time we sin, we’re declaring that either (i) God doesn’t know what he’s doing, (ii) God’s motives are questionable, or (iii) God isn’t worth obeying. Yet when we follow his word, we’re declaring that God is (i) all knowing, (ii) all loving, and (iii) totally worthy of our allegiance.
