The bible teaches us that when Jesus died we died.
When Adam and Eve sinned their nature (heart) changed.
Formerly it was good and inclined to obey God.
Yet their will was free and not tested yet.
When they wilfully disobeyed God their heart became rebellious.
Their nature became sinful.
As a result of that every person that was born after them had a sinful nature as well.
We were not made as pure separate individual beings.
Part of the purpose of that is that we could pass blessings on.
Adam was not supposed to pass on the curses to us that were the result of sin.
He was made to pass on the blessing that comes from surrendering to God and partnering with him.
If he had eaten from the Tree of Life I belief that is what would have happened.
We would never have known the destruction that sin brought into this world.
When he would have eaten from the Tree of Life he really would have taken part of Jesus who is our Source of life.
He would wilfully have chosen to partner with God in submission, trust and love.
Now do not blame Adam…
Although after Adam we were all born with a sinful nature that tends to rebel against God we do all have a responsibility of how we live our lives from a certain age on.
God totally made up for Adam’s rebellion.
He gave us Jesus who paid the rightful penalty for all of our sin.
When Jesus died God considered us as having died with Jesus.
This does not only speak of how Jesus died in our place and thereby paid the full rightful penalty for our sin.
This is quiet a mystery that we may not be able to fully understand, but our old rebellious sinful nature died with Jesus on that cross.
God had placed us in Jesus when He died.
And when He rose from the dead so did we.
Not as the same person we were when we died though.
We became one with Jesus, our spirit united with his.
And that is how we now have a new nature as believers.
We have been given a new heart. One that is willing to obey.
However the bible teaches us that we have to reckon ourselves as having been crucified with Jesus.
That means that we do not live in our own strength, but in his.
It means we have his heart and mind inside of us and we are abe to love the way He does.
We can now put Jesus on by faith, as I wrote before, because our old self (old nature) with its selfish tendencies died.
But in order to experience this we need to actively apply it through faith.
We need to belief that we were crucified with Jesus.
We need to consider ourselves as having died with him and not live for ourselves anymore.
And when we do we rise from our death ways of living.
From then on we do not live for ourselves any more but only for the One that gave his life for ours.
This enables us to love others the way we are loved by our Maker and Savior.
To be continued…
Creator's Joy 