IN THE BEGINNING

Separate Not Equal
“God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness… [Then] God made two great lights—the greater light to have dominion over the day and the lesser light to have dominion over the night” (Gen 1:4,16). This New Year begins for me with a new trek through the Word of our God using the Holman Christian Standard Bible. Though I’ve read Genesis over a dozen times before, only now did I notice what’s always been plain before my eyes. God begins with separation—the heavens from the earth, light from darkness, earth from sky and land from water. And that separation does not create equality.

“But you ask: ‘How have you loved us?’ ‘Wasn’t Esau Jacob’s brother?... Even so, I loved Jacob, but I hated Esau” (Mal 1:2,3). Love is separate and not equal. That is, if my love for my wife is equal to my love for others, then it is not love. If my love for a stranger’s child is the same as my love for my own, then it is not love. If my love for God is the same as my love for my family or my friends, then it is not love (Luk 14:26). “In love, He predestined us to be adopted through Jesus Christ” (Eph 1:4,5) means that before God separated anything in this earth, He first set apart those who would be His. In love, He separated His children from His creation in order to do good works which He prepared in advance for them to do.

The First Command
“Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it” (Gen 1:28). God created us in His image so that we might reproduce His image on this earth. The problem with Adam was that he “listened to [his] wife’s voice and ate from the tree” (Gen 3:17) and therefore every person born of Adam’s fleshly loins is “fathered in his [Adam’s] likeness, according to his image” (Gen 5:3). Because “every scheme his mind thought was nothing but evil all the time” (Gen 6:5), God separated those who followed Him from those who did not by either taking them away from the world (Enoch) or taking the world away from them (Noah). When Noah left the salvation of the Ark, the same command was given that righteous drunkard, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Gen 9:1). Sinners beget sinners and bred them to sin until…

“The first Adam became a living being; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit” (1Cor 15:45). Jesus, this last Adam, “By His own choice, He gave us a new birth by the message of truth so that we would be the firstfruits of His creatures” (Jas 1:3). This command, “Be fruitful and multiply according to your kind,” has always been obeyed with or apart from our conscious concession. The sons of Adam will multiply sinners to subdue this world. The sons of God, however, will make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey everything the second Adam has commanded us. We are the firstfruits of God’s creation. Are we being fruitful by reproducing disciples of the second Adam?

The First Sin
“In fact, God knows that when you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:5). The best lies wear the same clothes as truth. In fact, Adam and Eve were already created in God’s image and possessed the ability to discern good from evil. God said, “You are free to eat from any tree of the garden but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Gen 2:16,17). Good = free to eat. Bad = not this one. The serpent pointed his tail at the tree in the middle of the garden and caused the couple to believe they could choose to outsmart God.

“God, who saved us and called us… not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began. This has now been made evident through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus” (2Tim 1:9,10). Before the beginning, God saved us by His grace through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ which would come thousands of years later on Calvary. The sin wasn’t that they ate the fruit but rather that they listened to deception and thought that they could choose to be like God of their own free will. God said to do it His way and they asked to do it according to theirs. God created us to be like Him. Sin is when we try to make Him like us.