John Tenniel
The work God does for us is to make us able to be around Him again. Remember what that incident in the Garden of Eden was all about: God gave our ancestors the choice to keep Him as God, or to eat that super-smart fruit and make little gods out of themselves. They chose to be their own little gods, and we have suffered the consequences ever since.
What are the consequences? Death, of course (Genesis 2:16-17; Romans 6:23). It means just what you think – the end of your life. It also means something worse – your separation from God forever. You see, when Adam and Eve disobeyed God, He had no choice but to throw them out of His Garden. There can never be any more than one God anywhere, but they had decided to set themselves up as rival gods. To keep from destroying them, He had to get them out of His presence (away from Him).
It’s the same with us; we inherited that “God complex” (or “sin nature”) from our ancestors, and therefore we can’t ever come close to God either in this world or in the next. Eventually our bodies wear out and die, and then our spirits move on to a place often called hell, which is a very unpleasant collecting point for every being that can’t come into the presence of God (Revelation 20:14-15, 21:8).
But this is where the story gets happy again: even at that moment when our ancestors disobeyed God the first time and brought this awful consequence (“curse”) on us all, God promised to defeat Satan, the one who started the rebellion in the first place (Genesis 3:15). God Himself promised to become one of us, suffer the death penalty of our rebellion, and return to life just to show that Satan, death, and hell had no power over Him, and no longer had power over us. That’s why the Bible says this:
For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Messiah all shall be made alive. (I Corinthians 15:21-22)
And that is the work God does for us. Messiah Yeshua, also known as Christ Jesus, is God’s answer to our dilemma. And all you have to do to benefit from His answer is believe it.
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