You Will Surely Die

“And where I go you know, and the way you know.” Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:4-6).

Before sin became a reality in the human experience, Adam and Eve enjoyed a three-fold privilege in relation to God: (1) they enjoyed complete fellowship with God in the Garden of Eden, (2) they knew God personally and intimately, and (3) they possessed spiritual life. When they disobeyed the Lord’s command and ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, everything changed; the three-fold privilege was lost. (1) They died spiritually, immediately. (2) They became estranged from God and fearful of Him, as indicated in their hiding from Him when they heard Him walking in the Garden. (3) Having believed Satan’s lie, they were acutely aware of the guilt of their sin and tried to cover it up, as indicated in the attempt to cover their nakedness by making aprons out of fig leaves.

The Apostle Paul wrote (1 Corinthians 15:21-22), For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. The same judgment upon Adam and Even has extended to all of their descendants. There is none righteous, no, not one; there is none who understands; there is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; they have together become unprofitable; there is none who does good, no, not one. Their throat is an open tomb; with their tongues they have practiced deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips; whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; destruction and misery are in their ways; and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes (Romans 3:10-18). . . .  all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23) . . . For the wages of sin is death . . . (Romans 6:23).

The record in Genesis is telling. (Genesis 5:1-3) This is the book of the genealogy of Adam. In the day that God created man, He made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female, and blessed them and called them Mankind in the day they were created. And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and begot a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. Jesus said the same to Nicodemus, (John 3:6) That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 

Every one of us knows the loss of the three-fold privilege God created mankind to have. Therefore, every one of us has a three-fold need: (1) to be reconciled to God, (2) to have spiritual understanding restored, and (3) to have spiritual death replaced by spiritual life. All three are met by Jesus Christ whom God has sent to make the sinner spiritually alive, forgive the sin, and justify the sinner. He is the way to the Father, the truth of the Father, and the life of the Father to all who will believe in and receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Amen.

Pastor