9/1/2024 Word Count – 735 Reading Time – 3.3 minutes

I can’t find any clear information on where Lucifer’s sin and subsequent expulsion from heaven falls in relation to the creation of our universe and the creation of man. It seems reasonable to assume the fall of Lucifer took place in advance of the making of Eve since Lucifer, now Satan, was at work in the Garden of Eden. He either took on the form of the serpent or influenced the serpent who tempted Eve.

If we accept that free will, self-awareness, and pride were all necessary components to the commission of sin, choosing to disobey God, we can also accept that these were inherent in the psychological make-up of Adam and Eve. Up to the point of Eve’s temptation we see no reference to free will in the garden. Nevertheless, I consider it to be implied through God’s creation of the primary law imposed on Adam and Eve. Genesis 2 : 17; “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not ear of it…”. (I wonder where, or if, we would be today if Eve had resisted the serpent’s temptation, or if Adam had resisted Eve’s.).

In any case, Adam and Eve’s act of disobedience was willful and against God’s law, which makes it sin. As we follow sin’s progression through the Bible we see Lucifer succumbing to pride and sinning. We also see him influencing, by some estimations, 30,000 angels to also follow him in sin. We then see Lucifer, now Satan, influencing Eve to sin. Eve then influenced Adam to sin.

Up to this point the sins have been sins of willful disobedience to God. However, the next sin we read about in Genesis 4:9 – 16 is Cain’s murder of his brother Abel. In this act we see that sin has escalated from disobedience to bloodshed. And my understanding, from what I read, is that sin continued to be so pervasive and insidious throughout mankind that it became necessary for God to perform a near complete extinction of humans. This, of course, being the flood in which a very small sample of spiritually healthy humans were preserved. This healthy sample, Noah and his family, were used to start a new strain of humans possessing a higher resistance to sin.

If this is beginning to sound like the process of curing a virus I believe it is for good reason. Sin is a virus. It is highly contagious, vicious, and deadly. While its symptoms are evident in our physical being and behavior, it is truly an infection of the spirit that kills the soul.

The Israelites, God’s chosen people, were descendants of Noah, the sin resistant strain of humans. God worked on the Israelites to purify and distil their spirits down to create an antivirus, Jesus Christ. Jesus is the antidote to the virus of sin, and we need to be inoculated in order to survive this infection that is destroying our spirit and condemning our souls to death.

I hasten to add that the Israelites are probably no less prone to sin than anyone else. But they were the initial recipients of God’s law which provided the formula that eventually led to the perfection of  one human spirit in Jesus Christ.

Romans 1:3-4; “Concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh and declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.”

Timothy 2:5; “For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Jesus Christ,”.

From these 2 passages we learn that Jesus was totally unique in that He was human and also the Son of God. The reason for Jesus was to serve as a mediator between God and man. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, a mediator is –  “One that mediates, especially one that reconciles differences between disputants.”

Because humans are infected from birth with sin, and because God desires an intimate relationship with us, we need the work of Jesus Christ to enable us to reconcile our differences with God if we wish to enjoy the eternal life that is promised to those who believe.

1 John 5:13; “ I write these things to you who  believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.”