The Cause of the Human Condition and its Remedy

The Cause of the Human Condition and its Remedy

Dr. John P. Davis

The Bible does not offer a definitive explanation of how evil entered the universe. We know from the Bible that Satan, a created being, is evil and that he existed prior to the fall of man. Scriptures do not explain how Satan became evil. They simply present him as evil and as God’s opponent as he enters the stage in the drama of human life.

Satan’s method of deceit in the Garden of Eden brings about the fall of humanity and sets the pattern for all future deceptions. In the temptation (Genesis 3:1-5) Satan entices Eve to eat of the forbidden Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil. God had set this test so that Adam and Eve would experience moral discernment at the highest level of obedience.

Satan asserted doubt concerning God’s ways and he attacked God’s character by implying that God was unfair in not giving Adam and Eve access to every tree. He focused on the negative prohibition. Eve succumbed to Satan’s wiles. She misquoted God’s permission, God’s prohibition, and God’s penalty. She made the fatal mistake of not being careful with the Word of God.

Satan responded by blatantly denying God’s word. Satan essentially said, 1) You won’t reap what you sow; 2) God fears, rather than loves man; 3) You can be independent of God; 4) There is efficacy in things; 5) Don’t trust God’s Word. Satan propagates these same lies today.

Satan succeeded in taking Eve’s focus from God to self. Now that God is questioned, she trusts her own reasoning and Eve acts by sight rather than by faith. She sees; she covets; she takes; she draws others (Adam) into sin. The consequences of sin (3:7-12) are separation, alienation, and anguish. There had been harmony between God and man; man and man; man and animals; man and land. Now all harmony is gone as God’s word and order are violated. The woman listens to Satan, the man listens to the woman, and then the man attempts to have God listen to him.

Every human is infected by the sin of the parents of the human race. As Romans 5:12 states: Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned.

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Living on the Brink of Eternity

We may live today assuming that we have plenty of time to think about cleansing, forgiveness,  serving God, and eternity. Unpredictable, calamitous, life-ending events remind us that we all live either on the brink of eternity with Christ or on the brink of eternity in hell.

None who perish in disaster enter upon the day with the forethought that as a Christian this may be my last day and I’ll meet my Savior, or as one who rejects the Lordship of Christ, today my life will end abruptly  and I will wake up in the torments of hell.

We all need to be reminded of the powerful words of Jonathan Edwards in his message “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”

It is no security to a natural man, that he is now in health, and that he does not see which way he should now immediately go out of the world by any accident, and that there is no visible danger in any respect in his circumstances. The manifold and continual experience of the world in all ages, shows this is no evidence, that a man is not on the very brink of eternity, and that the next step will not be into another world. The unseen, unthought-of ways and means of persons going suddenly out of the world are innumerable and inconceivable. Unconverted men walk over the pit of hell on a rotten covering, and there are innumerable places in this covering so weak that they will not bear their weight, and these places are not seen. The arrows of death fly unseen at noon-day; the sharpest sight cannot discern them.

Yes every step we take in this world apart from Christ is on a collapsing road that travels over the pit of hell. The surface of the road is deceptive because it looks stable; it leads to pleasure, and is crowded with people who seem to be without care.

But the foundation is collapsing and, inevitably, maybe not today, nor tomorrow, but one day, the road will fail and the wide and hungry mouth of hell will consume those without Christ.

Listen to the words of Jesus:

Matthew 7:13-14 13 ¶ “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. 14 For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.

John 10:9 9 I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved….

John 14:6 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

No one can promise that we will not perish in some unforeseen, inescapable calamity. The promise is that when we do die, by whatever means, we will live with Christ forever.