Thoughts in Worship

Message Magazine's Online Devotional for Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Audio Link: https://www.spreaker.com/user/reachmanyradio/thoughts-in-worship-04-24-2018

This is devotional thought number 8 in our devotional series titled, “The Gospel According to Paul.”

“For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.” (Romans 5:19).

Have I ever told you that God loves you? How do I know? The Bible says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16). Why did our heavenly Father have to go to such lengths to show His love and save us from our sins? The Bible further says, “Even every one that is called by my name: For I have created him for my glory, I have formed him; yea, I have made him.” (Isaiah 43:7). When God created the world and all that is in it, He crowned His miraculous act by creating a perfect man and a perfect woman in His image and in His likeness (Genesis 1:26-27). The two, together, reflected the image of God. This was an honor above all honors. This was His original act of love, but something went terribly wrong. Eve was deceived into relinquishing her relationship with God and Adam, seeing this, jumped headlong into willful separation from God. “For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.” (1 Timothy 2:13–14). Since Adam was created first, and represented all humanity, his choice to sin became a genetic predisposition to sinning to all who would be born after him. As I said, God created us in His likeness, but something happened when Adam sinned. “This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created. And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth:” (Genesis 5:1–3). Adam was created in God’s image and likeness. We who were born after Adam sinned, were born after Adam’s sinful likeness.

This is where our theme text becomes so important to us. Some of us think life is unfair, as though God is charging us with the crimes of our ancestors. However, the Bible says, “The person who sins is the one who will die. The child will not be punished for the parent’s sins, and the parent will not be punished for the child’s sins. Righteous people will be rewarded for their own righteous behavior, and wicked people will be punished for their own wickedness.” (Ezekiel 18:20, NLT). What we inherited from Adam was weakness. Is this fair or unfair? Before you answer, reread today’s theme passage and couple it with the following: “When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned. Yes, people sinned even before the law was given. But it was not counted as sin because there was not yet any law to break. Still, everyone died—from the time of Adam to the time of Moses—even those who did not disobey an explicit commandment of God, as Adam did. Now Adam is a symbol, a representation of Christ, who was yet to come. But there is a great difference between Adam’s sin and God’s gracious gift. For the sin of this one man, Adam, brought death to many. But even greater is God’s wonderful grace and his gift of forgiveness to many through this other man, Jesus Christ. And the result of God’s gracious gift is very different from the result of that one man’s sin. For Adam’s sin led to condemnation, but God’s free gift leads to our being made right with God, even though we are guilty of many sins. For the sin of...