Why is there Sin in My Spirit?

In order to answer this question, we have to go back to the beginning of time, when God made everything that exists, and He made it all good (see Genesis 1). When He made the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, He made them “very good” (Genesis 1:31). Life was perfect. The earth was perfect and never grew a single weed. The climate was perfect, so Adam and Eve didn’t need any clothes. There was no danger in the world, and people were as comfortable around lions as they were around dogs and cats. But best of all, friendship with God was perfect. In fact, God would take on human form and walk with Adam and Eve in their garden home.
Meanwhile, in another part of the universe, someone was challenging God. Lucifer, one of God’s angels, was starting to think that, as wonderful a life as God had given him, things could be better. He could be like God and do away with God. He convinced others of the angels that they could live without God, too, and heaven experienced rebellion. Of course, it was nothing but a delusion that any of God’s creations could ever be as great as God, and God threw Lucifer, whose name then became Satan, out of heaven.

Satan was ticked. He still wanted to be a ruler – of something. Heaven was out. Where else was there?

There was the earth. God owned it, but He had given authority over it to man (for more on this, see If God is such a good God, why is there no much evil in the world?): 

Genesis 1
26  Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” 

Psalm 115
16  The highest heavens belong to the Lord, but the earth he has given to man. 

Psalm 8
3  When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
4  what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?
5  You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.
6  You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet:
7  all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field,
8  the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.

If Satan could get man to give him that authority, then Satan would have authority over the earth. So he came up with a plan. He approached Adam and Eve as a talking serpent and put forward to them the same idea he had come up with himself back in heaven. Did they really need God? They were good enough to be like God. Then Satan, knowing that the only thing God had told Adam and Eve not to do was to eat from one single tree in the garden out of all the hundreds of trees there probably were, tempted them by saying that God was just trying to keep them from being all they could be. God knew that if they ate from that one tree, they would be like God, knowing good and evil (Genesis 3:5).[1] They didn’t really need God to live good enough lives; they could be good enough all on their own. Sounds like religion, doesn’t it? If you have ever wondered where the idea came from that people can be good enough for God – only without God – this is where it all started.
Unfortunately for us, Adam and Eve bought it and ate from that tree. What Satan had said partially came true. Now they knew evil and how to do all kinds of wrong things. Unfortunately, they couldn’t always figure out the good part, and world history has proven that over and over again. However, what God had told them would happen if they ate from that tree came perfectly true. God had said: “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die” (Genesis 2:16-17). “Wait a minute”, you might say. “Adam lived 800 years and had children. He didn’t die when he ate the fruit; same for Eve.” Actually, Adam and Eve did die. They died in a very significant way. Oh, their bodies continued on, and their personalities remained intact. But their spirits died. That part of them which was like God, who is spirit (John 4:24),[2] and by which they related to God, died as a result of their sin. Then, when children were born to Adam and Eve, they were born in Adam’s likeness and his image (Genesis 5:3),[3] in other words, also spiritually dead. And so death entered the world through one man and passed to all men, and all have sinned ever since (Romans 5:12).[4]
Death is an interesting concept in the Scriptures. When we think of death, we think of that time when our body stops working, and our soul and spirit pass on to someplace else, hopefully heaven. But the Bible teaches that death is a two-step process. The first death is what we have just described – the separation of our inner person from our body, with the result that the body stops functioning. But there is a second death: “The lake of fire is the second death” (Revelation 20:14). If that sounds ominous, it’s because it’s the scariest thing that could happen to a human being. The lake of fire is described elsewhere in the Bible as the “eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:14). Not only will the devil and his angels be thrown into this place for all eternity, but death and hell will be thrown in there as well: “Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death” (Revelation 20:14). Now think of spending eternity in a place where the devil, demons (the devil’s angels), death and hell are thrown. But in the judgment, at the end of time, God will say to all sinners: “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels . . . Then they will go away to eternal punishment …” (Matthew 25:41 and 46).
This is about the worst news that anyone can hear. Sin keeps God out of our lives. Sin reaps wages: when we pass into eternity, we will face the second death. And we all have sin. Is there any hope for us? There is great hope. It is called “the gospel”.

Sharon Currens