Why is there Sin in my Spirit?

We have learned two important words: sin and sins. They sound almost the same, but they mean something very different. Do you remember what each of them means? 

“Sins” means:  

“Sin” means:  

We were all born with sin in us, and because of it, we do wrong things. But the Bible says that God made everything in our world – including people. And He made everything good. So why is there sin in us? Where did it come from? To understand that, let’s go back to the beginning of time, to when God made the first man and the first woman.
The name of the first man was Adam. The name of the first woman was Eve. Adam and Eve were never born the way we were. Because they were the first people, there was no one to be their Mummy and Daddy, so God made them Himself, and He made them already grown up. He made them perfect. And He loved them a lot. God loved being with them so much that He used to visit them in the form of a man, and He would walk with them and talk with them and just enjoy being with them. And Adam and Eve enjoyed Him very much. When God wasn’t walking with them in the form of a man, they could still talk to Him because God made Adam and Eve in a very special way.
When God made Adam and Eve, He gave them a body. Can you point to your body? He also gave them a soul. Your soul is the person you are inside your body. Is there a really neat person inside your body? God gave Adam and Eve something else that was very, very special. He gave them a spirit. You can’t see your spirit just like you can’t see your soul. It’s inside your body. It’s the part of you that can talk with God and hear Him talk to you. We don’t usually hear God with our ears. We hear Him speaking to our spirit, inside us. Our spirit is also the part of us that can feel God’s love and that knows He is with us. We don’t see God with our eyes, but if we know He is with us, we know that in our spirit. So our spirit is very special because it’s the part of us that knows God. Adam and Eve had a spirit and, when God wasn’t with them in the form of a man, they could talk with Him and hear Him anyway, in their spirit.
God had made the earth, where Adam and Eve would live. He made the earth perfect so they would have a perfect home. All the animals got along together. The weather was so good that Adam and Eve never needed to wear clothes. And they had God. It was a great life!
But in another part of the universe, something wasn’t so great. In heaven, God had made a beautiful angel called Lucifer, and many, many other angels. But Lucifer became unhappy in heaven. It’s hard to imagine how anyone could be unhappy in heaven, isn’t it, because heaven is a perfect place? But Lucifer was unhappy. He was starting to think that, as wonderful as life was in heaven, things could be better. He wanted to be like God and do away with God. Then he would be the most important person in heaven. He convinced other angels that they could live without God, too, and that would be a better way to live. And so they started a war in heaven against God. It never occurred to them that God was way more powerful than they were, and there was no way they could win a war with Him. They lost their fight with God, and they had to leave heaven. But where would they go?
One other place in the universe looked interesting – earth. Earth looked especially interesting to Lucifer because He wanted power. He had wanted as much power as God had in heaven, and he still wanted it. He had lost when he tried to get as much power as God in heaven. But maybe he would have better luck on earth. There was someone on earth with power – Adam and Eve.
What kind of power did Adam and Eve have? When God made them, He gave them the earth, and He told them that they could rule it. They could run things on earth however they wanted to. Of course, they loved God so much, they would run it the way He wanted. And if they needed help, they could always ask Him, and He would be there for them. Nothing could possibly go wrong. Perfect people who loved God were running things on the earth. But God gave Adam and Eve a warning that something could go wrong. He picked one fruit tree out of the hundreds of fruit trees around them and said: “Don’t eat the fruit from this tree. If you do, you will die.”

There wasn’t anything wrong with the fruit on that tree. God had made all the trees, and He said that what He had made was good. It wasn’t hard to avoid eating from that tree – there were so many others to eat from. But every time they saw it, they would remember how much they loved God and they would look somewhere else for food just because God wanted it that way and they could give Him this one thing He wanted because they loved Him.

Lucifer visited the earth one day, and tried to figure out how he could get to be the ruler there instead of Adam and Eve. He realized that God had told them not to eat from the one tree. “Hmmm,” he thought. “What if I got them to obey me instead of God? Then I would be the one with power over them. I would be the ruler of the earth.” But how to do it? Adam and Eve loved God. They obeyed Him because they wanted to give Him something that pleased Him. How to change their minds? Finally, he came up with a plan.

            Lucifer took on the form of a snake in the garden.

He got close to Adam and Eve and began talking with them. The Bible never does say if animals talked back when Adam and Eve were alive or if this was something Adam and Eve had never seen before. If they had never seen an animal talk, that would have really grabbed their attention. Whatever they thought about a talking snake, they were interested enough to have a conversation. Lucifer said through the snake: “I hear God has told you that you can’t eat from any of the trees He has made.” That was only partly true. God had told them they couldn’t eat from just one tree; they could eat from all of the others. Eve decided to correct Him, and she said: “God told us we could eat from any tree we want to, but we can’t eat from this one or even touch it, or we’ll die.” Now Eve was getting confused. She knew it was just one tree she wasn’t supposed to eat from, but God had never said that she and Adam couldn’t touch it. Lucifer saw that she was getting confused. That was good. He could use that to his advantage. So he said to Adam and Eve: “You won’t die. God doesn’t want you to eat from this tree because He knows that, if you do, you will become like Him, knowing good and evil, and He doesn’t want that.” Would they buy the lie? The lie that they could be like God and do away with God?

Adam and Eve considered.
Eve looked at the tree. She realized that the fruit on it was, in fact, good for eating. It looked harmless enough. And if it could make her as wise as God, wouldn’t that be a good thing? Against God’s clear warning, she decided to try it. She ate some, and she encouraged Adam to do the same.
Then something terrible happened. All that God had warned them of came true. He had told them that the very moment they ate, they would die. Their bodies didn’t die. Adam lived to be 930 years old. Eve lived a long while after as well. Their souls didn’t die. They continued to think and feel and make decisions. But their spirits – that part of them that was like God and that allowed them to talk with God and to love Him – those died as soon as they ate. They had made a decision to live without God, and God gave them what they wanted. With dead spirits, they could no longer be close to God.
Something else that was terrible also happened. They had obeyed Lucifer. Now they were no longer the rulers on the earth. Lucifer was. And although they had thought he was a friend, they were soon to find out that Lucifer had only come to them to get their power. He didn’t love them at all. In fact, he hated them. And all he wanted to do was to make their lives miserable. Which he had already begun to do. Adam and Eve would also discover that Lucifer had another name. That other name was Satan. He was completely evil, and they had given everything away to him. What would they do?
There was nothing they could do. What had been done was done. But God had a plan to rescue them. God had not been surprised then Adam and Eve disobeyed Him. God knows everything that will happen. He knew this would happen. And He had a plan. A plan to rescue Adam and Eve from all that had happened to them and to put an end to Satan’s power on the earth. That plan was the gospel.

Sharon Currens