The World and the Word

                                                         The Wheat and the Chaff

Every human has a dual nature. God created man in His own image; that is, with some of His attributes such as love and faith. Genesis 1:27; Romans 12:3. Whatever God creates lasts forever. He can never lose anything He has ever created. Ecclesiastes 3:14. God warned Adam and Eve that if they sinned by eating the forbidden fruit, they would become subject to spiritual death. Genesis 2:7. As soon as Adam and Eve disobeyed God, Satan took advantage of that weakness and injected spiritual death into the beings of Adam and Eve. Genesis 3:7. To become aware of one's physical and spiritual nakedness before God is to become aware of one's physical and spiritual death. Since every human has inherited spiritual death from Adam and Eve, then every human possesses a dual nature; that is, a good life created in God's image which can never die and a spiritual death which is foreign to humans. Luke 20:38; Genesis 3:20; Romans 5:12.

Adam and Eve disobeyed God because He had given them free will which allowed them to choose whatever they desired. Satan desires to overthrow and murder God and take His place. Isaiah 14:12-14. Satan believed that God had made a huge mistake when He gave free will to Adam and Eve, and if God can make mistakes then He cannot be Almighty which caused Satan to believe that he could find a way to murder God. John 8:44. Satan believed that by injecting spiritual death into humans which causes them to sin, he could eventually annul the spiritual life of at least one human that God created and loves, and thereby prove that God's Love can fail. Satan believed that if God can fail, then Satan would eventually find a way to murder Him. Job 1:6-12; Job 2:1-10; I Corinthians 13:8.

Job represents the fate of all humans. Job had freely chosen to strictly adhere to the good life that God had put into him, and so God had judged him to be as perfect as a sinful person can be. Job 1:8. When Satan told God that he would cause Job "to curse God and die," Satan meant that he would annul Job's spiritual life and cause him to become as totally evil as Satan is. But God had put a faith in Job that could not fail, and God has put His faith in every human that cannot fail no matter how evil they may become. Romans 12:3. But human faith would have failed and God would have lost humans to evil and spiritual death forever if He had not come to earth Himself to suffer that evil and spiritual death in man's place. II Corinthians 5:21; Hebrews 2:9. Job realized that his faith could not fail when God revealed to him that he had a Redeemer in Job 19:25-27.

God allowed Satan to attempt to directly murder Him when the sin and evil of mankind nailed Jesus to a cross in 31 A.D. I Corinthians 13:8. But Christ's Love proved to be triumphant over evil and spiritual death when He rose from the dead to rescue all humans from spiritual death. Hebrews 2:9-14; I Timothy 4:10; I Timothy 6:13; II Timothy 1:10; I Corinthians 15:26; I Corinthians 15:22; Luke 20:38; John 11:25; John 12:47. God has to save all humans because He can never lose anything that He has ever created and loves. Ecclesiastes 3:14; I Corinthians 13:8.

Sin causes spiritual death which is totally evil, and spiritual death, in turn, causes sin. It is a vicious cycle. Romans 5:12. The evil part of human nature continuously influences the good image of God in human nature, and because of free will, causes it to sin. Humans possess no power whatsoever to cleanse themselves of the filthiness of this vicious cycle. This condition makes the good lives of humans subject to eternal spiritual death. But because of His Almighty Love, Christ possesses the power to rescue all humans from sin and spiritual death by suffering their sins and spiritual deaths in their place. Christ also gained complete victory over all sin and evil by His resurrection from the dead in order to liberate all humans from the sin that causes spiritual death and from the eternal spiritual death that causes sin. Hebrews 2:9; II Timothy 1:10; I Corinthians 15:26; II Corinthians 5:21; I Corinthians 15:22; Revelation 20:14; Revelation 22:11-12.