The World and the Word

                                                 The Difference between Sin and Evil

Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This means that they came to be conscious of the good as well as the evil. One can only be conscious of the one if one is conscious of the other. Before this happened, they led blissful, innocent lives that they did not know were good. They both took their first bite of the forbidden fruit in the weakness of their free will, but they became conscious of the difference between good and evil after Satan injected evil into their inner beings. God had put some seeds of goodness in their disobedience. Eve desired to become wiser, and a better person, which happens to be a good system. Adam desired to sacrifice himself to fall to Eve's level in order to comfort her and protect her as best as he could. His action had to be good because it was symbolic of the sacrifice of Christ Himself. Romans 5:14. But their seeds of goodness within their sins did not mean that their disobedience was right. God had told them not to do it. Their disobedience allowed their lives to become open to Satan who would take advantage of their weakness in order to inject spiritual death into their inner beings which would ensure that they, and all of their descendants, would not be able to avoid sin throughout the entire history of mankind until the end of the world. God had warned them. Genesis 2:17. Evil would also ensure that the history of mankind would be one that contained tremendous suffering and pain. Genesis 3:16-19.

Had Adam and Eve eaten of the Tree of Life first, they would have immediately come to know God's majestic Holiness and His infinite Love for them. They would have instantly been able to completely reject the Devil and all evil. They would have entered into a state of grace and everlasting life with God. They would have experienced a natural transition from their earthly lives to their heavenly lives after over 900 years on the earth. Psalm 116:15. Jesus and the Apostles often referred to the deaths of God's saints as being asleep. After 900 years, Adam and Eve would have simply gone to sleep and awakened in Heaven. Adam and Eve were not in a state of grace before they sinned. They were simply in a state of innocence. They entered a state of grace after God killed an animal and clothed them in its skin. Genesis 3:21. No one ever falls from a state of grace. Romans 11:29. God also had a plan to bring some of Adam and Eve's descendants into a state of grace, and all others into a state of restored righteousness on earth through His sacrifice and resurrection for them. John 5:24; Revelation 5:11-14.

Some seeds of goodness reside in every sin of weakness. All through the Bible, God displayed His power to change sinful systems into wholly good ones by His ability to eliminate the false combinations of His elements and consistently add good elements until He had completely purified a false system. God changed Adam and Eve from a state of spiritual death into a state of being in God's grace. Genesis 3:21. God changed the story of Judah's sin with his daughter-in-law Tamar, who bore a son called Phares, into the ancestors of humanity's Savior. Genesis 38:29; Matthew 1:3. God converted the idolatrous Moabite Ruth to Judaism, and she became one of the ancestors of humanity's Savior. Ruth 1:16-17; Ruth 4:13-22. King David sinned with Bathsheba but they became two of the ancestors of humanity's Savior. Matthew 1:6. Samson led a life of sin and then deliberate disobedience of God, and God put him into hard labor in darkness which symbolized the bottomless pit, but he repented, and God gave him back his tremendous strength so that he could destroy a lot of evil people. Judges 16:21; Judges 16:27-30. God severely punished Jonah for his disobedience, and he never completely repented in his earthly life, and yet God took care of him. Jesus forgave Simon Peter when he repented of denying his Lord. The Bible is full of such stories.

But after Adam and Eve sinned in weakness, they also deliberately sinned because of the influence of evil within them. Eve knew that she had become ruined by spiritual death, and she very selfishly and cruelly desired to ruin Adam as well. Adam became selfishly afraid that he would lose his physical love with Eve. Unimaginable cruelty and horror entered into the history of the human race because of their deliberate evil. Many a person has turned his life over to practice evil because he does not understand that he can practice goodness because of the image of God within him. Luke 17:20-21; John 10:33-35. Spiritual death is totally evil. God cannot forgive total evil because it never repents. Matthew 12:31-32. God sends His Holy Spirit to call all humans who hear His gospel to repentance and faith in Christ who can save them by His grace. Romans 10:17. God sends His Holy Spirit to call all other humans to adhere to the goodness that He has put into their living souls and spirits. Those who reject the loving call of the Holy Spirit do so because they adhere to the evil, spiritual death within them that God will extract from their systems for Him to cast into the lake of fire. Revelation 20:15.

Nevertheless, God has devised a plan to save what happens to be left of the good souls and spirits of even the worst humans. Psalm 107:10-14; Revelation 5:11-14. Jesus called His disciples "friends" in John 15:15, and He even called Judas Iscariot "friend" in Matthew 26:50. Judas Iscariot refused to repent and probably went to Hell. But in the great worship service as recorded in Revelation 5:11-14, Christ will cause that which is left of his good soul and spirit to choose to repent and believe, and he will obey. As recorded in Revelation 20:5, God will resurrect even whatever happens to be left of this friend's good soul and spirit for Him to recreate with a new body to live a righteous life on His recreated earth. Revelation 21:1-5. God holds the power to change sins of deliberate evil into sins of weakness which He can forgive upon repentance and faith in Christ because one's desire to be reconciled with God engenders His Love and compassion for them. Colossians 1:15-23. But God will extract all evil which refuses to repent from the systems of all humans for Him to cast into the lake of fire. I Corinthians 3:11-15; Revelation 20:15.