The World and the Word

            The Difference between Sin and Evil

In John 12:32, Jesus prophesied that His sacrifice on the cross would draw all men to Him. Jesus referred directly to Numbers 21:5-9 where God sent fiery serpents among the Israelites to kill those who refused to have faith. The fiery part of the serpents symbolized God's wrath against evil. The unbelieving Israelites who were bitten and died symbolized the dead and evil spiritual deaths of all unrepentant unbelievers whom God will cast into the lake of fire. Revelation 20:15. When the people began to repent and believe, then God instructed Moses to make a fiery serpent so that those who looked to it would be saved. All of the unrepentant believers had already died before God told Moses to raise the brazen serpent. All of the repentant believers looked to the brazen serpent after the deaths of the unrepentant unbelievers, and they all were saved. All of this means that Jesus prophesied that He will save all living humans because He will cause all of them to look to His cross with faith. Sooner or later, all living humans will look to Christ to be saved. John 5:24; Revelation 5:11-14.

In Genesis 3:14-21, God did not curse Adam and Eve or any of their descendants because of their sin and evil. God cursed only the Devil and the ground. God punished Adam and Eve and all their descendants with temporary lives of pain and hard labor until their physical deaths, but He meant to provide a way to save all of them from eternal death. I Corinthians 15:26; I Corinthians 15:22; Genesis 3:15. God can never lose anything He has ever created and loves. Ecclesiastes 3:14; Romans 11:29.

God informed Adam that upon his physical death he would be put into the cursed ground where his physical body would dissolve. If Adam died as an unrepentant unbeliever, then God would have to consign his living spirit that God had created in His image to one of the cursed regions of death within the ground. Revelation 20:13. God sentences all unrepentant unbelievers to one of the three regions of death after they physically die. Hebrews 9:27. But since God had not cursed Adam and Eve or any of their descendants, then His promise to them that He would send them a Savior would have to apply to all humans. Genesis 3:15. God saved Adam and Eve by His grace, but He will also save all the living souls of all unbelievers consigned to one of the regions of death by the use of His fiery wrath against evil and a renewal of their faith as symbolized by Noah's burnt offering sacrifice as recorded in Genesis 8:20-21. Genesis 3:21; Revelation 5:11-14; Revelation 20:5; Revelation 21:1-5.

Living humans confined to one of the regions of death become subject to the Devil's desire to keep them there forever; that is, an eternal death. God can never lose anything He has ever created and loves, certainly not to the Devil. Ecclesiastes 3:14. But in a sense, these unrepentant living humans have become temporarily dead. But Christ made these spiritual deaths temporary because He took their eternal deaths on Himself on the cross. Hebrews 2:9. But in order to obtain a lesser form of salvation, these unbelievers must return to the repentance and faith that God put into them when He created them in His image. Romans 12:3. God will cause all of them to choose to repent and believe in the Lamb of God as prophesied in Isaiah 45:21-24; Psalm 107:10-14; Philippians 2:9-11; and Revelation 5:11-14. Jesus clearly taught that He holds the power to save those who believe in Him even after their physical deaths. John 11:25. Christ proved that He has this power when He took the keys of Death and Hell away from the Devil. Revelation 1:17-18. God does nothing halfway. Christ will absolutely crush the Devil and all of His evil works. Genesis 3:15; I John 3:8. God will raise all living humans confined to the regions of death to a recreated, righteous life on His recreated earth. Revelation 20:5; Revelation 21:1-5; John 5:28-29; II Timothy 4:1; I Timothy 6:13; I Corinthians 15:22; Revelation 22:11-12.

God instructed Adam to call his wife's name Eve "because she was the mother of all living." Genesis 3:20. Since God can never lose anything He has created and loves, then God can never allow any living human to ever become eternally dead. Ecclesiastes 3:14; Luke 20:38. Since God must make His Word good, then He can never lose to eternal death the gift of His good image that He has put into every living human. Numbers 23:19; Romans 11:29; Revelation 21:5.

In Genesis 3:21, God provided a special form of salvation for Adam and Eve and some of their descendants. God killed and shed the blood of an animal and covered Adam and Eve with "coats of skin." God did this to symbolize that their Savior whom He had promised them would shed His blood and water on a cross to cleanse all future living humans of all their sins and evil and protect them from eternal death the moment they repented and believed in Him while they were still alive in the flesh. Genesis 3:15. Jesus promised all those whom He would save by His grace that they would pass from death to life the moment they believed that He had taken away their sins and evil. John 5:24. God will give all living humans saved by His grace complete cleansing of their soul and spirits by the blood of Jesus, cleansing of their fleshly sins by the water shed by Jesus as they daily repent of them, forgiveness, the gift of the Holy Spirit to cleanse them and guide them and comfort them, the eternal life and righteousness of Christ Himself, joint inheritance with Christ, and a home with Him in Heaven forever. Matthew 26:26-28; I John 1:9; I Corinthians 6:11; II Corinthians 5:21; John 14:16-19; Romans 8:14-17; John 17:24. For all these reasons, the spirits and souls of all believers saved by grace go straight to Heaven when they physically die. II Corinthians 5:8. God will give spiritual bodies to all believers saved by grace during the Church Age in the Rapture of the Church. II Corinthians 5:1-5.