Understands He Is A Sinful Rebel Who Needs A Savior - Heroes of the Bible Devotional
Understands He Is A Sinful Rebel Who Needs A Savior
A HERO’S TALE
Think about the most beautiful places on earth: Maui. Tahiti. The Bahamas. The French Riviera. Now imagine a place a thousand times better, where the natural beauty was surpassed only by the fact that God himself walked there.
That was the Garden of Eden.
Adam and Eve had it made. As the Garden’s only residents, humanity’s first man and woman lived in a literal paradise on earth —a perfect, sinless home where God personally interacted with them (see Genesis 3:8). What a life!
But Adam and Eve chose to forfeit this amazing experience. When Satan tempted them to disobey God by eating the Garden’s forbidden fruit, they decided to rebel against their Creator. They chose their way instead of God’s. (You can read about this catastrophe, also known as the Fall, in Genesis 3.)
So sin and death entered the world. Man was separated from God, and God’s perfect creation fell into disorder.
DECODING THE MESSAGE
Adam and Eve really blew it. But we can’t be too hard on them, because we eventually would’ve messed up too.
Ever since Adam and Eve’s original sin, we’ve all sinned. Sin is breaking God’s laws, and the Bible says that we are all sinners (see Romans 3:23). In fact, we’re born into sin (see Psalm 51:5). We’ve inherited a sinful nature from Adam. From the moment we come into the world, our natural tendency is to shake our fists at our Creator and say, “I don’t want to follow your rules. I know best!”
That’s not only foolish; it’s downright wicked. Being just and holy, God could have chosen to destroy us. He could’ve thought, You know what? These people aren’t worth my time. I made them and gave them everything they need, and now they’re rebelling against me. Time to wipe them out.
But God didn’t do that. Rather than react in angry justice (which he had every right to do), God chose to show us undeserved love and mercy by providing a path of salvation. He did that by sending his perfect Son, Jesus Christ, to die for our sins.
GOD SHOWED HIS GREAT LOVE FOR US BY SENDING CHRIST TO DIE FOR US WHILE WE WERE STILL SINNERS.
—Romans 5:8
We are all born as sinful rebels who desperately need a Savior. Praise God that he gave us exactly what we needed, not what we deserved!
BATTLE PLAN
Read Ephesians 2:1-10. It’s a wonderful passage that shows how much we needed God and what he’s done for us through Christ.
