What We Lost

Week 1: What We Lost

God is a loving God and created humanity for the purpose of being in a loving relationship with God. In order for love to exist, it must be chosen, not forced or coerced. Therefore, in order for humanity to be able to love God, God had to create humanity with the ability to choose to either love God or turn away from God. Humanity chose to turn away from God, and in so doing, was severed from the life-giving relationship with God that it was intended and designed to have. Since the separation, humanity has been living in an isolated state, cut off from God, cut off from each other, cut off from nature, immersed in the darkness of self, and unable to climb out and reconnect to God.

Outline of Study

Created for Community
Love Must be a Decision
Bad Choices
The Effects of Sin
Created For Community

Read Genesis 1-3 and answer the following questions.

In Genesis 1:26-27, how is humanity described?

In Genesis 1:28, what is humanity commissioned to do?

In Genesis 2:7, what process does God use to create man? What gives man life?

In Genesis 2:15-17, what 'law' does God instruct Adam to follow?

In Genesis 2:19-20, what relationship did Adam have with the rest of creation?

In Genesis 2:21-25, what relationship did Adam have with Eve?

In Isaiah 43:7, how does God describe humanity?

According to the Bible, God created everything for the purpose of being in a loving community with Him. Just imagine how it must have been in the beginning. Man and woman lived in such a state that they were able to have face to face relationship with God, unashamed nakedness with each other, and fearless relationship with the animal and plant kingdom (there was no eating of animals and no toil in gardening).

This is the original design. This is what everyone longs for. Every human being, and every culture, has created some version of a utopian ideal that matches this description of the original design. If this seemingly unreachable ideal is so prevalent throughout the human experience, then there must be some truth to it. This longing we share is the echo of what we once enjoyed. It is the thing for which we were created and to which our soul is drawn.

Yet, very, very few people ever experience it. Why? If God designed us for it, then what messed up the plan? Was God a bad designer? Did he make a major, cosmic blunder? After all, if He is all knowing, then He had to have known that Adam and Eve were going to blow it, so, in the end, isn’t he responsible for the mess we’re in?

Chances are you have had these questions, or have at least heard someone voice them. The answer to these questions boils down to understanding the nature of love itself.

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Love Must Be A Choice

In order for love to exist, it must be chosen. Love that is not chosen is not love at all. Purchased love is prostitution. Forced love is rape. True love is the mutual exchange of two parties that choose to trust and invest in the other. So, in order for God to have a loving relationship with us, He had to create us with the ability to choose to love Him. If we were created with the ability to choose to love him, then we had to, automatically, have the ability to choose to not love him.

C.S. Lewis explains this concept better than anyone.

“God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go either wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong; I cannot. If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata-of creatures that worked like machines -would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free….

When we have understood about free will, we shall see how silly it is to ask, as somebody once asked me: "Why did God make a creature of such rotten stuff that it went wrong?" The better stuff a creature is made of-the cleverer and stronger and freer it is-then the better it will be if it goes right, but also the worse it will be if it goes wrong. A cow cannot be very good or very bad; a dog can be both better and worse; a child better and worse still; an ordinary man, still more so; a man of genius, still more so; a superhuman spirit best-or worst-of all. (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity)

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Bad Choices

Read Genesis 3:1-15.

In what way did the serpent distort the truth?

What did Adam and Eve do that violated the instructions that God had given them?

In v. 7, what was the first effect of their action?

Read James 1:13-15. Who is responsible for our temptation and our sin?

Read Romans 3:23. Who has sinned?

Here’s what happened. The serpent distorted God’s words. He challenged the integrity of God’s heart. He placed a seed of doubt in the minds of Eve and Adam, leading them to question whether God had their best interest in mind. Then, the fateful event happened. They disobeyed God. They determined in their hearts that they knew better than God and that they, too, could ascend to the level of the divine.

In this act of disobedience everything was changed. Something happened within the heart, mind, and soul of those people. Now they had the knowledge of evil. Now they had first hand experience of what it means to hurt someone. They had hurt God. They had broken his trust and cast a long shadow across the perfect relationship they had previously experienced with Him.

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The Effect of Sin

Reversed Sensory Dominance

Something even deeper happened. Somehow they were altered in their very constitution. In creation it seems that their spiritual selves were the dominant force in their existence. It’s as if they were clothed in their spirit, as if the spirit of man was on the outside, allowing them to freely interact with God, in his spiritual domain, and with each other in a supra-physical interchange. It’s not that they were not physical, for they were certainly created from the dust of the earth. But, they were infused with and overflowing with the “breath of God” the spirit that gave them life.

When they disobeyed, everything became inverted. No longer were they focused on God and in free relationship with him and with each other. Now the dominant senses were those of the physical nature. Now they experienced pain, shame, played the blame game, and had misdirected passions and desires.

As you read the following passage, notice the changes that happened to the man and woman as a result of their sin.

Read Genesis 3:16-24.

What is the new focus of their desire?

What will be the nature of their physical experience?

Isolation

Read the following passages and list the effects that "sin" has had on humanity.

Romans 6:23

Matthew 13:49-50

Matthew 25:41

Ephesians 4:17-19

The bottom line in the discussion of sin and its effects on humanity is one word…isolation. Man was cut off from God, cut off from spouse, and cut off from nature. Every one of us experiences this personal prison of self everyday. We are trapped within our own minds and cannot experience another person fully. The closest we can ever get to true unity with another is in the context of loving, sexual union between a husband and a wife. And even that has become tragically distorted and twisted as a result of our self-centered, isolated selves.

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Action Points

We end this lesson on a very dark note. The truth is, apart from an authentic, dynamic relationship with God, we are lost in the dark; eternally without hope of being connected to our original design and purpose. We are lost in the woods and can’t find the way home.

Where are you today? Has this lesson been a sober reminder of where you used to be? Or, is it a wake up call to where you are today?

If you do not know the way to reconnect to God, then there are two things you need to do right now:

Admit that you are lost and cry out to God for direction.

Commit to jumping right into the next lesson and learn about the path home. There is hope. There is light at the end of the dark tunnel. There is salvation. Keep reading.