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GOD AND
US THE CREATOR REACHES OUT TO US When God created our ancestors, Adam and Eve, they enjoyed a close and personal relationship with their Creator. They were uniquely created in His “image” and “likeness” so that God could have a special relationship with those who resemble Him in certain respects. Adam and his wife Eve enjoyed life to the fullest - as it can only be experienced without the ugly intrusion of sin. To be fully human, is to live a life that is God-like and free from the incapacitating effect of sin. Any other type of an existence other than the one intended for us by our Creator is a sub-human existence. It is with great sadness that we read in the third chapter of Genesis, that first Eve, and then Adam, deliberately violated the love and trust of God by knowingly disobeying Him. Not unintentionally, but with a clear mind and quite knowingly, they ate the forbidden fruit from a tree known as the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (Genesis 3). God had specifically told them not to taste the fruit of that particular tree because He knew that they would then experience sin, and thus, be contaminated by it. In addition, God had warned them that the result of doing so would be death. Sin is a deadly contamination, which if untreated, always produces death (eternal separation from God). The reality and tragedy of sin caused the ruin of that beautiful relationship with God and the harmony of life in paradise. Something so terrible happened that it caused a separation between God and them. A BEAUTIFUL THING IS RUINED - THE FALL Adam and Eve knowingly and intentionally did what they should not have. In other words, they sinned. In the Biblical sense, sin is not simply intellectual, but experiential. For the first time, Adam and Eve experienced sin in all its ramifications. They experienced the effects of sin spiritually, mentally and physically. Guilt and shame made their ugly intrusion in their relationship with God and the ugly deed of sin caused a separation (and the resulting tragic experience of loneliness). We often associate sin with the anger of God. We teach little children that if they do something wrong, God will get very angry with them and punish them. While God’s anger with sin is certainly a valid factor, sin is much more than that. When we see only God’s anger in relation to sin, we miss one of the most important points, which is: that to deliberately sin is to violate all the love, freedom and trust God has given to us. When we knowingly and intentionally do something wrong, much more than making God upset, we break His heart. Sin breaks God’s heart and our guilt alienates ourselves from Him. When we sin, our guilt and also the filth of sin’s contamination, separate us from God who is Holy - He cannot tolerate even the sight of sin. Precisely for this reason, the problem of sin must be resolved before it is possible for someone to carry on a personal relationship with God, as Adam and Eve did before the advent of sin. Let’s examine the act of Adam and Eve more closely. What Satan seduced Eve into doing was one big ego trip. As we read in the second chapter of Genesis, the Serpent convinced her that by forbidding them from a certain fruit, God was keeping something good from her, and so, she thought that something good would result from intentionally disobeying God. Her motivation was exclusively one of self-interest and self-gratification. Truly we are the offspring of Adam and Eve. We too, are guilty of the same sinful attitude toward God. Tragically, Eve put aside the fact that whatever God asks of us or commands, is in our best interest. We glorify God by trusting Him and His prescribed guidelines for living, and those are in fact designed by God to produce the greatest happiness, prosperity and success in our individual, family and social lives! All of God’s laws point in that positive direction. This fact is one of the greatest comforts we can experience in our relationship with our Creator. That sly Serpent from the Garden of Eden (Satan) however, tampers with our minds, as he did to Eve’s, and tries to convince us of the opposite. It is so sobering and saddening, however, to realize that we also oftentimes fall into the same trap that Adam and Eve fell into. We can be just as deceived as they, thinking that God’s laws don’t apply to us, and that we are more intelligent than God. Consequently, we tend to assert our independence from God and try to produce our own paradises. But the end result of a life lived at the exclusion of our Creator is always ultimate failure and lack of inner peace - the loss of paradise. After that initial fall, God had to expel Adam and Eve from the paradise of Eden, in order to repair the damage caused by sin. This was necessary because in the Garden of Eden, there was also a tree known as the Tree of Life (see Genesis 3). God did not want Adam and Eve to eat of that tree and live forever in sin, and consequently in separation from Him; so they were expelled until the damage of sin could be repaired, and then, and only then, could they eat of the Tree of Life and enjoy that special life and fellowship with God eternally. As we read in the third chapter of Genesis, Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden. Perhaps a sign was put up at the entrance which read: “Do not enter, Paradise under construction”. It is important to realize that our ancestors left Eden not in hopelessness, but with a promise. On their way out, God declared, “...I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” (Genesis 3:15). In other words, God promised that in the future, one of Eve’s offspring (Jesus Christ) would crush the power of Satan (the Serpent/Snake of the Garden of Eden) while Satan would unsuccessfully try to kill the Savior (“strike his heel”). This by the way is the first proclamation of the Gospel. REPAIRING THE DAMAGE God, who had made Himself visible and made possible the personal relationship between Himself and Adam and Eve, who experienced the optimum joy of a life unencumbered by the evil interference of sin, now became invisible. The devastation of the fall was so extensive, that it literally took God many centuries to repair the damage. In the process, God had to reintroduce Himself to humanity, to the offspring of Adam and Eve, which had been alienated from the Creator. God did so by slowly revealing Himself by various names such as “El Shaddai” which means “God Almighty” (Genesis 17:1) and “El Elyon” which means “the Most High God” (Genesis 14:18). Little by little, in the course of time, the invisible God revealed Himself more and more, in increasingly more intimate ways. For example, centuries after the initial fall, we read these words of David, Israel’s first King:
“I love
you, O LORD, my strength. After the time of King David, through His prophets, God gave very specific details as to how He would come personally to us and accomplish the work of our salvation. For instance, Isaiah describes the Incarnate God (that is, God in the flesh and among us) as such: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given... And he will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” (Isaiah 9:6). We also are given many details of the suffering which the coming Son of God was to endure in order to repair the damage of sin to secure our eternal salvation. Isaiah, under the inspiration of God’s Holy Spirit wrote, 500 years before the birth of Christ: “But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, by his wounds we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:5) FULFILLMENT OF THE PROMISE Long before His Son Jesus was born, God promised that He would come and live among us, and teach us His truths. This promise of God was fulfilled in Jesus, who was God in the flesh. At the best time possible, “in the fullness of time” as the Bible describes it, God sent His Son Jesus the Christ as the second perfect human in order to allow us to experience the fullness of His revelation. In other words, so that we could know and experience God in the same manner as Adam and Eve did in the Garden of Eden. As Jesus Himself has said, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” (John 14:6,7) Our Lord Jesus Christ did quite a lot of teaching during His ministry, and as a matter of fact, He taught much more than He preached. His favorite method of teaching was with the use of parables. Perhaps the best known and most beloved parable is the one commonly known as “The Prodigal Son”. Jesus used this parable in a tremendous way to describe the great loving and merciful character of the Heavenly Father, and His plan for our salvation. Therefore, let’s follow Jesus’ example, and use this parable to better understand God and His relationship to us. This parable is found in the Gospel of St. Luke chapter 15:11-32. Although the main story characters are a father and his two sons, it is really the story of God, the Heavenly Father and His extravagant love for the lost sinner (us). Let us now read the parable. THE CHARACTER OF GOD REVEALED Although this parable is well-known as the parable of the Prodigal Son, the word “prodigal” does not appear in this parable of Jesus. So let us look at that word and figure out who the real prodigal was the father or the younger son. What is the definition of “Prodigal”? The word prodigal means “lavish, unrestrained and extravagant”. The son is called prodigal because he was outlandish and extravagant in his demand to the father. The son was also extravagant in his wild life-style and unrestrained. He did not refrain from anything his heart desired - he lived a wild and fast life with no restraint - that is, until his money vanished. However, the real prodigal is the father. The father was unrestrained in his dealing with his son. At first he gave everything to him, and after he was betrayed by his rebellious son, the father took him back and made an extravagant and lavish celebration for the return of his son - without even demanding an explanation. The father was most unusually eager to have his son back, to forgive him, and again to restore him to his proper position and dignity which was lost due to rebellion. The younger son was lavish in a very selfish manner - he wanted everything for himself only - it was a self-centered love. But the father was much more lavish - he allowed his unrestrained love to flow to his lost son, and displayed a mercy beyond the expectations of the rebellious son - it was a giving, sacrificial love which looked out for the best interest of another. This it the true love revealed to us from heaven. Jesus used this story to reveal the prodigal (lavishly loving) nature of the Heavenly Father. The earthly father of the parable depicts the wonderful and merciful character of God the Father. God is the real star of this story and the attention is on Him. And more than just the story of a father and his son, this is our story - it is the story of God and us. Just like the younger son of this parable, and just like Adam and Eve, we break God’s heart every time we turn our backs on Him, refuse His guidance, neglect to speak to Him through prayer, refuse to thank Him for all His blessings for us, and refuse to acknowledge Him as the source of all the goodness in our lives. Just like the son, we think that we don’t need the Father, and that we can provide our own happiness, even though it is God who created us and gave us life. And worst of all, we tear His heart when we live with the attitude that He doesn’t exist and that we can be happy without him. In that way we are no different than the young son of the parable or Adam and Eve. In the Old Testament Book of Deuteronomy, Moses has this to say to those who had shown ungratefulness to God: “Is this the way you repay the LORD, O foolish and unwise people? Is He not your Father, your Creator, who made you and formed you?” (Deut. 32:6) Now let’s look at verse 16 of the parable. Taking into consideration this condition of the younger son , how can we compare it with what he had when he was with the father? The final result of the rejection of his father’s love was that the young son ended up with a bunch of pigs and lived the filthy life of a pig. This verse is an analogy of the life of sin and rebellion against God. Satan makes sin look very attractive, he puts it in a very beautiful looking package (as he did to Eve). For example, if the young son knew how his sin against God and his father really looked, he would never have sinned. Instead, Satan made that young man’s sins look beautiful - they looked like attractive girls, dependable friends and the chance to have fun through gambling. But when the deceptive attractive wrapping was removed from the sin, the son found out the hard way that he had wasted his life with sexual perverts, dope addicts, criminals and lost his inheritance. This parable is really about the Heavenly Father. Do you think that He is everyone’s Father? No, God is not every person’s Father, but of those who believe in Him and through faith, are His children. God is the father of those who love His Only Son, Jesus, and whose sins have been forgiven by Him. As a matter of fact there are two fathers - God and Satan. Satan is the father of all those who love their sinful lifestyle so much that they will not ask for God’s forgiveness - they take after their father the Devil, whom Jesus described as the “father of lies”. Jesus makes this point very clear in the Gospel of St. John chapter 8, verses 42 and 44. Now let’s look at the opening words of verse 17 of the parable. It says, “he came to his senses”. What does this mean? This means that he repented. To repent means to feel sorry or regret over an action or an attitude. Repentance involves the change one’s mind about something. Taking this spiritually, it is realizing that one has sinned and feeling regret for that action, and having a change of attitude over the sin or bad habit. Repentance, or coming to his senses, was the first step in the recovery of the younger son. Likewise, repentance for one’s sins is the first step in salvation for those who have never turned to God or for those who have stayed away from God because of sin. And finally, let us look at verses 22, 23 and 24, the climax of the whole parable. In relation to God and us, what is the important lesson in these verses? The most important message is that our God is a good God. He is full of mercy, compassion and love, even for me. He is so eager to have me that He even sent His Son Jesus Christ to die in my place for my sins, so that I may live eternally with Him (John 3:16). God stops at nothing, He is unrestrained, He is prodigal in His desire to have me as His child. One of the most thrilling verses in the Bible is Luke 15:7. It is the words of Jesus who says, “...there is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety nine righteous persons who do not need to repent”. Our Lord is saying that just as the father of the parable made a lavish and big celebration over the repentance and return of his beloved son, in the same way, God and all of heaven with all its angels, rejoice when a person turns back to God. This is the best and most comforting lesson we can learn. The sad tragedy is that there are those who intentionally stay away from God. While it is in our power to turn to God and enjoy all the goodness which goes with being a child of God, we are warned in other places in the Bible of the eternally horrible consequence of rejecting the love of the Father. What is your decision? Are you a child of the Heavenly Father? Recite this prayer by St. Nerses Shnorali, and as you read this prayer, make it your personal prayer.
You, Who
sees all things, THE NEED FOR THE SAVIOR All that we have discussed thus far gives us an understanding of our relation to God, His purpose for our creation, but also the human dilemma due to sin. It is therefore only natural that we attain an understanding for the need of a savior from our dilemma; The Savior Who is Jesus the Christ. About 1,500 years before Jesus was born, the great leader of the Jews, Moses, received the Ten Commandments from God. These commandments showed exactly how God wanted His people to live for their own good and how to please God. Among the commandments are such commands as, you shall have no other gods before me, do not murder, do not lie, do not steal, honor your father and mother, etc. But the problem is that although we know God’s will for the manner in which we must live, we are all guilty of committing sins. As King David has written long before Jesus came, “...there is no one who does good, not even one” (Psalms 14:3). One of our Armenian Church Fathers, St. Krikor Naregatsi describes the human dilemma in this very poetic manner: “. . . what shall I record of my own wretched self? My face turns black and I have no answers, knowing how unworthy I am of the communion of God and Saints. Knowing even if the seas change to salty ink, and the forests of reeds are cut into pens and the boundless fields spread with parchments I could but finish writing a fraction of my lawlessness. And should I build a scale, and the Cedars of Lebanon with Mount Ararat on one side, my guilt would tilt the balance to the other. . . " And as St. Paul warns us, the result of unforgiven sin is eternal death. Therefore, God sent someone to save us from our predicament - He sent His Son in order to be our Savior and provide our salvation from eternal death. At this point it is important to ask ourselves the following two questions: What is a savior? What is salvation? A savior is, simply, someone who saves. It could be a lifeguard who saves someone from drowning, or a policeman who saves somebody’s life and so on. Salvation means deliverance or escape from danger or death. Now let us see how Jesus is the Savior, and from what He provides our salvation. Let’s take a look at two short passages which deal with the crucifixion of Jesus: First, turn to the Gospel of St. Mark chapter 15, verses 25-38 and read. Why do you think that Jesus (in verse 34) said, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” It is highly significant to realize that up until that moment, Jesus and His Father had always enjoyed perfect and unbroken fellowship. But when Jesus was nailed to the cross, your sins and my sins - our lies, our filthy habits, our hatreds, our stealing, and every sin known to mankind - was placed on Him. Although He was without sin, for the first time Jesus became personally into contact with sin and was covered with the filth of our sins. It was at that precise moment that for the first time in their relationship, God the Father turned His face away from His Son. God cannot even tolerate the sight of sin, and because His Son was covered with our sins, He even turned His face away from His beloved Son. That experience was most painful for Jesus, and He cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” That’s what sin does, it separates us from God. And in order to be accepted by God, our sins must be removed. That’s what it means for Jesus to take away our sins and pay the penalty for them. He died in our place, so that we would not have to suffer eternal death. This is the salvation which Jesus the Savior provided for us. As a matter of fact, the name “Jesus” means Savior - or the One who saves. Too many people don’t take the problem of sin seriously, and think that God is too good to condemn those with unpardoned sin, but quite the contrary, the gruesome public display of the tortured, dying Jesus is God’s warning to all mankind that the punishment for sin is most severe, therefore, we must go to the One who paid the penalty for our sins for forgiveness. In the Gospel of St. John we read these incredibly comforting verses which testify of God’s love for all, His plan for our salvation, and yet, the dire consequence of rejecting the Savior and His salvation: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. He who believes in him is not condemned; he who does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God”. (John 3:16,18) On the cross, Jesus also said, “It is finished” (John 19:30). The great work for our salvation for which Jesus came to earth had finally been finished. He came in order to show us the way to eternal life and to make it possible by dying on the cross for us. He in fact is the new Tree of Life. Adam and Eve were not allowed to eat of the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden, until the damage of sin could be repaired. But now, the doors of paradise are reopened - paradise has been restored - all are invited to eat of the Tree of Life, Who is none other than Jesus Christ. Whoever eats His Body and drinks His Blood (as depicted by the Holy Communion) will live for eternity. CONCLUSION: We have learned quite a lot about Jesus Christ. But the most important thing is what you personally think of Him. Once when Jesus was traveling to a distant city with His disciples, He asked them, “But what about you? Who do you say I am?” Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:15-16) Now Jesus is asking you the same question. “Who do you say I am?” Our eternal destiny depends on our answer. Jesus, as the Son of God willing put aside all His power and the splendor of heaven in order to come here, suffer and die for your sins. Do you believe that He is your Savior? Do you accept Him as the Christ? Answer these questions in your heart. Pray this prayer written by one of our Armenian Church Fathers, St. Nerses Shnorhali. It is a prayer to God the Father, in which we acknowledge Jesus as our Savior and ask Him to forgive our sins.
O Heavenly
Father, you truly are God,
Have
mercy on all your creatures, Copyright © Renewal In Christ Mission. All Rights Reserved. |