Jason Silver

Refreshing blog

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My Journal and Diary

2005

March

Friday, March 11th, 2005

SEX: More on Change the Rules

This is so well said:

As it always does, temptation began with the challenging of God's Word. How often has the argument been made that if something doesn't harm anyone else it shouldn't be unlawful? The serpent suggested much the same to our first parents. The fruit he urged them to sample, he said, would harm no one. Indeed, it appealed to them on every level of their being: biologically it was "good for food," aesthetically it was "a delight to the eyes," and intellectually it was "desired to make one wise." We can almost hear the couple asking themselves, "How can anything so beautiful be wrong?" The tempter promised that disregarding the explicit commandment of God would entail none of the penalties the Lord had warned them of. No, eating the forbidden fruit, he said, would actually cause them to see themselves in a new way. They would become like God himself. They would know good and evil.

Significantly, God himself acknowledged that the couple had, indeed, come to see themselves in a new way when he asked, "Who told you that you were naked?" God says in effect, "See, they have become like us, knowing good and evil." But the life-and-death issue that frames the whole of the biblical witness, the question that remains before us to this day, is: who was right, the Lord or the tempter? God said, "In the day you eat of it you shall die." The serpent said, "God's a liar; in the day you eat of it you won't die, you'll discover what it really means to live: life lived to the hilt, biologically, aesthetically and intellectually."

Who was right? If we understand "life" to be measured in biological, aesthetic, intellectual terms, the serpent was certainly correct. They ate and they didn't die! Not for years. They had children, grandchildren, great grandchildren....

However, when we begin to understand the way the Scriptures use the terms "life" and "death" we also begin to see the extent of the devastation that ensues from disobedience. Jesus himself said, "And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent" (John 17:3).


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