War In Your Heart # 21

Defeat Through the First Man in Eden (continued)

Black Week - in Eden (continued)

Genesis 5:3: "Adam begat a son in his own likeness, after his image." And what kind of children were begotten of Adam? Distasteful - even repugnant - as the answer to this question is, the Word of God, with utter faithfulness, gives the answer. What kind of posterity must come from Adam, the head of the race, the womb of humanity? From the one who intelligently, deliberately disobeyed God and thereby came under the righteous wrath of God? How awfully solemn is the revelation of Scripture!

Ephesians 2:2, 3: Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience ... And were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.

One cannot have both God and self as the center of one's life. It is one or the other. Adam and Eve had chosen not only for self against God, but for satan against God. This plunged them into the night of separation from God, as we shall see. Their union with God was broken. Their union with satan had begun. But the break in union with God was not only personal; it was collective. The sin, the death, the defeat of Adam was the sin, the death, the defeat of humanity. Adam as the representative man took the race, for whom he stood, into that break with God and into that beginning with satan. Adam's posterity, the family of whom he was the father, became the children of the devil.

1 John 3:8-10: He that committeth sin is of the devil ... Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin ... In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil.

Matthew 13:38: The tares are the children of the wicked one.

satan's Victory Over God and Man

Since his own sin and fall resulting in his ejection from the mountain of God, satan's dominating passion was the thwart God in His eternal purpose for His creation. satan, who sought to dethrone God, and was thereby himself deposed from his high position in heaven, sought a seat of government for his rebel kingdom.

The cosmos had been given to Adam by a deed of trust, to rule over it. By Adam's sin of disobedience satan secured absolute dominion over him and, by heredity, over the race in him. When Adam gave allegiance to satan, he became a subject under a totally new form of government - the rebel government of a will at enmity with God - and so Adam became a bondslave of satan.

2 Timothy 2:26: and that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.

Romans 6:16: Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants, ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?

Adam had been given dominion over the earth as God's vice-regent. But this dominion had now been won by God's archenemy, by a legal conquest. Adam, by his betrayal, had surrendered the dominion of the earth to satan, who thereby gained governmental authority and rule over it as "prince of this world." Three times our Lord speaks of satan by his title, and in the wilderness temptation He does not refute satan's claim to the kingdoms of this world (Matthew 4:8-10).

satan has won a twofold, signal victory. All men have become his state slaves: the whole earth has come under his dominion. He has won it through the betrayal of God's first man.

~Ruth Paxson~

(continued with # 22)