Genesis 2:15-17
The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”
Like most of you, I would guess, I have a kind of love/hate relationship with speed limits. You know, those rectangular black and white signs posted all along the highway that say “SPEED LIMIT 65 mph” while everyone around you is going 75 mph!
I respect and appreciate speed limits because I understand they have been established for my own good and for the safety of all the other drivers on the road with me. But speed limits also irritate me at times because they, well, they limit me! They limit my freedom to drive as fast as I think I need to drive!
We see that same tension between freedom and limits in Genesis 2.
And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”
See it?
It’s as if God said, “You are free to drive your car and to drive it wherever you want to go; you can turn right, turn left, you can drive from here to Malibu; but you must not drive your car over 65 mph, or you will surely get a ticket.”
Right at the beginning, God is teaching us about the relationship of freedom to limit; and that the gospel begins with the limit of God.
As parents we all know instinctively that our children need limits.
“Don’t play with matches.”
“Don’t play in the street.”
“Don’t stick your finger in the electrical outlet.”
We also know that the limits we place on our children are good because they are an expression of our love.
So it is with the limit of God. The limits of God, whether those limits are about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, or about murder, or about stealing or adultery or any of the “Ten Commandments”, are good because God’s limits are an expression of his love.
The problem is; we don’t like limits. We don’t like it when our parents don’t let us eat candy for breakfast. I don’t like it when the government tells me I can only drive my car 65 mph when it is designed to go 100 mph.
We don’t like limits because, deep down, we really want to be God. And that desire to be like God started in the Garden of Eden.
But we are not God. And when we try to live without God and his limits, we quickly forfeit the joy and peace for which he created us.
Genesis tells us that the gospel begins with God’s love. All creation itself is an expression of the goodness and love of the Creator. God’s love is further expressed in the creation of man and woman in his own image. God then expresses his love by establishing limits for Adam and Eve, and for us.
And when we violate God’s limits, which Adam and Eve eventually do, and which we all do, we discover how much we need not only his love and his limits, but his grace as well.
In God’s limit we see both his love and our own need for the gospel.
Brian Coffey
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment