God tells us in Proverbs 4:7(NKJV) “Wisdom is the principal thing; Therefore get wisdom. And in all your getting, get understanding.” When we look up the word ‘principal’, we see other words like eminence, main, predominant, leading, and primary. Right off the bat we can see that God ranks wisdom pretty high. We can begin to see how important the condition of our minds is when it comes to fulfilling the destiny that God has for us. In Ephesians 4:23 (NKJV), God tells us, “And be renewed in the spirit of your mind;” One of our major responsibilities as Christians is to put on the mind of Christ, to put off negative thoughts, and to begin to think like him.
Something spiritual happens when we obtain the wisdom of God’s Word, and change the way we think. When we’re in school, we learn that we’re graded on how well we know the material by taking tests. If we pass a series of tests, it certifies that our minds are sufficiently filled with an understanding of knowledge that has been unpacked for us. It also means that we can go on to the next level. We can never exhaust this process of learning and growing. And all kinds of things are awarded based on the proof of our understanding of various subjects; things like scholarships, diplomas, degrees, jobs, promotions, and other accolades and rewards.
This system of learning and rewards was not initiated by humanity, it was initiated by God. The world rewards us for learning the wisdom and information it deems important, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the importance of the wisdom of God. His wisdom causes us to be transformed by His love, and this is what we were created for. Each piece of new understanding and wisdom builds upon prior revelation, and this causes us to grow more into the person Heavenly Father has destined us to be. The foundation that is central to this is knowledge of the sacrifice of Christ.
Adam and Eve had many children, two of them were Cain and Abel. In the very beginning of the bible, in Genesis 4, we learn that at harvest time, these two brothers offered sacrifices to the Lord. Before Adam and Eve bowed to the devil in disobedience, they enjoyed wonderful fellowship with God in the Garden of Eden. There is no doubt that He shared much wisdom and understanding with them. The spiritual practices that are sanctioned by God for us to do on earth as part of our worship of Him are a pattern of the way things are done in heaven. It is very easy for us to assume that part of the knowledge God imparted to them was that which concerned sacrifices and offerings. They, Adam and Eve, no doubt passed this knowledge and wisdom down to their children.
Genesis 4:3-5(NLT) tells us, “When it was time for the harvest, Cain presented some of his crops as a gift to the Lord. Abel also brought a gift—the best portions of the firstborn lambs from his flock. The Lord accepted Abel and his gift. but he did not accept Cain and his gift. This made Cain very angry, and he looked dejected.” This gives us a little bit of a window into the heart space required to offer anything before Heavenly Father. Whatever we offer up to Him must be given from a place of love in our hearts.
Again, remember that a deep well of gratitude is essential to spiritual maturity. We cannot be deeply thankful for a gift we do not fully understand. God gave us the gift of free-will. Romans 11:29 (NLT) tells us, “For God’s gifts and his call can never be withdrawn.” He has free-will, and He created us in His image. We are like Him in the sense that we are free to make our own choices and decisions, and it is also inevitable that we will face the consequences, good or bad, of those choices and decisions. Heavenly Father will never overstep our free-will choice, and through Adam and Eve, we have a firsthand account of the nature of humanity. Adam and Eve were far more intelligent than you and I could hope to be. They talked with Holy Spirit often, and He enjoyed their fellowship and communion. They had a mutually fulfilling relationship, so we can deduce that Adam and Eve were highly functioning in reason and thought. Their blood did not have the impurities that ours have. Before sin entered the picture, they were incredibly strong and viral. God gave them everything they could ever need or want, but they allowed the devil to plant doubt in their minds, and ultimately chose to believe the devil over Heavenly Father. The consequences of this bad action was beyond devastating.
Humanity followed this track of sin, doubt, and dishonoring God to such a degree that God’s heart was grieved. He said in Genesis 6:7 (NLT), “I will wipe this human race I have created from the face of the earth. Yes, and I will destroy every living thing—all the people, the large animals, the small animals that scurry along the ground, and even the birds of the sky. I am sorry I ever made them.” Noah’s obedience to God allowed humanity to continue flourishing, but our sin issue also continued to separate us from the kind of relationship with Heavenly Father that He desired.
God does not make us worship and praise Him, and of course, He is all-powerful and totally could do this if He wanted; but His desire is to have a family that will love Him because they choose to, not because they have to. He created us with incredible capacity and ability. Ephesians 2:10(NLT) tells us, “For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.” God never gave up on us. In His foreknowledge, He knew that we would mess up, and He knew that His Son would need to save us from ourselves.
In John 14:6, Jesus Christ tells us that he is the way, the truth, and the life; and that no one can come to the Father except through him. He showed us the way to the Father’s heart, and he made it possible for us to have the relationship with God that He wanted all along. The devil had us caught up in the curse of the law, where we had to dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’. We had to do this so that we wouldn’t reap the horrendous consequences of our bad choices, decisions, and actions. Romans 6:23 (NLT) tells us, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.” The payment for sin is death. This is what our sinful actions deserve. Any action, deed, behavior, thought, or attitude that isn’t inspired by God does not represent love, because God is a God of love. If it doesn’t come from Him, it comes from the devil.
Sin, death, darkness, bondage, and destruction represent the devil’s domain. These all belong to his realm; he runs that territory, and through our sin and unbelief, many of us spiritually transfer ourselves out of God’s territory of love and light into the territory of darkness. As born-again believers, we don’t have any business with darkness any more. We’ve been rescued from it, Colossians 1:13 (NLT) tells us, “For he has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son.”
Jesus Christ came to the earth to show us the real deal, to give us a way—a path to the Father. He gave his life as a sacrifice for every sin for all eternity, because that was required to fulfill the payment that sin required. Hebrews 9:22 (NLT) says, “In fact, according to the law of Moses, nearly everything was purified with blood. For without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness.” His perfect blood was shed for the remission of our sins. We didn’t deserve it, but because of God’s love, grace, and mercy, Christ purchased our lives from realm of the devil, and ushered us into the Kingdom of God. ■
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
“The Sacrifice of Jesus Christ” written by JMack. 4theChristianMan.Com© 2018. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.