Abounding Grace Sermon Questions

Question One: You said that our conscience was an imprint of God in us, something I’d agree with. But it made me think – Adam ate the ‘apple’ from the tree that would ‘open their eyes and enable them to know good and evil’. Do you think this was actually the birth of our conscience? If so, is our conscience something that wasn’t originally in mankind’s DNA, so although its an imprint of God in us…we weren’t originally intended to have that imprint?

Answer: Before Adam and Eve sinned, they had an understanding of right and wrong. We know this because they were given instruction from God not to eat from the tree of ‘the knowledge of good and evil’ (Genesis 2:17). The sense of conscience that all people have is similar, it’s a deep inner sense of what it means to obey God and to disobey God, when we elevate our own wills over and above His: Adam and Eve had this before they sinned. When they sinned, their ‘knowledge’ of good and evil was not simply a head knowledge it was an experience of evil, it had infected them. I can have knowledge of a disease without having the disease, for Adam and Eve and indeed for us all, we ‘know’ sin, like a disease we are riddled with.

Question Two: If the first step in recieving grace is an awareness of our sin and distance from God, then how do we help those around us to recognise their own sin and need for grace and salvation?

Answer: Simply telling someone they’re sinful and in need of a saviour is unlikely to go down very well! When people were around Jesus, His purity, Godliness and Holiness were enough to bring a sense of conviction and awareness of sin in people- just by being in proximity to Him! How we live our lives and the increasing work of the Holy Spirit in us, making us more like Christ, will also bring about a similar awareness of sin in individuals, simply by being in proxy with us. For Christ ‘sinners’ were drawn to Him hence He had a reputation for hanging out with sinners. His holiness didn’t deter people, but compelled them to him. We can aspire to having a similar reputation, by living Christ-like lives at home, work, college, school etc...!!!

Question Three: NCC why did God not make the earth perfect originally?

Answer: Genesis 1:31 says this “God saw everything he had made, and behold it was very good.” The world was made by God without any flaw or sin. Sin entered following Adam’s disobedience, this wasn’t God’s doing but Adam’s and the world has been under the curse of sin ever since. Our hope as Christians is that in the future God will renew the heavens and the earth; what has been made imperfect by sin will be restored to perfection, sin will be eradicated from the earth, what a glorious hope this is!

 Tim Blaber: Abounding Grace from the Romans series

Comments

• 27/05/2010 12:08:42

  By Anonymous

  in regard to the answer of question three: If God, originally had a "perfect" world, and sin slipped in, why then is there not a possibility that the same occurance could happen a multitude of times, even after the promise of heaven?'

• 27/05/2010 17:04:35

  By Tim

  Wow! That's a a question which raises a whole host of sub-questions, to do with the nature and origins of sin, the sovereignty of God over creation/sin/redemption and eternity. Thus, it will be a fairly fruitless task attempting to answer this one fully, but I will make a couple of comments:

  1) God being God is all-knowing and all-sovereign, nothing happens that is outside of His control. He stands outside of time and so has a perspective of all future events, nothing can take him by surprise.
  2) At the cross Jesus said 'It is finished'- what was finished? The necessary work to defeat both sin and death and the ushering forth of salvation for all who trust in Him. His work on the cross covers all sins from all time, for all who have faith in him

  Christ's work on the cross is a one time event with eternal/cosmic consequences. I conclude from this that if it were possible for sin to re-enter into creation following Christ's return then what took place at the cross was not an ultimate defeat of sin. This is what I believe the author of Hebrews is communicating when writes that the sacrifice of "Jesus Christ" was "once and for all" (Hebrews 10:10), and how by it "he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified" (Vs 14).

  There is a union that we, the redeemed, have with Christ that is different to the relationship Adam had with God. A perfect union brought about by his death, whereby we are married to him as His bride.

  I will stop here and refer back to my initial qualifying comments. Thanks for the question.
  '

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