God created Adam in His own image and likeness. Man was in a perfect state, but decided to question God’s ways and took advice from the enemy of God.  Man listened to the wrong counsel and lost his perfect state through disobedience to his creator God.  Because of this, man was expelled from the perfect state he was in.  God has given us chance after chance after chance to willingly comply with His ways and we continue to reject God’s counsel.  Choosing to rebel against God forces Him to discipline his creation.

Just as a parent disciplines a child for disobeying, God disciplines us so we can change our ways and follow the right path.  We are the ones who put ourselves out of the protection of God where the enemy sees us as a target for destruction.  God allows Satan to target us but most of the time, He has nothing to do with the attacks.  We do it to ourselves.

I remember back to the day when I made Jesus the Lord and Savior of my life; the experience was amazing.  I recall it like it was yesterday. My life was changed.  I knew that God was not mad at me any more.  I felt accepted and loved by Him. It was and still is a tangible presence in my life.  I can feel to this day His love because of that decision that I made.

As the days went by, I did not understand the second step that I needed to take, which is the renewal of my mind.  Even though joy was inside of me, we all know that our minds play a role in everything that we do.  My mind began to play games with me saying that what I have experienced was just a feeling, it was not true, I was not saved, and that everything was a lie.  Little did I know, Satan was not happy that I was saved.  He had lost one more soul.  He was there to remind me that God was a judge and that He would punish us if I was to make a mistake again.  That is the way that I thought because I did not know the application of Romans 12:1-2.

As a new believer, your mind will play with you and try to misguide you.  I had to move onto the next step and so will you. Satan knows that you being ignorant of God’s word allows him to try to instill a lie in you.  Since he can only talk to you through your mind, Satan want to remind you of your inadequacy before God.  I didn’t know that God loved people and hates sin.  I thought the two were the same thing, but there is a clear difference between the two.  As a young believer eager to find out about the difference between the two, I discovered that God would meet me where I was.  He knows what areas of our lives need understanding.  God knows where we need to be free.

So the question still remains?  If God is good, why would he punish us?  One answer is that God punishes sin, which means us missing the mark.  Sin needs an object to be displayed and man is the object in this case; sin displays itself.  We feel the result of sin which feels like punishment.

One thing I learned in the book of Genesis is that Adam was in a perfect state when he was created. This means no sin in the Garden of Eden.  There he yields to sin by listening to the devil’s advice; the devil introduced sin into the Garden of Eden.  One thing to remember is that Adam had a choice to stand for what God said or to believe what the devil said.  He chose willingly not to stand with what God said.  The results were devastating.  Adam lost the trust of God, he lost the presence of God, he lost his place in God, and he lost his home in the Garden of Eden.  The result of sin is punishment.

Let’s take a look at the word punish in the Merriam-Webster dictionary.  There are seven definitions for the word punish:

1. To inflict a penalty or a sanction on someone as a retribution for an offense.
2. To subject to someone for the penalty of a crime.
3. To inflict a penalty on a criminal or a wrongdoer for an offense.
4. To inflict a penalty for a transgression or illegal or moral code.
5. Refers to corporal punishment as a means to improve behavior.
6. Stresses punishment to control an offender and to eliminate or reform unacceptable conduct.
7. To impose a penalty on for a fault, offense, or violation.

The result of sin equals a conflict between God and man. Man was created to be inseparable with God.

When God created man (Genesis 1:27) and named him Adam, God created him to never be apart from God.  But he also put inside of Adam the will to chose. Why?  Because God wanted man to voluntarily chose to serve Him and to be with him. In other words, man without God was not meant to exist.  Apart from God, man will experience alienation, despair, loneliness, destruction, and ultimately death.

A long time ago after I got saved, I asked God a question, maybe one you have asked yourself, why was I born in the lineage of Adam and not in a perfect state like Adam had?  I asked what had I done to be born in Adam (sin state)?  Why didn’t you give me a choice? God answered, “Antonio if you or any other human I have ever created were in the same situation as Adam, everyone of you would have done the same thing” (Romans 3:23).

Stay tuned tomorrow for part 2 of this daily sermon. We will look at scripture that supports why God punishes us.

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