5.2 Falling Short
© 2018 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
As you read your Bible, you will notice a large topic called “sin.” The word translated “sin” in the New Testament is hamartia, which was used at an arrow-shooting contest and meant “falling short of the mark” or “not hitting the target.”
Knowing Jesus as He is comes step by step. Part of the reason for that is that knowing Jesus has some very large enemies, both in the heavens around you and in your own mind. On the outside of you is accusation, but on the inside of you is the belief that you have failed God in this small thing or that. As we proceed along the path of knowing Jesus, you will learn how you and Jesus together share full and complete victory over these two enemies.
You are out from God, little children, and have overcome and defeated them [false accusations], because greater is He who is inside of you than he who is in the cosmos (1 John 4:4). – Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:57).
Adam’s Decision. In order for you to walk in all victory over sin, however, you must know first what sin is. And to know what sin is, we must look a bit more at Adam’s decision in the Garden of Eden. I would suggest that you read Genesis 2-3, but keep in mind that everything inside the serpent’s words is nonsense, neither God nor man were anything like what the serpent suggested.
The decision for Adam, at least on the surface, was clearly between two things set before him by God, eating of the tree of life or eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Already Like God. Adam was created in God’s likeness and as His image (Genesis 1:26-28). The meaning of that design has no end. Everything God is in His infinite being, with the Lord Jesus being the Blueprint in-between, Adam was designed by in each finite point of his heaven-earth form. And every way by which God expresses Himself in His infinite being, Adam was designed to express that same thing through him into the finite creation, both heaven and earth.
The Lord Jesus Christ, walking this earth, convinces us that when God appears to be seen and known inside His creation, He appears as a Man. Yet man, in his form, is weak and seemingly insignificant.
The Most Terrible Statement. You see, as we saw, when God reveals Himself, He humbles Himself, because God is meek and lowly of heart. Yet God is also very bold, and thus, to reflect that same boldness, God designed inside of Adam a heart as fierce as a lion’s.
The most terrible statement in all the Bible was written by Paul. – Adam was not deceived (1 Timothy 2:14). Paul also stated that Adam KNEW God (Romans 1:21). If Adam was not deceived, then his choice to eat of death instead of eating of life was cold and calculated. Adam knew everything. He knew Christ upon the cross; he knew the deceit of the serpent; he knew the consequences to his children and to both heaven and earth from his actions. Adam was not deceived.
Through One Man. You see, Adam was the master, for God had made him so. And Adam’s choice would send forth a river, either a river of death or a river of life, by which the entirety of heaven and earth would be defined. Through one man [Adam], sin entered [came] into the cosmos {the interactive arrangement of all entities in heaven and earth}, and through sin death; thus death spread into all men (Romans 5:12).
Sin and death did not come through the serpent. Sin and death did not come because of Eve. Sin and death came into heaven and earth entirely through one person, Adam, and his one cold and horrific decision. What was that decision and what was it based upon?
Adam Could Have Chosen Life. God had created Adam in His own likeness, that is, by the design of Christ, and as His own image, that is, the expression of God seen and known.
BUT – God cannot sin; doing what is wrong never enters God’s mind. And so it never entered God’s mind to force His knowledge upon Adam. For Adam to enter into the full knowledge of God through Him, Adam would have to choose life.
Adam could have chosen the same life that you and I have chosen, that is living inside of the Lord Jesus Christ and He living inside of us, alive in our hearts, that is, you and me living by and as another Person and God inside of Christ.
The Same Choice We Have. But to honor Adam, God’s choice had to include another option. It was God Himself who placed the tree of knowing right and wrong alongside of the tree of life. In fact, the tree of knowing right and wrong, word on the outside of us, word in our intellectual grasp, word under our control, is found all through the Bible and Christians make the same choice between life and death all the time.
Adam had the same choice you and I have, either Christ Jesus in Person living inside of him and fulfilling through him all that God speaks, or Adam himself in control of God’s word, either to hear and obey or to refuse and disobey. All who choose to “obey” a word they cannot know, by that same choice, are reserving to themselves the right to disobey.
Option Two. After gazing long and deeply at the tree of life, calling to the longing of his heart, and after seeing the full meaning of Christ upon the cross, life laid down and love poured out, a God who humbles Himself, Adam turned to look at Option Two.
Option Two contained three very different things all working seamlessly together. Those three things were (1) the greatest, smartest, and most beautiful of all created beings presenting himself through subtle words as the image of what God “ought to” look like; (2) a woman, his own heart-throb only moments before, now disgusting to Adam, despicable and dirty; and (3) the option of every word God speaks in outward form, word over which Adam had full control and by which he could control everything.
Hating God’s Appearance. Adam’s decision, then, a decision that was SIN, was based at the meeting point of two seemingly opposite triangles.
On the one hand, Adam decided that a “God” who looked like the serpent, all outward glory and perfection, the highest of heavenly beings, was a superior “God” than a God who looked like a Man hanging bloody, bruised, and naked upon a cross of wood. In that moment, Adam hated himself, he hated a God who looked like a puny, weak, and stupid human, and in utter self-loathing, he worshipped an arrogant “Christ.”
Adam hated weak. And all who sin with Adam also hate weak. “God, why did You make me like this, You Jerk!” – They hated Me freely and without a cause (John 15:25).
Despising All Others. On the other hand, out from a heart as bold as God’s, but empty of God Himself, Adam looked at Eve and at the tree of law – By the law is the knowledge of sin {the knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong} (Romans 3:20). Adam despised Eve, and with Eve all of her children, all those “other” humans out there. And filling his heart with the arrogance of a superior “Christ,” – The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9) – Adam reached for word under his own intellectual control so that he might control Eve, that is, all other people in his life.
And thus, Adam’s soul, the story of his consciousness, split apart into self-loathing/self-exaltation, into arrogance and self-pity, into abusing and being abused.
Not Eating of Life. But here’s the thing. None of these things, hating himself and the God whose image he was, or exalting himself in arrogance over other people, were Adam’s real sin.
Adam’s sin (falling short of the target) was that he WAS the image and likeness of God, and that in being so, he failed to eat of Christ. Adam’s sin was not eating of the tree of life, not living inside of Jesus and Jesus inside of him.
God did not create Adam to direct his own steps by his own knowledge of right and wrong. God made Adam a human; we know what humans are, bumbling and foolish, making endless mistakes. None of that is a problem, especially when we know God as He is and His purposes for us. The problem is not living inside of Jesus and Jesus inside of us through faith.
Light Is Honesty. So, what do we do with all our foolish mistakes? Remember that walking in the light is walking in honesty.
If we should say that we do not have sin, we deceive ourselves {walking in dishonesty}, and the truth is not inside of us. If we should acknowledge our falling short {our inability to obey God}, He is faithful and just, that He might forgive us our sins [sending them away] and might cleanse us from all unrighteousness and hurt {denoting a state of complete purity}. If we should say that we have not fallen short of the mark [have not sinned], we make Him to be a liar, and His word is not inside of us. {John is stressing the critical importance of honesty before God, that we are incapable of doing His will of ourselves.} (1 John 1:8-10).
“Christian” “Sin.” God did not create you with any ability to “do what is right.” God created you to be filled with Christ, who alone fulfills all that God means by what He speaks.
Thus, for you to walk in the light means being real about yourself and placing all of your foolish mistakes entirely into the Lord Jesus Christ. – For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, for our sakes, that we might become the righteousness of God inside of Him (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Our purpose here is not to talk about redemption, but to understand sin. For any Christian, then, sin is three things: (1) failing to live inside of Christ and Christ inside of us through faith; (2) pretending that we are “doing God’s will”; and (3) attempting to control other people, hurting and abusing them out from an underlying contempt.
Yet, even these, Jesus took into Himself upon the cross and even now carries all. Jesus is fully responsible for you. Only as you place your present sins upon Him and not upon yourself are you then free to spend the strength of your life knowing Him.