And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. Ephesians 2:1-3
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil may have been given that title because it was a test of obedience by which our first parents were tried, whether they would obey God or disobey His command.
Commentary from the MacArthur study Bible, notes for Genesis 2:9.
Adam’s sin brought universal death-exactly opposite the result he expected and Satan had promised: “You will be like God” (Genesis 3:5).
Unlike Adam’s act, Christ’s act has-and will-accomplish exactly what He intended, i.e., spiritual life.
Commentary from the MacArthur study Bible, notes for Romans 5:17.
Ezekiel 18:23
This verse, in either location, is merely a confirmation of willful disobedience. Contrast this with John 3 (which I won’t retype here). In John 3 there is nothing about behavior, nothing about actions we must take. Instead, there you will find Jesus affirming that whoever trusts in Him will be saved and will have eternal life. But we need Christ’s power to understand, be enlightened, to believe, and to turn to Him in obedience. Understanding something of supernatural origin is not possible with our natural senses.
Scientists have tried in vain to create life in a laboratory ex nihilo-out of nothing. But so far they have been unsuccessful. No one has discovered the power of life. Yet that is the power that God displayed when He raised Jesus Christ from the dead. It is a power we do not know how to explain.
The power of the Spirit of God is a power man cannot understand or duplicate in a lab. It is a power that is limitless. We can be filled with the Spirit of power-the power only Christ can give. The choice is yours-to willfully turn to Jesus, asking HIM for HIS power to believe, or to willfully turn away from Him. My belief in Jesus doesn’t make Him real. Likewise, disbelief does not make Jesus nonexistent. If He is real then that is true apart from you or I. The Lord wants you with Him forever. He gives us a choice-He does not force. The flag you wave is of your choosing.
Portions of commentary from David Jeremiah’s Turning Points Devotional, November 21, and Charles Stanley’s In Touch Devotional, November 23.
“All the healthy and out-going activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that at least he may say, as one of my own patients said on arrival down here, ‘I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked.’ The Christians describe the Enemy as one ‘without whom Nothing is strong’. And Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man’s best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them,…” The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis, pg. 60.
-Word- pictures by DLink 