Reflections

Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’;
         Cursed is the ground because of you;
         In toil you will eat of it
         All the days of your life.
    “Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you;
         And you will eat the plants of the field;
    By the sweat of your face
         You will eat bread,
         Till you return to the ground,
         Because from it you were taken;
         For you are dust,
         And to dust you shall return.”

When God created Adam, He walked in the garden with Adam and had complete communion and fellowship.  God told Adam that he had dominion over the entire earth and could eat from any tree except the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  God said that if Adam ate from this tree then he would die.  Adam and Eve both ate from the tree and sinned against God.  Sin was introduced to the world through Adam.  God removed Adam and Eve from the garden and they lost the fellowship they had with God.  Mankind was now destined to a life of sin and separated from God.

One of the reasons Christians celebrate Christmas is because Jesus was born to undo all that Adam had done.  Jesus was a promise from God to save us from sin so that we may once again be reconciled with God.  This is not a holiday we should take for granted or be consumed by the commercialism of it all.  Instead it is a time for us to reflect on what God has done for us through Jesus Christ His Son.  Despite man’s fall, God is determined to have the kind of relationship with man that He intended from the beginning of creation.  All of this is possible through Jesus.

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Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” Genesis 1:26

In the Gospel of John we are told that in the beginning was the word, the word was with God and the word was God and the word became flesh which is Jesus Christ.  In Genesis when man is created God made man in His image.  Since Jesus was in the beginning and the beginning was the word then man was created in the image of Jesus.  God made us in His image and according to His likeness.  God then gave man dominion over all the earth

So from the beginning we were created to be like Jesus.  This was God’s plan from the beginning.  December is the month that we celebrate the birth of Jesus.  Jesus is the reason we celebrate Christmas.  There are many who want us to take the “Christ” out of Christmas, but this is the season we reflect on the purpose of Jesus’ birth and life.  So over the next several reflections we will look at the purpose of Jesus’ birth and why He came to live among us.

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