Where He Leads I Will Follow: Choosing Life

 

To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your labor pains; with pain you will give birth to children. You will want to control your husband, but he will dominate you."  Genesis 3:16

 In the last post, we looked into how sin is essentially believing someone or something else over God. We might believe we know better, or that the powers of this world are more powerful than God, but the truth is we’re wrong. No one is wiser, no one is more powerful, no one has better thoughts or intentions for us. And when we choose someone or something else over God, that’s sin. Sin separates us from God because we have chosen something over Him, we have chosen to follow another path than the one He placed us on. It never works out well. In that choice, that sin, we experience spiritual death, the separation from God. That essential part of us that lives on forever is now dead. Our body may still be walking around on earth, our heart beating, our mind thinking, our mouth talking, but we are dead inside. We have stepped onto the path of death which takes us further and further away from our loving Father and Creator. When God spoke to Adam and Eve about this in the Garden, we get an overview of what this path will be like for every human to follow them.

 To Eve, specifically, God said, “I will greatly increase your labor pains; with pain you will give birth to children. You will want to control your husband, but he will dominate you," (Genesis 3:16). This affects all women, whether married or single, mother or not. All women endure the painful predecessor to birth through their monthly cycle. Even those, like me, who don’t have a uterus anymore are still “cursed” by the power of hormones out of whack, causing sleeplessness, migraines, and more. And even women who are not married are influenced by the desire to control, if not their husbands than the world. In the 6,000+ years since this incident, women have always been struggling. For equality, for the right to vote, for equal pay, for the opportunity to own property, to be seen as human even. Society questions our value, and so do we. But do you know where our true value can be found? In our life-giving creator who made a way out of even this for us.

 You see, God knew even before He made Adam and Eve what they would do, that they would introduce sin to the world and spoil all that He had done, and He already had a plan in place. Earlier in this passage we read the first Messianic prophecy, “And I will put hostility between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring; her offspring will attack your head, and you will attack her offspring's heel,” (Genesis 3:15). This points forward way into the future to Jesus and how He will eventually overcome the curse of sin and death, crushing the head of the serpent. When Jesus died on the cross, He paid the price for our sins – all of them. He made a way for us to return to God, to become a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). We can be reunited with God once more, our spiritual/real self alive with Him forever!

Here’s the Thing: Jesus did the work, the Holy Spirit draws us to Him (John 6:44), but we need to choose. Deuteronomy says it better than I ever could, “Today I invoke heaven and earth as a witness against you that I have set life and death, blessing and curse, before you. Therefore choose life so that you and your descendants may live!” (Deuteronomy 30:19)