Bible Study #1: Bridging the Gap

This Bible study, entitled "Bridging the Gap" was the very first lesson we studied as a group (we studied this on November 15, 2007).

The Bible passages upon which this lesson is built are Genesis 2:4-15, Genesis 3:1-10, and Romans 5:12. The premise of this lesson was that although mankind has continually refused God's offer of an eternal, meaningful, and vital relationship, God has continually bridged the gap we have created with our sinfulness, selfishness, and pride.

A friend and I were having a talk, one of those deep religious talks that makes you kind of nervous you're going to say the wrong thing (that's why I pray that God will be speaking instead of me). This young man is an atheist - he doesn't believe in any sort of god, particularly the God I know. He began to explain to me that he couldn't believe in a God that would just push man away. It was just one sin - why didn't God just forgive Adam and let that be the end of it?

Well the answer to that question is simple. Man is the one who pushed God away in the Garden of Eden, and we have done it ever since. God never created us to sin. His intention was to enjoy a personal relationship with each one of us, and this relationship is made valuable because God gave us free will in order to choose Him. When man was first created in the form of Adam, God placed him in the Garden of Eden that satisfied all his needs and desires. God walked with Adam in the garden and enjoyed a face-to-face relationship that we will never have until we get to heaven. Adam could do anything he wanted in the garden, except that he could not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So what did Adam do? He gave up everything God had lovingly created for him to satisfy one urge, and man was forever separated from God.

But why couldn’t God just forgive Adam? Why did He push Adam away? The truth is that Adam is the one that hid from God; Adam is the one that pushed God away. Genesis 3:8-10 relates the first moments after Adam and his wife Eve ate fruit from the forbidden tree: “Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, ‘Where are you?’ He answered, ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.’” Adam was the first man to experience the profound shame resulting from his sin, but Adam’s attempt to hide from God in the darkness has been mirrored by all of humanity since the moment sin first entered the world.

Romans 5:12 describes the end result of our sin: “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned.” By turning his back on God, man rejected a personal relationship with God and left himself with only the option of death. And although God would have been justified in destroying Adam and Eve at that very moment, He did the opposite, and He sent His only son Jesus Christ to die on the cross and bridge the gap that we have all created between ourselves and God. But while God has forgiven mankind’s ultimate betrayal, and He has taken the first step toward our redemption, the majority of people that I see everyday have still chosen to turn their backs on God. Couldn’t God just have forgiven Adam? God absolutely could have forgiven Adam, and he has extended His forgiveness to Adam and all of his descendants since sin was first introduced into the world. But sadly, only a small percentage have accepted God’s merciful offer.

In the Garden of Eden, we lost the most absolutely fundamental thing in life – a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. We lost the ability to speak face-to-face with the One who created us, to laugh with Him, to lay our worries and concerns at His feet. But God displayed inhuman forgiveness by reinstating that face-to-face relationship in the form of Jesus Christ. Jesus taught us how to pray so that we could regain direct contact with God again; there is no need to speak through a priest or a saint because God was merciful enough to grant us direct access to Him again. And for a period of thirty-three years, the Israelites and those from the surrounding areas were able to speak with God, know God, understand His principles, and be touched by God. And in keeping with our sinful tradition, we hung Jesus on a cross to die so that we wouldn’t have to be challenged, or even offended, by the Truth that was so foreign to a world without God. But even while Jesus hung upon the cross in the most unbelievable torment you can imagine he spoke these words: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). Even before we ask, God has forgiven our sins, and all we must do is answer God’s call in our lives.