Tag Archives: Sinless

Self-Will Twisted

The gift of self-interest has become twisted. What began in a more perfect world as a healthy motivation to support and enhance life has degenerated in this fallen world into a power struggle—man against his fellow man in an egotistical attempt to improve his standing in life.

Satan is well aware of this weakness in our nature. So he uses it to dominate man, taking him down the road to self-destruction in an endless cycle of immorality and greed.(Ephesians 4:19) The truth is that self-will can never be satisfied devoid of relationship with God, and it’s desperately sad that so many have been blinded to this reality.

Man’s first taste of the bitterness of self-will was experienced by Adam. The fall of man is a very sad beginning to human history, but is also interesting because it says so much about our nature. Many Christians view Adam as being a perfect man—someone very different from man as we know him today. The fact is he was a perfect man. He was created sinless in a sinless world, which is the reason God could inhabit his being so freely and completely.

Yet this raises a question as to what the true definition of human perfection actually is. I think Adam was human in all the ways we’ve seen man’s nature to be in the foregoing chapters. What perfected his humanity was his relationship with God, and the fact that he dwelt in fellowship with God in a sinless world.