Imagine you get a brand new phone. It’s the latest top of the line version. It’s got all the bells and whistles. You have the phone for a short time and you download something that causes your phone to now have a virus. It now has all kinds of issues. You get in contact with the maker of the phone and they say you have to do a hard reset and restore the factory settings. Now you’re not sure you want to do this because you’ll lose stuff that you don’t want to. None of this was the fault of the company you got it from. This was your choice to download the thing containing the virus. It was your decision because you had the free will to make it.
God designed everything to be good. If you read in Genesis 1 the creation story you’ll see a repeated phrase: God saw that it was good. Then you get down to the end of the chapter and you see this. And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good (Genesis 1:31 KJV).
God created everything good. It was designed to be good. Everything worked in harmony. There was no sickness, disease, war, crime, etc. Then a virus that we call sin entered the design. Once sin entered it brought all kinds of issues with it.
Some may say, “why did God just not put the tree in the garden?” Well then it’s not free will. If you don’t have a choice to love someone then it’s not love. We as humans had one command and we messed it up. You may think that we didn’t mess up, but Adam and Eve did. Now before you jump on Adam and Eve for messing it up for us. Know that most of us probably wouldn’t have lasted as long as they did. We don’t really even know how long they were in the garden before this happened.
So now sin is in the world and it infects everything. Most of all our relationship with Jesus. Your sins have come between you and your God (Isaiah 59:2 BBE). Remember though that this was not the original design. God didn’t design it this way. He made it good. We corrupted it.
But God in His great mercy and grace makes a way for us while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son (Romans 5:10 WEB).
The thing is though the choice is ours. We have to be willing to do a hard reset. Reset our way of thinking, reset our way of life, reset the path we are on. This does mean that we will lose some things we are used to. Let us say as Paul would that I am ready to give up all things for the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, which is more than all: for whom I have undergone the loss of all things, and to me they are less than nothing, so that I may have Christ as my reward (Philippians 3:8 BBE). Nothing we lose to gain a closer relationship with Jesus is a loss.
Let us pray that God would renew us, that He would make us new. Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me (Psalm 51:10 KJV).
2 Corinthians 5:17-18 NET 17 So then, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; what is old has passed away – look, what is new has come! 18 And all these things are from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and who has given us the ministry of reconciliation.
Ezekiel 36:26-27 KJV 26 A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.