- For we ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and
pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. - But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared,
- Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.
It is no secret—and often said—that we live in a fallen world. There is no better proof of this than our natural attraction to what harms us and our resistance to what is good. Why is it that good girls like bad boys? Why do boys want to be “bad” in the first place? Why do we associate pleasure with the very things we come to regret, even though as children we were warned against them? There are many examples that show our pleasure principle leads to pure vanity. So why do most of us spend our youthful peak years feeding our flesh?
It may surprise many, but God’s perfect order for mankind is that we begin life in our natural state before we come to understand who we are spiritually. This does not mean that God wants us to be led by sin. Paul explains this in 1 Corinthians 15:46: “However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural; then the spiritual.” What Paul is saying is, our spirits first dwell in earthly, natural bodies before we receive our eternal spiritual bodies. Also true is that our natural impulses come first in life—and along with them our fleshly desires and weaknesses that Titus 3:3 describes so honestly—before we learn who we are spiritually.
This natural-then-spiritual order is unique to mankind. Scripture shows that before God created
humanity and earthly creatures, He had already created spiritual beings that dwell in the heavenly realm—angels who could observe mankind and even walk the earth. Job 38:7 tells us: “the morning Stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy“, when God laid the foundations of the earth. Genesis 6:2 speaks of angels who abandoned their proper place in Heaven, saying, “the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were fair, and they took to them wives, of all which they chose.” But even these were not the first to rebel against the spiritual order God established.
God’s will for the natural to come before becoming spiritual only makes sense when we consider the fall of Lucifer. Ezekiel 28 gives a vivid description of who Lucifer was before iniquity was found in him. Verse 12 describes him as: “full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty.” Verse 13 reveals: “Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering,” showing the honor and splendor God had given him. Verse 14 goes even further: “Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so.” These verses reveal the extraordinary trust and authority God placed in Lucifer. And verse 15 tells the tragedy of his fall: “Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.“
Most people say the first sin in the world was the partaking of the forbidden tree. But few recognize that the first sin in the universe was the pride of Lucifer. Pride is the same sin he used on Eve when he told her in Genesis 3:5, “you will be like God.” This was the very delusion that led him to oppose God. This is why God hates pride in man. Pride corrupted a perfect spiritual being, and pride led humanity into rebellion. Yet it was also Lucifer’s fall that led God to create mankind in His own image—although lower than the angels, yet possessing something the angels do not have: free will with the gift of redemption. So it makes sense, when considering the rebellion God experienced from His angelic creations, that mankind would first experience life through the trials of our fallen state, to allow our free will to lead us to choose God and mature spiritually.
Amen.