Faith comes to you as God's gift of grace: "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God" (Eph. 2:8). Not only is your salvation a gift of God, but the faith to embrace it is his gift as well. But here is

God knew that we would convince ourselves that we are okay when we're not okay. So he designed a means for us to be confronted again and again with the depth of our sin and the expansive glory of his provision in the person and work of the Lamb, the Savior, the Redeemer—the Lord Jesus Christ.

Yet the message of the garden of Eden is that sin makes us quest for God's position. We want life to work according to our will and conform to our plan. This desire to be at the center never goes anywhere good, personally or relationally. Self-centeredness is at the core of sin's dysfunction, another powerful evidence of our need for rescuing grace.

The birth of Jesus is a sure sign that God will act where we cannot act, and he will act with life-giving grace. Celebrate that Jesus came to give life, because it's the one gift we could never, ever give ourselves.

To every human being, sin is the ultimate undefeatable enemy. It captures and controls us all, and there is nothing we can do. It is either the height of arrogance or the depth of delusion to think that you are okay. None of us is okay apart from the invasion of grace that is the core purpose for the coming of Jesus.

No need to deny, rationalize, or otherwise excuse away evidence of your sin. God wouldn't have sent his Son if your sin were not real.

If your life is Christ, then your death will be only more of Christ, forever. If your life is only Christlessness, then your death will be only more Christlessness, forever. That's not fundamentalism, that's the law of non-contradiction.

We are all insane. That is what original sin means. Sin is insanity. It is preferring finite joy to infinite joy, creatures to the Creator, an unhappy, Godless self to a happy, God-filled self Only God can save us from this disease. That is what the name "Jesus" means: 'God saves'.

but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.”

but about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You must not eat of it or touch it, or you will die.’”

When the woman saw that the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eyes, and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom, she took the fruit and ate it. She also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it.

“Who told you that you were naked?” asked the LORD God. “Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”