5. The Character of God

Dr. Jim Richards

Most people define original sin as Adam and Eve disobeying God in the Garden by eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Original sin was not just them eating from the tree. Original sin was that they ate from the tree for a particular purpose - because they believed a lie. They believed God wasn’t good, that they weren’t created in His likeness and His image. They believed the only reason God didn’t want them to eat from the tree was because, if they did, they would become like God and would get to decide good and evil for themselves. That is the heart of all sin, unbelief, and all the wickedness going on in the world. Once we start deciding good and evil independent of what God says it is, we set ourselves on a course that seems right, but only leads to death. The entire world is in chaos because we’ve created our own concepts and ideas of good and evil. And as always, when we choose independently of God’s truth, we end up in disharmony with God, disharmony with one another, and a world full of chaos. We are being taken on a journey away from God, to alienate us from Him so that we can never have the life He promised. I want to help you understand the character of God and that every deviation of God’s Word is usually because we don’t believe the truth about God’s character and nature. Therefore, we don’t really see the truth about how good God really is.