Chapter 12: God's Promised Man's Redemption from Sins through His Son, Jesus, after Man's Fall from the Grace of God

Luke 4:16-21

Jesus went back to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and as usual he went to the meeting place on the Sabbath. When he stood up to read from the Scriptures, he was given the book of Isaiah the prophet. He opened it and read,

"The Lord's Spirit has come to me, because he has chosen me to tell the good news to the poor. The Lord has sent me to announce freedom for prisoners, to give sight to the blind, to free everyone who suffers, and to say, THIS IS THE YEAR THE LORD HAS CHOSEN."

Jesus closed the book, then handed it back to the man in charge and sat down. Everyone in the meeting place looked straight at Jesus. Then Jesus said to them, "What you have just heard me read has come true today."

(But before the Presentation of the Fulfilled Promised Salvation of Mankind, we recall the prior topic presentation of the Fall of Man, of our parents: of Adam & Eve.)

Thus, before continuing to move on to the main topic of this Chapter about God's fulfillment of His Promise of Salvation we remind ourselves of the dire situation man and all men had fallen out of which God willed in all eternity to deliver man from that wretched state of being made separated from Him because of man's sins. Yet, despite that, we must, indeed, in this direction of deliberation, like God warned Job against an all-out outrage about the miseries of living, acknowledge with unswerving reverence of and gratitude to the Almighty for the most evident fact of existence.  Surely, prior to God's creation, man and nature were nothing.  God has created man and the rest of the being both in heaven and on earth.  The undeniable reality is that man, nonetheless breathes, and retains some faculty of choice, no matter how muddled and weak.  Likewise, including human life, nature remains to demonstrate its wondrous occurrences, both pacific and wild.  And definitely no creature has any right nor ability to contest God per any single remonstrance of defiance.  God is the Creator; and creatures are his subject creatures.

We briefly repeat our recalling of Man's State of Becoming Separated from God. 

Aware, nonetheless of man's sin of having rebelled and disobeyed God, we cannot but receive the dire and damnable consequences by such pitiable and sad act of human disobedience of the Almighty Creator.  And so as in the above, we only recognize such tragic human and natural consequences.  Thus, no one could deny the toils & the drudgery in living; as well as its quite simplistic characteristics! Living is a raw deal at one or more stages of life, whether at the very early stage or midway or at the later stage of life. Off the bat, however, we cannot by sheer pessimism be open to the good days, nonetheless, that we are permitted enjoying even if it is given that we live an imperfect earth.  For It is likely that every now and then life would appear neat, even like a paradise for a good many people, again in certain stages of living. And this depends upon whether; or how much more or how much less or least individuals were touched or treated in life with incidental or situational/circumstantial good breaks or bad breaks. Life is indeed puzzling and a mystery. How some individuals seemed luckier than others; while others seemed much more miserable than others. At least during the times when they were lucky, or when they were then miserable.

         Truth is simple, as God is one: a unity without discord like a symphony of music and is essentially without contradiction! As Author of life and creations His original design and intended 'natures' for living beings are intrinsically all to be in accord with Himself; and they are to be self-evident or uncomplicated owing to His Self Evidence and lack of complicating contradiction! Thus, when initially He made man according to His image, man or man's living was not supposed to be a messed-up maze of inconsistencies and disunity. Yet like we have described above, life realities all occur as muddled, even chaotic.  God's simple truths of life could, and at times are made to appear way so complicated by the messed-up intricacies of the world. 

          Proceeding to uncover, thus, as our humble reckoning of man's fallen state outside of salvation yet, very obviously, whether in our place of work, our home, or even our place of worship we would find many not at all welcoming deeds and gestures to truly entitle us to call such special venues our place of worship, our familial domain, or our comfortable resource of livelihood.  It is even possible for such place to be completely without even the least spirit of accord or peace.  Even in such places, any given day, and many a given day could turn out to be an unending very long day.  Often, human beings that we are, and even granting the best intentions and ideal situations, almost always it happens something turns awry, a conflict suddenly sprouts, or some backlash develops; or things turn ugly.  The facts of life here seem that it has become the universal fate of all individuals the world over and throughout all of history; even if in varying aspects, degrees, or circumstances, or at a different era or time, or milieu & place to be burdened with what we might call the human 'theological' predicament, i.e. the human fall from God's favor, the state of not having the full union with God, and the state of being, while in this world looking to heaven but likewise while messed up by the power of sin and evil. We could always look back what this was; and how it came about, yet we remain face to face battling and surviving the hurdling through this theological human flaw.  The voices of the world will persist to vociferously continue to confuse hearts and minds of people to deny this “human theological predicament”.  For, surely and principally the Prince of this world, the Devil, will orchestrate his minions, both of the spirit world, and from among men under the power of his possession, at telling the world and persuading the world there is nothing wrong in the dog-eat-dog culture practiced between people of the world.  They are to employ all the subtle means at getting people to accept all lies and deceptions in human behaving.  They would get consenting people to commonly think and believe there is no such thing as sin, there is nothing that should make people feel guilty no matter all manipulations and abuses done between one another. 

       Further elaborating, thus, on the one side, this is how unfortunate human predicament runs through the thread of day to day living, and how it spells out the diverse unpredictable messes it has caused and woven into the fabrics of inner human life, and inter-human social conflicts. Thus, with reference to the lying job worked by the evil spirits upon people, there are individuals who probably somehow entertain the belief that they do not perceive, nor believe they can be touched at all by life’s prevalent ordeals and shortcomings. Whether uniquely buffered or insulated against evident pathetic human/social conditions; or uniquely undisturbed within themselves by any human complexes of some kind is to give them the benefit of the doubt. Possibly such individuals or people might have been conveniently “parochialized” into some level of coziness and comfort their life seem all very conventionally regimented and protected; protected particularly against the humanly and socially embedded messiness of living, to some artificial degree, and very temporary situation. These individuals or even people very easily confirm and even lament “other” people’s or “other” individuals’ culpability and shortcomings; but hardly contemplate the same character or inner errors or even tendencies in themselves. They are so full of themselves they could only see the problems outside of themselves; their main preoccupation is to correct the societies outside of their own. This is that metaphysical shortness of perceptions and admissions accounted for by these people’s/individuals’ seeming exhibition of self-willfulness and self-affluence, wit, and gaiety; maybe precisely on account of their having become so engrossed with the world’s conventional fun, pleasure, and non-stop ‘busy-bee-ness’. Whereas they could be possessed with some degree of innocent and simple care and commitment to provide succor and resources; nonetheless theirs' is that humanitarian messiah-ship demeanor and orientation of seeming superiority over them lamentable and sorry bunch of people. They admirably project all the desires for development and progress or perfection in all facets of society and living; and they exude that impossible defeat or failure mindset. These individuals could even be, by Pharisaical imitation, leadership people of the Church, who seem to portray themselves excused from the need of the help they are teaching their flock. A type of these people, and people behavior have been exemplified early in the generations of human race. During the olden times, even of the Old Testament people and times, we remember the people of Babel. They had found themselves to be a new breed of humans in that after becoming content with their accomplishments, they had thought of validating and proving their self-enhancements and laurels by attempting to erect what they figured to be an endlessly towering edifice to build on and on. They had imagined so long as they persisted and moved on such an unending towering edifice was all feasible and possible. They had become pseudo-divinely thinking but conniving. They had made themselves some gods. Until they were baffled and checked and disillusioned when suddenly they found themselves unable to comprehend each other as each other was mysteriously made to speak strange language. The Babel human experience! In the extreme, some group of people who had absolutely deluded themselves into esteeming themselves and totally believing in their supposed exempt human racial superiority were the self-professed Aryan dominant race of people associated with the promoters of Hitler’s Nazism.  But, contrary to the above type of individuals' delusionary exceptionalism of themselves the reality has been, because Adam and Eve disobeyed God's one condition for them, man's, (and thus, all of mankind's), precisely by the curse of "original sin", previous paradisiacal capabilities, provisions, and order of creations about them were all taken away by God.  On a grand scale, Adam and Eve's act of disobedience not only cost them the loss of all human and material provisions. It cost them that most important good given them by God, namely the human innocence towards evil. Before their fall indeed it could be said of them that they were able to see no evil, hear no evil, and talk no evil! For then they did not know evil. Hence, man did no evil, and did nothing wrong. Everything they see around them was good according as God had ordained Paradise for them. Until they disobeyed God. Thus, because they disobeyed God, they had become culpable to God, and then found out they had lost the favor of God. So when confronted by God for their disobedience they found themselves naked and nakedly embarrassed! In other words, they found the effect of disobedience to be the degradation of their human nature, both externally and internally. Externally, we have mentioned the above effect of material impoverishment. God explicitly condemned them to inescapable physical labor as the requisite for subsistence. Hence, the words: "Out of thy sweat, shalt thou earn thy bread!" It was also pronounced to become a painful physical labor even for the woman to give birth to her offspring. Externally and internally most everything in living shall become a labor. But specifically, internally, they had lost the divine innocence or state of guiltless-ness. Hence, they and their off springs had become most susceptible not only to judgments in error but to outright injustices and criminal behavior. E.g., their first son killed their second child. On and on, they and all their off springs had become prone to committing all sorts of evil, i.e. the mark of the so-called original sin, or the human state of sinfulness. Inside and out, human living had become a perpetual story of people struggling against each other, and against flawed natural conditions of livelihood. Man's existence had then become an ordeal, a particular human predicament God had not meant for them but which the first human beings chose to befall them and their off springs.

Yet let us, on the other hand, go back and refresh ourselves of the other initially and fundamentally God-intended and willed destiny and heritage for man under the two contexts between after man was immediately created and gifted by the Creator and, then, having fallen from the grace of God, man's living that had become in need of redemption, and which was generously offered up right away by the offended heavenly Father the human life as indeed offered redemption via the mysteries and plans of God through His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ: God made man Savior of mankind out of God the Father's eternal loving and providing providence and wisdom.

Thus, from the point of view of creation's beginning, let us recall how and why, from the outset, God created man. Man lived a life God gave him which had a meaningfulness. God gave him, and to his wife this earthly life whereby they were to appreciate their life accepting stewardship over all other creations of God for their own good in glorification to and of God. God Himself said His creating them and all the other things of creation was good. And Adam and Eve surely saw they had a very good deal from God for themselves and their would-be off-springs. Their life was practically an absolute bounty! As God's chief creatures of earth, they were well endowed with everything they would need and want as human beings. But because they owed their creation from God, they were limited by one condition of God, a condition that God emphatically told them shall greatly displease Him if broken. When they were absolutely complying with the condition, which, by no means deprived them of their complete satisfaction and happiness, the life God had given them, their existence, was absolutely a Paradise. They were not to get sick; they were incapable of worrying about any necessary provisions or wants'; and they were not to die! Everything about Paradise spells out what might be our bottom-line definition of happy and contented earthly living in any place at any later time of history! And, whereas, in our worldly parlance, we tend to hear, and think, what people say would make them happy and content in life: "If only I have all the money in the world that I need!" "If only I'll never get sick!" "If only I have the most beautiful/most handsome/strongest mate in life!" And surely, our first parents, the very first human beings, had all these needs given them, and met with! Indeed, they got it made.  (Now, unfortunately for them, and their off springs, all of us, they chose not to comply with the one condition of God. And so, their Paradise was taken away from them by God; or their paradisiacal human living was reduced to just mere human existence. The stability, permanence, genuineness, and orderliness of living, whether with respect to the internal human traits & potentials or with respect to external biological & environmental human habitation & exploiting have become limited and relative by changeableness. Before the fall, our first parents all the animals in the paradise were probably upon their easy beckon call and command as they were made by God during creation masters of God's creatures. This changed; whereas humans still exercise some dominance over the animal species, nevertheless we know very well man must be extra wary and clever with them: lions, and the sharks, including the snakes. Physically and outwardly, Adam and Eve were probably 'perfect' physical specimens but with the fall experience psychosomatically transpired within them must have been an internal re-structural 'genes inter-reactivity causing them latent biological unpredictability towards the begetting of the potential varied types of human off-springs that might explain the diversities of humans. Also, Adam and Eve were probably sort of 'Einstein-like' about their mental acumen but for the same phenomenal eventuality of the fall experience many of their off-springs, obviously, would not be hence, the reality of humans all over history & places being born with a greater or lesser degree of congenital physical syndromes typifying the different levels of IQ's of people. Then, that element of good-naturedness; some are born moderately tempered, some wild; some are naturally trusting some suspicious; some workaholic, some just plain lazy. Of course, habitat or upbringing has also its 'relative' influence.)

Nonetheless, woeful, and hopeless the new predicament of living it had become for all of Adam and Eve's children; and deprived of the lasting and authentic qualities of meaningfulness, human existence, as we shall later expound, retained variably and relatively man's natural gifts and faculties (Re: Chapter 10: On Earthly Material Blessings). Internally and externally, man's possession, exercise, and minimal enjoyment of them would be dependent upon individual and sociological fates and destinies. But, indeed certain men and women might be led to be content with them; and sadly might tragically embrace an attachment to or even espouse themselves into worship of these mere goods of the world. The extreme eventuality of this behavior is referenced to above with the illustrating of some types of people or people mindset of themselves.

         Indeed, (and this is the main flaw attributable to the fall experience), man will not always choose to opt for what is good. Either he/she will not want to do anything at all, or he/she will not choose to do that which is good, or/and he/she will not decipher what is good for him/her. However, thanks be to the Heavenly Father, at the very least man retained that faculty to will or not to will. For this minimal existential prerogative and for 'all those' other residual physical and mental as well as ambiance possibilities of existence, some individual human beings, like we state above, force and delude themselves to the referred-to-sort of contentment and complacency. Perhaps, for at least a lifetime? Depending upon how much 'lease' of mercy God allows him/her/, or these some individuals? Yet, this flawed human act of choosing was and is nevertheless the only threshold, (insignificant as it is without the working of grace), by which Adam and Eve, and their off-springs were and through time to be enabled to receive the FATHER's PROMISE. Through Christ and by the Holy Spirit a later covenant with the Father, and therefore a later REDEMPTION OF MANKIND from the above wretchedness into the temporal LIFE OF GRACE, and the eternal LIFE OF BLESSEDNESS after judgment time in the NEW HEAVEN and the NEW EARTH was/is to be availed and offered in faith to the men and women with open hearts . (This is the Good News, which we are to re-tell, and re-share, and re-expound ON THIS venue on the internet via this website.)  Please be assured our fullest retort and answer to our own describing and acknowledging of the despicableness in living shall be completely addressed and vindicated by the more extensive chapter discussions and presentation of the yet meaningful life God has destined man to live and begin to appreciate even if still we have not reached the perfection of Christ's promised heaven yet.   

And so my friends, to you and I, who honestly accept being beset by this overwhelming predicament of being part of the fallen people of God, if you and I would only embrace the Lord's message, "behold, and see here His response to all your problems and predicaments!" And as the evangelicals loudly proclaim: "Christ is the answer!", it is in this context that our specific verses pertaining to Christ's coming unveil THE GOOD NEWS for every man in suffering. Christ came to deliver everyone in bondage because of sin. Jesus' words, and Jesus, himself THE WORD made flesh is our FREEDOM. He is our only recourse to be free. Jesus, thus, creates and points to a new kind of world order. Jesus restores even more what our first parents lost by of their fall. By virtue of Himself, the Good News Himself Jesus is making real, and visible a world where light conquers darkness, where faces of the new life spring replace the many looks of despair. As yet Jesus makes us wait for the new heaven and new earth till the end-times with the final restoration of the old order of total human union and bliss with God both spiritually and materially. Essentially, however, Jesus' promise of reconciliation with God brought forth by his coming is already accomplished; it is now here upon us. Upon Jesus' rising from the dead, Dimas, the good thief, along with many dead just Israelite Jews waiting in limbo went up to heaven with Jesus; as from then on more and more holy Christian believers have been taken to heaven; and more and more Christian followers in the world have continued to believe. This is the mission message we are proclaiming and explaining here! And it will be our recurring theme on these web pages, particularly on this sub-section on "Jesus, our hope and Joy!": God promised to His People in the Past and in the Present Covenant a second chance of union with God, a renewed agreement by the Almighty with His loved human creatures, the New Covenant of God with mankind.

Hence, It was not accidental that the Lord Jesus quoted Isaiah:"... "The Lord's Spirit has come to me, because he has chosen me to tell the good news to the poor. The Lord has sent me to announce freedom for prisoners, to give sight to the blind, to free everyone who suffers, and to say, THIS IS THE YEAR THE LORD HAS CHOSEN." From the tragic day that our first parents, Adam and Eve had fallen away from God, and ever since then, because of and together with them, all of us human beings through all generations have inherited their original sins, and on our own have committed our own kind of horrible sins. Thus, on account of this fallen nature of all men and women since day one of the fall man has lost God's paradise, man has been banned from his former state of bliss and happiness with God, and man has fallen persistently under the great influence of the "serpent" the evil one. And so we have had a life and a world characterized by Godlessness, i.e. a life and world pest by the state of human disorientation, and disorderliness mainly consisting of selfishness. It has been like man has been banned from the Kingdom of God; and was cast onto a power-grab-survival of the fittest oriented Kingdom of this world. Each one is pitted against each other; and so it’s been a story of alternating winners and losers, predators and preys between and among men. Bottom-line, each one goes down, and goes down hapless and dead. Every one suffers because everyone in his/her time eventually becomes the prey, the victim, and the vanquished. Such is the story of human civilization, likewise, the story of man's fallen state of sinfulness.

Through it all God never completely turned away His face. God, aware of the disgrace that man has fallen into, has always desired man's return to His grace, to good will. And so God called his special elects from among men to deliver to them His message that He longs for the people to return to God. And so God called Noah, Abraham, Jacob, David, Moses, Joshua, the prophets especially Isaiah and others including John the Baptist to tell the people one underlying message: to acknowledge human sinfulness, and rebelliousness against God, and to repent of their sinfulness. The 10 commandments, the law, were the measuring stick by which men were to acknowledge the ways by which they offend God. The law pointed to man which sins they needed to accept guilt for and to repent of. Saint Paul explained that what the law did was only to guide men away from committing the specified grievous offenses against God, and to lay down guilt upon those who insisted upon committing them. But the law did not provide men strength to consistently avoid sins, and did not provide real relief (release from remorse) for those that tried to avoid offending God. Saint Paul said this is the imperfection of righteousness through the law. And so something or somebody (already predicted beforehand) was needed to come to really free men from the bondage of committing sins, and from the guilt of their sins.

The first prediction of God’s promise of relief of man from sins was the following. We have the implied coming of a new woman in contrast to the old woman, Eve. And whereas the Old Woman Eve has fallen prey and victim to the serpent, which personified evil, the new Woman, empowered through her Son, will crush the Devil as represented, indeed, by the serpent. This was referred to in Genesis 3:15; to the serpent God said, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel." This was accomplished with the new Woman’s, Mary’s, Son overcoming the Devil by his Redeeming Act on the Cross as evil people, in lieu of the serpent/Devil, nailed Mary’s Son’s feet to the cross.  The following prelude discussion puts in perspective one repercussion from the first parents' sin against God with respect to man's becoming tied up to life suffering per the instrumentality of the evil one. 

(A Parenthesis Subtopic is being repeated and Incorporated here, a return digressing to the topic of sin, evil, and suffering as related to or as to be offset and radicalized into peace, joy, and some degree of earthly glory, for now, before the promised perfect glory upon the final victory of the Savior, Jesus Christ for the destined people of God.)

But first off, let us tie in together with this chapter on God's promise of redemption the two human predicaments of life discussed in two other chapters: the predicament of intrinsic human miserableness because of sin, and the all around internal and external aspects of the problems of living and the inescapable human suffering resulting from such problems of life, again on account of sin.  So we make reference here to the treatment of human misery done in the separate Chapter Seven as well as Chapter 9.  Critique, therefore, the statements, which we posited separately in Chapter 7.

In Chapter 7, we, thus, described suffering as this "fundamental phenomenon of brokenness" either within the person or between persons. Through those examples we could decipher the individuals’ experiencing of being cut inside them – whether physically or emotionally, of being torn apart from someone or others, again spatially or emotionally or culturally, and/or of any other similar experience of the destroying of individuals and communities or inter-relations on account of, along with other human shortcomings, natural selfish oppositions or irreconcilable differences. We say an individual suffers when certain parts of his body breaks up, e.g. like bruises, and wounds, or like a broken heart as in hurt or injured feelings. Moreover, individuals suffer when between each other some separateness exists, or conflicts take place. Thus, we could generally denote suffering as human ‘conflicts’, i.e. conflicts within himself or conflicts with others. Within oneself man is always burdened by fears, worries, and uncertainties that always clouded and foreshadow man’s day to day living notwithstanding any amount of caution and diligent efforts about dealing with them. Then as regards his relations with others, every individual has no guarantee he won’t be betrayed by somebody no matter if he be his/her "best friend" or his/her closest blood relation. The individual selfish interest will always dictate an individual’s bottom-line behaving with respect to others. How sad it is to experience the moment when a promise is broken, or our trust betrayed!  Summarily, thus, evil or sin consists in judging or acting by exclusive natural standard and with the imperfect and flawed human faculties. This inescapably unravels into necessarily time and space constricted perceiving or achieving. Sans of the faith element accompanying and even actually elevating the "judging" or "acting" to their fullest dimension and capability, such restricted and faith disabled human activities are bound, surely, to reckon with mere temporal and visible or tangible dealing with reality. It can only be surmised how easily and falsely human existence would have become characterized. In other words, atheistic and agnostic attitude and behaving naturally follows under such existentially restricted dealing with reality, regarding with both facts and ideas. Sans faith, or grace; or to be without God, it becomes an open city for evil and evil spirits to occupy that realm of human existing. Another way to look at it: evil and the Devil has been given a free hand over the lives of such unbelieving & non-believing people. And to their tragedy, they then have unraveled their lack of God in their lives by the consequential chaotic and troublesome living of their lives. The last paragraph above preceding this synthesizing outline illustrates this dire and tragic effect of a life cast into the power and dominion of the evil spirits.

Ultimately and again paradoxically for our own good, with respect to its holy dimension, there’s the necessary real act of suffering: the act, or the many, many acts of self-denial as the manifestation of the redeemed souls' availing of the newly infused law of God within each human being, which has been given to man right after Christ's work of salvation. This is the Christ now given upon mankind, and individually planted within each man and woman, who believes in the Christ, the Redeemer son of God made Incarnate, made man. But the redeemed human being must, indeed, believe in Christ; and in the process must repent of and for his/her guilt of his/her sins, and therefore must upon belief give up on sins.  But the hardest thing for a man to accept and to do is to deny himself. And whereas this is the ultimate call of God to every human being; self-denial is the toughest suffering every human being is to bear. Christ spoke of self-denial along with man's carrying of his cross. Together, self-denial is initially where every man begins to carry his cross, and ultimately where he/she crucifies himself/herself. Self-denial will involve the act of self-denial in relation to other people that come along his/her way. But it is his decision to completely surrender of himself/herself to the will of God in relation to others that he gets to love God and be in union with God. This sense of suffering thus is fundamentally the main task and work of every human being all through his/her life. And it is in this sense that the act of suffering is and will be a recurring activity in any human spiritual life. It is clearly an instrument of penance, cleansing, purification, and sanctification for a human being on his track to God and salvation.