The Lie of Sin
Truth is a big idea
But for our purposes in this discussion, it is the inner script that speaks to us.
Your truth is the words on the inside of your identity that shape how you see yourself, how you see God, how you interpret the world around you and the things that happen to you.
But truth is more than a set of ideas, behavioural ethics or life principles. Truth is embodied in a Person. That Person is Jesus. He is the truth about God - but He is also the truth about us. And He came to live that truth, to show us that truth, to demonstrate that truth; so we would not just understand truth with our minds, but be able to enter into it with our hearts, our loves and our everyday, lived relationship with God.
Truth is not something we strive to attain - or live up to. Truth is something we ‘see’ then realise and participate in by surrendering to it. You can’t make Truth - true.
All you can do is come awake to it. And, by letting go of other ideas, begin to live ‘out of’ its healing and delivering power and its inevitable life-giving freedom and liberty.
However, to fully value and enter into the truth of Jesus, we need to see the contrasting LIE that has attempted to capture humanity from the beginning. The LIE of Satan and Sin that opposes the TRUTH embodied in Jesus. And like Jesus said, when we know this truth, the truth will set us free. Truth heals - because it exposes the lie of sin; the lie we had been believing; and gives us a powerful, life giving alternative to anchor our faith, hope and love to.
To see the great LIE of sin - we need to go back to the Garden of Eden. Knowing what God calls ‘sin’ - and what human history and tradition calls ‘sin,’ can often be two different things, making us focus on the wrong issues and allowing room for the devil to place guilt and condemnation on us due to our ignorance.
Let’s pick up the story of the Fall in Genesis Chapter 3.
Gen. 3:1-7 NKJV
Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’” Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
So, when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.
The temptation of the serpent was essentially the cancerous ideas that:
God wasn’t fully telling Adam the truth.
Therefore, Adam was not safe inside God;
That he was actually outside of God;
That he was therefore on His own.
Let’s flesh this out a bit. The serpent was essentially saying…
“God hasn’t given you the full story. He is holding something back from you. And a partial truth - is a lie. God can’t be trusted. Your future and security is better in your hands, under your control. He is telling you that you are ONE with Him. But He is treating you like you are ‘OTHER’ to Him. Take back the control Adam! If you eat from this Tree, you’ll be able to judge God and hold Him accountable. You will be able to see whether everything He says to you is actually trustworthy. And…the first thing you’ll see is that you won’t actually die. This is just an idle threat to keep you from the truth. Take back control Adam. Hasn’t God said you are to have dominion on this earth? How are you going to do this if you don’t have control?”
You see…sin isn’t the act of eating the fruit. Sin is the adoption of the thought process that:
I am separate from God. I am on my own. I will judge God’s goodness and faithfulness before I fully trust it. Which means - my first response to God won’t be surrender to Him. I will author my future. I will decide who I belong to and who I will surrender my will to.
As Adam and Even adopted this thought process, that God was no longer the Source of their being, the Source of their LIFE, their TRUTH and their WAY - they felt naked.
And they hid. They hid from their actual Source of LIFE, TRUTH and WAY. They moved away from the posture of Jesus. The place of the Son (or daughter) living in a loving, trusting, devoted and self-giving relationship with their Father in Heaven. This is the death that came to humankind. Our death was the result of our movement away from LIFE.
This diseased thinking - became Adam’s new pivot point, and this is what sin actually is. It is the root of the Tree of Death. The broken stuff that humankind does, after they think this way, is the fruit that comes from this type of thinking. This one lie, once it takes root, produces death in the human soul.
So in effect, the actual fall came before Adam and Eve ate the fruit.
Eating the fruit was their first fruit response at trying to gain control over the baptism of doubt and anxiety that had sliced through their souls. It was this doubt and anxiety that caused them to feel naked. When they stopped believing the truth and believed the lie of the serpent, their inner assurance was shredded and anxiety swept into their hearts. The Bible says their eyes were opened. Interesting! Death came from ‘open eyes’ not closed eyes. They had new eyes of perception that now sat at the centre of their truth seeking, and truth validating, central, human core. Simply, put in modern language, their new eyes were no longer ‘Spirit and Truth’ - but Human Psycho Neural. Or - Mind-Body.
Truth was determined by what they thought and how they felt about what they thought
Adam and Eve were tricked by the serpent to pursue the deep and abiding assurance that their souls craved, through self-authorship. They sought to control, through their independent actions, what they already had (in abundance) in their original design and fellowship within the Godhead. The baptism of anxiety that followed - was death to their peace and joy. This feeling of anxiety was new to them. And in their fear - they hid. Hiding from the very Father that loved them, created them, wanted to heal them and satisfy the wound in their souls. It was nonsense. But to Adam and Eve - it was their new truth.
God was now their Judge - not their Father. And if He was their Father - He was a Father that was out to get them, punish them and put them in their place. They had, in effect, re-defined who God was. Not in the true image of who He actually was - but in the image of their own lie; their own delusional thinking and mythology. They had created the first false god. The real truth of who God was, and who they were, was replaced by a new truth, which was, of course, a totally evil fabrication. And it fractured their souls. This fracture produced hiding, self-protection, self-centeredness, which, along with their new psycho-neural centre, obliterated their freedom for fellowship and their inner sense of assurance. Isolation, loneliness, and alienation rushed in.
The great dance of fellowship which they previously drew their life from dissolved. Their fellowship of divine life was replaced by brokenness, estrangement and angst. From this core, all manner of human creations emerged…jealousies, envies, frustrations, disappointments, strife and finally murder.
Adam and Eve became different people. Sure…they still existed…as in, they drew breath.
But they no longer experienced life and life more abundant. True…divine…life.
This lie is the heart of sin. This lie is the disease of sin that needed curing and healing. And, as St Athanasius wrote, “Adam and Eve began to lapse back into non-being.” They lost the freedom to share in the Trinitarian life. In fact, the presence of God, instead of being their Source of LIFE, now filled them with dread. As the generations followed after Adam and Eve, the accumulated weight of this lie became a ‘way of being’ inside the human heart that we couldn't shift on our own. The reality was this ‘way of being’ needed to be transformed from the inside out.
