Grace In Judgment

The Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field.

To the woman, he said, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing. In pain, you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.

And to Adam, he said, because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground because of you.

In pain, you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles, it shall bring forth for you. And you shall eat the plants of the field.

By the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread till you return to the ground. For out of it, you were taken. For you are dust. And to dust, you shall return.

The man called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all living. And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.

Then the Lord God said, Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever.

Therefore, the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man. And at the east of the garden of Eden, he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

Amen. Up until this point in Genesis, we have only seen God blessing. All of his work thus far in what we have studied has resulted in life and abundance, beauty, and satisfaction, especially for humanity, for the first man and woman that he made.

All of that changes when we arrive at our present text. Suddenly, God is not blessing. Suddenly, we find that God is cursing.

So that in chapter 3, the emphasis of his work is on how it now results in deprivation, shame, painful toil, and death.

Again, especially for humanity, for Adam and for Eve. The truth is that most everybody wants the God of Genesis 1 and 2.

They like that God. He's pleasant when we see him displaying his glory through the wondrous, creative works of the world.

When he's providing life in its fullness and bountiful blessing for us. We want that God. That is a pleasant God. We like that picture.

Few of us are as interested in the God of chapter 3. The God who displays his glory just as prevalently, equally so through judgment, issuing curses and depriving us of the fullness of life that we had found earlier in chapters 1 and chapter 2.

And yet, it's the same God. It's not a different God. It's not a lesser God. It's the same. Just as God is glorious in creation.

Just as he is glorious in giving life and bounty and abundance. He is glorious also in justice.

He's glorious in his judgment and good in both. And one of my goals for this morning is to show you in this text that is only through the reality of God's judgment that we can actually come to discover what is the most astounding aspect of God's character and his acts toward us.

And that is God's grace.

God has written convincingly that God's glory in salvation through judgment is actually the primary theme of the entire Bible.

And that theme finds its climax, of course, in the person and the work of Jesus Christ. First, the climactic moment of his atoning death on the cross and his crucifixion.

Christ bringing salvation through his own judgment, taking on our judgment as he is crucified. And then being raised from the dead, proving that that saving work has been brought to us.

It finds its ultimate resolution, though, in the end. As Christ, the righteous one, our Lord and Savior, finally judges the world to bring this final salvation to all of his people through its judgment at the end of the age.

So while it finds its climax later, as it finds its resolution later, this theme of God's salvation, God's glory and salvation through judgment, it finds its genesis here in chapter 3.

The emphasis of the narrative, of course, is clearly on God's judgment following the original sin. And that judgment includes individual consequences.

It includes collective death and physical death. It includes the expulsion from the blessings of God's presence in the garden. And still within this narrative of judgment is the seedbed of God's saving grace.

And as we continue further in our study of the Bible, what we find is what the foundation that is laid here for us of grace, even in its concealment somewhat in chapter 3, it begins to grow and flourish into the beautiful blessings of the gospel in Jesus Christ.

And so I want you to see God's judgment, but I want you to see God's grace in that judgment. First, I want you to notice that grace is promised in judgment.

It's promised in judgment. That comes in verses 14 to 19. This is divine speech given to us in poetic form, which is helpful in helping us to understand what God is saying here.

It's the classic parallelism where the first line is intensified and further clarified by the second line as we work through the speech that God gives.

He's announcing his oracles of judgment on each party involved in the fiasco of the fall. Those consequences include an existence that will be marked by struggle and toil, ultimately leading to death.

The man and the woman's experience of life moving forward will be stripped of all of that bounty and blessing that they had freely enjoyed in God's garden.

Theirs will be a living death that culminates in a physical death as their bodies are returned to dust.

But the particulars of God's judgments strike at the heart of each individual's distinctiveness in being. Let's just walk through.

God begins first with the serpent, verses 14 and 15. Look at it with me. Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field.

On your belly you shall go, the dust you shall eat all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring.

He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. There's a unique play on words here. God declares that the serpent who, in verse 1, was most crafty will now be most cursed.

Remember, this curse, this is not about a species of animal. That's not what this curse is being delivered to. This is about a spiritual power represented symbolically by the animal.

It's about Satan. That ancient serpent he's called in Revelation 12. Who is symbolized by the snake in this narrative.

I want you to think about this. Wrap your head around what's happening here. That the serpent will go on his belly and eat the dust does not mean that there was a physical change in the species of animal.

It's been suggested that perhaps before this moment, maybe snakes looked different than what they look like now. Maybe they had legs. Maybe they wondered upright as opposed to crawling as we understand them to crawl now.

But I think that's a mistaken notion of what's actually happening in this text. I don't think that we're to understand this to be a physical change in a species of animal.

Rather, the posture of crawling, eating the dust is used throughout the scriptures as a sign of abject humiliation.

It is to be brought low and despised and shamed. It's not about a snake. It's about how Satan, the devil, the deceiver will now be acknowledged in the world.

The evil one sought to be glorified like God, we understand. We read between the lines and trying to sort out what is his motivation and attempting to deceive the woman to begin with.

We find what it is is he is an adversary of God. He wants to destroy the Lord and the Lord's people. He wants to make himself honorable like this God.

Instead, God declares he will be humiliated and disgraced above all of the created world. And how will this humiliation ultimately be demonstrated?

In his demise. Think about what's happening in the narrative here. He will be crushed by the offspring of the very one he had manipulated for his own glory.

Rather than to receive glory through the deception and his manipulation of the woman, the seed of the woman will ultimately bring about his greatest humiliation and destruction.

God curses the serpent, the devil, the adversary and deceiver. Then we get to verse 16 and it moves from the serpent to the woman.

What is it that God says to her? I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing. In pain you shall bring forth children.

Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you. Moving forward, the distinctive elements of the woman's life will be marked by painful toil and discord.

God will multiply her pain and childbearing. Sorry, Marissa. That encourages you as you prepare.

This is more than about the labor pains of giving birth. The word actually here in the beginning is conception. I will surely multiply your pain in conception.

And then as we see in this parallelism, in pain you shall bring forth children. The punishment, the punitive action here is on motherhood itself. What would have brought her tremendous joy and joy alone up until this point will now be marked by pain.

Difficulty. The joys of motherhood from conception to childbirth to raising children will be attended by painful toil. Being a mother in a fallen world will be hard.

Becoming a mother in a fallen world will be hard. The blessing of bringing life and bringing about more image bearers to give glory to God will continue, but it will not continue in the same way.

It will also multiply evil as her sin and Adam's sin passes on to the sin of their children. It will be painful for her. The second part of this oracle is not actually punitive judgment from God.

It's a revelation of the ongoing effects of sin and her relationship to her husband. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.

The disputed text is somewhat ambiguous, but we get clarity if we look at chapter 4, just probably on the same page. Look at chapter 4 and verse 7. The same exact phrase is being used in the next narrative.

God is speaking to Cain, and he says, If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, same language, sin is crouching at the door.

Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it. Now that gives us some clarity as to what this actually means in chapter 3 now.

Just as sin is desiring to master Cain, so will the woman attempt to struggle in a war of mastery with her husband.

The husband and the wife's relationship as a result of their sin is broken, and it will continue to be broken. It will be a war of domination between the two of them.

She will attempt to dominate the one whom God had ordained to exercise the function of leadership. And yet God will not allow for it.

He will rule over her still yet, albeit as a sinner. He will. God's order stands, though both the man and the woman will struggle to live up to it in their sinful and fallen state.

This is the effects of sin on the marriage union that was so glorious in chapter 2. And then he moves to the man, verses 17 to 19.

To Adam he said, Plants of the field, that's distinct.

He hasn't had to do that up to this point. He's been eating the bounty of the good fruit of the garden. He will have access to that goodness no longer. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground.

For out of the ground you were taken. For you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Interesting, if you remember when we studied this a couple of weeks ago, just the previous passage.

Once God exposes Adam's sin, what is it that he resorts to as a final option? The blame game. It's really not my fault.

It's the woman's fault that you gave me. And by the way, since you gave her to me, this is really your fault, God. Notice what God does with Adam as he speaks to him here at the beginning. He will not accept that.

Notice, because you have listened to the voice of your wife. That's not listening in the sense of receiving her counsel. He must do that. It's listening in the sense of abdicating his role as the prophet, priest, and king of the garden in order to submit to his wife rather than to do what was right.

Because you have done this. Because you have eaten of the tree that I commanded you not to eat of. He will not let Adam get by with thinking that this is anything less than his own responsibility and his own personal sin against God.

And what's the curse? It's not on Adam. It's on the ground. The abundance of trees that were, in chapter 2, pleasant to the sight and good for food are replaced now with thorns and thistles and the plants of the field that will require hard labor.

Prior to the fall, Adam's work was a personal pleasure. God provided his food in abundance in the garden and he could be satisfied in the pleasure of his work as he cared for the garden because it was through that work that he enjoyed his creator and the blessings of his creator.

His work wasn't for survival. His work was for glory and enjoyment of God. All of that changes now. Adam's work would no longer be a pleasure.

It would be a necessity for his very survival and it would be hard. And the only relief he will get from this consequence is death.

No repentance in Adam will change the consequence that God gives him for this sin. Only death will relieve him from the painful toil that he will now endure as he is returned to dust.

What is this? It's judgment. It's just. But it's hard. It's severe.

It's deserving. But it's in the midst of these divine pronouncements of judgment that we find this profound promise of grace.

And it comes to us in the curse against the serpent in verse 15. Will you just set your eyes on it again? I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring.

He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. It's in the curse against the serpent. There is no grace for the serpent and his offspring.

But there is grace here applied in hope of redemption and restoration for the man and the woman and her seed. God will cause enmity to exist between the serpent and the woman, not between humanity and a species of animal, but between Satan and his power and evil and the seed of righteousness that will come from the woman.

An ongoing war between his offspring and hers. And what's really interesting is as we move forward in the scriptures and particularly in Genesis, there is this delineation between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman.

It's revealed as early as chapter 4. In the very next narrative as we get to Adam and Eve's first two sons, Cain and Abel. Cain receives the curse for his sin.

He's the first human to receive a curse. It's as if Moses is identifying Cain as the seed of the serpent and the righteous Abel in his death as the seed of the woman who is then replaced by righteous Seth.

And it is through Seth that mankind begins to call on the name of the Lord. There's this delineation there. The seed of Cain, the seed of the serpent, and the seed of the woman, the righteous, promised seed in Seth.

We see it later. Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau. On and on it goes as we see this delineation throughout the scriptures.

This warring and enmity between those who love God and seek God and those who hate God and rebel against him and against his truth. Jesus himself alludes to this when in conflict with, of all people, the religious people of his day.

John chapter 8, he says to the Pharisees, you are of your father, the devil. You are the seed of the serpent, he says. And your will is to do your father's desires.

You want your way and your glory through lies about God the same way that he did. Well, how do we know Jesus meant that? Because it's what he says. He was a murderer from the beginning, Jesus says.

He does not stand in the truth because there's no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character. For he is a liar and the father of lies. And then he says, whoever is of God hears the words of God.

That is the words of Christ in that context. And the reason why you do not hear them, he says, is because you're not of God. You're not the seed of the woman. You're the seed of the serpent.

On and on it goes. We find it all the way to the end of scripture. It's collective in that sense. I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring that's collective in that sense.

But the collective seed of the woman and the serpent is suddenly narrowed at the end of the verse. Do you see it? The collective sense of the seed now is individualized.

An individual offspring of the woman will do battle, not merely against the seed of the serpent, but against the serpent himself.

Do you see it? He, singular, shall bruise your head. Not the offspring's head, the serpent's head. Bruise here is the underlyingness is a more violent word than what we might assume reading here with bruise in English.

It means to strike. Just fitting if the imagery here is of a serpent, isn't it? The serpent and the promised seed of the woman will trade parallel strikes.

The significance is not in the strike itself. The significance is in the location of the strike. The serpent will strike his heel. The seed will strike the serpent's head.

He will deal a mortal blow that will destroy Satan and his offspring forever.

But the question is, who is this seed? And how will he deal this mortal blow? Well, that's concealed for us in chapter 3.

We don't know. But we have this great privilege, don't we? This great privilege of reading the Bible from the New Testament perspective of fulfillment.

And the Bible insists that Jesus Christ is indeed this promised seed, who in his atoning death and resurrection received a strike to his heel while delivering a head crushing blow to the serpent.

The mystery of Christ is concealed in the passage. But the point is that God issued a promise of salvation through a future deliverer, even in the midst of pronouncing this judgment against Adam and Eve.

It's all judgment. But there's this promise. Life will be restored. A deliverer will come. There will be one from the woman, another human, who will deal this mortal blow to the serpent and to sin and to death.

And God always fulfills his promises. He is faithful to his word. Thus Paul says in Galatians 4, when the fullness of time had come, just at the right time, Paul says, God sent forth his woman, his son, born of a woman, a real human, truly human, the seed of the woman, but also truly God, the son.

Paul says, God sent him forth, born of a woman, to redeem those who are under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons, no longer as the seed of the serpent in our sin and death, but now the child of God through the son and his work on the cross.

And when we come back to Genesis 3, what we must recognize is that this promise of redemption is entirely of grace.

God is not obligated in any way to show us mercy. Death is what we deserve, but the Bible says that God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but he delights in steadfast love for his people.

Therefore, in the oracles of judgment, we find this astounding promise of grace. Grace is promised in judgment. Let's quickly move on to the next section.

Notice now that grace is received received in judgment. It's received in judgment. Verse 20, the man called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all living.

And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them. So the text is moving from the divine speech of God's oracles of judgment.

It's moving back to Moses' narration of the events. Important to this part is recognizing that it describes what happens after the pronouncements of judgment so that Adam and Eve and what they're experiencing in 20 and 21, they are living in judgment.

Therefore, they are receiving grace in the midst of judgment. Death is raining on them. God has spoken. And yet, even then, they receive grace.

the first thing that we see is that Adam gives his wife a new name. It's curious, isn't it? It almost seems like it's out of place.

I don't think it is. I think it's right where it should be. Up until this point, she's only been called the woman. This is the first time that we find the name Eve in the Bible because that was not her name until this point.

She was called woman because she was taken out of man. This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. Adam says, I will call her woman. He named her that initially in recognition of the fact that she came from his own flesh to be a companion in whom he would delight.

We saw a beautiful picture of that in chapter 2. But he renames her here. Following God's judgment, he names her Eve. It means life giver.

And he names her that, Moses says, because Adam understood she would be the mother of all living. Now, why does that matter? I think Moses is helping us to see a change in Adam here.

He had learned not to doubt the truthfulness of God's word. God had said that if he eats of the tree, he will surely die. And now he knows it's true.

God doesn't lie. And having been attentive to God's promise in the midst of judgment in verses 14 to 19, he renames his wife as a sign of his faith in what God said.

God says he will still bring forth offspring from Eve and that through that offspring will become a promised seed who will bring redemption.

And Adam hears the oracle and he believes God and now he renames his wife Eve as a sign of his faith in what God had said. He receives the promise of grace in the demonstration of his faith in God's promise.

grace. But it's more than that, isn't it? It's not just the renaming of the woman. We read in verse 21, the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and he clothed them.

Adam resumes his place of headship by issuing a new name. It seems that he then becomes the first example of repentance and faith but then he experiences grace even further.

In the contrast to the loincloths of fig leaves comes full garments of skins, full coverings. The word is tunic.

The full covering, it's not mere leaves. Now, it's made of skins. This was an act of grace. God providing a covering that is sufficient for them as they await the ultimate fulfillment of his promise.

Now, I think the people who first received this book, the ancient Israelites wandering in the wilderness of Sinai, having just been given the tabernacle and its instructions and they're witnessing now in their daily life these sacrificial rituals, I think they would have immediately connected this statement to the sacrifices they were accustomed to bringing in the tabernacle.

I think it's likely that we have here a sign of the sacrificial death of the Lord Jesus as a covering for our guilt. But the purpose here in chapter 3 is to point out that only God can sufficiently cover our guilt and shame.

only He can do it. All of our attempts to make up for our sin and our fallenness are like those loincloths of fig leaves.

Only God can provide what we really need and He has provided that in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Grace is received in judgment. Finally, I think we see in 22-24 that it is grace alone in judgment.

Grace alone. Then the Lord God said, Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now lest he should reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever.

Here's the action that follows the statement. Therefore, the Lord God sent him out of the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man and at the east of the Garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

This final element of judgment in the text is the formal expulsion from the garden. It's the most tragic scene in the whole thing.

The garden was the place of God's manifest presence. It was the place where the couple enjoyed the blessing of intimate fellowship with their creator.

God not only expels them he guards it so that they can't return. He puts a chair of them there a flaming sword to prevent them from going back.

How tragic. The man who was once tasked with guarding the garden serving as a priest to God in the garden delighting in the presence of God now is himself being guarded from it.

And the reason for the banishment is twofold. First of course they're removed because of their sin having become entered into this experiential knowledge of good and evil after eating of the forbidden tree.

The serpent had deceived Eve into thinking that if she ate of the tree she would be like God and indeed that was only partially true. They enter into this awareness of evil that they did not already know but it wasn't what the servant promised.

it was a knowledge of death rebellion of shame and guilt. That's punitive judgment.

God says you can't be here anymore where I am. But there's another piece to it in fact the second piece actually seems to be the emphasis. Adam and Eve were expelled so that they might no longer eat of the tree of life.

What is that about? I think it's grace and I think it's grace in this way. Notice what God says. Now lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever therefore he sends them out.

And then again in verse 24 he puts the cherubim there with the flaming sword to guard not merely the way to the garden but to guard the way to the tree of life. Why would this be necessary?

What is happening here? We ought not to take from this that it would have been theoretically possible for the man to take of the tree of life and reverse God's judgment against God's will.

That's not what we should take from this. God isn't concerned that Adam will find a way back in and will be able to receive life apart from God granting it.

That's not what we take from this. I don't think it's what it means. Calvin is helpful on this. Here's what he said. God it is indeed certain that man would not have been able even if he devoured the whole tree to enjoy life against the will of God for there was never any intrinsic efficacy in the tree but God made it life giving so far as he had sealed his grace to the man and the use of it.

In short Calvin says God resolved to rest out of the hands of man that which was the occasion and ground of his confidence lest he should form for himself a vain hope of life which he had lost.

What does that mean? Simply this. The tree did not have power in and of itself to confer life to the man and his wife.

It was sacramental in a sense so that every time they took of this tree it was a reminder of the life that they received and enjoyed from God.

It was a sign of the reality of life that came from God. The tree represented this blessing of life but now the man and the woman would no longer have a participation in that life which means they will no longer have a participation in the sign of that life but this is also grace in this way it meant meant that all of their hope for restoration and forgiveness and life would have to rest solely!

on the promise of God in the redemption through a promised seed their hope was then grace alone it wasn't merely faith in the promise plus participation in the signs that God gave their hope could not be in anything apart from grace alone in Christ alone and in an act of grace God removes them from any notion that life would be found by any means other than his promise so that they might move forward acknowledging in the tragedy that there is grace here but it is only in the promise of God I can't get it any other way and so we read in

Ephesians 2 by grace are you saved through faith this is not your own doing because you ate of the right tree or did the right things or attended the right service or gave the right amount or said the right prayers no it is by grace alone through faith it's not your own doing it is entirely the gift of God not the result of any work on your part so that no one may boast it is grace alone there is judgment here but it is not only judgment in each phase of the judgment whether it's in the pronouncement of the oracles of judgment whether it's in the existence within that judgment or the expulsion of the garden there is grace grace is promised in a future seed grace is received through faith and the coverings of

God that are sufficient for their guilt and shame and it is grace alone so they may not be confused as to how they might once again be restored there's tragedy here but the tragedy is how we get to the grace I want to close in a different way I want to go back to this idea it's presented here in the text this ongoing struggle of the serpent and the seed of grace and faith how does it work and I just want to show you just through one particular example of the Lord Jesus would you turn just to John chapter 3 we're not going to read verse 16 I actually want to read just before it John chapter 3 just before we get to that amazing statement of

God's love being shown in the son for all who will believe I want you to see what Jesus says to Nicodemus in verses 14 and 15 this is not a reference to Genesis 3 I'm not trying to make it a reference to Genesis 3 but I want to show you a connection as we see this theme of grace and judgment the serpent and the seed following throughout the scripture notice what he says in verse 14 Jesus says as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness so must the son of man be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life now those are short verses but they are packed Jesus is saying there is a promise of life though death reigns in us in Adam there is a promise of life and that promise of life will come through the son of man Jesus in this text is that son of man and it will come by faith alone in the son of man and what he does okay salvation but he illustrates it in verse 14 just as

Moses lifted the serpent in the wilderness so must the son be lifted up it's not a reference to Genesis 3 it's a reference to Numbers 21 Numbers 21 Moses is still leading the Israelites through the wilderness they keep falling into this repetition of sin and rebellion against God their complaints and murmurings against God over and over they keep coming to God and saying we wish you would have just left us in Egypt because you're not better than Egypt we would have rather stayed there when the story shows up in Numbers 21 God has just delivered them powerfully from another enemy and immediately they turn and they say the food that you keep giving us every day we're tired of it we hate it we don't want it we want the food of Egypt we don't want to die in the wilderness and suffer here you're not better than Pharaoh we want to go back to judgment on them do you remember what it was it was the fiery serpents

God brings forth these serpents who would bite the people venomous snakes they would bite the people and the people would get very sick and die now the reason I point to that is the imagery of the serpent why would God choose serpents so many ways he could have judged the people in the wilderness why would he do that symbolism that is perpetual throughout the scriptures we sense it even in secular culture today the serpent the snake is associated with sin and darkness and evil and death I think God is doing something specific there he's connecting their sin and their death back to this imagery of the serpent and when they are bit by the snake and they succumb and commit the sin they die so they come to Moses and they say Moses we need you to go to God on our behalf we need a solution we need salvation so

Moses the great intercessor for Israel goes to God and God says here's what I want you to do I want you to make a serpent and I want you to hang it on a post in the camp and if anybody will just look at it they are bit and just look at it they will receive their healing so Moses does it he doesn't take one of the fiery serpents that were killing people that's not what he does he makes a serpent in the likeness of those serpents I think that's actually important for us to see it's not a snake a real one it's a bronze one in the likeness of those snakes and he hangs it on the post and it didn't matter if somebody was bit by the serpent it didn't matter how sick they were it didn't matter how far in the progression of death they had come if they would just look to it in faith that God has promised that if I just look to his provision of grace in the bronze servant he will bring me healing and

Jesus reflects on that in John 3 and he says just as Moses lifted that serpent in the wilderness so must the son of man be lifted up so Jesus Paul says is God's son sent in the likeness of sinful flesh and God makes him who had no sin he makes him to be sin so that if we will just look to Jesus we will receive the healing through the promise of grace that begins all the way back in Genesis 3 it doesn't matter how much sin is there it doesn't matter how many times you've been bitten it doesn't matter how far along in the progression of sin and death you find yourself if you will just by faith look to God's provision of grace in the person of his son in Jesus

Christ and what he has done for us on his cross and in the resurrection you will receive full and complete healing or in Jesus words in John 3 eternal life death will no longer reign in you sin's power will be broken in you and you will be restored to life not because you ate of a tree or said just the right words in a prayer or did the things that churches tend to say that you're supposed to do but because Christ is sufficient and by faith you might receive the grace alone that God promised and that you might have for eternal life let's pray together