Do you think that statement becomes any less true if you are white, black, brown, male, or female? Do you think that other people who aren’t the same denomination, religion or a person who doesn’t believe in God at all as you are just as valuable to God? How about people in a different division of the place you work like “the mail room people” VS “the clerical staff”?
What is it within us that makes us judge one another? Do we think that God feels the same about other people as we do?
It is the tree of knowledge of good and evil. We inherited it from our great grandparents Adam and Eve. It makes us judge everything independently, that is, without God. God knew this would happen and warned “in the day you eat of it you will surely die.” Well one proof of that is that God had said man was “very good”. Now man was judging himself and said “naked and ashamed”. “Who told you that you were naked?” “Did you eat of the tree I told you not to?” (Genesis 3:)
God knew man ate of the tree as soon as he started judging good and evil for himself. Man’s new found knowledge wasn’t complete though and therefore not correct. God is perfect and has perfect knowledge. He can see the beginning and end of a thing even beyond time. He can correctly judge good and evil. He made them.
Man, now judging good and evil judged himself and saw himself as imperfect. This is sin. Much later, in the book of Hebrews (9:13), God says through the writer “How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” It is the consciousness of sin that kills man (separates him from God). This is what the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil does. In man’s little imperfect knowledge and judgment, he can’t be with God because he is less than perfect.
Another aspect of the working of this insidious tree is that it makes people self-centered. One example of this is the situation between Cain and Able (two sons of Adam and Eve). The one had offered God a sacrifice of a lamb. This indicates a consciousness of personal sin and the need of payment (the lamb representing Able). Cain on the other hand offered Grain (the work of his hands) and became very angry and jealous of Able because God showed respect to Able’s sacrifice and not to his. There is a lot going on here but the main element is Cain doesn’t understand why his hard work isn’t worth much more than the Lamb that Able offered. In answer to Cain’s expression of anger God told Able that sin was lying at the door and that he must overcome it. Rather than submitting to God against this wrong Cain felt he had been dealt, he decided to kill his brother. This marked the climax of Cain’s self-righteousness, anger and jealousy. All of these have their root in the knowledge of good and evil, self-centeredness, and self-exaltation.
We tend to think of “sin” as something wrong we have done. While this is one aspect or manifestation of sin, it can be more clearly defined as that element that separates us from God and all that issues out of that element. The element is the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. If we act apart from God we manifest sin (the independent nature inherited from our great grandparents Adam and Eve). God actually designed man to become one with Him, to live in and with Him. This tree separates us from Him and compounds that separation by driving a wedge between us every time we act independently of Him.
Now God has brought man a cure for his consciousness of sin. The God Himself came down to man in the form of a man (His son Jesus). As a man, He suffered on man’s behalf all the punishment man deserved for his sins and then provided a new life. God himself with His resurrected Son comes into us by the Holy Spirit that we now can receive Him because we have the consciousness that we have been forgiven and cleansed from our sins through Jesus the Christ. This new life within helps us and teaches us how to live according to God so that we can please him and because of our cleansed conscience, we are able to have continual fellowship with God.
Even when you know what God has done for us, it takes special progressive revelations to really get it. We are so dull because of being used to judging according to our own ability to understand or, as I should say, inability. As we grow in Christ, we are taken from one degree to another in our ability to grasp bit by bit what God has done and why. I could say thousands of times “God really loves you” and you might start to get it some special day as you think and dwell on those words. Then when you really believe it, you start to grow more and realize it more. God says that when all of the believers together, each sharing their own grasp/understanding/comprehension/apprehension/experience/fellowship with all the others through God’s indwelling Spirit; while being continually infused with the flow of His pure divine love that we will eventually be filled up with the fullness of God.
(2 Corinthians 3: and Ephesians 3:).
A wonderful thing I want to leave with you, that is PRAY. God wants us to seek him out and talk to Him. He is more than ready and willing to manifest Himself to us; we just need to keep on asking him, be thankful, and believe that He hears and will answer out prayers.


