The first thing God gave to man was responsibility:
"The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it"
Genesis 2:15 [ESV]
How interesting, for many reasons I suppose... But one that comes to mind is, throughout the bible, God seems to like giving BIG responsibility to the unexpected character...the ones that feel ill-equipped, the underdog, the long-shots. For example [yeah, I'll pick the obvious ones], Moses, Joseph, Daniel, David, Elisha, Paul, all 12 disciples, just to name a few. So how clever is it, that the very first thing that God would give to the very first man, would be responsibility? Even though it seems like a small thing; "here's a garden, go do some gardening"... It's the first "job" God ever handed over to a human.
But, thinking in terms of today, it's overwhelming to me, the amount of responsibility God has handed over to us humans. He clearly commissioned/assigned/gave us the responsibility of saving lives [matthew 28:18-20, II corinthians 5:11,20-21]. I mean, hello? First responsibility he gave to his disciples after coming back from the dead. I'd say it must be pretty dang important. And for those who are lost...you know, the ones we come in contact with every day...it literally is a life or death situation. Gracious, how much does that push me to tell Jesus to everyone I meet?
The second thing God gave to man was freedom:
"And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "of every tree of the garden you may freely eat"
Genesis 2:16 [NKJV]
How much does that speak to the character of our loving and gracious Father? Our whole idea of salvation and redemption is based on freedom and liberty from the sin that would surely be our downfall. His death and resurrection set us free from the curse of living under an impossible law [galations 3:10-14]. All throughout His Word I see this pattern of His desire for us to have freedom [II corinthians 3:17, galations 5:1, ephesians 3:11-12, ...only a few]. And how beautiful is it that one of the very first things God spoke into mans life was freedom and liberty?
The third thing God gave to man was boundaries:
"but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."
Genesis 2:17
So I got to thinking about this whole tree of the knowledge of good and evil thing... And can you imagine, living in a place where you had no idea what right/wrong or good/evil looked or felt like? Adam and Even didn't have any comprehension of sin, or wrongdoing... of guilt, or shame. That is such a crazy concept for me. I look around me, and every day I see people whose lives are MOTIVATED by guilt and shame. And to think, all of that could have been avoided by just following this one boundary that God laid out.
One of the things that I really love about God is that he's always a gentleman, and he has this desire to be loved and valued...but he doesn't force himself on us. He could have created man and woman without the capacity to choose between right or wrong. But I guess He preferred humans to robots, I would. Love can't be taken by force, it's a precious gift. Today we're still faced with the choice to give and prove our love to Him with our actions; by following His boundaries. Yeah, you know that old saying "actions speak louder than words". He doesn't want empty professions of affection, he wants to see our commitment. Think about it in terms of someone you love. Would you rather they TELL you they love you, or SHOW you they love you by their actions? I just think it's amazing that he gave us the choice to love Him. That he would choose to go thru the pain of rejection Him, just so that we could have that freedom.
I suppose thats enough for now.
