The Master's Plan

What is sin?  How could it come to be?  Where is the line between good and evil?  We constantly discuss "The Fall" and how man is inherently sinful due to Adam and Eve's mistakes, but what exactly did they do that was evil?  These are questions that have haunted my mind for years, but after much contemplating, this is what I have found.  It is no secret that humans are special to God.  We were created in His image; therefore, we are set apart from other created things.  Since we were created to be unique and special, I realized that being created in the image of God meant that we retain traits that He has (creativity, discernment, reason, the ability to think critically, etc.)  I also realized why we were created.  In Genesis, God physically walked in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve.  This is the epitome of our purpose in life: to literally walk with God.  This means that He doesn't want robots who only do what He says because He is God.  He desires for our hearts to be overjoyed within His presence and to truly enjoy time with him.  In order to create humans so that they would choose to be with Him, God instilled within them the ability to have free will.  This is the same free will that would have allowed Satan to choose to rebel against a sovereign God.  That means that God allows us to choose Him or reject Him.  This choice is essential.  By understanding the idea that God gives us our own free will, the line between good and evil becomes blatantly obvious.  Good and evil are nothing more than God or not God.  God IS good.  Hence, evil is the absence of God.  Therefore, sin is simply anything that is not of/from God, and its wage is death.  What Adam and Eve started in the Garden was not due to a particular thing that they did; instead, their fault was that they disobeyed God's command and denied his authority.  They rebelled against God.  However, let us not assume that God created evil.  Such a thought is absurd and out of the very character of a Holy God.  He gave us the freedom to choose Him or deny Him; as a result, evil was born from the decision to rebel.  Thus, Adam and Eve were removed from the Garden where the Tree of Life stood.  What a tragedy it would have been for Adam and Eve to live forever with their newly adopted nature to rebel against God.  That is why death is essential to life.  The good news is Jesus Christ.  He is the final piece to the puzzle: the "Second Adam."  Jesus is the revelation of the Master's perfect plan.  When He willingly sacrificed His perfect life on the cross, Jesus conquered death and bridged the gap between God and man.  Jesus is God's way of reversing the effects of mankind's wrongdoing.  In order for God to conquer evil, He had to give the world a choice. For as long as Adam and Eve sought to serve God alone, evil would never be apparent to them.  Since they chose to rebel against Him by partaking of the fruit, they chose death.  However, since God is omniscient, He made a way when there was no way: Jesus.  The Cornerstone of our faith.  Mankind may once again "walk with God" in life.  Although death still exists as punishment for our evil choices, the beauty of Jesus is that our walk continues after death.  Death has become the new beginning.  We must only choose to follow Him wherever he leads.