February 13, 2007

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  January 13th
  Day 5

  Sin is of the flesh, not the spirit. Since the spirit exists on earth in the flesh, it is trapped by sin. Our hearts, though, can be freed and this is what Baptism makes possible. In Original Sin, we are condemned. The door is locked. Baptism does not save the flesh, but the heart, the soul. If we spend our lives striving to keep our souls free of sin, death will allow our flesh to fall away and our souls will reunite with God.

  Sin separated us from God.
  Once we were united, alike, as we were meant to be, praising, reverencing and serving God; loving Him. Then Adam and Eve ate of the tree, an act that went against their purpose and nature and suddenly they were not what they were. Eden was a place created for those in union and love with God, and since Adam and Eve went against that, they could not stay.
  But God still loves us and wants us to return to Him as we were meant to be. How? Well, the flesh is now a slave to sin, so flesh cannot enter Paradise. He COULD just do away with sin, but since WE CHOSE it and HE loves us, He won’t as it would betray His promise of free will and says, “I love you as you are… except this sin thing. So I’ll just do away with that and then everything will be fine.” Instead, in love He works with us as we ARE, as we chose to be.
  This means that all He has to work with, all He can save is our souls, the only part of us that sin is not the automatic master of, since the soul is from God and not from the flesh. Our flesh comes from our parents; the soul does not. Your body is half of your mom and half of your dad. Would you say that your soul is half of your mom and half of your dad? Certainly much of who we are comes from them, but ultimately I am quite different from my parents. My parents did not give me a soul, did not give me life. They gave me a body, God gave me a soul. My parents created a vessel, God filled it with life.
  The Law (the ten commandments and others) was not meant to forgive Original Sin, it was meant to prepare a holy people to receive the Messiah, and to bring the chosen people closer to God, requiring great devotion and dedication to repair the relationship damaged by sin.
  Christ then comes, giving us Baptism to cleanse us of the Original Sin, unlocking the door to our souls. The Law and the teachings of Christ now serve as a guideline of how to live and how to maintain a free heart for God. Some of the laws (animal sacrifices in Leviticus, for example) were done away with; Christ was the final sacrifice of that nature. So now it is possible for us to keep sin from it’s hold on our souls, but our flesh is a lost cause.
  But the door to Eden is still shut and locked. In order for a man to enter Eden, he would need to be perfect, free from Original Sin on his soul and free from the mastery of sin, period. He must be united perfectly with God in love, just as Adam was before the fall.
  Enter Mary, free from Original Sin from birth; the perfect mother. God is the perfect father, therefore Jesus is the perfect child and later will be the perfect man. Jesus, by His parents, never inherited the sin of Adam and Eve. After living a life that is to serve as the model for all to live, after living a HUMAN life and even being tempted, He does not sin. He is in perfect union with God, as He IS God. Then He dies, completely perfect and sinless, and Eden cannot refuse Him because of this perfection and also because He is God, returning to His home. Christ FLINGS OPEN the gates of Eden for us. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and no one shall come to the Father except through Him!
  After His death He returns and orders His apostles to baptize all in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. But in loving us, God gives us Baptism as a choice still. Even after all of this, we still must choose Him; He doesn’t force us to love or choose Him. How amazing is that?!
  God became fully human, praising our humanity in doing so. In keeping salvation as a choice for us to make, He reverences us, respecting our free will at the risk of losing us forever. During His time on earth, God served us always, and serves us still. Christ is the greatest sign of God’s love for us.
  Now we have a way of living that helps us to free our souls from the clutches of sin, and Eden has been opened to us by Christ, the new Adam. But there is something a lot of people don’t think about. In the beginning, God created EVERYTHING and gave it to Adam as a great gift, to share all of God’s creation with God. The coming of Christ was the dawn of a NEW Genesis, Christ being the new Adam. What great and amazing gift did we receive then? There were MANY.
  TO BE CONTINUED……

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