Life has always been by grace

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. Genesis 2:7

Life has always been a gift from God. Life was given to man before he ever even existed! How could he have ever earned it!

So now man had life - a gift from God. God put man in a garden paradise. The tree of Life was in the midst of the garden, as well as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam had life. He was already created in the image of God. It was a gift of God's grace.

However, Adam was given a choice. God told Adam that if he touched or ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he would die. Long story short, Adam believed the lie of the serpent. He was deceived into believing that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil contained something that he was missing and that he needed.

We all know the story. Rather than finding blessings in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam wound up finding death and curses.

We may think we'd choose differently if we were Adam. But think again. We make the same choice that Adam made, week after week - in CHURCH (!) and in how we choose to live our daily lives.

And we really ought to know better! We have the whole story right in front of us.

Adam was booted out of the garden, and all of mankind was kept out of there. He was separated from the tree of life, all because he ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Man now knew good and evil, but he no longer knew LIFE. It was supposed to be the other way around! Man now lived by the knowledge of good and evil, rather than by the grace of God and the life He had freely given. It wasn't meant to be that way!

However, long story short, Jesus came and restored us to LIFE. Living by the knowledge of good and evil would never give us life. Again, as Adam found out, it brought death and curses! God's law was put into effect to execute the consequences of the original choice to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil - the curse. Paul rightly called the law "the ministry of death" and "the ministry of condemnation." Like Adam, Paul had thought that living by the law (the knowledge of good and evil) would give him life, but he found it was really ordained for death (see Romans 7:10). Why do we keep making the same mistake, especially when we know we've been redeemed?

"Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law" (Galatian 3:13), but for some reason, instead of simply remaining with Him (He Himself is the way, the truth and the life), we fall back onto the law - the knowledge of good and evil - when it comes to daily Christian living!

The law is no more a set of values that we were meant to live by, than the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was!

We were meant, from the beginning, to live by grace - to live by the very life of God. By continuing to try to live by a set of rules or principles based upon the knowledge of good and evil (the law, or any set of "rights and wrongs") is to believe the same lie that Adam originally believed! Friends, we've been redeemed - to LIFE.