It’s encouraging and life-changing to read in the bible about the countless miracles, signs, and wonders that Jesus Christ performed when he walked the earth. He loved people and had such compassion for them. Some he miraculously healed and delivered by the power of God, but sadly, many of us living today have convinced ourselves that God’s power isn’t flowing in our time as it was long ago. This simply is not true. Our Heavenly Father said in Malachi 3:6(ESV), “I am the LORD, and I do not change.” God invites us to come to Him and have faith in the transformation He can make in our lives through Jesus Christ. He wants us to have a personal encounter with His healing and delivering power so that you and I can know the power of God for ourselves.
Our Heavenly Father created us in His likeness, and we are perfectly suited for relationship with Him. It was always His desire to have a family, and those of us that are born again of His Spirit are it. He’s given us the incomparable privilege, power, and authority of being His kids, and we can see His Will unfolding from the very beginning, in the Book of Genesis. God’s Will for the first man and woman was for them to remain in fellowship with Him forever, but He would not force this on them because love doesn’t force. Like Adam and Eve, God has given us all the gift of free-will. He wants us to walk in His love, but Adam’s and Eve’s catastrophic fall in the Garden of Eden revealed that God allows us to make our own choices and decisions, even if they are extremely bad ones.
God told Adam not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but his wife, Eve, fell for the devil’s lies and convinced Adam to do the same. Their disobedience was their downfall, and because they sinned against God, they lost their holiness and severed their connection to Him through the Holy Spirit. The cost of sin is death, and although God knew they would eventually sin, He did not cause or prevent them from making that choice. Genesis 2:16-17(ESV) tells us, “And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of 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.” He gave them this one commandment, and of their own volition, they chose to deny His sovereignty and bow to the devil. Many people that are living today are doing the exact same thing.
God didn’t want Adam and Eve to be separated from Him, but again, in His foreknowledge He knew they would one day choose to turn their backs on His Word. It was not His Will to allow His masterpiece of humanity to remain under sin’s curse. Even before Adam and Eve fell, God had a redemption plan in place to take care of the sin issue through His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ.
We might think to ourselves, that old Adam and Eve messed up everything for us. The truth is that if we had been in their place, we would have done the same thing. Adam and Eve were perfect, but they were not robots. They had authority and dominion in the earth and could have had a spectacular existence by continuing to walk in the Spirit, but they chose to disobey God, and this was their choice to make. They allowed the entrance of sin, and everyone else born from the seed of Adam sinned too. Romans 5:12(NLT) says, “When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned.” Everyone born after Adam sinned as well. Sin just kept on spreading, generation after generation. This kept us in bondage because Adam’s sin transferred him and everyone after him into the kingdom of darkness.
Ephesians 5:8(NLT) says, “For once you were full of darkness, but now you have light from the Lord. So live as people of light!” We were once ‘full of darkness’. This was our condition before God sent His Son to earth to save us. We were in a terrible fix because no human being could pay a price high enough to redeem us from sin. Only Christ could set us free from darkness and make us right with God, and he did this through dying on the cross. Romans 8:3-4(NIV) tells us, “3 For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”
Life is in the blood, and during Old Testament times, sin was covered by the blood sacrifice of animals, but this was merely a band-aid for the sin issue. It didn’t fix it. The blood of Jesus Christ was pure in every way, because he is God’s only begotten Son. To please our Father and complete our Father’s mission, Jesus Christ took our sins to the cross with him and crucified them there. He cleansed us from all sin and wiped our slates clean. Now that we’re free, Galatians 5:1(The Message) warns, “Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you.”
God has redeemed us through Christ. He has restored what Adam and Eve lost, and He has given us His righteousness. We didn’t have any of our own, but through Christ, we do. Romans 5:19(NIV) declared, “For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.” It is in the Spirit that we have freedom, blessings, and righteousness. If you walk outside the Spirit’s leadership and guidance, you might get into serious trouble. But if you seek God in all that you do and obey His Word, you’ll continuously live by the power and authority of Christ. This is your right! Commit to receive all that God has in store for you. Believe and trust Him when He tells you that you have all the rights and privileges of royalty and know that your life will prove it over and over again, if you live holy. ■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
“Privileges of Royalty”, written by Reverend Fran Mack. Edits by Kim Times and K. Stephens for Sundie Morning Sistas ©2023. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! SMS is dedicated to inspiring and encouraging Christian Women through the Word of God.