This morning’s reading of Greg Beale’s Union with the Resurrected Christ (I like to add Ascended Christ as well!) was highly rewarding. I was once again renewed by gospel indicatives galore by Beale’s work in demonstrating that the eschatology of the kingdom began in the Old Testament, with its origins in the garden.

Beale is determined to do Biblical Theology correctly, and so it is necessary that the principle of first mention is applied in this wondrous gospel doctrine of the believer’s union with the Savior Jesus Christ, God’s Son and Messiah. Adam and Eve got sin’s ball rolling in the garden. Every subsequent sin requiring redemption stems from this original sin, correctly termed as such by the early church father, Augustine.

Beale does a masterful job of showing how sin in its original committal took the opposite way of repentance by Adam and Eve from God’s clear command to them in the garden. He writes in page 24, “The first two humans were to think (I add speak as well) God’s thoughts after Him”. Adam and Eve, and especially Eve who takes the lead in responding to the rogue serpentine’s speech, adds, subtracts, de-emphasizes the right, and emphasizes what’s not needed.

1. Eve “minimizes their privileges” – God said, “You may eat freely”. Eve, representing mankind (it should have been Adam taking the lead to “subdue” the serpent!) said merely, “We may eat”.
2. Eve “minimizes the judgment” – God said, “You will surely die”. Eve merely said, “You will die”.
3. Eve “maximizes the prohibition” – God originally said, “You shall not eat”, but Eve said, “You shall not … touch”.

What a picture of the psychology of sin, and how humankind is deceived by the psychology of satan. He will rarely go explicit in deception. The essence of deception is using partial truths to bring about eventual subversion and deviation from the original intention and commandment of God. It is also crucial to realize that God’s commandment of prohibition from eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is preceded by His magnanimous invitation to our first parents to partake and enjoy the fruit from all the trees in the garden.

God actually makes it difficult to miss the one tree they are to give it a miss in terms of eating! It is the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden. It must have been explicitly obvious to Adam and Eve that this tree of the knowledge of good and evil was that one tree that came with God’s prohibition with dire consequences of disobedience, “you shall surely die”.

Adam and Eve chose to disobey the native Creator Voice that brought them into existence and instead chose to listen to a created voice. Instead of meditating upon what God had communicated to them about their office, position, privilege and standing in God’s created universe, they chose to listen to a creature that creeps upon the dust of the earth! We today are exactly the same as Adam and Eve.

In the light of God’s sustainable goodness to us, we still automatically default to doubt about Him, and His promises to provide and protect. We often wonder if we have missed His voice. We often add our human and fleshly projections to His voice. We emphasize what He does not and de-emphasize what’s truly core to Him.

The root of our sin is actually our blindness which leads to doubt which leads to unbelief of the gracious Person of God. We absolutely miss His mercy and love and choose instead to listen to our pathetic inner rationalizations of our trodden down nature. We will cling to whatever gives us a “fix” for our fleshly appetites rather than seek Him who is “Spirit and Truth”.

Beale goes on to say that “after Adam’s failure to fulfill God’s mandate, God raised up other Adam-like figures to whom His kingly and priestly commission was passed on.”

That passing on reaches us who are united with Christ in His death, resurrection and ascension to where we now “sit together with Him” in the heavenly places (Eph 1:3; Col 3:1-3). In Christ, every believer is a “royal priest” in the “royal priesthood, a holy nation, a chosen generation, His own special people (all gospel indicatives which rejoices our hearts) that (and now the imperatives of the gospel are laid out for us), you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Pet 2:9).

In union with the resurrected and ascended Christ, this commission to every believer to a be a royal priest and make a difference in life still stands.