Have you ever held an acorn? Just the thought that a little seed can grow and mature into a large 100-foot oat tree can seem unimaginable. Everything needed to accomplish what it was created for is already in that seed. Every leaf and acorn it will produce is dormant in that seed, just longing to come forth just as the Father commanded it to in Genesis chapter 1.
1 Peter 1:23 says,
“having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever,”
The moment you were saved, a seed was planted deep inside you.
2 Peter 2:5 talks about the qualities that are with in this seed,
“So devote yourselves to lavishly supplementing your faith with goodness, and to goodness add understanding, and to understanding add the strength of self-control, and to self-control add patient endurance, and to patient endurance add godliness, and to godliness add mercy toward your brothers and sisters, and to mercy toward others add unending love. Since these virtues are already planted deep within, and you possess them in abundant supply, they will keep you from being inactive or fruitless in your pursuit of knowing Jesus Christ more intimately. But if anyone lacks these things, he is blind, constantly closing his eyes to the mysteries of our faith and forgetting his innocence—for his past sins have been washed away.”
There is beauty in this verse. It says that Faith, goodness, understanding, self-control, patience, mercy, and love are already planted deep inside you in the seed of God.
But there is a warning. The warning is that if these things are inactive or fruitless, it is because you have closed your eyes to the mysteries of our faith, and you have forgotten your innocence! This is one of the most powerful verses. Your ability to walk out God's word that has been implanted deep within you is dependent on you believing that God has made you innocent.
Adam and Eve were given the command to reproduce. Some might believe that this was merely about having children. I believe that it was about reproducing God's image. I want to point out a very important detail about their story. When they sinned against God, they did a very interesting thing. In all their days in the garden, they were naked. On the day they sinned, the first thing they did was hide; the second thing they did was cover themselves with leaves.
I want to point out this detail of the leaves. They did not cover their whole bodies with leaves but rather their reproductive parts. Why? When Jesus spoke to them in the garden, the first thing they told him was that they hid because they were naked. Jesus replied, "Who told you that you were naked! Nowhere in the story did the serpent ever tell them they were naked. So, where did they get the idea that they were naked? Their hearts! Our culture tells us that if we walked down the street naked, it would be considered perverted. So our fleshly hearts tell us that is not right. The same way that the heart of Adam took dominance over His Spirit and condemned him, saying that their flesh was not innocent.
So I want you to hear this. Adams's sin made his heart condemn him in thinking that he was perverted. Jesus responded by saying, and I am paraphrasing, "I did not tell you that you were naked or perverted!" Because their eyes, as Peter stated, were darkened to the faith and in forgetting their innocence, they imminently saw their ability to reproduce God's image as perverted.
Everything needed to reproduce Christ's image is deeply buried within you through the seed that was placed there by God when you received your salvation. All the faith, patience, godliness, power, and love, including miracles, signs, and wonders, are there inside you. The only thing that is keeping that seed from bursting into fruit is your ability to believe God's word about you that you are innocent. Sin strips your confidence in God away and tries to clothe you with a dead man perverting the truth of how God sees you.
The statement of Jesus to go and sin no more lest something worse happens is not God's Judgment toward man but man's judgment toward himself by allowing his sins to pervert God's truth. So I want to declare this truth over you for those who believe in Jesus Christ. You have been declared INNOCENT!!! I know some of you struggle with that because your heart condemns you for what you did but do not allow what you did to speak louder than what Jesus did! Only Believe the Gospel and allow truth to manifest the very qualities of Christ in your life.
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