The term “gospel” means “good news.” However, the good news can only be properly understood in light of the bad news. The bad news is found in the history recorded in the book of Genesis – a history that many people now reject because they have been taught that neo-Darwinian evolution is the way life came about, contrary to the Genesis record. We will see that such a belief is not compatible with the good news of Christ. Thus, Christians must be prepared to expose the absurdity of particle-to-people evolution so that people can embrace true history and make sense of the Gospel.
Back to the Beginning
While neo-Darwinian evolution is an unsubstantiated speculation about the origins of life, Genesis is the God-breathed, recorded history of the origins of life. Genesis records the details of God’s creation of the first generation of plants, animals, and people. Everything that God made was originally “very good” according to God Himself (Genesis 1:31). And yet not everything in the world today is “very good.” Today we see wickedness, death, sickness, suffering, and natural disasters. Clearly, something has changed. The second and third chapters of Genesis explain how the world went from “very good” to the corrupt world we experience today.
When God made Adam and Eve, they were both good. And yet, their condition was unstable. That is, they had the capacity within themselves to choose to continue to be good or to rebel against their Creator and thereby become wicked. God gave them a simple test by which to reveal their choice: one tree whose fruit was not to be eaten (Genesis 2:16-17). God explained what the penalty for disobedience to that simple command would be: death. In Genesis 3, we learn that both Adam and Eve chose to disobey God (to sin), and that death and corruption entered the world as a result (Genesis 3:17-19).
It is important to note that God did not force Adam and Eve to sin against their will. No. Our first ancestors sinned by their own perverse choice. They had the capacity within themselves to obey God, and there was no difficulty in God’s command to abstain from the fruit of one tree. There is nothing wicked about God giving humans genuine freedom and the power of choice. Thus, God is not at fault for original sin. He knew it would happen and even planned it (e.g., Isaiah 46:9-11). But God does not approve of sin.
Moreover, God’s response to the first sin was appropriate but tempered with mercy. Since God is King, defiance to His commands is high treason: a capital offense. Furthermore, since God is the source of life, it stands to reason that rebellion against Him should be death. However, God is not merely an earthly king – equal in value to his subjects. God is infinitely holy. How can the one-time death of a finite man of finite value satisfy the infinite infraction of sin? Adam and Eve not only deserved death but an infinite death in the Lake of Fire. God would have been perfectly just to execute them both immediately and then cast them into the Lake of Fire for all eternity (Revelation 20:10).
Instead, the Lord showed mercy to Adam and Eve and delayed their execution. Adam was allowed to live 930 years (Genesis 5:5). Furthermore, God provided skins of clothing to cover their shame (Genesis 3:21). How many human kings would be so generous to their traitors? God also promised that a descendent of Eve would crush the head of the serpent (Satan) who had deceived Eve. That descendent would be none other than Jesus Christ. Genesis 3:15 is sometimes called the proto-gospel because it gives the first promise of a Savior – the first hint of the good news.
Since God gave Adam dominion over the earth, the entire world suffered when Adam sinned (Genesis 1:26-28; 2:19-20). Everything under Adam’s authority became cursed (Genesis 3:17-19; Romans 8:20-22). The world is no longer “very good” although remnants of its original beauty and goodness remain. It is important to recognize that Adam’s sin affected more than just Adam himself. It affected the world. And it affected Adam’s progeny (Romans 5:12).
When Adam sinned, it affected his nature; he became a sinner and continued to sin from his own perverse desires. The Bible teaches that all who are descended from Adam have inherited his sin nature (Romans 5:12). Adam represented us at the Fall, and there is a sense in which we were “in Adam” (1 Corinthians 15:22). Therefore, we are sinful from the moment of conception (Psalm 51:5). It is our fallen human nature to rebel against God (Job 15:14-16). We are, by our very nature, sinful and deserving of God’s wrath (Ephesians 2:3). God would be perfectly righteous and just to give each and every person what we all rightly deserve: physical death followed by an eternity in the Lake of Fire. In fact, God’s righteousness demands that our sins must be punished appropriately. That is the bad news.
But God…
Yes, God is perfectly righteous. Fortunately for us, this is not the only aspect of His character. He is also love (1 John 4:8). And He is merciful. Psalm 145:8 states, “The Lord is gracious and merciful; slow to anger and great in lovingkindness.” He is willing to forgive the sins of anyone who repents of sin and trusts in Him for salvation (Mark 1:15). This seems like good news, and yet we still have a problem. In our wickedness, none of us desires to repent and seek after God. Romans 3:11 states, “There is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God.”
Ephesians 2:1 states, “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins.” What can a dead person do to become alive? Absolutely nothing. Furthermore, we were spiritually dead by our very nature and acted on our wicked desires. Ephesians 2:3 states, “Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.” The human heart – the core of our being – is, by our fallen nature in Adam, desperately wicked and does not desire salvation (Jeremiah 17:9). Fortunately, God can change our hearts. He can remove our dead hearts of stone and give us living hearts of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26). He can grant repentance and salvation (Acts 5:31; 2 Timothy 2:25). Apart from this gift, no one would be saved.
But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast (Ephesians 2:4-9).
Our salvation is a miracle – a resurrection of our dead spirits that only God can perform. Notice that the above passage explicitly denies salvation by our own good works. The reason should be obvious. Our finite good works do not pay the infinite penalty of our high treason against God (Isaiah 64:6). Rather, God saves us despite our wickedness. We were spiritually dead; but God can resurrect the dead (John 5:25-29).
God isn’t morally required to grant repentance and salvation to anyone. We all deserve death and hell. But God does grant repentance and salvation to some and adopts them as His children (Romans 8:15-16; 1 John 3:1-2). He gives us new natures that desire to love Him and obey His commandments (1 John 2:3-5; 2 Corinthians 5:17). We still fall short at times. But our sin grieves us, and so we confess it and repent of it (1 John 1:9).
What About Justice?
So God forgives all the sins of those who repent of sin and trust in Him (1 John 2:12). But God’s justice demands that those sins must be punished appropriately. How can God’s justice and His mercy be reconciled? In Christ. The penalty for sin must be paid by man since man is the guilty party. Yet only God Himself can pay the infinite penalty of sin. Therefore, God the Son took on human nature, adding it to His divine nature so that He can die the death we deserve (2 Corinthians 5:21). As our blood relative, Jesus represented us on the cross. He willingly died in our place to pay our penalty (John 10:15, 17). And since Jesus is God, His life is of infinite value and can therefore pay for all the sins of all people who have trusted in Him (John 3:16). At the cross, God’s wrath was satisfied (Hebrews 2:17).
And since Jesus is God, He has power over life and death – even His own. Christ rose from the dead on the third day (Acts 10:40). This proves (1) that He is God (since only God can raise the dead by His own power), and (2) that Christ has the power to raise the dead – a guarantee that on the last day He will raise up everyone who has ever died (John 6:40, 44, 54). Our future physical resurrection was promised by Jesus and was demonstrated by His own resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:20-24). Everyone whom the Lord has granted repentance and salvation will be resurrected to spend eternal life in the blessings and grace of the Lord. That’s the good news!
Foolishness to Some
And yet, 1 Corinthians 1:23 states that the Gospel of Christ crucified is “foolishness to the Gentiles.” The Bible uses the terms “Gentiles” or “Greeks” to refer to those who are not Jews. Most Gentiles of the first century A.D. had no knowledge of Creation, of Adam’s fall into sin, of the penalty for sin, or of the promise of a Messiah. Lacking knowledge of Genesis, they made up their own myths regarding the origin of life and humanity. Sound familiar?
Greek culture permeated the first-century world due to the aftermath of the Greek Empire, which preceded the Roman Empire. The Greeks believed in a sort of polytheistic evolution rather than special creation. In their view, human beings had always been mortal; this is what separated man from the gods. Thus, death was not the penalty for sin in their view but was a normal part of the world. Human beings were not inherently sinful in their view either. Rather, the Greeks believed that people were basically good but that we do wicked things because we are uneducated. Therefore, the Greeks did not seek a savior. Rather, they searched for wisdom via education (1 Corinthians 1:22). To them the idea of a Savior was unnecessary – especially one who accomplished salvation by dying!
The culture today is much like the first-century Greeks. Many people believe that evolution is the way life came about and therefore that death is a normal and appropriate part of nature. They believe that death has always existed since life first evolved. It therefore cannot be the penalty for sin. This undermines the Gospel. The notion of a Savior who suffered and died for sin makes no sense to those who believe that death is normal and not the penalty for sin. Indeed, our culture believes that “education” is the solution to man’s problems – not Christ. It is very difficult to explain the solution to people who don’t realize they have a problem.
If a person were about to walk off a cliff, you might yell at him or even tackle him to save his life. But if he didn’t realize the cliff was there, he would be very offended at your actions. “Why are you yelling at me? Why did you stop me? Get out of my way!” In the same way, those who believe in neo-Darwinian evolution do not properly understand sin because they have rejected the history of Adam and the Fall. They do not realize that they have a problem. They are often offended by Christians who attempt to offer them a solution. Such unbelievers have no conception of the heinousness of sin because they do not understand the holiness of God. It is in Genesis we learn that sin is high treason deserving of an infinite death. But evolution is incompatible with such history.
This is why we at the Biblical Science Institute are so passionate about defending the literal history recorded in Genesis. Creation is not an irrelevant side issue. It is foundational to the Gospel. People need to properly understand the problem before they will even consider hearing the solution. We need to understand the bad news recorded in the literal history of Genesis before we can correctly understand the good news that is found only in Christ.