October 4: Hijacked Kingdoms

The third chapter of Genesis is where everything goes terribly wrong. The perfect world was shattered as Adam and Eve decided to believe the great lie that they’d be better off as their own gods, and so ate the fruit in disobedience of God’s one and only command, plunging human history into a sin-cursed, pain-ridden, death- swallowing existence. It’s the moment everything came falling down.

Notice, at the core of Adam and Eve’s sin was a desire to be like God. Instead of embracing their created design to be image bearers, coming under and extending the reign of God wherever they went, Adam and Eve wanted to be gods unto themselves. Instead of images of God, they wanted to become like God and rule themselves. Genesis 3 is nothing short of mutiny. The image bearers of God revolt against His Kingdom rule and carve out their own little kingdoms for themselves outside of Him. And over these hijacked kingdoms, they fancy themselves king and queen.

But here’s the problem: human beings make lousy gods. We were never meant to
rule by ourselves. The weight of running our own kingdoms brings massive anxiety, loneliness, selfishness, and aggression. We ruin ourselves and everyone around us when we live as orphans pretending to be gods, cursed in the very center of our dominion. And we’re not even free. Our co-conspiracy with the serpent brings us under his diabolical rule. Our life as “our own gods” turns out to be tormented by sin, death, and Satan. What looked so good, turned out so very bad. Ruling as god over our own hijacked kingdoms turns out to be a lot harder than we realized, and much more than we can handle on our own.