God and sin are exact opposites. God and sin cannot stay in the same place at the same time for they are mutually exclusive. They cannot dwell together.

Suppose you are sitting in a room that is full of light. After a few hours, darkness will fill the room.  Where did the light go? It was displaced by the darkness. Yet, in a few hours, the light will return. Where did the darkness go? It was displaced by the light.

Light and darkness are exact opposites; they are mutually exclusive and can never dwell together. Since God is light and sin is darkness; God must displace sin or sin displaces God.

1 John 1:5-6

. . . God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. ⁶ If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

Ephesians 5:8

For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light.

Sin separated Adam from God and caused him to hide from God’s presence. Sin also separated God from Adam and required Him to pronounce the death sentence and send him out of the garden of Eden.

God cannot dwell with sin in the sinner on earth; and neither can He dwell with sin in the sinner in Heaven.  If the natural man continues in his sin and refuses to accept the way of salvation which God has provided in Christ Jesus, by his very choice he excludes himself from the presence of God throughout eternity. His own unrighteousness will lock him out of the Kingdom of God.

1 Corinthians 6:9

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? 

Revelation 21:27

But there shall by no means enter it anything that defiles, or causes an abomination or a lie, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.

“Let us now sum up the truth we have studied thus far. God’s first man, Adam, was without sin; he was created in God’s image on the plane of human life. He was made with the capacity for life on the highest plane, the spiritual, and with the power to choose such a life. God made man with his face turning Godward. God’s will was both the center and the circumference of his life: consequently, he lived in righteousness and peace because and in perfect adjustment with God, with himself, and with all created beings.

But Adam chose to disobey God’s command. He used his power to choose Satanward and placed his life voluntarily under Satan’s sovereignty. He stepped outside of God’s sphere of righteousness, light, and life into Satan’s sphere of sin, darkness, and death. He dethroned God and enthroned self. He ceased to be spiritual and became flesh. Sin made him a sinner with his face turning Satanward and his course trending downward. Self-will became both the center and the circumference of his life; consequently, he lives in ungodliness, unrighteousness, and discord because there was maladjustment with God, with himself, and with all created beings.

Adam himself was the father of children. He was not merely an individual creation of God but he was the appointed federal head of the human race. All the evil consequences of sin in him were transmitted to all men so that by nature all men are guilty and defiled. The most awful consequence of sin, however, was not the moral and spiritual ruin of the human race but the denial of the Godhood of God in His own universe.

This view of the origin and the consequences of sin, even though it is so clearly taught in God’s Word, is not accepted by all. Sin even in many pulpits today is treated very lightly if not passed over altogether. Nevertheless, everyone knows that humanity is saturated with sin and that sin is really at the bottom of all the world’s trouble. But many people are unwilling to admit the real nature of sin. They treat it like a superficial skin disease rather than like malignant cancer.

Men are unwilling to acknowledge the truth of God’s estimate of the natural man, that left to himself he is hopelessly, incurably bad. They place the blame of his misconduct onto his environment or limited circumstances and by seeking to improve these external conditions and to afford him larger opportunities through education and civilization they believe he can be evolved into what God intended him to be.

Such thinking is due to a fundamental misconception of what sin is. The essence of the first sin in Eden is clearly defined in God’s Word and it is the essence of all sin from that day to this.

1 John 3:4

Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness.

The exceeding sinfulness of Adam’s sin lay in the fact that it was high treason of the created against the Creator; of the subject against the Sovereign. Such at heart is all sin. The natural man is a spiritual Bolshevist.

Man is not only guilty and defiled but he is rebellious and lawless. He is not only separated from God by sin but he is unreconciled by enmity. In God’s sight, he is a sinner, an enemy, an outlaw.”

Paxson (pp 56-58)

Source: “Life on the Highest Plane” by Ruth Paxson

Loving God, thank You for the gift of salvation through Your Son Jesus Christ. Today we pray for everyone who refuses to accept Your way of salvation. May they know their choice will exclude them from Your presence throughout all eternity.

In Him,

Marion