One of the realities that should guard the hearts of those who know Christ is His steadfast love for His Bride - the church. What is interesting is that sin can cause us to doubt the love of God for us and, in Genesis 3, we see that the doubt of the love of God led to sin in the garden.
This is not as obvious in the wording of the text but, when considering the enemy's logic, we see that he was causing doubt about God's intention for Adam and Eve. When Eve responds to him about the command the Lord gave regarding the trees in the garden he said, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:4–5). Veiled in the serpent's response is this thought: "He cannot really love you or else He would want what was best for you. Instead, He is limiting you because He does not want you to become like Him"
In a phrase the enemy's temptations are aimed at distorting our passions such that we become discontent with the Divine. What the serpent did was point to Eve's present condition and contrasted it with a possible future condition and then made her to feel stuck where she was without the possibility of achieving a best life. Eve, consequently, believed his narrative and doubted the veracity of God's love for her and, as a result, went with her self-centered passions.
Do you see that? God's love and care for her was called into question and she believed the false narrative. What is noteworthy is that, with all that she could freely eat, it was this tree - the forbidden tree - that she could not do without. This unfiltered and undiscerning passion for what the Lord forbade was rooted in Eve's compromising of God's Lordship. When Eve (and we) minimized God's Lordship our trust in God's love for us is an inevitable casualty. When we doubt God's love our love for self becomes our supreme passion.
This is exactly the root cause of Israel's grumbling against God while in the wilderness. Their circumstances caused them to question God's love and, as a result, they not only grumbled but longed to return to Egypt - to bondage. It is the cause of our grumblings as well. Therefore, the Lord hates grumbling because it is the fruit of doubting His love for us and our being discontent with the Divine. When we become discontent with the divine, we become restless - anxious about what is before us because we are dissatisfied with where God has us. So, on our own, we begin plotting and looking to create a spiritual future (golden calf) without the Lord.
Saint Augustine, the great Church Father, noted the following in his Confessions: You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” Augustine captures the essence of what genuine devotion is and, at the same time, the aim of the enemy's schemes. True devotion is resting in God's love for us in Christ. Temptation is resting in our doubt of God's love for us.
As a father there would be no greater sting than my children questioning or doubting my love for them. Do we not think the Lord is infinitely grieved when we doubt His love for us when He has demonstrated it with the cross and communicated it by His Word?
Here is the cure for discontent and doubt of God's love for us:
31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who
did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously
give us all things? 33 Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34
Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is
at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the
love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger,
or sword? 36 As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are
regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors
through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor
things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all
creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans
8:31–39).
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