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The Nature of Humanity March 30

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It Only Takes a Spark

“The tongue is a little member and boasts great things. See how great a forest a little fire kindles!” (James 3:5).

It’s a legend, but the story seems to be just too good to fade away: A cow in the barn of a Mrs. O’Leary kicked over a lantern, and the spark from that flame started the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. As many as 300 people died, more than 100,000 were left homeless, and approximately 3.3 square miles of the city were reduced to rubble. Whether it was a barn in the alley behind what was then DeKoven Street or not, we know that something sparked that fire in Chicago, and we know that a combination of drought, wood-based construction, high winds, and a fire department skeletal crew—only 17 horse-drawn steam engines for a whole city—helped to propel the destruction. How does that incident relate to the effects of sin? In the same way that a spark set Chicago ablaze, the very first sin—eating the “forbidden fruit” by our first parents—echoed down the millennia, from one generation to the next, multiplying even more quickly and permanently than did that fire. The Puritan writer Benjamin Harris, in his 1690 New England Primer , summarized it well: “In Adam’s fall, we sinned all.” That taught a basic theological concept to generations of youngsters, and it’s true today: Because of Adam’s sin, we have a propensity, a leaning, to commit sin ourselves. The little “spark” of Adam’s sin ignited a fire that still consumes today. And even for committed Christians, repeated practice of sin can ignite an inferno of consequences. The remedy is not to walk around with a fire extinguisher. Instead, we must internalize the truth. “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5). By staying close to Jesus in prayer and in practice, we can call on His help when tempted to play with fire! Apply It: Remember that our disposition toward sin isn’t only our fault—we inherited it from Adam. But remember, too, that God will supply “the way of escape” from every temptation if we call on Him! Dig Deeper: Genesis 4:8, 23; 6:1–5, 11–13; 1 Corinthians 10:13

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