‘Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness (1 John 3:4).’

Just imagine you are an avowed hedonist who lives on a planet whose name is Utopia, and you are curious to learn about a strange people who inhabit a not too distant planet called Earth.

In the rainbow ‘thought-bubbles’ hovering above your head are the enticing words, “Maybe life on Earth is more pleasurable than here?”

Fired by your insatiable lust for pleasure, you beam yourself down. On landing successfully, and hidden beneath your cloak of invisibility, you observe the earthlings. You are utterly amazed, because instead of being civil to one another, many of them abuse, hate, and even kill their kindred (Exodus 20:13).

Wherever you go it is seems they all disobey authorities, governments, kings and queens (Titus 3:1, 2), and even their offspring disrespect their own fathers and mothers (Exodus 20:12). Anarchy and lawlessness reigns among them.

You ask yourself, “Why?”

By chance you find a tattered Book in a pile of trash that is destined for a recycling plant. The Author of the Book is the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords (1 Timothy 6:15), the Creator of the Universe – God the infinite eternal One who made all things (John 1:1-3).

Probing deeply within His Book, which is called the Bible, you discover that without exception all earthlings suffer from an ailment that some call sin and others lawlessness (Romans 3:23; Cf. 1 John 3:4). It is a pervasive and deadly disease that is inherited from the first of the earthlings, the man Adam.

God formed him from ‘the dust of the ground  (Genesis 2:7),’ and He gave Him a woman whom He formed from one of his ribs (Genesis 2:22). Adam named her Eve (Genesis 3:20), and she became his wife (Genesis 2:24, 25). They were the progenitors of all the earthlings.

God commanded them to multiply and to fill the face of the earth (Genesis 1:28; 6:1; 9:7), but because of Adam’s lawlessness God decreed that they and their offspring would die (Genesis 2:17; 1 Corinthians 15:22) – spiritually and physically.

The more you probe into the Bible you discover there are a number of earthlings who have been cured of Adam’s disease. They have been chosen by God (Deuteronomy 7:6; Cf. James 2:5) to be His special people (Deuteronomy 14:2), and they will never die (John 11:26). He has separated them from all the tribes of the Earth (Leviticus 20:26; Matthew 25:32), and He has miraculously infused them with His life-giving Holy Spirit (Joh 3:3-8) who enables them to love Him and their neighbours as themselves (Luke 10:27).

This Holy Spirit utterly transforms them (2 Corinthians 5:17), and instead of bickering, abusing, hating and killing other earthlings, they pray to God whom they call their ‘Father (Matthew 6:9),’  and they ask Him for opportunities for sharing His love with other earthlings. No longer lawbreakers, they obey the law (Galatians 6:2) of HIs Son Jesus, who is Christ, the Messiah (John 1:41; 4:25) .

As you continue to satisfy your curiosity you discover that their Father God lavishes His love upon them (John 3:16; 1 John 4:16), and He gives them faith (Ephesians 2:8) in Jesus who sacrificed Himself on a wooden cross many years ago. By dying and suffering in their place He annulled their lawless deeds. He made them precious (1 Peter 2:4) and acceptable to His Father. As He hung on the cross, this Son of God voluntarily gave up His life (John 19:30) in exchange for the lives of His Farther’s chosen ones (Ephesians 1:4).

He died (John 19:30) and he was buried, but two days later His Father miraculously raised Him to life (Acts 10:40; 1 Peter 1:21). In like manner He will raise to life His chosen earthlings (1 Thessalonians 4:16). Thereafter they will live with Him and Jesus in a new world yet to be formed by God (Revelation 21:1).

You are amazed to discover that in this new world there will be no hatred, no murders, no anarchy, no rebellion and no lawlessness (Revelation 21:4, 8, 27) – only perfect love (1 John 4:8). The Father and His Son (Revelation 21: 22) and the indwelling (Isaiah 57:15) Holy Spirit, united with the reincarnated earthlings will live there for evermore (1 Corinthians 15:50-54), and they will have countless pleasures (Job 36:11; Psalm 16:11; 36:8).

You conclude that your lustful, pleasure-seeking life on planet Utopia is by comparison with the life to come for God’s redeemed and chosen people a meaningless vanity (Ecclesiastes 2:1; 12:8).

Tragically since you are not an earthling, you have no place on Earth, nor do you have an inheritance (Ephesians 1:11; Acts 20:32; 26:18) in God’s new world. You are without hope (2 Thessalonians 2:16), and your only option is to beam yourself back to the planet from whence you came: a place of lust, selfishness, delusion and death.

If only you were an earthling you would plead with God for His mercy and ask for His forgiveness, and you would turn from your lawlessness.