God has been accused by many of being a murderous and violent God. Much of the Bible would seem to back up that claim. Only in the writings of the New Testament do we see God referred to as a God of Love not of violence. God has not changed, only the covenant between God and man has changed. We see if we look at the beginning in Genesis 1: 31 that God saw everything He had made and it was VERY GOOD. There is no record of the time between then and when Satan came into the Garden of Eden and tempted Eve and Adam to eat of the Tree of Knowledge, but we know that he did. from that point, because of the sin of man, death came into the world.
First, Adam and Eve began dying and from that point neither of them, or anyone else, lived more than a thousand years. that leads us to the scripture found in Psalms 90:4 and 2 Peter 3:8 that explains that to God a day is as a Thousand Years. It also brings us to the first death in God’s creation, in Genesis 3:21. God had to Kill some animals to make Adam and Eve coats of skins to wear. That later led to more death. The original coats that God made them wore out and became smelly from their own sweat and body emanations and I’m sure, they had to kill again to keep themselves in clothes.
From there it was not very far down for them to go and kill another human as we see in Genesis 4:8. The debauchery of man continued from there to spiral downward. As time went on, man continued to disobey the commands of God and death became more and more widespread. When God made a covenant between Himself and Abraham, He instituted the death and sacrifice of an animal to be the death that would take away the sins we had and make us clean again in the eyes of God. The sin that was passed down to us from Adam and Eve, could only lead to death, so it could only be delayed by death.
Afterwards, the descendants of Abraham, the Israelites, would again and again disobey God’s commands and intermarry with the other nations who worshiped false gods, against God’s will. God’s judgement would be brought down against these other peoples, and also against Israel, after great delays in God’s judgement futility hoping that the Israelites and the other nations would turn away from the error of their ways. God instead of showing how condemning He was, showed us time and again how forgiving He was. God kept everyone from the result of their sins as long as He possibly could.
During all this time God tried to help us to keep from killing by showing us how to use plants instead of animals for covering or nakedness and protecting ourselves from the elements. Our sin, however, called for death to delay the consequences. As humans, we were the ones who created this problem, and God was the only one who could help us find a way out of the problem with sin that we created.
God finally made a New Covenant with man through the sacrifice that was above all before, His Son, Jesus Christ. The covenant God made with us is spelled out for us in the New Testament. It is summed up in John 3:16-17. Where God’s own son tells us that He came to be that sacrifice as the only human that never sinned and was clean enough for God to accept as a sacrifice for us, because God loved all of us so much, that He was willing to let His own son become the ‘scape goat’ that would take on ALL the sins of man and bring forgiveness to us all. As the verses say, Jesus came not to condemn the world, but that through Him it might find a way to be saved from itself.
All that we need do now is to accept the free gift that God has offered us. Death was brought to earth by mans sin. That sin must be covered up by the forgiving blood of Jesus Christ for us to be able to commune again with God as Adam did. Ultimately, WE are the ones that are the reason for the death and evil in the world, and God has done more than we could ever ask, in giving His own Son to be the sacrifice through His own death for the sin WE brought into this world. All we need do is accept the FREE gift god has offered us.
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