All we have to do is look around in our world today to realize that evil truly exists, but this was never God 's intention. Scripture tell us that God is love (1 John 4:8) and that everything God created was good (Genesis 1:31). When our Creator created humankind, God gave us freedom to choose and in doing so humankind made choices that caused a fall from God 's grace. The decision that Adam and Eve made to disobey God brought evil into God 's creation. Riley Case writes, "We are a strange mixture of good and evil. On the one hand we are the highest of God 's creation, made in his image.....On the other hand we do not naturally glorify Him as God." "Real evil enters the picture when we refuse to accept the finitude of human life or try to play God with our own or others ' lives." When we go against the will of God, we are sinning. "Original sin is the idea that human beings cannot help but think, act, and speak in ways that violate God 's will--until, that is, God goes to work on them, changing them from inside out." As sinners we need God 's grace to overcome evil and sin. "Sin is certain, but the grace of God is more certain than our sin." But the good news is that God is working to bring us back into …show more content…
John Wesley understood humanity to have four basic, human relationships: "with God, with other humans, with lower animals, and with ourselves." These four relationships, when appropriately maintained, lead one to be holy in the eyes of God. Our relationship with God, however, was broken when sin entered into the world with the fall of humanity. Wesley believed that "through sin we actually lose the image of God." However, it is through Jesus Christ that "we have the ability to recover the image of God." God 's gracious gift of Jesus Christ is universally available to a fallen humanity, "enabling anyone who wishes to accept God 's gift of salvation to do so. Nevertheless, we do not have to do so. We can in fact say no to God. God 's grace