Genesis 1:1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Genesis 2:4 These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.

The difference between these two verses is the inclusion of the title Lord. In Genesis 1:1 God stood alone in creation and asked nothing of His creation. Creation can stand alone without any expectation other than to exist, nature being nature.

The issue in Genesis 2:4 is the generations that follow are answerable to the ruler of heaven and earth, the Lord God. Generations is a term in which God has granted us the ability to give life to this place in time in which He has placed us. In doing so He, the Lord God, takes on the responsibility for the lives that have been created.

That responsibility exists whether we believe it or not. When we create life we are responsible for it, even if we do not know how to take care of it. We cannot escape that responsibility just because we do not know what to do. As Lord God, He knows what to do to care for His creation. This is what love does.

When life begins because  of love we are making a conscious decision. Those seeds of love drive us to take on the responsibility for that life, even if we don’t know what we are doing. This was much more difficult for Adam and Eve because they had no previous generation to teach them by example to show what it means to take responsibility for creating the next generation.

At this present time, so long after the beginning, all those generations have one thing in common, the Lord God has not abdicated His responsibility for any of us. At the core of love is choice. None of us can love without making a conscious decision to take responsibility for the decisions we make, either to love or to abdicate responsibility.

What happens when the previous generation fails to set a loving example of how to make choices that are pleasing to the Lord who reigns? He has not neglected His responsibilities. As Lord He tugs at the heartstrings of every generation to tell us when we have made bad choices. Love is still a choice. Do we seek to discover love even if the examples set before us were absent of love? If it didn’t work with our parents, why should we choose to carry on with what doesn’t work? Seek a better way.

2 Peter 2:21 For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them.

The Lord God gave us those holy commandments. His way of communicating love.

2 Chronicles 7:14 if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

Exodus 3:15 God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.

Christians carry the name of Christ because we recognize Him as the Lord. At the time those passages above were written there was no clear understanding of how to pronounce God’s name. When God changed Jacob’s name to Israel all future generations were called Israelites which labeled them as being God’s people at that time.

In these present days we label people, justly or not, to communicate our understanding of what those groups believe.

When we buy a product, the containers, boxed, canned or bottled, have labels that identify the contents. Granted the print is small and often contains scientific names we do not understand. US law states they must exist, nothing was said about making them understandable.

This is one of the problems with labeling people because they do not come with warning labels that identify what is in their hearts and minds. We can only gauge their actions which we cannot do until after they have acted and that becomes our label for everyone in that group.

Are all people alike? As Christians we know we are many different parts that make up the whole body. Using labels destroys the individual’s identity and does not see them as individuals.

Matthew 13:30 Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, “Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.”

Bundles, more than one, an undetermined number of labels, all of which are grouped together to be burned. This is where we are today in assigning labels, bundling groups together to be judged. They are not wheat, which is food for life.

Matthew 7

Judging Others

“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?

Jesus is Lord. Obey Him. Think about our use of labels and which ones are appropriate.