The reality is that we rarely understand the magnitude of what each seed will produce, not only in the first growing season, but throughout time as well. Something that starts off so small can become enormous in time, and then keep multiplying.
James 1:15 tells us that when sin is full grown, it brings forth death. If you think about it, though, we rarely see this play out literally. God’s instant judgment, such as on Uzzah, on Nadab and Abihu, on Annanias and Saphira, does not seem to happen very often.
But God is not mocked. Sin still brings forth death. This is because we can be in a state of spiritual death even while we are physically alive. Spiritual death was in view when Jesus told the disciple to “let the dead bury the dead,” meaning to let those who have no spiritual life attend to it. Spiritual death is also readily seen in the letter to Sardis, the church of the living dead. The members are still breathing, but there is hardly any spiritual pulse. Thus, death can signify an inferior quality of life, a life where there is separation from the Creator, the Life-giver and Sustainer. Eternal life is defined as knowing Him, and death is moving in the opposite direction.
Such death began in the Garden of Eden. God told Adam that in the day he ate of the fruit, he would surely die. And God was not mocked. When Adam ate of the fruit, death entered the world, even though Adam kept breathing for almost a thousand years. He was separated from His Creator, which was a grievous calamity. The ground was cursed, and his quality of life was drastically degraded. Not only that, but the effects of that choice have affected every person throughout time, now some 6,000 years later.
