If God is Perfect, How Did He Make People Who Mess Up?

Last summer, Wendy and I had the opportunity to visit a unique place in the world. We spent a few days in Barcelona, Spain, and one of our must-see destinations was La Sagrada Familia. It's a massive basilica that many of you have probably heard of, and some of you have visited. I had heard of it, but I didn't really know much about it before we went.

It was designed by Francisco Paola del Valle in the late 1870s and into 1880. He oversaw construction for one year, 1882 to 1883, before the famous architect and artist Antoni Gaudi took over in 1883 and oversaw the project for 44 years until his death. Here's what makes it remarkable: as of this morning, that basilica is still being built, 140 years later. They're still adding to the top. You can go all the way up inside it, but the truth is, it's still becoming what it was always designed to be.

And yet, Francisco Paola del Valle knew exactly what this building would become. The plan had been drawn. It had been designed. It had been dreamed. Now, 140 years later, it's still coming to life, but it is doing so according to that original vision.

Easter works like that.

God Had a Plan, and That Plan Is Being Fulfilled
God had a plan, and nothing we have experienced, done, or carried in our lives surprises Him. Nothing falls outside the scope of what He had designed from the very beginning. That should bring us a great deal of comfort, especially as we begin a five-week sermon series called "The Power of the Cross," moving toward the celebration of Easter.

Looking at Genesis 3 and Luke 24, we find that the cross was woven into the very fabric of God's blueprint, even before people were created, even before time began.

The cross was not God's emergency response to our colossal failure. He didn't look down and think, Oh no, they really messed this up. Now I have to come up with something else. Plan A didn't work. God is bigger than that. Much bigger than that.

From the very beginning, He revealed through Scripture that a wounded deliverer would crush the serpent and redeem His people. That's what He set out to do. And indeed, it is what He has done.

That truth brings me real comfort: God had a plan for our soul-crushing dilemma before we even knew we had one.

The Fall: What Went Wrong in the Garden
When sin entered the garden, it shattered trust. It perverted desire. It introduced guilt, shame, curses, and death into a world that had been entirely perfect.

Genesis 3:1-6 gives us the account: "Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, 'Did God actually say, "You shall not eat of any tree in the garden"?' And the woman said to the serpent, 'We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, "You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die."' But the serpent said to the woman, 'You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.' So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate."

This moment represents a seismic shift in how Adam and Eve viewed their place in the garden. Go back just one verse to Genesis 2:25 and you find this: "And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed." In literally one breath of Scripture, everything perfect that God had created in the garden is shattered through the sinful choice perpetrated by the serpent and agreed to by the first two humans.

What Life in the Garden Actually Looked Like
These were people intimately and perfectly created by God. He loved them. He walked with them every day. They were in constant fellowship with Him. They lived in a lush garden where every single provision for their well-being was freely available, requiring very little effort on their part. They were completely comfortable with who they were and how they had been made.

Genesis 2:15-17 shows us their standing before the fall: "The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, 'You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.'"

God created trees that were good for food, plants, and animals, but among them, two trees in particular stood out: the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. God specifically told Adam not to eat from the second one. He set clear parameters around what was off-limits in the garden. Everything is yours. Nothing is withheld except this one thing.

Why God Built in a Choice
This raises a fair question. If God is perfect and creates a perfect world with perfect people, how does this kind of colossal failure happen?

It comes down to what real love requires. For Adam and Eve to truly love God, to fully obey Him and walk with Him in genuine relationship, God had to build in a choice. He had to create the possibility of refusal so that their love and obedience could be real. Forced love is not love. God built human beings for fellowship, to walk with Him, and for that fellowship to be meaningful, they had to be able to choose it for themselves.

They chose otherwise, and the consequences were immediate and severe.

There Is No Plan B
A scarlet thread runs through all of Scripture, from Genesis through Revelation, pointing consistently toward the power of Jesus to overcome the problem that entered the world in Genesis 3. Sin, guilt, shame, death, and the curse are not problems that caught God off guard. They are precisely the problems He designed the cross to solve.

This is not a salvage operation. It was never a course correction. God's Plan A is complete. It is perfect. It is exactly what He designed it to be, and He had no need for a backup.

His way is the only path to restored relationship with our Heavenly Father. If you're looking for answers to the age-old problem of sin, curses, death, and guilt in this world, the answer is Jesus. You can know, before you leave today, that you have taken hold of Him as your Savior. It really is that straightforward.

The Comfort of a God Who Never Panics
The cross was never an afterthought. God did not look at human history and improvise. He looked at human history and executed the plan He had already written.

That matters because it means nothing in your life is outside His knowledge or beyond His reach. The brokenness you carry, the ways you have failed, the mess you are currently standing in, none of it surprised Him. None of it required Him to rethink the plan. From the very beginning, He saw it all, and He designed a way through.

La Sagrada Familia is still under construction, but it is becoming exactly what its architect designed it to be. The same is true of God's redemptive plan. It has been unfolding for thousands of years, and it is becoming exactly what He always intended: the full restoration of what was lost in the garden, accomplished through the cross, secured in the resurrection.

That is the power of the cross. And that is where we are headed this Easter season.



This blog is based on the message shared by Executive Pastor Kirby Follis at our CityRise Bellaire campus on Sunday, March 8, 2026. Check out the full message below!