Thursday, May 14, 2009

Creation, the Fall of Adam, and re-creation of the holiness of man…

· Gen 1:26…And God said, Let us make man in our image

God the creator of all things perfect in love and holiness created man in His own image. At creation in the Garden of Eden man was created morally and eternally perfect to live a contented life in the presence of God. Adam, the first man and head of the human race was created with a divine nature in the image of God. In the beginning Adam lived in subjection to the Creator through obedience and holiness of heart given by God at creation. Human guilt and shame did not exist in the conscience of man because there was no violation to the Divine law of the Creator. Adam was created with a free will and had liberty to choose right from wrong. As a like figure of Christ, Adam reflected the morality of the entire human family and was created without a sinful nature. Adam knew God; recognized God; and was instructed by God not to disobey the command of eating from the forbidden tree. When Adam violated the Law of God, sin and death came into existence and tainted humanity that followed.

Before the fall of man and before death entered the human family, mans eternal state of being was perfect in love, holiness, and obedience of conduct in the presence of God. God intended for man to be without shame, innocent, and in perfect communion with Him as Creator. Adam and Eve became violators of Divine Law and broke communion with God through disobedience to His commandment. From this original sin consciousness of guilt and shame seeped into the human family through the acts of sin. Disobedience to God tainted Adam and Eve as well as the entire human family from generation to generation. The result of this original sin ushered in the effects of God’s curse upon the earth, upon the serpent that tempted Eve, and upon the seed of man in the form of a carnal heart and depraved nature. Unlike Adam who was created with a free will, all men born after the fall were polluted with a sinful nature. Carnality from birth now affects the way man thinks, chooses, and decides. The will of man is no longer free, but enslaved from birth to an inherited depraved nature.

Since the fall of man, the root of sin has polluted the human heart and led man away from any way of regaining a harmonious relationship with God like Adam and Eve experienced in the Garden. That type of harmony could never be found or achieved by anyone outside of the imputed righteousness of God through mans belief in Christ. The first promise made by God was given to the Serpent after Eve yielded to temptation in Genesis 3:15, 16. This prophetic utterance was recorded by Moses and contains both the root of sin in humanity and the magnitude of how man could be delivered from sin through the promised power of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. Man’s only way to regain right standing with God, was to exercise faith in God as Abel did. Abel reflected right standing with God by faith in God. Cain reflected a man out of harmony with God and murdered his brother Abel. Cain had no previous example of murder and was the first biblical example of unregenerate man after the fall.

What Adam lost pertaining to the moral character of man can be re-created by God’s Grace and Mercy through the redemptive power of Christ. A sinful man can be forgiven by God through trusting in the redemptive work of Christ on the cross. A forgiven man can be delivered from a sinful nature by faith in the power of a resurrected and Living Christ. Either or both these experiences are the effects of God’s restoration to the soul of man concerning what Adam lost at the fall. Adam lost a Divine nature which took man out of harmony with God, but Christ can re-create it! The re-creating work of Christ in the new birth and the renewal that comes from the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer work hand in hand in restoring man to the image of God. The holy heart and holy conduct of man before the fall was the plan of God at creation. The re-created holy heart and holy conduct of a believer since the fall is the plan of God in the church, the body of Christ. Faith in the person of Christ is what provides this miraculous re-creation to anyone that trusts Christ alone for the forgiveness of sins!

· Eph 2:10…For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus
· 2 Cor 5:17…Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature

1 comment: