In Adam's Image & Likeness

[dave c]

HEALING SHELTER MINISTRIES #131k Written 17DEC08 http://groups.msn.com/AHealingShelter/welcome.msnw

Save Me Today—Part Eleven: In Adam’s Image & Likeness

by rev dave c

For the past 25 years I have repeatedly heard and frequently repeated, “We are created in the image and likeness of God”. It is said so often, in fact, that my “What did he say?” alarm went off a few months ago while listening to a radio teaching by the late Adrian Rogers. “Adam and Eve were created in the image and likeness of God,” he said, “...the rest of us were born in the image and likeness of Adam.” I ran to get a Bible and I read: Genesis 5:1 This is the written account of Adam's line. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. 2 He created them male and female and blessed them. And when they were created, he called them "man." 3 When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth (NIV). What a simple statement with such far reaching, “Well, duh!”, head-slap implications. It was a light bulb moment.

Besides the deep and meaningful theological issue of whether or not they had belly buttons, what are some of the innate differences between Adam and Eve, who were created directly by God, and all of the rest of us who were born from the first couple? Genesis 2:15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die" (NIV). We know, of course, that Chapter Three says that Adam and Eve did in fact eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and they did in fact surely die—not immediately in the physical sense (although the countdown clock was started), and not mentally (although sin began its poisonous, dissipating work). Adam and Eve did surely die spiritually the very moment they ate “the forbidden fruit”.

Paul tell us that, without Christ, we are dead in the transgressions of our sinful nature (Co 2:13 & Ep 2:5). Please note that he says that we are not just dead in and because of our personal sin—we are dead in the sinful nature of worldly humanity. In Psalm 51:5 King David laments, Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me (NIV). The Apostle to the Gentiles makes it quite clear in First Corinthians, Chapter 15, 42 through 49, that we received that sinful nature from Papa Adam because we have borne his likeness. In those verses we read that our inherited, natural body (lit., “soulish body”) is perishable, dishonorable, and weak. Furthermore, Paul tells me that, outside of regeneration through Jesus living within my person, I am inescapably a slave to the law of sin and death and that my sinful mind is hostile to God, it cannot submit to God’s law, and it is incapable of pleasing God (Ro 7:24-8:9).

The New Testament is replete with descriptions of “the natural man and woman” who reflect the fallen nature of the first man, the first Adam. Galatians 5:19 The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like... (NIV). Romans 1:29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them (NIV). Second Timothy 3:2 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4 treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God… (NIV).

At the conclusion of the sixth day of creation, after the Lord God had created Adam and Eve and placed them in the Garden of Eden, He sat back (so to speak) and pronounced all that He had done as “very good” (Ge 1:31). By Genesis 3:6 all that changed as a result of the willful disobedience of Adam and sin entered the world of mankind. In Romans Chapter Eight we read: 19 The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. 22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time (NIV).

No amount of effort on the part of unregenerate humanity can overcome our inherent sinful nature for more than a moment in time that is quickly swallowed by evil in thought and practice. Isaiah 64:6 All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away (NIV). Romans 3:10 As it is written: "There is no one righteous, not even one; 11 there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. 12 All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one" (NIV). What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death (Ro 7:24-8:2; NIV). Amen and amen.