Thoughts on Man's Condition pt.5

... …and man became a living being. Gen 2:7b

After the fall of mankind, man could no longer reflect and express the image of his Creator in its fullness. Adam could not show from his life, the love, power and majestic wisdom, God as before the fall. In fact Adam/man began to have emotions and experiences that the Lord never intended. He experienced fear, shame, guilt, pain and separation.

Hayford cites:
Bequeathed to us through inheritance, this is an image of sin, brokenness and failure that produces our:
–irresponsibility to obey God’s holy laws;
–incapacity to fulfill our God-ordained destinies;
–inability to enjoy life as God intended it to be.3

Adam had a sense of emotional, spiritual, and physical security in his God before the fall. He experienced high levels of competency and fulfillment as he tended the garden and even studied and gave names to all the animals which the Lord allowed him to do.
This man experienced the joy and freedom of transparency with himself, his wife and his God. He knew no fear, because the perfect love he experienced from his God and his wife cast away all fear. (1 John 4:18).

Adam had a clear sense of his identity and his purpose and operated within the parameters of this knowledge. Righteousness, peace, joy were the hallmarks of Adam’s experience and by extension should have been the experience of every man born after him.
Instead, after Adam’s disobedience he and all men after him were to be plagued by a plateau of struggles and inner conflicts trying desperately to be at peace with themselves, God and their neighbours. Man now enters the realm of being needy.

The Need for Purpose and Identity

At the very heart of every man is that driving desire to do “that thing” that would be satisfying, fulfilling and would bring some measure of significance to their lives.

Being separated from God, has brought men to a crisis, where they no longer know who they are and why they were created. Since men have lost a sense of identity and direction they engage in activities or join groups to “borrow identity and purpose.” Some men become workaholics and use their jobs to substitute for the inner need for personal fulfillment which comes through fulfilling personal purpose, while other men may join various organizations which they believe can fill their void.

Today we have a generation of young men who lime on blocks, engage in crime and violence and illicit sex. This generation is commonly called generation X, simply because they lack direction for their lives, which purpose gives. All these activities are attempts to clothe themselves in identity and purpose.

Now there is fundamental difference between identity and purpose. The former mainly focuses on the question “who am I?” and may the writer add “whose I am?” These questions lurk the hearts of millions of men, longing to be answered but finding none. After one comes into the understanding of his identity, he then can focus on “why do I exist?” which is the question of purpose. This gives the direction for your life and by extension allows you to know what to and what not to do.

The question of a man’s identity rest solely in his relationship with his God, not in his wealth, power or even his unique purpose on earth. This is because men were made to reflect the image of God, so who a man is is inextricably linked by his union with his Creator. Men do not know who they are because they lack the knowledge of whose they are!
When men understand they belong to God, they then can appreciate their primary purpose – worship.

Their lives are meant to be in a worshipful relationship with their God, therefore they live their lives pleasing to God in accordance with His Word. After they appreciate the primary purpose they can focus on their secondary purpose.
Every man is unique and has a special and individual mandate from God which will utilize the gifts, talents, and even his disposition .This mandate or mission is the secondary purpose, it is not eternal like the primary one, but will have eternal value.

Thoughts on Man's Condition pt.4

Adam Reproduced
In our society today one can clearly see the effects of Adam’s fall as well as the emotions he felt and the techniques he used to hide them or at least to some degree alleviate the pain of his reality.

The concept of men in this fast paced society of having a personal intimate relationship with God is a very unpopular one, even scoffed at.
Like Adam, men have lost sight of the perspective of who they are in the light of who God is. Men have inherited Adam’s delusion that we can function independently of God without any on going communication with Him and yet expect success. Adam expected success in being knowledgeable in his mind, satisfied in his body and pleased in his emotions, and men of the 21st century also expect success in business, family, and personal development. This will not occur!

Success is the manifestation of God’s Word in every area of human life. Men today fear the reality of God and all that would mean, like accepting personal guilt, accountability to Him, surrender of will and the reality of failure by His standards. So we have built “fig leaves” of philosophers, of atheism, rationalisation,humanism,agnosticism, and we hide behind these out of fear of exposure. Like Adam men today do not and cannot relate to God and we experience fear and shame so we hide behind our fig leaves. The extent of Adam’s reproduction will be looked at in more detail in the following section...

Thoughts on Man's Condition pt.3

THE FALL

The Fall
Adam enjoyed unprecedented fellowship and communion with God. All of who God is and has was available and extended to Adam. In every sense of the word he beheld the glory of God with an unveiled face and was being changed progressively over time from one state of glory to another.

This dimension of intimacy with God was always in the mind of the Creator. We as men were designed to have this level of relationship with the Father, and not act independently of Him. This is exactly what happened in the Garden between Adam and God and is mirrored and mimicked in the lives of men to this very day.

Genesis 3 gives the account of the fall of man. Adam acts independently of God and disobeys God’s command not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, when he listens to the voice of his wife as opposed to God

God as the Creator has exclusive rights to expect obedience from man. In giving a command he established a new manifestation of relationship between them – that is of Lord and vassel. Men need to understand that concept of God’s Sovereignty and our finiteness. So Adam broke the rule of this relationship, the rule was of obedience. Because he broke this “covenant” relationship distaster followed.

After this act of disobedience man found himself unable to fellowship with God in the cool of the day as like previous times. He covered himself in fig leaves due to shame, guilt, embarrassment and fear. These figs were leaves of “self-effort” to make himself able to stand before God and not feel exposed. This tactic will be used by men centuries after and even improved upon. Adam’s experience with God after his act of disobedience was to become the reality of every man who would be born of a woman after him, they would experience shame, fear and they would hide from the only one who loves them with an everlasting love...

Thoughts on Man's Condition pt.2

Image of constitution:
John 4:24
24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."

Image of Fellowship
Lev 19:1-219:1 The LORD said to Moses, 2 "Speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them: 'Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy.

1 John 4:8
8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
Jer. 12:1
You are always righteous, O LORD,

Is 65:16
16 Whoever invokes a blessing in the land
will do so by the God of truth;
he who takes an oath in the land
will swear by the God of truth.

These Scriptures highlight God’s constitution which is Spirit and a few of His moral attributes, Holiness, Love, Truthfulness and Righteousness. Man was also created a spirit when God breathed the breath of life into him, possessing a soul (mind, will and emotions) and living in a body (1 Thes. 5:23).

Man in his original make-up was also holy, righteous, and capable of love and truth. It’s upon these basic truths that God and man can have fellowship. As two spiritual beings they can communicate spirit to spirit and because both are holy they can have fellowship since walking together is based on agreement and God cannot look upon evil and wickedness because of the pureness of His eyes (Hab 1:13). Man had the reality of all of his thoughts, emotions, will being conformed to God, so much so that it is safe to say that if God was a man with a body on earth in Eden that He would act and respond just like Adam.

Let us look at the third dimension of the image man has.

Image of function
Gen 1:3
3 And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.
God spoke and it was so.

Gen 2:19-20
He (GOD) brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.
God spoke and it was so, Man spoke and it was so, just like his Maker. Man also has the ability to make choices, just like God, to reason and think, to manipulate environments just like God. To create and pro-create. All of these are elements of Man’s original make–up that are essential for Man to fulfill his purpose, which is the next part of our archeological dig: Man’s Purpose.

It’s upon the basis of man’s original design being so interrelated and intertwined with God in the sense of his similitude of character, nature of constitution being spirit and ability that Man is able to fulfill his purpose as outlined by God. Let’s examine this:

26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
Gen 1:28

28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."


We already established that the image is one for fellowship and function. It is also should be noted that image comes first then what they can do, in other words the ability to do flows out of the IMAGE the blessing or the enablement in verse 28 also flows out of the image.
From this passage we can also see the realms and dimensions of function that man was designed for. God gave man 3 realms; earth, sky, and sea to subdue and these represented all of earth’s current dimensions at that point in time.

Now to subdue really means to conquer, subjugate. To do this Man must have knowledge of realm being conquered, the principles and processes that govern it as well as the nature of it with its inherent qualities. Man was supposed to operate in all of the earth’s affairs. Not only was he designed for all dimensions of life but also the management of the resources that lie within in each realm. So the sky is one realm and the birds are the resource, the earth is another and the livestock and things that crawl would its resource and lastly the sea and its fish. So man had to fill as well as multiply in every realm. As enormous as this task was, Man in his original state was more than able to accomplish it. This is so for two fundamental reasons: man’s image and his fellowship with God.

Even though man had the ability to reflect God perfectly and function in all the realms it was never to be done independently of God, but through on going fellowship. Here we see how fellowship and function overlap in the image and are mutually inclusive. Man needs both to be successful in his purpose, because only God knows everything and can download information (spirit to spirit) to him so that he can prosper in all his endeavors. Man was so in tune with God that he heard the sound of God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. What that is really describing is Man’s ability to discern the movements, locations and activities of His Maker, who is Spirit in the midst of a his natural or physical environment.

This is vital if there is to be co operation between God and Man in the three realms. Basically, Man is God’s manager on earth, so man must be able to receive instruction from God, the board of directors. Today we have realms of science, law, medicine, business, and politics and so on. The plan for Man and God never changed …….man did. It is from this elevated level of existence that man has fallen.

Thoughts on Man's Condition

Mankind has never been in such a paradoxical condition as he finds himself in today. On one end, brilliant discoveries in the fields of medicine, technology, science can be attributed to him yet this same man holds the value of money (paper, plastic or metal) higher than that of another human being and would kill for the right price. Be it economic murder of small territories through offensive tariffs and trade treaties or the murder of unborn children in the form of abortion.

How is it that we as a race can crack and read the human genome code and yet simultaneously destroy nations with weapons of mass destruction? To discover this enigma of man’s operations we need to look at his make up, origin and purpose. The truths gleaned from this study will prove to shed much light on Man’s current state and why he does the things that he does.

This spiritual archeological dig must begin with man’s ancient origins in the book of beginnings:

Gen 1:26-27
26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."

27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

This portion of Scripture holds many truths about man his make-up, function and ultimate destiny and will be our primary point of reference. Let us start with his make-up. The Bible states that God said that He would make man in His own image. This means that man in himself has no genuine expression apart from expressing the image of his Maker, who is God. If Man is not reflecting God then by definition he is not being a man but something else, because he would reflecting something else. Thereby, making man a Reflective Being as opposed to one who is the primary cause.

This design is imperative if man is to truly fulfill God’s purpose which we will exam shortly. Let us now briefly explore the “image” which man was designed to reflect and this will then be categorized into three groups, namely: image for fellowship, image for function and image of constitution. To do this we must look at God Himself and what Scripture declares about Him...