Let us make man in our image

There are quite clearly two Adams spoken of in the Bible.  The first book of Corinthians, ch.15 v45  says ‘The first man Adam became a living being, the last Adam became a life-giving spirit .’  If we look in Genesis ch2 v7, we see that  this first man, Adam, was formed of dust from the ground  This  ‘man of dust’ was formed before any plant or herb had grown on the earth ( v5 ), even before the sun and the moon were created, which would have been on the second day, and is formed by God alone., who places him in the garden of Eden.  The word ‘Adham’, used here, is the Hebrew for ‘man’, which sounds like, and may be derived from, the Hebrew word for ground ( Adhamah ).  This Adam disobeyed God, and was tempted to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil when his wife was persuaded to question God's word   when the serpent said 'Did God really say?', thereby coming to know good and evil.  God had told Adam that he could eat of any tree in the garden except the tree of knowledge of good and evil .  Because of this disobedience,  eternal life was denied him (Genesis ch 3 v. 22,) and he and his wife Eve were sent with several curses from the garden of Eden ( which means ‘delight’ ), and this emphasises the loss of relationship with God suffered by them through disobedience to Him through the questioning of His word, a choice made by them which took them away from the blessing of eternal life. They were sent out of the garden and denied access to the tree of life.

In Genesis ch.1 v, 26 God says ‘Let us make man in our image’. This takes place on the sixth day, and the word used in verse 27  for ‘man’ , ‘adam’, is a collective  referring to mankind, both male and female .

We are told that eternal life is not just to know God but to know God and His Son Jesus Christ, (John ch.17 v3 ), and Hebrews ch.1 v.2 tells us that God  made the worlds by Jesus.   We are also told in John ch.1 that Jesus is the word, and that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and that the Word was God.  From this we gather that the ‘ us ’ and the ‘our’, as in ‘Let us make man in our image,’ could well refer to God and Jesus .   God is Spirit, ( John ch. 4 v.24 ), and Jesus is the express image of God. (Hebrews ch. 1 v.3 ) so is this collective ‘man ‘, made in the image of God and Jesus Christ, the church , the spiritual man, the one spoken of by Paul in 1 Corinthians ch 15 v.49?    2 Corinthians ch. 3 v.18 says that we, the church, 'are being transformed into His image'.  These created beings were told to bear fruit and were sent out to  multiply, God referring  to everything He had made, including them, as being ‘very good’ (Genesis  ch.1 v.31 ).

God is  Spirit and until His Spirit is born in us we can not be like Him.  We are the ‘man of dust’, without hope and without God in the world (Ephesians ch.2 v.12 ), and bear the image of the man of dust until we are born again of God’s Holy Spirit.   Just like birds, who are first born into an egg and then have to break through that shell in order to fly, we have to break through the restrictive shell of our earthly sinful and disobedient to God nature, to be able to soar in Heavenly places with Christ Jesus.  This can only be achieved with the help of the Holy Spirit , made manifest through the diverse gifts within the body of Christ.  

Once we are born again and are in Christ Jesus and are actively walking in the Spirit, then we begin to become like Him.  We are encouraged by Paul in 1 Corinthians ch. 15 v. 49 to bear the image of the heavenly.  The first Adam became a living being.  We are not in the likeness of God as descendants of Adam because Adam sinned and all his descendants inherited his sinful nature, thereby becoming children of disobedience, all under God’s wrath, and ‘dead’ in our sins, (Ephesians ch.2 v.1.).  In 1 Corinthians ch.15 vs .45 - 49, we are told that there are two Adams, a physical which comes first and a spiritual which comes second.   We, as Christians are told that we shall bear the image of the first one and then encouraged to put on the image of the second one.  The second Adam, Jesus, was a life giving Spirit, and all who descend from him will be in His likeness and, because He is the express image of God, they will also possess the ability to be made in the likeness of God if they believe on Him., being obedient to Him.  We can only become sons of God through this life-giving Spirit.  Galatians ch.3 v.27 says ‘ For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith.  For as many of you as were baptised into Christ have put on Christ.’

‘ But as many as received Him, to them gave He  power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name, which were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God ’  John ch.1 vs. 12, 13.

Jesus is God’s only begotten Son and we can become part of the body of Christ, thereby  spiritually becoming God’s Son too.   Is this the transformation spoken of in Genesis ch1 v26 , and is  God  speaking to Jesus (for the Gospel of John ch1 v1,2 and 3 says ’In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made .’)?

Genesis ch.1 v. 16 speaks of two great lights created on the fourth day.  Although God had created light on the first day, the sun and the moon were not created until the fourth day, ‘ a greater light  to rule the day, and a lesser light to rule the night ’.  If we take the natural meaning, it speaks of the sun and the moon coming into our world on the fourth day.   However, the scriptures are discerned spiritually as well. 

Psalm ch.90 v.4 says that one thousand years in God’s sight are as a day gone by.  Psalm 19 speaks of the heavens declaring the glory of God, and speaks of the sun being as a bridegroom, and Jesus is called  the bridegroom, and also the light that has come into the world ( John ch. 3 v.19 ).   John ch.1 v.9 says The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world.  This was talking about Jesus at the time of John the Baptist, it was not talking of the natural‘ light’ that was already in the world, but the light that was coming into the world.

The sun gives light in the day, and while Jesus was in the world He was the light.    John ch.3 v 19a says, regarding Jesus and the work that He came to do  ‘ and this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, ’.   In John ch,9 v.4 He says, ‘ I must work the works of Him that sent me while it is day: the night comes when no man can work.' 

The second great light created on the fourth day was the moon, to give light in the night.   The moon is a simile of the church, ‘ to be established as a faithful witness (psalm 89 v.37 ) ’.  Jesus has commissioned the church to do the work He did on earth.  He said to His disciples ‘As my Father has sent me, even so I send you ’ ( John ch. 20 v.21 ).  We can do nothing without Him, the Holy Spirit has been sent to equip  us to do His work. Within the body of Christ is the ability, through the spiritual gifts, to do all the works that He did while He was in a physical body on Earth , both within the house of God and in the world.

Just as the moon has no light of it’s own, but can only reflect the light of the sun on the world at night, so we have no light of our own to shed on the world while it lies in darkness. We must reflect the light which comes from our Lord Jesus,    ( hence  ‘no man can work ’)   The church is the spiritual body of Jesus Christ which has been forming for nearly two thousand years, or two days  in God’s time.  Jesus said in  Luke ch. 13 v. 32,   ‘ Today and tomorrow I do cures, on the third day I will be perfected. ’  Is He talking God’s time, has He been doing  ‘ cures ’ for two thousand years, and are we in the sixth day when the full measure of Christ’s body on earth will be reached, ( Jesus’ body being perfected ), being told to multiply and subdue the earth through His Spirit. ? Have the last two thousand years been used to form the ‘ man made in God and Jesus’ image’,  the collective, spiritual one spoken of in 1 Corinthians ch.15, and is this spiritual, collective one about to be perfected in Jesus ?  Romans ch.6vs3-5 says ‘ Do you not know that all of us who have been baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into His death?  We were buried with Him therefore, by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from death by the Glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.  For if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His.’

 

As far as time is concerned many people may say that we have gone past the  six thousand years, but whose calendar do we go by?  The Jews have a different calendar to us, the Mayans a different one again.  Also the Genesis day starts in the evening.

The earth lay in darkness cold as a tomb
there was no warmth or light

It lay without life like the barren womb
of a woman alone in the night

...... It waited for Jesus

Once again the Earth waits as in days of old

Again there is darkness, again it is cold

But now there’s a moon to reflect the sun

To announce the return of God’s Holy One

To tell of salvation from sin and death

By receiving God’s Spirit .... His life-giving breath

God has given Jesus a name above every other name, ' for you have exalted above all things your name and your word ',Psalm 138 v.2b.     The king James version puts it  'for thou hast magnified Thy Word above all Thy name' , and I believe this is what the Father did, gave Jesus the authority to even blank out the curse that God had put on mankind by becoming the spotless lamb without blemish required as a sacrifice to do this.  ( Jesus means ‘ Yahweh saves ’), and because of this He is able to save mankind from the spiritual death inherited as a result of the sin of Adam.   Lazarus, Mary and Martha’s brother was dead for four days before Jesus raised him from the dead.  The name ‘ Lazarus ’ means ‘ whom God helps ’, and this is exactly what God did to mankind after they had been spiritually dead in their sins for four spiritual days, (four thousand years ) .   He made a way for all of mankind to regain the spiritual life they had lost through Adam by sending Jesus, to whom He has given all authority, even authority over death itself.   In Luke ch.9 vs. 28 -36, when Jesus was talking on top of the mountain with Moses and Elijah, Peter wanted to make booths for the two of them and one for Jesus.  However, as he said this a cloud came and overshadowed them, and a voice came out of the cloud saying ‘This is my Son, my Chosen, listen to him’ and the other two disappeared, leaving Jesus alone.  The law and the prophets no longer carried the divine authority, only Jesus did.   When Jesus was born as the Son of man and the Son of God it was the end of mankind having the curse of the fleshly inheritance of the first Adam.  Joseph did not father the child Jesus, the Holy Spirit did.   Man was once again given the opportunity of eating from the tree of life ( Jesus, the Word of God ).  

Jesus said to Martha, when she confessed belief in the resurrection on the last day, ‘I am the resurrection and the life, he who believes in me, though he die yet shall he live ’( John ch.. 11 v.25 ).   Paul was confirming the creating of this new spiritual being in 1 Corinthians ch.15 v.22 by saying ‘For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive ’.  We are collectively the body of the new Adam spoken of in Genesis ch. 1 v.26   ( the life giving spirit ), in Christ Jesus, when we believe in Him, Jesus being the head.   Philippians ch.2 v.9 tells us that 'God has highly exalted Jesus and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.'  God is spirit and must be worshipped in spirit and in truth. 

There is, in Jesus, a divine forgiveness which keeps no record of the death producing sins, which was not there in the old covenant between mankind and God, ( ‘ Let it be known to you therefore brethren that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and by Him everyone that believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses. [ Acts ch. 13 vs. 38, 39 ] ) and gives access to eternal life which had  previously been denied us.( Genesis ch.3 vs 22-24.).   Once we believe in Jesus and have become part of His body He, being the head,  instructs us to remove the grave clothes from dead mankind with the commission He gives to His disciples in Matthew ch.28 vs. 19 and 20  ‘ Go therefore and make disciples  of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father  and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age .’ 

It is God Himself who has made Jesus Lord, and in Him alone is the ‘life’ that is eternal.  He is the manna  from heaven, the  bread of the face, the ‘word of God ’, the  door to the sheepfold , the  mediator between man and God,  and the only means by which man may be reconciled back to God.  There is no other name under Heaven by which we might be saved.   He is the tree of life that Adam and Eve could not eat from because of their disobedience, the fruit of which enables mankind to know God and have eternal life.    The‘ Word’, which is Jesus, has the power to create.  It was there in the beginning, when God used it to speak the world into existence, and was there when God said ‘Let us make (create) man (the word used is mankind in the original text) in our image. ’.  God and  His only begotten Son Jesus, the Word of God, who was with Him in the beginning (John ch.1 v1),  and who was taken up into heaven to sit at the right hand of God after His time on earth ( Mark ch. 16 v.19), are making mankind ( formed from dust), in their image, speaking of our spiritual re-creation which God is doing through Jesus, ( curing us from our disobedient nature ) and has been doing for two thousand years since the Spirit was given, to those that believe, after Jesus was crucified, (for the Spirit was not given until after Jesus was crucified).  We are a new creation in Christ Jesus.

In Acts ch.2 v.36 we are told that God has made Jesus both Lord and Christ, and in John ch.3 v.16 we are told that God has allowed Jesus to be crucified for our sins because He loves us and does not want us to perish but have everlasting life.  Eternal life cannot be attained without Jesus, otherwise Adam and all mankind would have automatically received it 

The time allotted by God for Jesus to save is a time of grace, when the door is open to us.  It has been granted to  us to eat of the tree of life, a thing previously denied us all by God because we were under the curse of death, inherited  through Adam’s sin.(Ephesians ch.2 v.5 says we were dead in our sins )  The right to eat of this tree has not been earned by us but by Jesus, through His crucifixion.  It is a gift!

Son of the Father

The ultimate sacrifice of all time took place when Jesus was chosen to be crucified and Barabbas was set free.  Jesus represented the lamb without blemish that, in the priestly rituals of the old testament, was used as an offering to ward off the punishment due to the Israelites for disobeying God, while Barabbas represented disobedient mankind, being a son of Adam by nature. 

The name Barabbas  means ‘son of the father,’ and his crime was sedition, which is ‘conduct tending to promote treason or rebellion against a governing authority’.   Adam’s original disobedience in the garden of Eden  was  exactly that, and the governing authority that he was rebelling against was God.  His act caused all of mankind to inherit the sin of rebellion against the governing authority of God.  

It is not coincidence that the one who was set free from being put to death at Calvary was named Barabbas.  He represented fallen mankind, the children of Adam.   On that day  the Son of the heavenly Father was releasing the son of the earthly father from spiritual death and opening the way to eternal life to all of mankind.   1 Corinthians ch. 15 v 49 says , we have borne the image of the man of dust and we are destined to bear the image of the man of the Spirit.  As God Himself is  Spirit, (2 Corinthians ch.3 v.17 ) so too the new image is a spiritual one.  We are made alive together with Christ, being saved by grace, and are raised up with Him, and made to sit with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

If we turn the word ‘ evil ‘ around we get the word ‘ live ‘.  If we turn the Hebrew word for evil, Ra, around, we get Er, which means waken.   Verse 18 of 1 Corinthians ch.15 speaks of  ' those who have fallen asleep in Christ ' When we are in Christ we have turned around from evil, and shall waken one day ( on the third spiritual day after Jesus came to earth, at the end of the sixth day according to 'one day being as a thousand years ) to a life of no death, no tears, no sorrow.  How wonderful is our God!  

And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood there is no remission. It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.  Hebrews Ch. vs.22,23