Chapter 1
Creation
In our study of themes relating to Redemption, we accept the first fundamental of Christianity: That God is a person, and as such He is the Deity who made all things. We accept as valid that God exists and that He has spoken to the human family, and that His Word is a revelation of Himself and is recorded in the Bible (Hebrews 1:1-2; 2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1:21).
In Genesis 1, God's Word gives the account of the preparation God made for man before He created him. First, He planned a Universe for man, and in the heart of that Universe, He purposed a home. When God laid the foundations of this mighty Universe He planned and purposed it all to be the home of His man. At its completion, God put His stamp of approval upon it. It will meet man's every need. The home is ready for man (Genesis 1:25).
God made a solemn declaration that He wished to make man in His own image (Genesis 1:26). In order to partake of God's life, he must be in God's class -- in God's realm. He must be made in the image and likeness of his creator. He must be created as near like Deity as possible in order to be God's child and heir.
Man -- A Triune Being
Genesis 1:27 records the Creation of man in the image of God. Man, after the fall, in his condition of alienation from God, could not know what the image of God was without a revelation from Him (Ephesians 4:18).
In John 4:24, Jesus Christ, the incarnate one, revealed that the Creator, our Heavenly Father, was a spirit being. In 1 Thessalonians 5:23, Paul in his revelation, discloses the fact that man is a Triune being, consisting of a spirit, a soul, and a body. The spirit is that part of a human being, the real man, created in the image of God. The soul includes the mind and the will. Thus God created man in His own image, a spirit being with a soul and a body.
Man's soul and body fit him for life upon this universe which had been created for him. The real man was the spirit. Man was created to walk in fellowship with God, in God's realm, which is the realm of the spirit. Your body is not you, your mind is not you. You have a mind which you use, you have a body which you use. Your mind and your body are merely the instruments of the spirit, the real you.
Creation
The man outside of Christ is spiritually dead and does not realize that he was created in the image of God, and made to walk in fellowship with God. This is due to the fact that all he (the natural man) is able to know about reality, he gains through the five senses belonging to the physical body (1 Corinthians 2:14). These physical sense organs of the human body can only receive stimulus from like substance, matter. Therefore, man's senses can only perceive for him a physical or material realm -- there exists according to the scriptures a spiritual realm as well as a physical.
The scriptures speak to us of an unseen realm -- our Heavenly Father, the Holy Spirit, Angels, Satan, and demons. All these are spirit beings. Our physical sense organs do not contact this spiritual realm.
Ephesians 6:10-20 reveals the spiritual warfare surrounding us, from which our sense organs receive no stimuli. We are not aware, through physical contact, of the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit (although there may be seasons of great anointing) nor of the presence of angels who are sent to minister for us (Hebrews 1:14).
Read: John 16:7-15; Hebrews 1:14; John 14:23; 1 Corinthians 3:16; 1 Peter 5:8;
Mark 16:17; 1 John 4:6; James 4:7.
Because the doctor, with the point of his knife, has not been able to locate the spirit of man, materialists and atheists have said that the body is the whole man. Romans 1:18-25 & 28 reveal man has refused to have God in his knowledge because he has not been able to see Him with the physical eye, or touch Him with his physical being. A fish might just as well say there is nothing outside of water as for a man limited to sense knowledge, to say there exists nothing but matter.
We conclude that man is primarily a spirit being, created to walk with God, his heavenly Father, and on His level. We realize that when God created man, He possessed no material body such as man, yet man's fellowship was perfect and complete by Him (we walk by faith not by sight). This reveals that man's body was subordinate to his spirit and that his spirit was to dominate. Man's spirit was to rule his mind and his body. The body was to be the home in which the real man lived. As man walked in the realm of his spirit, he walked in the faith-dominating realm. The body exists only for the spirit and the soul of the man.
The spirit of man operates through the soul or intellect, and these in turn operate through the physical body. At death, the man and his soul leave the body. When man has left his body, the body has no reason for existing; therefore, dissolution and disintegration set in at once.
The Mind of Man
The scriptures declare that when man was created, he had a mind, intellectually of such character, that he was able to name the entire creation. Genesis 2:19-20 "And out of the ground Jehovah God formed every beast of the field, and every bird of the heavens; and brought them unto man to see what he would call them: and whatsoever man called the living creature, that was the name thereof. And man gave names to all cattle, and t the birds of the heaven, and every beast of the field."
When we realize that there are thousands of bugs, birds, worms, animals, fishes, and reptiles, whom Adam named, we can understand that he possessed an intellect which enable him to rule creation.
When we recognize that the creator, our God, is a Father, and that the whole family in heaven and earth is named after Him -- then we should understand that one reason for man's existence is Father-God's craving for fellowship (Ephesians 3:14-15). Therefore, man's mental capacities were such that he could fellowship with the mind of the Creator.
The Will of Man
Another crowning feature that God gave His man, was man's will. The will is the power of Choice, the ability to choose or to determine ones actions. God assumed a great responsibility in creating a being with a will. Yet no other type of being could have answered the reason for creation. Without this will, God's created one would have been a machine, not a man; a puppet, not a person. When we understand the desire of our heavenly Father for fellowship, and that this fellowship must come from man, not as an instinctive response, but emerging out of love and a free will, and man's choice, then we have a grasp of the great purpose of God in creation.
Read: Luke 9:23.
Man's Physical Condition
When man was created, he was planned a perfect human being with an endless human life. His body was not mortal nor immortal. The word "mortal" means "subject to death," and in the case of fallen man, it means "death-doomed and Satan-ruled!" Adam, after his creation, was an eternal spirit being in God's class with an eternal human body. The law of disease and death had no dominion or part in man's body. Adam's body was perfect and fit to be the temple of his spirit, God's under-ruler.
Man's Dominion and Authority
Reading the scripture Genesis 1:28 carelessly and without insight, we have overlooked the tremendous place man held in the heart of God. He was the object of a Father's love and affection. It was the joy of our heavenly Father to give His man dominion over the works He had created. This man had by creation in the plan of God, the ability to rule the universe. Psalm 8:3-9 is a revelation of the creation of the first man as the Father God desired him to be and to live. Psalm 8:5 in the Revised Version reads: "Made a little lower than God." The King James Version reads "a little lower than the angels," but according to Hebrew authorities, the word is "Elohim". It is the same word as used in Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning God" or "Elohim". The thought of the Hebrew is, "just a shade lower than God." Man was created as near like God as possible. He was created to be God's companion and under-ruler. Man's dominion reached, some think, the utmost star; hence, Joshua commanded the sun to stand still! There is good reason to believe that the dominion of the first Adam was as far reaching as Christ's rule shall be when He shall return to take over the dominion of the universe.
Hebrews 2:5-8 is a revelation of Adam's dominion. Hebrews 2:8 (last clause) reveals that man no longer holds his dominion. Hebrews 2:9 shows that the lost dominion of Adam has been given to Christ, by virtue of His sacrifice on the cross in man's behalf. Hebrews 1:3 gives to us a suggestion as to the way that Adam ruled the world. Jesus upholds all things by the word of His power. It seems reasonable to believe that Adam ruled creation by his word. His voice was like the voice of his creator in its dominion over creation.
Adam possessed such complete authority over creation, that he had in his hands the legal right to confer that dominion to another being. In a later lesson we shall see that he did this very thing.
Man's Responsibility
It is impossible to overestimate the responsibility of Adam. He was responsible for the joy and sorrow of our heavenly Father. He was responsible for the human family yet unborn. God could have spoken the entire human family into existence at once, but He did not choose that way.
Genesis 1:28. He made Adam and Eve fellow-workers with Him, in the bringing of the human family into the world. God gave to man the ability to reproduce himself by begetting children. These children were primarily for the joy and the Glory of God.
It happened in this wise:
Instead of creating the human race by one single word, God created one man and woman. He said to them, "I permit you to give birth to my children, to rear and to educate and care for them, teaching them to love me and respond to my yearnings." So, man's real business is to give birth to God's children. In our day, to lead a soul to Christ means leading them into the New Birth.
This gives a responsibility to man that can only be measured by eternity. Man gives birth to eternal personalities, children that will live as long as God will live. Man then, is the custodian of God's joy.
We have dealt in detail on Creation of the human race in Adam for a definite reason -- the renewing of your mind. To have a low estimation of the creation in Adam is to have a low estimation of Christ and the Christian.
Until the time that we are born again, we live in spiritual darkness in the realm of spiritual death. (Genesis 2:17; Ephesians 2:1-5) We are unaware of any condition other than the bondage related to the realm belonging to fallen man. Before being born again, we were familiar with Genesis 1 through the world mind, with little or no spiritual insight. Now that we are in Christ, Genesis takes on a new significance.
In the story of Creation, we failed to see that man was the reason for creation and the existence of the universe. To the man outside of Christ, the human family played a minor role. Our lives in a spiritual sense were alienated from God. (Ephesians 4:18) We failed to understand what was implied by such terms as "Father," and "love". We failed to grasp that God Almighty has a family in humanity, that like any earthly father He longed for children, and we failed to understand His joy in creating man in His own image, and then turning the dominion of his creation over to man.
Before we are born again (John 3:1-7), we saw God as a policeman -- we saw creation as a pitiful failure; we saw man as a poor weak worm of the dust. We saw it just as Satan would have us to see it!
1 Corinthians 15:45-49, tells us of two creations: the creation in Adam, and the new spiritual creation in Christ. In Adam we see man marred by the disobedience, fall and entrance of spiritual death. In the fall, man sustained loss of fellowship with God, and loss of authority over creation. In Christ, we see spiritual death destroyed, and man made a new creature in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17). In Christ man is set free from the bondage and dominion of Satan, set free from spiritual death and made alive in Christ (Colossians 1:13-14). As you gain spiritual insight into the reason for the first creation, you will understand your place in the new creation in Christ, and understand in a measure what you mean as a member of Christ to the great Father heart of Almighty God. A low conception of the creation in Adam has given us a low conception of the New Creation in Christ.
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