The content or meaning of the image of God is unfolded further in later revelation. For instance, it is remarkable that after the Fall, too, man still continued to be called the image of God.
In Genesis 5:1-3 we are reminded once more that God created man, man and woman together, in His image, and that He blessed them, and that Adam thus begot a son in his own likeness, after his image. In Genesis 9:6 the shedding of man's blood is forbidden for the reason that man was made in the image of God. The poet of the beautiful eighth psalm sings of the glory and majesty of the Lord which reveals itself in heaven and earth, and most splendidly of all in insignificant man and his dominion over all the works of God's hands. When Paul spoke to the Athenians on Mars' Hill, he quoted one of their poets approvingly: For we are also His offspring (Acts 17:28). In James 3:9 the Apostle by way of demonstrating the evil of the tongue makes use of this contrast: that with it we bless God, even the Father, and with it we curse men who are made after the similitude of God. And Scripture not only calls fallen man the image of God, but it keeps on regarding and dealing with him as such throughout. It constantly looks upon man as a reasonable, moral being who is responsible to God for all his thoughts and deeds and words and is bound to His service.
Alongside of this representation, however, we find the idea that through sin man has lost the image of God. True, we are not anywhere told this directly in so many words. But it is something that can clearly be deduced from the whole teaching of Scripture concerning sinful man. After all, sin — as we shall consider more specifically later has robbed man of innocence, righteousness, and holiness, has corrupted his heart, darkened his understanding, inclined his will to evil, turned his inclinations right-about-face, and placed his body and all its members in the service of unrighteousness. Accordingly man must be changed, reborn, justified, cleansed, and sanctified. He can share in all these benefits only in the fellowship with Christ who is the Image of God (2 Cor. 4:4 and Col. 1:15) and to whose image we must be conformed (Rom. 8:29). The new man, accordingly, who is put in the fellowship with Christ through faith, is created in accordance with God's will in true righteousness and holiness (Eph. 4:24) and is constantly renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him (Col. 3:10). The knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, which the believer obtains through the fellowship with Christ, have their origin, and example, and final purpose in God and they cause man again to share in the Divine nature (2 Peter 1:4).
It is upon this teaching of Holy Scripture that the distinction usually made in Reformed theology between the image of God in the broader and the narrower sense is based. If, on the one hand, after his fall and disobedience, man continues to be called the image and offspring of God, and, on the other hand, those virtues by which he especially resembles God have been lost through sin and can only be restored again in the fellowship with Christ, then these two propositions are compatible with each other only if the image of God comprises something more than the virtues of knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. The Reformed theologians recognized this, and over against the Lutheran and the Roman theologians they maintained it.
The Lutherans do not make the distinction between the image of God in the broader and in the narrower sense. Or, if they do make the distinction, they do not attach much importance to it nor understand its significance. For them the image of God is nothing more or less than the original righteousness, that is, the virtues of knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. They recognize the image of God only in the narrower sense and do not appreciate the need of relating this image of God to the whole human nature. Thus the religio-moral life of man is held to be a special and isolated area. It is not related to, and it exercises no influence upon, the work to which man is called in state and society, and in art and science. Once the Lutheran Christian shares in the forgiveness of sins and the fellowship with God through faith, he has enough. He rests in that, and enjoys it, and does not concern himself to relate this spiritual life, backwards, to the counsel and election of God, and, forwards, to the whole earthly calling of man.
From this, in the other direction, it follows that man, when through sin he has lost the original righteousness, is bereft of the whole image of God. Nothing of it is left him, not even small remains: and so his rational and moral nature, which is still his, is underestimated and maligned.
The Roman Catholics, on the contrary, do make a distinction between the image of God in the broader and narrower sense, although they do not usually employ these words for it. And they, too, are concerned to find a relationship between the two. But for them this relationship is external, not internal; it is artificial, not real; mechanical, not organic. The Romans present the matter as though man is conceivable without the virtues of knowledge, righteousness, and holiness (the image of God in the narrower sense) and can in reality also exist thus. In that event, too, man still has some religious and moral life but only in such a kind and to such a degree as can come from natural religion and natural morality. It is a religion and morality which, as it were, remains limited to this earth, and it can never pave the way for him to heavenly blessedness and the immediate vision of God. Besides, although in the abstract it is possible that such a natural person can, without possessing the image of God in the narrower sense, fulfill the duties of natural religion and of natural moral law, still, as a matter of fact, this is very difficult inasmuch as man is a material, physical, and sensuous person. After all, desire is always characteristic of this sensuous nature of man. Such lust or desire may not in itself be sin but it certainly is a tempting occasion for sin. For, by nature, this sensuous character, being physical, is opposed to the spirit, and constitutes a threat to it always. The threat is that reason and will will be overcome by the power of the flesh.
For these two reasons, according to Roman Catholic thought, God in His sovereign favor has added the image of God in the narrower sense to the natural man. He could have created man without this image. But because He foresaw that man would then very easily fall prey to fleshly desire, and also because He wanted to raise man to a higher state of blessedness than is possible here on earth, that is, to the heavenly glory, and to the immediate presence of Himself, therefore God added original righteousness to the natural man and so lifted him from his natural state to a higher and supernatural vantage point. Thus a two-fold purpose was achieved. In the first place, man could now, what with the help of this supernatural addition, easily control the desire which flesh is naturally heir to; and, in the second place, by fulfilling the supernatural duties prescribed for him by the original righteousness (the image of God in the narrower sense), man could now achieve a supernatural salvation corresponding to his further endowment. Thus the supernatural addendum of original righteousness serves two purposes for the Roman Catholic: it serves as a restraint upon the flesh, and it clears the way for merits to heaven.
The Reformed theologians take their own point of view between the Roman Catholic and Lutheran positions. According to Scripture, the image of God is larger and more inclusive than the original righteousness. For, although this original righteousness has been lost through sin, man continues to carry the name of the image and offspring of God. There remain in him some small remains of the image of God according to which he was originally created. That original righteousness could not, therefore, have been an endowment, separate and independent, and quite unrelated to human nature generally. It is not true that man at first existed, be it in thought only or in actuality also, as a purely natural being, to whom, then, original righteousness was later superadded from above. Rather, in thought and creation both, man was one with that original righteousness. The idea of man includes the idea of such righteousness. Without it man can neither be conceived of nor exist. The image of God in the narrower sense is integrally related with that image in the broader sense. It is not accurate to say that man bears the image of God merely: he is that image of God. The image of God is identical with man, is as inclusive as the humanity of man. To the extent that, even in the state of sin, man remained man, to that extent he has preserved remnants of the image of God; and to the extent that he has lost the image of God, to that extent he has ceased to be man, true and perfect man.
After all, the image of God in the narrower sense is nothing other than the spiritual wholeness or health of man. When a human being becomes sick in body and soul, even when he becomes insane in mind, he continues to be a human being. But he has then lost something that belongs to the harmony of man, and has received something in its stead which conflicts with that harmony. Just so, when through sin man has lost the original righteousness, he continues to be man, but he has lost something that is inseparable from the idea of man and has received something instead that is alien to that idea. Hence, man, who lost the image of God, did not become something other than man: he preserved his rational and moral nature. The thing that he lost was not something which really did not belong to his nature in the first place and what he received instead was something that seized upon and corrupted his whole nature. Just as the original righteousness was man's spiritual wholeness and health, so sin is his spiritual disease. Sin is moral corruption, spiritual death, death in sins and transgressions, as Scripture describes it.
Such a conception of the image of God permits the whole teaching of Holy Scripture to come into its own. It is a conception which at one and the same time maintains the relationship and the distinction between nature and grace, creation and redemption. Gratefully and eloquently this conception acknowledges the grace of God which, after the fall, too, permitted man to remain man and continued to regard him and deal with him as a rational, moral, and responsible being. And at the same time, it holds that man, bereft of the image of God, is wholly corrupted and inclined to all evil. Life and history are available to confirm this. For even in its lowest, deepest fall, human nature yet remained human nature. And, no matter what acme of achievement man may accomplish, he remains small and weak, guilty and impure. Only the image of God constitutes man true and perfect man.
* * * * *
If, now, we try briefly to survey the content of the image of God, the first thing that comes up for attention is man's spiritual nature. He is a physical, but he is also a spiritual being. He has a soul which, in essence, is a spirit. This is evident from what the Holy Scripture teaches concerning the origin, essence, and duration of the human soul. As to that origin, we read concerning Adam that he, unlike the animals, received a breath of life from above (Gen. 2:7) and in a sense this holds for all men. For it is God who gives every man his spirit (Eccles. 12:7), who forms the spirit of man within him (Zechariah 12:1), and who, therefore, in distinction from the fathers of the flesh, can be called the Father of spirits (Heb. 12:9). This special origin of the human soul determines its essence also. True, Scripture several times ascribes a soul to animals (Genesis 2:19 and 9:4, and elsewhere) but in these instances the reference, as some translations also have it, is to a principle of life in the general sense. Man has a different and a higher soul, a soul which in very essence is spiritual in kind. This is evident from the fact that Scripture does ascribe a peculiar spirit to man but never to the animal. Animals do have a spirit in the sense that as creatures they are created and sustained by the Spirit of God (Ps. 104:30) but they do not, each of them, have their own, independent spirit. Man has.14 Because of its spiritual nature the soul of man is immortal; it does not as in the animals die when the body dies, but it returns to God who has given the spirit (Eccles. 12:7). It cannot, like the body, be killed by men (Matt. 10:28). As spirit it continues to exist (Heb. 12:9 and 1 Peter 3:19).
This spirituality of the soul raises man above the plane of the animal, and gives him a point of resemblance with the angels. True, he belongs to the sensuous world, being earthly of the earth, but by virtue of his spirit he far transcends the earth, and he walks with royal freedom in the realm of spirits. By his spiritual nature man is related to God who is Spirit (John 4:24) and who dwells in eternity (Isa. 57:15).
In the second place, the image of God is revealed in the abilities and powers with which the spirit of man has been endowed. It is true that the higher animals can by sensation form images and relate these to each other, but they can do no more. Man, on the contrary, raises himself above the level of images and enters the realm of concepts and ideas. By means of thought, which cannot be understood as a movement of the brain but must be regarded as a spiritual activity, man deduces the general from the particular, rises from the level of the visible to that of the invisible things, forms ideas of the true, the good, and the beautiful, and he learns to know God's eternal power and Godhead from God's creatures. By means of his willing, which must also be distinguished from his sinful desire, he emancipates himself from the material world and reaches out for invisible and suprasensuous realities. His emotions even are by no means set in motion merely by useful and pleasurable things inside the material world but are roused and stimulated also by ideal, spiritual goods which are quite insusceptible to arithmetical calculation. All of these abilities and activities have their point of departure and their center in the self-consciousness by which man knows himself and by means of which man bears within himself an ineradicable sense of his own existence and of the peculiarity of his rational and moral nature. Besides, all these particular abilities express themselves outwardly in language and religion, in morality and law, in science and art, — all of them, of course, as well as many others, peculiar to man and not to be found in the animal world at all.
All these abilities and activities are characteristics of the image of God. For God, according to the revelation of nature and Scripture, is not an unconscious, blind force, but a personal, self-conscious, knowing, and willing being. Even emotions, dispositions, and passions such as wrath, jealousy, compassion, mercy, love, and the like, are without hesitancy ascribed to God in the Scriptures, not so much as emotions which He Himself passively undergoes, but as activities of His almighty, holy, and loving being. Scripture could not speak in this human way about God if in all his abilities and activities, man were not created in the image of God.
The same holds true, in the third place, of the body of man. Even the body is not excluded from the image of God. True, Scripture expressly says that God is Spirit (John 4:24), and it nowhere ascribes a body to Him. Nevertheless, God is the creator also of the body and of the whole sensuous world. All things, material things too, have their origin and their existence in the Word that was with God (John 1:3 and Col. 1:15), and therefore rest in thought, in spirit. Moreover, the body, although it is not the cause of all those activities of the spirit, is the instrument of them. It is not the ear which hears but the spirit of man which hears through the ear.
Hence all those activities which we accomplish by means of the body, and even the physical organs by which we accomplish them, can be ascribed to God. Scripture speaks of His hands and feet, of His eyes and ears, and of so much more, in order to indicate that all that man can achieve by way of the body is, in an original and perfect way, due to God. He that planted the ear, shall He not hear? He that formed the eye, shall He not see? (Psalm 94:9). To the extent, therefore, that the body serves as tool and instrument of the spirit, it exhibits a certain resemblance to, and gives us some notion of, the way in which God is busy in the world.
* * * * *
All this belongs to the image of God in the broader sense. But the likeness of God and man comes out much more strongly in the original righteousness with which the first man was endowed and which is called the image of God in the narrower sense. When Scripture puts the emphasis on this original righteousness, it thereby declares that what matters most in the image of God is not that it exists but what it is. The main thing is not that we think and hate and love and will. The likeness of man and God gets its significance from what we think and will, from what the object of our hatred and love is. The powers of reason and will, of inclination and aversion, were given to man precisely for this purpose that he should use them in the right way — that is, according to God's will and to His glory. The devils, too, have retained the powers of thought and will, but they put these solely into the service of their hatred and enmity against God. Even the belief in God's existence, which in itself is a good thing, gives the devils nothing but trembling, and the fear of His judgment (James 2:19). Concerning the Jews, who called themselves children of Abraham and named God their Father, Jesus once said that, if this were so, they would do the works of Abraham and would love Him whom God had sent. But because they were doing precisely the opposite and sought to kill Jesus, they betrayed that they were really of the father the devil and wanted to do his will (John 8:39-44). The desires which the Jews fostered, and the works which they did, constituted them despite all their keen discrimination and energy like unto the devil. And so, too, the human likeness to God comes out not chiefly in the fact that man possesses reason and understanding, heart and will. It expresses itself principally in pure knowledge and perfect righteousness and holiness, which together constitute the image
of God in the narrower sense, and with which man was privileged and adorned at his creation.
The knowledge which was given to the first man did not consist of the fact that he knew everything and had nothing further to learn about God, himself, and the world. Even the knowledge of the angels and of the saints is susceptible to growth. So was the knowledge of Christ on earth up to the end of His life. That original knowledge of the first man implies rather that Adam received an adequate knowledge for his circumstance and calling and that this knowledge was pure knowledge. He loved truth with his whole soul. The lie, with all of its calamitous consequences of error, doubt, unbelief, and uncertainty, had not yet found a place in his heart. He stood in the truth, and he saw and appreciated everything as it really was.
The fruit of such knowledge of the truth was righteousness and holiness. Holiness means that the first man was created free of all taint of sin. His nature was unspoiled. No evil thought, deliberation, or desire came up out of his heart. He was not innocent or simple, but he knew God, and he knew the law of God that was written in his heart, and he loved that law with his whole soul. Because he stood in the truth, he stood also in love. Righteousness means that the man who thus knew the truth in his mind, and who was holy in his will and in all his desires, thereby also corresponded wholly to God's law, wholly satisfied the demands of His justice, and stood before His face without any guilt. Truth and love bring peace in their wake, peace with God, and ourselves, and the whole world. The man who himself stands in the right place, the place where he belongs, also stands in the right relationship to God and to all creatures.
Of this state and circumstance in which the first man was created we can no longer form an idea. A head and a heart, a mind and a will, all of them altogether pure and without sin — that is something which lies far beyond the pale of all our experiences. When we stop to reflect how sin has insinuated itself into all our thinking and speaking, into all our choices and actions, then even the doubt can rise in our hearts whether such a state of truth, love, and peace is possible for man. Holy Scripture, however, wins the victory and conquers every doubt. In the first place, it shows us, not only at the beginning but also in the middle of history, the figure of a man who could with full justice put the question to his opponents: Which of you convinceth me of sin? (John 8:46). Christ was very man and therefore also perfect man. He did no sin neither was guile found in His mouth (1 Peter 2:22). In the second place, Scripture teaches that the first human couple were created after God's image in righteousness and holiness as the fruit of known truth. Thus the Scriptures maintain that sin does not belong to the essence of human nature, and that it can therefore also be removed and separated from that human nature.
If sin cleaves to man from his earliest origin, and by virtue of the nature which is his, then from the nature of the case there is no redemption from sin possible. The redemption from sin would then be tantamount to the annihilation of human nature. But now, as it is, not only can a human being exist without sin in the abstract, but such a holy human being has actually existed. And when he fell, and became guilty and polluted, another man, the second Adam, rose up without sin, to set fallen man free from his guilt and to cleanse him of all pollution. The creation of man according to the image of God and the possibility of his fall include the possibility of his redemption and recreation. But whoever denies the first cannot affirm the second; the denial of the fall has as its other side the comfortless preaching of human irredeemability. In order to be able to fall, man must first have stood. In order to lose the image of God he must first possess it.
* * * * *
The creation of man according to the image of God — we read in Genesis 1:26 and 28 — had as its nearest purpose that man should fill, subdue, and have dominion over the earth. Such dominion is not a constituent element of the image of God. Nor does it, as some have maintained, constitute the whole content of that image. Moreover, it absolutely is not an arbitrary and incidental addendum. On the contrary, the emphasis that is placed upon this dominion and its close relationship with the creation according to the image of God indicate conclusively that the image comes to expression in the dominion and by means of it must more and more explain and unfold itself. Further, in the description of this dominion, it is plainly stated that to a certain extent it was, indeed, immediately given to man as an endowment, but that to a very great extent it would be achieved only in the future. After all, God does not say merely that He will make “men” in His image and likeness (Gen. 1:26), but when He has made the first human couple, man and woman, He blessed them and said to them: Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it (Gen. 1:28), and He further gave Adam the particular task of dressing and keeping the garden (Gen. 2:15).
All this teaches very plainly that man was not created for idleness but for work. He was not allowed to rest upon his laurels, but had to go straight into the wide world in order to subdue it to the power of his word and will. He was given a big, a widely distributed, a rich task on the earth. He was given an assignment which would cost him centuries of effort to accomplish. He was pointed in a direction incalculably far away which he had to take and which he had to pursue to the end. In short, there is a big difference and a wide separation between the condition in which the first man was created and the destination to which he was called. True, this destination is closely related to his nature, just as that nature is closely related to his origin, but there is distinction all the same. The nature of man, the essence of his being — the image of God according to which he was created — had to come to a constantly richer and fuller unfolding of its content by means of its striving towards its destination. The image of God, so to speak, had to be spread to the ends of the earth and had to be impressed on all the works of men's hands. Man had to cultivate the earth so that it would more and more become a revelation of God's attributes.
The dominion of the earth was therefore the nearest but not the sole purpose to which man was called. The nature of the case points to that fact. Work which is really work cannot have its end and final purpose in itself but always has as its further objective to bring something into being. It ceases when that objective has been reached. To work, simply to work, without deliberation, plan, or purpose, is to work hopelessly and is unworthy of rational man. A development which continues indefinitely is not a development. Development implies intention, course of action, final purpose, destination. If, then, man at his creation was called to work, that implies that he himself and the people who should issue from him should enter into a rest after the work.
The institution of the seven-day week comes to confirm and reinforce this conviction. In his work of creating God rested on the seventh day from all His work. Man, made in the image of God, immediately at the time of the creation gets the right and the privilege to follow in the Divine example in this respect also. The work which is laid upon him, namely, the replenishing and subduing of the earth, is a weak imitation of the creative activity of God. Man's work, too, is a work which is entered upon after deliberation, which follows a definite course of action, and which is aimed at a specific objective. Man is not a machine which unconsciously moves on; he does not turn about in a treadmill with an unchangeable monotony. In his work too man is man, the image of God, a thinking, willing, acting being who seeks to create something, and who in the end looks back upon the work of his hands with approbation. As it does for God Himself, man's work ends in resting, enjoyment, pleasure. The six-day week crowned by the Sabbath dignifies man's work, raises him above the monotonous movement of spiritless nature, and presses the stamp of a Divine calling upon it. Whoever, therefore, on the Sabbath day enters into the rest of God in accordance with His purpose, that person rests from his works in the same glad way as God rests from His (Heb. 4:10). This holds true of the individual and it also holds true of the church and of mankind generally. The world, too, has its world's work to perform, a work which is followed and concluded by a Sabbath. There remains a rest for the people of God. Each Sabbath Day is but an example and foretaste of it and at the same time also a prophecy and a guarantee of that rest (Heb. 4:9).
That is why the Heidelberg Catechism rightly says that God created man good and according to His own image in order that he might rightly know God his Creator, heartily love Him, and live with Him in eternal blessedness to praise and glorify Him. The final purpose of man lay in the eternal blessedness, in the glorification of God in heaven and on earth. But in order to arrive at this end man first had to fulfill his task on earth. In order to enter into the rest of God he first had to finish God's work. The way to heaven goes through the earth and over the earth. The entrance to the Sabbath is opened by the six days of work. One comes to eternal life by way of work.
* * * * *
This teaching of the purpose of man so far rests entirely upon thoughts which are expressed in Genesis 1:26-3:3. But the rest of the second chapter has another important constituent element to add to it. When God places man in paradise, He gives him the right to eat freely of all the trees in the garden except one. That one He singles out as an exception, the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Man is told that he may not eat of that tree, and that on the day he eats of it he will die the death (Gen. 2:16-17). To all that is commanded is now added one thing that is forbidden. The commandments were known to Adam partly from a reading of his own heart, partly from God's spoken word. Adam did not invent them. God created them in him and communicated them to him. Man is not religiously and morally autonomous. He is not his own lawgiver, and he may not do as he pleases. Rather, God is his only Lawgiver and Judge (Isa. 33:22). All those commandments which Adam received now resolved themselves into this one requirement that he who was created as the image of God should in all his thinking and doing, and throughout his life and work, remain the image of God. Man had to remain such personally in his own life, but also in his marriage relationship, in his family, in his six-day working week, in his rest on the seventh day, in his replenishing and multiplying, in his subduing and having dominion over the earth, and in his dressing and keeping of the garden. Adam was not to go his own way but had to walk in the way that God appointed for him.
But all those commandments, which, so to speak, gave Adam ample freedom of movement and the whole earth as his field of operation are augmented, or, better, are limited, by one proscription. This proscription, not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, does not belong to the image of God, is not a constituent element of it, but, quite to the contrary, fixes its boundary. If Adam transgresses this proscriptive command, he loses the image of God, places himself outside the fellowship of God, and dies the death. By this command therefore the obedience of man is tested. This command will prove whether man will follow God's way or his own way, whether he will keep to the right path or go astra4y, whether he will remain a son of God in the house of the Father or want to take the portion of goods that is given him and go to a distant country. Hence, too, this proscriptive command is usually given the name of the probationary command. Hence, too, it has in a certain sense an arbitrary content. Adam and Eve could find no reason why just now the eating of this one particular tree was forbidden. In other words, they had to keep the command not because they fathomed it in its reasonable content and understood it, but solely because God had said it, on the basis of His authority, prompted by sheer obedience, out of a pure regard to their duty. That is why, further, the tree whose fruit they might not eat was called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It was the tree which would demonstrate whether man should arbitrarily and self-sufficiently want to determine what was good and what evil, or whether he would in this matter permit himself to be wholly led by the command which God had given concerning it and keep to that.
The first man, therefore, was given something, indeed, was given much to do; he was also given something, though this was little, which he was not to do. Generally the last requirement is the more difficult of the two. There are quantities of people who are willing to do incredibly much for the sake, say, of their health, but who are willing to give up nothing for it, or at least very little. They regard the slightest self-denial as an unbearable burden. That which is forbidden gives off a kind of mysterious lure. It raises questions about why and what and how. It prompts doubt and excites the imagination. This temptation which emanated from the proscriptive command the first man had to resist. This was the struggle of faith which was given him to fight. But, in the image of God according to which he was created, he also received the strength by which he could have remained standing and have conquered.
Nevertheless it becomes apparent from the probationary command even more clearly than from the institution of the seven-day week that the end or destiny of man is to be distinguished from his creation. Adam was not yet at the beginning what he could be and had to become at the end. He lived in paradise, but not yet in heaven. He still had a long way to go before he arrived at his proper destination. He had to achieve eternal life by his “commission” and “omission.” In short, there is a big difference between the state of innocence in which the first man was created, and the state of glory for which he was destined. The nature of this difference is further illuminated for us by the rest of revelation.
Adam was dependent upon the change of night and day, waking and sleeping, but we read of the heavenly Jerusalem that there shall be no night there (Rev. 21:25 and 22:5) and that the redeemed by the blood of the Lamb stand before the throne of God and serve Him night and day in His temple (Rev. 7:15). The first man was bound to the apportionment of the week into six work days and one day of rest, but for the people of God there remains hereafter an eternal, unintermittent rest (Heb. 4:9 and Rev. 14:13). In the state of innocence man daily required food and drink, but in the future God shall destroy both the belly and meats (1 Cor. 6:13). The first human couple consisted of man and woman and was accompanied by the blessing: be fruitful and multiply. But in the resurrection men do not marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven (Matt. 22:30). The first man, Adam, was of the earth, earthy, had a natural body and so became a living soul, but the believers in the resurrection receive a spiritual body and will then bear the image of heavenly man, the image of Christ the Lord from heaven (1 Cor. 15:45-49). Adam was created in such a way that he could stray, could sin, could fall and die; but the believers even on earth are in principle raised above this possibility. They can no longer sin, for whosoever is born of God does not commit sin, for his seed remains in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God (1 John 3:9). They cannot fall even to the very end for they are kept through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time (1 Peter 1:5). And they cannot die, for those who believe in Christ have, already here on earth, the eternal incorruptible life; they shall not die in all eternity, and though they were dead they should yet live (John 11:25-26).
In looking at the first man, therefore, we must be on guard against two extremes. On the one hand, we must, on the basis of Holy Scripture, maintain that he was immediately created in the image of God in true knowledge, righteousness, and holiness: he was not at first a small, innocent child that had to develop into maturity; he was not a being who, mature in body, was spiritually without any content, taking a neutral position between truth and falsehood, good and evil; and still less was he originally an animal being, gradually evolved out of animal existence, who now at long last by virtue of struggle and effort had become man.
Such a representation is in irreconcilable conflict with the representation of Scripture and with sound reason.
Still, on the other hand, the state of the first man should not be exaggeratedly glorified as is so often done in Christian doctrine and preaching. No matter how high God placed man above the animal level, man had not yet achieved his highest possible level. He was able-not-to-sin, but not yet not-able-to-sin. He did not yet possess eternal life which cannot be corrupted and cannot die, but received instead a preliminary immortality whose existence and duration depended upon the fulfillment of a condition. He was immediately created as image of God, but he could still lose this image and all its glory. He lived in paradise, it is true, but this paradise was not heaven and it could with all of its beauty be forfeited by him. One thing was lacking in all the riches, both spiritual and physical, which Adam possessed: absolute certainty. As long as we do not have that, our rest and our pleasure is not yet perfect; in fact, the contemporary world with its many efforts to insure everything that man possesses is satisfactory evidence for this. The believers are insured for this life and the next, for Christ is their Guarantor and will not allow any of them to be plucked out of His hand and be lost (John 10:28). Perfect love banishes fear in them (1 John 4:18) and persuades them that nothing shall separate them from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus their Lord (Rom. 8:38-39). But this absolute certainty was lacking to man in paradise; he was not, together with his creation in the image of God, permanently established in the good. Irrespective of how much he had, he could lose it all, both for himself and for his posterity. His origin was Divine; his nature was related to the Divine nature; his destiny was eternal blessedness in the immediate presence of God. But whether he was to reach that appointed destination was made dependent upon his own choice and upon his own will.
Notes
- Gen. 2:19; 9 :4, 10, 12, 16; Lev. 11:10; 17:11; and elsewhere.
- Lev. 19:31; 20:27; and Deut. 18:10-14.
- Deut. 18:10; Jer. 27:10; and Rev. 21:8.
- Lev. 19:26; Isa. 47:13; and Micah 5:11.
- Deut. 18:11.
- Lev. 19:26 and Dent. 18:10.
- Deut. 18:11 and Isa. 47:9.
- Matt. 18:10 and 24:36.
- Ps. 103:20 and Col. 1:16.
- Gen. 18:2; Judges 18:3; and Rev. 19:14.
- Deut. 33:2; Dan. 7:10; and Rev. 5:11.
- Dan. 8:16; 9:21; 10:13, 21; and Luke 1:19, 26.
- Dent, 6:13; Matt, 4:10; and Rev. 2:9.
- Dent. 2:30; Judges 15:19; Ezek. 3:14; Luke 23:46; Acts 7:59; 1 Cor. 2:11 and 5:3-4.
Author
Born on December 13, 1854, in Hoogeveen, Drenthe, Holland, Herman Bavinck was the son of the Reverend Jan Bavinck, a leading figure in the secession from the State Church of the Netherlands in 1834. After theological study in Kampen, and at the University of Leiden, he graduated in 1880, and served as the minister of the congregation at Franeker, Friesland, for a year. According to his biographers, large crowds gathered to hear his outstanding exposition of the Scriptures.
In 1882, he was appointed a Professor of Theology at Kampen, and taught there from 1883 until his appointment, in 1902, to the chair of Systematic Theology in the Free University of Amsterdam, where he succeeded the great Abraham Kuyper, then recently appointed Prime Minister of the Netherlands. In this capacity — an appointment he had twice before declined — Bavinck served until his death in 1921.
https://www.the-highway.com/
Walang komento:
Mag-post ng isang Komento