I have focused on the idea of man in creation and have tried to clarify it. Perhaps there is as much confusion and uncertainty here as anywhere today, even in Christian ranks. There is confusion and uncertainty of the beginning of man, was he created as man as of today or did he evolve from an ape? Also, there are other things that confuse and seem uncertain to man that I tried to point out in this study. The idea of God is being attacked in many ways and in many quarters. But there seems to be, also, a growing recognition of man's need of God. Man within himself is helpless in the midst of hostile forces on every hand. God is man's only refuge and help in time of need. I feel that man should know about his total self, and relationship with God. I will try to point out and focus on studies of man before the world was created, the three-folds of man's nature and functional parts, his fall and punishment, and also his renewal stages and his final destiny.
THE CREATION OF MAN
A Complete Study of ManBy GILBERT H. EDWARDSAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2010 Dr. Gilbert H. Edwards
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4520-3340-2Contents
Preface...................................................viiIntroduction..............................................xiI. PRE-CREATION OF MAN....................................1II. THE BEGINNING OF MAN'S EXISTENCE......................12III. CORRUPTION IN THE CREATED MAN........................44IV. THE RECREATION OF MAN.................................59V. THE FINAL STATE OF THE CREATED MAN.....................81VI. THE CREATION OF MAN...................................99Acknowledgements..........................................103
Chapter One
PRE-CREATION OF MAN
1. Man in the Mind of God.
In the beginning when the earth was dark and void, God had a plan. His plan was to create man, but first He had to prepare a place for man to live. God spoke and said, "Let there be light." This light, which is distinct from that radiated later from the sun, dispersed the darkness that enshrouded the deep (Gen. 1:2). Everything God made in the visible world that which is above (heaven), and that which is below (earth) is centered around man and is viewed from his angle. The earth is that part of the terrestrial surface which was to be the abode of man and the scene of his activity.
God designed man to be different than the rest of the animals. God had in His mind to make man from the earth, which He called Adam, which is derived from "adamah", "earth", to signify that man is earth-born. He was to be in God's image and after His likeness. God intended to create man to be immortal and make him an image of His eternity. Man was to have moral freedom and will as his Creator. He will be capable of knowing and loving God, of holding spiritual communion with Him and man alone can guide his own actions in accordance with reason. Because man is endowed with reason, he can subdue his impulses in the service of moral and religious ideals, and is born to bear rule over nature (Psalm 8). God wanted man to build and rear a family (Gen. 1:28).
God's precept given to man:
"Be fruitful, multiply, replenish the earth, subdue it, have dominion over fish, fowl, and every living thing that moves upon the earth." (Gen. 28)
Be fruitful - God wanted man to be productive. Everything that God created, including man, is expected to help bring forth seed of its kind (Gen. 1:11).
Subdue it - Man was to gain dominion over the physical and the animal creation.
Man as a religious being - "Be ye holy for I am holy." God wanted man to be holy, because He is holy. (Lev. 20:26)
God designed man, before the world began, to be conformed to the image of His son Jesus Christ (Rom. 8:29). Christianity is a fact in the world. It had an origin, development and history; but, before it became a fact, development and history, it was first in the mind of God. God had mapped out the world from the beginning to end, step-by-step, in His mind before He started to create the world (Job 38:4-11). Christianity is a founded religion in the sense that it goes back in history to the life and work of its founder, God, and cannot be divorced from Him because God put a part of Himself in man. Even if man does not come to God, there is a part in him that can know God, that is, if he chooses to know Him (Rom. 1:19).
Before man was made, God wanted man to be made for himself. He must long for God. All things would speak to him of a higher power. God put this constitution in the soul of man, that he can reveal himself in higher ways than nature itself is capable of. The soul is to reach out after God (Rom. 1:19). Man's most sacred privilege is freedom of will, the ability to obey or to disobey his maker. This was a test in the Garden of Eden when God commanded the man saying, "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die (Gen. 2:16-17)." This sharp limitation of self-gratification was to test the use he would make of his freedom and this limitation begins the moral discipline of man. Unlike the beast, man was to have a spiritual life which demands the subordination of man's desires to the law of God. The will of God revealed in His law is the one eternal and unfailing guide as to what constitutes good and evil, not man's instincts or even his reason, which, in the hour of temptation, often calls light darkness and darkness light. God intended that man be created as a deathless being. A simpler explanation is that in view of all the circumstances of the temptation, the all merciful God mercifully modified the penalty, and they did not die on the day of their sin. Some may say that man died spiritually; the author believes that God, in the beginning, intended for man to live as an immortal being for eternity. God planted a garden eastward, in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed and there were many trees in the garden, which were good for food, even the tree of life, the fruit of which prolongs life or renders immortality (Gen. 2:9).
Clarke's Commentary says,
"The tree of lives", alluding most manifestly to the tree so called which God in the beginning planted in the Garden of Paradise, by eating the fruit of which all the wastes of nature might have been continually repaired, so as to prevent death for ever; the opinion which appears probable enough. The blessings which wisdom-true religion-gives to men, preserve them in life, comfort them through life, causes them to triumph in death, and ensures them a glorious immortality."
If man had eaten of the tree of life after he had sinned, then he would have had to live in sin for eternity. Therefore, God had to put him out of the Garden of Eden.
The idea of God before the creation accounts for man as an intelligent being. Man as a thinking being could not have been produced by unintelligent forces. Man's power to know raises him above and distinguishes him from all other forms and beings that we know in the world. How is man as an intelligent being to be accounted for? Unless we postulate a God of intelligence as the cause and creator of man, then man is an inexplicable riddle. The idea of God helps us to understand how the world is an object of knowledge for man. To live a rational life, man must have a rational environment, as he could not live an intelligent life in an unintelligible world. It is an impressive fact that man can interpret the world in which he lives. In all his investigations of the world, he proceeds on the assumption, consciously or unconsciously, that the world in which he lives is a world of law and order. In the results of his investigations, he justifies this assumption, and he finds that the world is knowledgeable. This could not be true unless it were a world of order. Man finds in the world around him such laws, such orderly processes, such casual connections among phenomena that he reduces one realm of life after another to scientific knowledge. It is amazing to men how man can interpret the world in which he lives. God planned the whole world in His mind. God created everything before man, for God had His reasons, as has been previously mentioned. In calling light day, God defines the significance of light to human life. In the Bible account of creation, everything centers around man and is viewed from this perspective. The most reasonable explanation of man's intelligence in relation to a world of law and order is that both originated with a creative mind, and that this creative mind is the bond of union between the two. This is the only reasonable explanation of man as a rational being and of his power to interpret the world. Rationality in man or in his world could not originate with the sub-rational. The rational order of the world and the rational nature of man testifies to the presence of an intelligent God in the world.
God intended that religion be one of the most characteristic things about man's life. Man has a spiritual affinity for God, because he is also a spiritual being to a certain extent. He knows God and is not satisfied without Him. He has an insatiable thirst for the infinite and the eternal. He cannot rest until he rests in God. He has an ineradicable craving for a spiritual object of reverence, trust, and worship. He is not satisfied with the seen and the transient. He longs for communion with the unseen and the abiding. It is man's nature to be spiritual. God planned it that way; it was in His mind before He created the world. Man is so made that he must ceaselessly seek for that which he cannot find, and without which he cannot be satisfied.
God outlined His program for man in His mind. Therefore, God knows the events of the world order not simply as isolated or detached events, but in their relation to all the other events of that order. The events do not exist as unrelated. They do not come that way, they come as parts of the world order since this whole world order is grounded in God. He knows these events; therefore, as they are, namely, a part of the world order. In other words, God knows the world order as a totality, as a unity. The whole time series is present in the mind of God as an undivided and indivisible whole. And since God knows the historical world order as a whole, He knows it in its parts, in its single events. But He knows them as events in the world order, in all their connections or relations in that order. God respects the world order which He has established. He does not act inconsistently with that order since He respects man's freedom. He does not deal with man in such a way as to do violence to his nature as a free being. God wanted man to serve Him of his own will. "Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely." (Rev. 22:17)
There is no limitation involved in this, other than a self-limitation. The only limitation is the one imposed by the nature or will of God in ordaining man's existence as free. It was in God's plan that man should have the ineradicable sense of moral freedom and responsibility.
At the same time, man has the sense of absolute dependence which implies the existence of an Absolute Being on whom he depends. Because of man's free will, he was subject to fall. God who works in an orderly way in nature has not left the salvation of man to haphazard and uncertain experimentation. If man wishes to enter into life, he is to keep God's commandments (Math. 19:17) and undertake to obey God. The proper destiny of man is eternal life with God, for God calls and invites all men to Himself and wills all men to be saved (I Tim. 2:4). God allows men to resist His grace, to refuse the life He offers and to do things He forbids, as God made man free and wills that man comes to Him freely. Man was not made to be only the image of God, knowing and honoring Him indirectly but learning of Him through things He has made. From the very beginning, it was God's plan that men should become His children by adoption and share the richness of the life of God. But, because man is free to make choices, this freedom presents him with a problem. This freedom can cause deep doubts that will cause man not to obey his Creator. God knew this and had put in His plan, since God knew that man would have moral problems and wanted man to look to Him for solutions. God has given us an answer to these doubts about human life and actions. It is in Jesus Christ.
Before God created the heaven and earth, when the earth was empty and unformed, and darkness was upon the face of the deep (Gen. 1:2), the world was a place without life. The complete desolation was transformed into a home for all of God's ideas. All of God's ideas shared something in common. The fruit tree and the moon, the seas and the great winged birds, the woman and the man. All were connected at a most fundamental level because God created them. The image of God's breath entering is one of profound intimacy. It speaks of a God who seeks to relate, to be close, to share life as it unfolds. God intended for man to be a communicator, as God is a communicator, for God spoke the world into existence. To create is to put something of oneself into its creation. It implies self-revelation, making known one's inner being. God became attached to all His creation. God's plan is that man will be like Him, attached to all creation, and be a communicator, wanting men to speak the right words to one another (I Pet. 1:13-16). God intended that man continue the process of creation by communicating with one another for there will always be darkness in human hearts and emptiness in human lives. There will always be confusion in our world, due to man's rebellion. The invitation to participate in and continue the communication process we call creation was extended to man as part of the entire creative act.
God said, "Let us make man in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves, and let them be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven, the cattle, all the wild beasts and all the reptiles that crawl upon the earth." God created man in the image of Himself, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them. God blessed them, saying to them, "Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and conquer it." (Gen. 1:26-28)
God intended not only for man to communicate with the rest of creation, but also with Him (Gen. 3:8-9). God intended to be there with man, whenever he needed Him to give a word of comfort, and a promise of continued presence: I will stay with you. I will keep communicating with you. The same God who spoke to the darkness and made a promise to the earth spoke again to Abram.
God said to Abram, "Leave your country, your family and your father's house, for the land I will show you, I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name so famous that is will be used as a blessing (Gen. 12:1-2)."
2. The Purpose of Creating Man
The definition of purpose is an idea kept before the mind as an end of effort or action, plan, design, or aim. The world was created for redemptive ends. The fact that the world is the scene of the enactment of such a redemptive program also throws light on God's purpose in creating the world. The world was made for redemptive purposes. Man is the climax of creation. Creation is to be understood only from the standpoint of human life, for the world was made for man. Human life can also be understood only from the standpoint of God's redemptive purpose. Creation and redemption are parts of one great plan and program on the part of God. Man and the rest of the creation were created for the glory of God. He was to subdue and replenish the earth, to bring its forces and resources into subjection to himself (Gen. 1:26). The purpose of man is to worship God; "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." - nothing shall receive the worship due to Him. "Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image." - this verse forbids the worship of the one God in the wrong way; nor is He to be worshipped under any image. Thou shalt not bow down unto them - God desires to be all in all to man, and claims an exclusive right to his love and obedience (Ex. 20:3-5). Man is to be a co-worker with God. He is to continue to help finish it. God's purpose for man is to have His nature. Designed by God, man must produce:
1. Holiness-Righteousness is God's holiness in relation to man as a responsible moral agent. It is God's holiness as related to man as under moral obligation. The holiness of God is the reason why man should be holy and is the standard of holiness for man. The perfect goodness of God is the standard of goodness for man (Lev. 11:44; I Peter 1:16).
2. Righteousness-God's righteousness demands righteousness in man. This is sometimes called mandatory righteousness. This demand of man's moral nature is a revelation of God's righteousness as demanding righteousness in man. God makes men righteous because he is righteous. The righteousness which God gives to man is grounded in righteousness as an attribute of his character and reveals this attribute. Righteousness as an attribute of God is the source of righteousness in man.
3. Love-God's love demands man's love. Man requires that he shall render to God such devotion and service. God intended that man give himself whole heartedly to God. God wins possession of man by giving Himself for man and to man. It is by an impartation of Himself to man that God awakens in man a desire for God. The awakening of the desire for God, leading man to seek God and the giving of Himself to man are two sides of the same transaction. God awakens a desire by giving Himself. He creates in man a deeper capacity for God and wants man to fulfill His desires.
Excerpted from THE CREATION OF MANby GILBERT H. EDWARDS Copyright © 2010 by Dr. Gilbert H. Edwards. Excerpted by permission.
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