Genesis 1, 2, 5 ~ Man’s Nature Before & After the Fall ….continued from Monday
I hesitate to move too quickly past the truth we’ve discovered in realizing man’s design. It is essential that we know this, for it is more than relevant to the subject under consideration. It is vital. Let’s also not forget what that subject is lest we lose sight of the goal…to fulfill those first words spoken by God to his man. They are the words He is still speaking to us today. Be fruitful.
We’re not just sermonizing random spiritual truths here. This knowledge is indispensable if we are ever to realize fruitfulness in our lives. This is what is needed to reverse the hindrance that came on man’s ability to bear fruit….on our ability to bear fruit. We know what God wants us to produce. What we are discovering is the answer to HOW to produce it. I wasn’t there yet, but everything I was seeing was crucial to solving my dilemma. I was on my way to freedom and fruitfulness.
So, again, as was discussed in The Me You Can’t See….
Man IS NOT his body.
Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground,
This was the creation of man’s body.
Man IS a spirit.
…and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. Genesis 2:7
THIS was the creation of man.
We are not a body. We are a spirit. You don’t have a spirit…you are your spirit. This cannot possibly be over-emphasized. You ARE your spirit. Your spirit is you!
Notice what Adam (Adam’s spirit) looked like before he disobeyed.
Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness… Genesis 1:26
God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Genesis 1:27
These scriptures reveal that originally man looked just like God. That is what likeness means. Again, in Genesis 5, we get a glimpse of man’s original state.
This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day when God created man, He made him in the likeness of God. Genesis 5 :1
Although this was man’s glorious image originally, as was discussed in The Fruit of Disobedience, much changed after Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s command. They became self-conscious, fearful, and unable to bear fruit without painful struggle and toil. Worse yet, something else changed that had a far greater and more crippling result.
Man lost his likeness. Adam took on a new image.
This tragic transformation would not only affect them but all of mankind forever. Now, all men would be born with this new image.
When Adam had lived 130 years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his image….
Genesis 5:3
No longer in the likeness of God, man would now be born after the image and likeness of fallen man. What did this image look like?
Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, And in sin my mother conceived me. Psalms 51:5
…through one man sin entered into the world… Rom 5:12
…but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin. Romans 7:14
Adam had “sold out” mankind. Man now had a fallen nature, a sin nature.
Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath… Ephesians 2:3
Sin was now what man did naturally, by nature. This seemed to be the description of Paul’s state as described in Romans 7….and it was a description of mine. Was this nature to sin to be our condition forever? The term nature is defined as: the inborn or inherent characteristics of something which cannot be changed. So, was I just to do my best and receive forgiveness for the rest? Was I destined to remain in bondage to sin, a prisoner because of this nature I had inherited from Adam?
I didn’t want to be a son of fallen Adam, born after his likeness and his image. I didn’t want this sin nature, something that couldn’t change because that was how I had been born. It was an impossible situation…. I had been born this way. What could man in this condition do? The only possible, impossible solution…to be born again.
Don’t miss the P.S. (“post” script) here
…and My Story continues here
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