February 25, 2011
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In Their Own Image
The primary theme throughout Scripture is the message of how our God in His Sovereignty is returning their original and rightful heritage to the sons of Adam:
Recent events in Tunisia, Egypt and other places have underscored the profound longing of the human heart to be free. These popular, almost spontaneous uprisings seem to affirm the need people have to be out from under overt political abuse and the often heavy-handed efforts of their leaders to control almost every aspect of life. There is an innate desire for self determination. This insatiable hunger is repeatedly expressed by individuals and communities of people universally. In the last two or three years this has been a primary theme in our own country. The current political climate here has seen large numbers of Americans objecting to the increased central control the federal government has assumed. They have reacted strongly to the massive spending and the extensive over-reach into their lives--particularly in the realm of medical care. They have seen accelerating controls threatening the freedoms that have been long enjoyed by the citizens of this nation.
Unfortunately the human tendency is to misuse what is good. I suppose an obvious abuse (at least for me) is food, but the possibilities are quite unlimited considering our boundless creativity. Elements and relationships intended to be for our good are often diverted to less than positive--even outright harmful purposes. And this is true as well regarding our freedom. We have all witnessed and/or suffered from the harmful effects of unrestrained freedom from time to time (either our own or the liberties that others have taken). What often happens in response to this are the well-intentioned (or not so well-intentioned) efforts to control or at least, reign in these human excesses. And of course the push back is almost inevitable and immediate. We do not like nor do we want limitations to be placed upon us.
But this insatiable desire to be free is not at all out of line with our humanity--who we essentially are. Yahweh God created Adam and Eve with the power or ability to choose. He brought them into the Garden of Eden with the responsibility of caring for the garden and naming the creatures that were placed there with them. Except for the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they were free to gather and eat food from the vegetation--the trees within the garden. God told them that eating the fruit of that particular tree would be lethal. And so they were consistently confronted from day to day with the need to exercise the God-given will to decide how they would live out their lives in that place. It was not long before satan in the form of a serpent approached Eve. Once she explained to him that she and her husband were free to eat from any tree except the one in the middle of the garden, satan informed her that God was wrong. The fruit of that tree would not harm them. In fact, he suggested that God may have had ulterior motives for keeping it from them. He said:
Satan planted an idea in the innocent heart of Eve which sounded so inviting. God had personally created two perfect human beings in His own image with the capacity to make free and moral decisions. They could please Him--or themselves. There was the tension and constant need for them to choose. God had created and sustained them in the garden making Eve and her husband, Adam, dependent beings. And satan was offering them the promise and good fortune of being out from under Yahweh God’s thumb. It was a wonderful thought to be free, to do as they pleased and to go anywhere they wanted just like God! This was an important element of satan’s promise--"You will be like God!"
Ironically, Adam and Eve’s decision to be free from God, lost for them all the freedom they had been given by Him. The Apostle Paul stated the principle quite well; "Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey. . . ?"(Romans 6:16). With that decision, our first parents did not set themselves free from God. They had simply transferred their servitude from one master to another. And that choice was a disaster--for themselves and, for us. In the garden there had always been a wide latitude of options with only one restriction. Satan had provided none! There was only the inevitability of death! And in that fateful decision, death reigned over all. The freedom that life gave was lost in a devastating way.
Adam and Eve had been created in the image, after the likeness of Yahweh God and as such, I am convinced that a part of their essential nature was the innate desire for self-determination with the essential need to be free to choose. Yahweh’s wise understanding of this is apparent in both the environment He provided for them and the responsibilities He gave them in that place. Eve, being the mother of us all (see Genesis 3:20), bequeathed to us these same very basic needs. Because every human being is essentially connected to our original set of parents physically, mentally and emotionally, in a very real sense, we have been created in their image.
Just as we are essentially connected to our original parents, there is also an inseparable bond to our Heavenly Father, Yahweh God. Moses and David both spoke in a clear and distinct manner regarding how we all were created and formed:
How we were formed--that is, in what manner and how Yahweh God involved Himself in the process of bringing us from the womb into this world, we cannot exactly know. In this miracle of life, our parents have given us bodies that are limited--subject to hardship, pain and suffering in a fallen world. And to add insult to injury, we are destined to die. The Father of our spirits (Hebrews 12:9) has given us what our original parents received--perfect hearts with a deep longing to be free, just like them. And just like them, we will all choose to join them in sin just as Adam chose to follow Eve in her transgression. It is inevitable. Instead of experiencing the exhilaration of freedom, we bear the devastation of death--separation from God in this world and destined for death in the world to come. And so in this sense Paul ‘nailed’ it: ". . . All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23[NIV]).[In the next portion of this discussion, we will consider why sin is inevitable and the important role of freedom in all of this]
L.A.Williams--
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