What is your opinion of the human race then? No doubt there are some people whom you love, but taken as a whole, would you call it a success? There’s just too much that we get wrong, and a lot of that is due to inconsiderate use of our freewill, greed, lack of respect for our fellow man. It wasn’t always like this, you know, nor will it be in the future.
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
Genesis 1:26, 27, 31
The purpose of the Creation was to produce an earth, a universe, which responded to the will and laws of God. God is the Creator, and if we respect that, it is incumbent on us to honour Him – to reflect His glory. We can understand then that the Creation was good, until man liked the idea of the forbidden rather more than being obedient to the simple law which God had given him:
And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
Genesis 2:16-17
However, the forbidden fruit was eaten. Genesis 3 details the punishment for this disobedience: a hard, difficult life, leading to an end described in verse 19:
By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
Genesis 3:19
This is where we are today: we became “mortal” – we live, we die. This is not a satisfactory situation for God – what mankind has become brings no glory to the Creation. This is why Jesus, the Son of God, was born of a woman here on earth, to see whether he could live a life of obedience to God, and thereby overthrow the curse of death which disobedience has brought and thereby inspire us to follow his example with the hope of eternal life – healing the separation which sin has caused. Jesus, born a man with the same nature as men and women today, was successful in this, and belief in him, and what that belief entails, is the means whereby God has made it possible for us to be embraced in His great purpose, when the Creation is again at one with His will. We find our great hope in these verses:
For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.
1 Corinthians 15:21-22
Separated no more from God – the mortality of sin is itself overcome by love for God, and by God’s love for mankind – for us! Once more, the Creation will be good in God’s sight, and man rejoice together with Him – not fight against Him.
Further reading on this and other topics is available on the website of the Christadelphian Office:
