Adam and Eve again

[Rowland]

     Adam and Eve were not created in the perfect image of God. If they had been created in God's perfect image they would not have sinned. Perfect people do not sin! Making human beings in God's perfect image is what God's work of saving human beings is all about. God's work of saving us human beings is a work of creation. of making human beings a prefect reflection of God's very being which is love.
     Adam and Eve were creatures made of dust, of flesh and blood and as such they could not have inherited the Kingdom of God even before they had sinned: "I tell you brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God..." (1 Corinth. 15:50). Adam and Eve even before they had sinned were of the natural man: "The first man was from the earth, a man of dust..." (1 Corinth 15:47). They were superior to the animals in every way, but they were not what God intended them to be. God was not finished with his work of creating human beings in his image.
     Adam and Eve even before they had sinned were of the natural man. "The natural man does not accept the things of of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Corinth. 2:14). They were incapable of loving God with their whole heart and soul or even loving one another. All sin is a failure to love. Eve showed her lack of love for Adam by including him in her rebellion. Adam showed his lack of love for Eve by falsely blaming her for his sin. Eve, who was spiritually superior to Adam, trusted in her own wisdom rather than God's. The Serpent is a symbol for human wisdom, which is not in itself evil. The Serpent is symbolic of Eve's wisdom. She was having a conversation with her own wisdom.
     What Eve did not realize is that the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was not simply about intellectual knowledge. It was about experiential knowledge. This tree could be renamed the Tree of the Experience of Suffering. Eve was right. She and Adam would become like God (see Genesis 3:22)but only through experiencing loss and death and much suffering as all of her offspring including Jesus would experience.
     Jesus too went to the Tree of Suffering but he did so in loving and trusting obedience to the Father's Wisdom. Jesus was not being punished for our sins. He was being perfected on our behalf. The crucifixion was a creation event in which the New Man, the New Adam, was being created, was being perfected through his loving obedience in suffering. He was the first human being to be created in God's perfect image. Please see Hebrews 2:10-12 and 5:7-9. And as he lives in the hearts of human beings they too become more like God in their ability to love others. The mystery of salvation is "Christ in [us], the hope of glory" (Col. 1:27b).  God completed his work of creating the New Adam by resurrecting Jesus from the dead. 
     What Adam and Eve needed even before they had sinned was Jesus Christ, the only God provided source of salvation, the means whereby the human being is led by the Holy Spirit. Because of not having the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus Christ in their hearts, Adam and Eve could not have obeyed God's commandment to not eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. They did not have the freedom to keep the one commandment that God had commanded them to obey. Where theologians get the idea that Adam and Eve sinned by an act of their free will is beyond me. The mark of the sinner is his lack of freedom, his slavery. True freedom comes with being saved, with being delivered from slavery to sin. What Paul said about the Torah of Moses was also true of the Law given to Adam and Eve: "...Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin..."  And  "The very commandment that promised life proved to be death for me"  And,   "For I do not do the good that I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing" (Rom. 7:7, 10, 19).  Jesus living in the human heart is what the New Covenant is all about:
                    "Behold, the days are coming, declares Yahweh, when I will make a new covenant with the house
                    of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant I made that I made with their fathers
                    [or with Adam and Eve] on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land
                    of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares Yahweh. But this is
                    the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel in those days, declares Yahweh. I will put
                    my law [the law of love] within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and
                    they shall be my people (Jeremiah 31:31-33). 

See also Ezekiel 36:26-27.  And those who die without the Holy Spirit of Yahweh and Jesus within them and thus were not saved during their lives before the grave:
                    The Lamb in the midst of the throne WILL BE their shepherd [he wasn't during their earthly lives],
                    and he will guide them to springs of living water [the Holy Spirit], and God will wipe away every tear
                    from their eyes [who but they who are thrown into the outer darkness are weeping?] (Rev. 7:17).

The Father loves you all so very much.

[jugghead]

 :thumbsup:

[rosered]

     :dsunny: :thumbsup:  they shall know the truth and the truth shall set them free ....       :HeartThrob:

[GodIsLove]

Amen!!!

[marie glen]

Amen!  :iagree: It's not what He's created, but what He is creating! :thumbsup: I don't suppose He put the tree of knowing both good and evil in the garden as some sort of after thought.. Or as if He didn't know full well what would happen! And engineered things so "all in heaven and earth" would take this unavoidable journey/lesson all together at once.. I have to think just how in creation (pun not really intended) do you create genuinely able to think and reason beings, AND keep paradise/perfection intact? We have to be educated.. and deeply inoculated against the virulent disease of imperfection, which can only ever be an abyss of possibility and potential, apocalypse/ruin, and ultimately death. Imperfection just cannot work, or endure.

Amen writing His law and likeness within every one of us. :banana: ..And creating a new heavens and a new Earth where total rightness will dwell, for the Father will be Most High, and the Son will be Lord of all of us.  :cloud9:

[Age-enduring]

I see the Eden story as a metaphor for emergence of man into the physical realm - nakedness is the feeling of separation from the Father. On a spiritual level it is everyone's story, and it is now.  Adam hid from God - I don't accept the sacrificial penal substitution narrative anymore, to bridge some chasm.  Laying down ones life for friends and sacrifice are two entirely different things.

I also ascribe to the view that Yahwehism was all about tribalism - see Laurent Guyenot's 2018 book.  The trick has been to convince gentiles to believe Yahweh is the Universal Father - he isn't.

[marie glen]

 I don't believe penal substitution either except as a side effect.. Or that is, NOT to appease God's anger - which wrath I strongly believe is results and natural consequences - But "Christ Crucified" as an image strong enough to pierce ultimately every heart snd psyche and appease every guilty conscience. I mean imagine if you were a Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot, etc!

The thing about beginning with one man and one woman - and there was the tree (visible option) of knowing both good and evil, results in all "in heaven and Earth" taking this unavoidable lesson/journey all together at once.. Unavoidable if we are to have thinking ability. As just HOW do you have genuinely able to think and reason beings, AND, keep paradise/perfection intact?

"The bear will graze with the cow, and the lion will eat straw like the ox" - Isaiah 11:7.

Lack of believing the reliability of the Scripture as fact is what has, imo, caused the "falling away" of western culture, once called Christendom, from the faith.. (In droves and now despair, drug addiction.. suicide.. all on the increase.

[Age-enduring]

I agree, the death of Jesus is a powerful image, with respect to the death of an innocent. Each however still dies for their own 'sins' in accordance with the law of sowing and reaping, which proceeds from the Father - as universal law, it cannot come from anywhere else. Universal law is also a powerful unifier of humanity and indeed all that is living, whichever realm / dimension it is in, with the qualifier that there are appointed seasons and purposes for an entity's experiences, which accounts for the Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot's.  If it were better that they had not been born, implies there was a choice / option as to being manifest in flesh or not, and what experience they would have.

I still think Adam and Eve - beginning with one man and woman - is a metaphor. The reason is due to recent awareness of 'relevant alternatives' and the reality of perception management (of humans and humanity) at large.
How is it we are only 'allowed' to believe in 2 options - either creation or evolution, and any other option is ridiculed (?).  Personally, I'm on the alien gene manipulation project page at the moment - it fits better, and is more plausible, with what we know - Bible narrative has to be weighed and tested and reinterpreted, to be aligned with how things are, but that is a given anyway, as spiritual beings.

The Lion lying down with the lamb - yes, I'm a bit of a sucker still for dispensationalism - I want to believe we are entering the Messianic age (millennium) especially and that Jesus will return to 'sort it all out'. I'm not sure however if it is that, or if it is the maturing and manifestation of the sons of God, who are after all brothers of Jesus, and in Christ.

[Andrew]

posted by age

"Personally, I'm on the alien gene manipulation project page at the moment - it fits better, and is more plausible, with what we know - Bible narrative has to be weighed and tested and reinterpreted, to be aligned with how things are, but that is a given anyway, as spiritual beings."

I remember like 15 years websites talking about a great deception to come dealing with the idea that the "
"aliens" created us. New age books talks about the alien agenda manipulating genes as well...I've had some experiences with these demonic beings as well.   

[eaglesway]

24
"The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands.
25
And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.
26
From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.
27
God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.
28
`For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, `We are his offspring.'
29
"Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone--an image made by man's design and skill.
30
In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. Acts 17


Paul was intelligent, perceptive, and received the gospel personally and directly by revelation fromthe risen Lord Jesus. He believed what he said here and I believe it as well, "from one man" seems to mean just that. I do not believe it is a grave offense to see the creation story in Genesis as a metaphor. I believe it is a metaphor- but a true and living one expressed in actual life history. the creation of the cosmos, the earth, and Adam and EVe are massive events described in very few words, and the history of hundreds of years and millions of lives and events in the age before the flood described breifly and perhaps cryptically- but none of these things call the scriptures into question.

I do believe Jesus will sort it out, when the veil is rent, and time is no more because death has been destroyed, we will know as we are known and all will be well as the whole creation is set free from futility into the glorious liberty of the children of God. (Rom 8)

On this site the authority of the scripture is absolute, but interpretations of scripture are open to discussion.

[joeteekay]

I do believe Jesus will sort it out, when the veil is rent, and time is no more because death has been destroyed, we will know as we are known and all will be well as the whole creation is set free from futility into the glorious liberty of the children of God. (Rom 8)

On this site the authority of the scripture is absolute, but interpretations of scripture are open to discussion.

Beautifully stated. Much truth in these few words.  :dsunny:

[Age-enduring]

I liked most of it, :winkgrin:. I did find 'the authority of scripture' rubbed a bit, but I think that's because I've come to the view that authority has to be founded on knowledge (and not just power, hierarchy and edicts), which is why I said about bible narrative being interpreted based on how things are, which can only be based on what we know now, in this moment, since once an effect has manifested, the cause becomes hidden from view. Everything else is just beliefs, either true or false. The only 2 non negotiables I have from a faith position is that there is a Father who is an Omnipresent Unconditional Loving Spirit, and there is also a personal 'born from above' experience. Everything else has to be weighed and tested. Arguments about what is and isn't scripture get quite tiresome soon enough, so I won't get involved in them.