Our study of the essentials of the Christian faith follows a pattern. We began with a study of revelation both in nature and in Scripture. Our first essential was that God speaks to us and reveals himself to us. We know only what God had revealed to us about himself. Secondly, we looked at God. Using his revelation, we saw God’s nature and attributes, and his work and decrees. As we learn about God and his nature, we learn about ourselves, for he made us, and he tells us who we are.
In the Psalm 8, David asks the question that is the center of our study today. “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor” (Psalm 8:3-5). When we think of man, we must first remember that he is a creation of God. Because of this, he is in a relationship with God, and without that relationship he is nothing.
We are told that man was the last, and crowning, element of God’s act of creation. On the sixth day, after he had made everything else, God made man. We read, “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 (Genesis 1:26-27). Later we also read, “then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature” (Genesis 2:7).
Two things separate man from all the rest of creation. In Genesis 1, we are told that God spoke the universe into being. God said, “Let there be …,” and there was. However, with the creation of man, God reached down and created him out of the dust of the earth. He took a more hands-on approach to the creation of this one aspect of his new world. Secondly, man was created in the image and likeness of God.
What does it mean that man is created in the image of God? Does it mean that we, in our physical appearance, look like God? Remember that our study of God stated that God is spirit. He does not have a body. Although Scripture sometimes speaks of the arm of God, or his heart, or his eye, he does not have a body like ours. So, there must be more to the idea of God’s image than merely having a body that looks like him.
The Westminster Confession speaks of God creating Adam and Eve “with rational and immortal souls, endowed with knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness” (WCF 4.2). This what is meant by the image of God. Man was created as a rational being. He was intelligent and moral, and able to think for himself. He could make choices. And, like all of creation, he was made very good” (Genesis 1:31).
Another important aspect of man, as he was created by God, is the fact he exists as a body and a spirit (or soul). And Scripture says that this was good, from the beginning. Some early Greek philosophers taught that only that which is spiritual is good, and that which is physical is always evil. Therefore, in their mind, the good spirit of man was trapped in the evil body, and the two were always in conflict with each other. For them, redemption was the release of the spirit from the body.
Scripture, on the other hand, speaks of man as a duality – two distinct parts united by God’s act of creation (Genesis 2:7). While the Greeks spoke of redemption as a release of the spirit from the body, we know that both spirit and body await redemption by Jesus Christ. Paul wrote, “And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:23). After death, our souls continue to live, and they will be reunited with our glorified resurrection bodies.
We said that God created man righteous and holy (WCF 4.2). But, we also know that man did not remain in that original state of righteousness and holiness. What happened is referred to as the Fall. Man disobeyed the direct command of God; man sinned.
What is sin? According to the Westminster Larger Catechism, “sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, any law of God, given as a rule to the reasonable creature” (WLC #24). God’s perfect law is a revelation of his character, and it reveals to man how he should live as a creature of God.
In the Garden of Eden, there was only one negative command which was to be obeyed. God told the man, “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). We know, from Genesis 3, that Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate from the tree. At that point, they died spiritually, and they began to die physically. Not only that, but sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned” (Romans 5:12). The sin of Adam and Eve effected not only them, but all mankind after them.
And so, all men descended from Adam are born sinners. This sin nature or the flesh, is known as original sin. It is the result of the first sin in the Garden of Eden, and it refers to the corruption of all of mankind. It is the propensity (natural inclination) that we all have to sin. And, from it flow all actual sins which we commit on a daily basis. And, even when we are justified by Christ’s work on the cross – when we are saved – we continue to struggle with this sin nature. It is about this struggle which Paul writes in Romans 7. That chapter is wonderfully summarized in the statement, “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (Romans 7:15). And it is the death of this sin nature, and the resolution of this struggle that we refer to as sanctification, as we are daily transformed into the image of Christ (Romans 12:2).
Essential #3
Man is a creature of God, made in his own image and likeness. As such, he has been given a mind which can think and reason, and which can make choices. Originally, that mind made only choices which were pleasing to God. However, after the fall of man into sin, all our desires are sinful (Genesis 6:5 and Jeremiah 17:9). In this estate, we are in dire need of a Savior whom God has graciously provided.
