Faith Baptist Church
4258 Botetourt Road
Fincastle, Virginia 24090
(540) 473-2325
Geneses 2:7
We began our series on the divine imputations last week where we saw the first move on the part of God was to impute human life to Adam and Eve. In this first imputation, God gave to mankind human life, Gen.2:7. Since that time God has given soul life to every person born. The original imputation was a blessed event. God, the Divine Potter, was sharing his image with a lump of clay and calling it man. God did not breathe earthly oxygen into Adam and Eve; he breathed soul life into them. This was not like doing CPR with mouth to mouth resuscitation on a person, this was more than air, this was God imputing, crediting, depositing human life into the immortal soul and the physical body came to life. When God imparts human life to the soul this is an eternal imputation. When the body is snuffed out in death this does not snuff out the living soul. Human life is never snuffed out of a person, even in death the imputation of human life goes on. The unsaved have a soul that possesses human life and those souls will live on forever as well; except their human life will continue in Hell.
Rev.20:6 “Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection; on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priest of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.”
Rev. 20:11-15 read...
The second resurrection is in one gathering and it happens at the end of time. The second resurrection involves only the unsaved and at that time the works which they substituted for salvation will be reviewed by God and every human soul there will be cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.
Our earth suit, the body, will return to the ground, but the soul which possesses human life lives forever. What you do with your human life in relation to God is up to you.
This is why we all have a calling to return to God in salvation, II Pet.3:9 We have all been made to be human beings by God; otherwise we would be nothing more than brutish mammals giving birth to mammals of the same kind.
We have not evolved from some different species of creation. God made every creation after its own kind, Gen.1:11, 12, 21, 24, and 25. The Hebrew word for kind is min. This word means species, genus, or family order, I Cor.15:39.
There are mutations within the species, but there are no transmutations between the species. God has locked the species within its own kind. The missing link is man’s lack of faith to believe the record God has given concerning creation. After God made the creation and all the animal kingdom, God made mankind, but in mankind God put his image. God said let us make man in our image. This means God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit had a part in our creation. God made the animals to be under man’s dominion, but he made mankind to be under His dominion. We are accountable to God, but the animal kingdom is not.
Sin is the outworking of man’s refusal to be submissive to God’s dominion. Adam and Eve eventually rejected God’s authority. While under God’s authority Adam and Eve had security. They lost that security when they refused to submit to God.
In the Garden of Eden we see the principle of human good and evil. It plagued the garden.
With human good Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves together in an attempt to equate themselves with God. Since that time mankind has attempted to match his religion and good deeds with the best God has to offer. The tree of human good and evil represented what Adam’s free will could do apart from the plan of God. God said to Adam and Eve, I made you, I love you and now I will set you free to love me back, but if you break free of my authority as your Divine Creator, I will have to curse you because I am holy and I cannot fellowship nor have a relationship with sinners. After Adam and Eve sinned they tried to impress God with their goodness. People still spend a lifetime trying to impress God with their goodness. God is not impressed. He is only impressed with himself and rightfully so.
God gave Adam and Eve free will so they could worship and love him freely of their own choosing. The tree of good and evil gave Adam and Eve the grand opportunity to demonstrate the power of God operating and functioning in the soul of a human being. To honor God this way would put Satan, with his entire previous pre-fall honor to shame. But when they fell in sin the only thing that could save them was satisfied justice. The same system that condemned them was also the same system that could save them.
What the righteousness of God demands the justice of God carries out. Folks, we need to understand our God. Sin demands judgment, Gen.2:17 and justice carries out that judgment. While in a state of perfection in the Garden, Adam and Eve did not need grace, for justice had not been violated. But grace was instantaneously activated as soon as they were condemned. Grace is designed for the undeserving, and we are all undeserving of God’s favor.
And so he [Jesus Christ] who knew no sin was made sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in him, II Cor.5:21.
This was the only way that God’s justice could be satisfied and still provide a means of forgiveness to sinful mankind. Love cannot forgive sins; only satisfied justice can forgive sins. A life had to be given for a life; the sinless life of Jesus Christ for the sinful lives of all humanity.
We come empty handed to the cross, or we do not come at all. People walk around with their assumed portfolios of merit which they think God recognizes, but God does not recognize the merits we tout. All of our merits are stained with the influence of sin, either consciously or unconsciously. Our hearts are deceitfully wicked and we cannot see it.
Have you seen yourself in this light before? Have you accepted your lost condition before God? I hope you have and I hope you have received Jesus Christ as your savior. I have seen my self in this lost condition before, and I did something about it; I believed on the person of Jesus Christ who died for me.