The Creation and Uncreation of Man
LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. No. 7.
The Creation and Uncreation of Man.
ALL previous studies have abundantly shown that righteousness is life, and only in righteousness is there life in the truest sense. For all that is called life which is separated from righteousness ends in death, or non-extinction of being. Such life is, in the ultimate, death, ever tending toward it, and continued only through the mercy of God for the sake of His creatures,—continued that man may be brought to repentance and find the life everlasting in Jesus Christ. The teachings of Scripture relating to man's nature, his condition in death, and his final destiny are all in harmony with this fundamental thought. In the light of it, let us study some of the special texts relating to man's nature. 1. Man's Creation. Of this we have two accounts, the first a general statement of the creation of the human species, the second a particular statement of the creation of the first pair, the head of the race. These statements are as follows:— "And 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 fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them." Gen. 1:26, 27. "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." Gen. 2:7. a. Man was made in God's image. This doubtless took in man's physical, upright image, as well as his moral condition. The chief of God's glorious handiwork was not in his physical being to even seem to be a groveler of the earth. His uprightness physically was to indicate uprightness morally. "Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions." Eccl. 7:29. It is not difficult to believe that the fall morally has equally affected man's physical being. Sin has marred and blasted and dwarfed and crippled and degraded man both spiritually and physically. But this image did not constitute man immortal any more than it clothed him with omnipotence or omniscience. God "only hath immortality." 1 Tim. 6:16. b. Man was made of the dust of the ground. "The first man is of the earth, earthy." And this man, formed of God from the earth, was made a living soul by the Creator's breathing into him the breath of life. The record does not say that God made a form of clay, into which He placed a soul, and that soul was man. God made the man of the dust of the earth, a perfect being, with functions of thought and action all complete, lacking but the one thing—life. This God breathed into his nostrils, and he that before was a lifeless soul, became a living soul, or, as the Hebrew words mean, a living creature. The breath of life was the life which God gave to all animate creation,7as shown in other scriptures. See Gen. 7:15, 22. There is not the least shadow of basis in the Scriptures of truth for the assumption that this breath of life, or spirit, was other than the vital principle, the power from God which set in motion the human machinery, and which connected man with the Great Central Dynamo, the Fountain of Life. It was not an entity before it was given to man; it had no separate conscious existence; and it certainly did not acquire that by being breathed within man. Let this suffice: It was the breath of life which made man a living creature. c. Man's continuation of life depended on unbroken harmony with the great Source of life, his Creator. When he broke that by disobedience he was to die. Therefore, the test of loyalty placed before man,—the forbidden tree,—is coupled with God's loving warning, "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Gen. 2:17. When man chose sin, he chose death. Free from sin, he was free from death. When he ate of the tree, therefore, he became a dying man—a subject, a child, of death. We are aware that it is said that this means only a part of man, the soul. But common sense and humble faith will say that the "thou" whom God addressed was the man He made from clay, and that the death warned against meant the death of the man. This theory is very old. It originated in the Garden of Eden, though not a product of the garden. The old tempter was there, and when God said, "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die," the tempter said, "Ye shall not surely die; . . . ye shall be as God." Gen. 3:4, 5. Not being able to convince man that all that humanity can see of man does not die, Satan invented that double falsehood, upon which has been based every false religion from that time to this: (1) That the real man is immortal, does not, can not die, from which have sprung transmigration of souls, ancestor-worship, various forms of polytheism, purgatory, saint-worship, eternal torment, etc., etc. (2) Self-salvation, or salvation through human merit. "Ye shall be as God;" in some way man his own saviour has been the disappointing falsehood in all false religions, and will be the eternal disappointment of all outside of faith in the great all-powerful, all-cleansing love of God. c. Man was, therefore, created neither mortal nor immortal. To be mortal is to be subject to death. Man was not created to die, but to live. He was a candidate for immortality. Immortality is incorruptibility, deathlessness. But as incorruptibility of the flesh depends upon the incorruptibility of character, and as man had not yet formed his character, or met the test, he was not immortal. He was pure and holy. From the great Fountain he received the eternal life of God. By the power of that life constantly received through faith man would have perfected a righteous character, and then would have been made immortal physically. 2. His Uncreating. But man failed. He listened to the tempter through his wife, and here is the record of the sad consequences:— "And unto Adam He said, Because thou hast harkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it, . . . in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." Gen. 3:17-19. "And now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever; therefore the Lord God . . . drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the Garden of Eden cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life." Vs. 22-24. "Then shalt the dust return to the earth as it was; and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it." Eccl. 12:7. a. He was formed from the dust; back to the dust he returns. Out of it he was taken, back to it he goes when sin has finished its work. Nothing could be more plainly stated. From God the life or spirit came. The original word—rooakh—is the same in Eccl. 12:7 and Gen. 6:17 and 7:15. Its root meaning is "to blow" or "to breathe." The word "breath" in Gen. 2:7 is from neshamah, the primary meaning of which is "a puff, that is wind, angry or violent breath."—Strong's Lexicon. The same word is rendered breath in Gen. 7:22. How did the spirit of life come from God?—As the breath of life. How does it return?—As the breath of life. b. Man's life was made to depend upon God's agencies. Divine Wisdom could not for man's sake give him occasion to think that he was self-existent. If the life of God was to be continued to man, he must get it specially through the tree of life. But when man was shut off from this, his life came to an end. When he depended upon himself, he died. But there is hope, as we have already seen, in Jesus Christ. He is Redeemer because He is able to re-create.