This question is often asked by the skeptic, and frequently found without reply in the mind even of the believer in Christ. How immensely important to possess clearly an answer to this stupendous question; one that will leave the infidel without excuse, and at the same time, settle firmly in divine truth the minds of those who believe.
The first part of this important verse confines the entrance of sin to this world; and the second limits the passing of the consequent sentence of death on man; without noticing either the possible entrance of sin into other spheres or death passing upon other than the human family.
Let us now turn to Genesis, chapters one and two, where we have the account of the creation of man.
“And Elohim saith, We will make man (Adam) in our image, after our likeness, and they shall have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every reptile that is creeping on the earth. ... So Elohim created the man (Adam) in His own image, in the image of Elohim created He him; male and female, created He them.” (Translation by G. V. W.)
There are two distinct words used here by God, very different in their signification; they are image and likeness. How accurately this usage is maintained throughout the Word of God, is amongst the wonders of its perfections. The word image is sometimes, in human language, used to signify the likeness in one for another; as one would say, “such an one is the very image of his father” —meaning that he is an exact likeness; but this is not the way it is used in general, in the Scripture. There it is used, rather in speaking of that which represents another, without having any reference to its being like or unlike, in features, or otherwise, to the person represented. We read of Christ being the “image of the invisible God,” (Col. 1:1515Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: (Colossians 1:15)) and man being “the image and glory of God.” 1 Corinthians 11:77For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man. (1 Corinthians 11:7). In these and other scriptures the word image is used as fully representing another, as the image of Jupiter, of Caesar, and so on. Now likeness is different from this. Its meaning is simple and readily understood as describing a person being like another, that is, having the same traits of character and features.
The man was created then in both these ways. He was set as the great center of an immense system, fully to represent God, as His image. The dominion of the vast system was his. All created things were under him. All intelligences, his wife included, were to look up to him as God’s representative in that sphere. God alone was over him, all else being subject to man. But he was also in the likeness of God. He was pure as his Creator made him; he was “very good”: he was sinless too, absolutely without evil. He was from God, to be for God, and thus like Him, and fit, therefore, to be His image, to represent Him, and to be the center to which all should look up; he had also an intelligent will and his choice was free.
But, why did God leave moral evil a possibility? Or, why did He permit the entrance of sin? Could He not have created a being which could not fall? One who could only do what was good and right?
The answer is plain. Because, if He would create a glorious creature—man, after His OWN image, and in HIS likeness, free to choose either good or evil, and not a creature governed by a mere chain of instinct, as the birds and beasts around him—He must leave the entrance to him of evil, a possibility, though not a necessity. If man, as God created him, could not choose evil, then he had no choice at all; and he would be no more virtuous in doing good, than the mere animal which follows the instincts of its nature. And because in such a case, he MUST do good, he would be no more virtuous in doing so than they.
Either God must refrain—we write the words with reverence—from creating such a being, of this high and glorious order of existence, with a free choice and will, or He must leave the question of evil a possibility to him. Alas, for the result! of which a fallen race speaks with such terrible reality. He chose the evil and refused the good; and the moment he exercised this choice, he became a sinner. Man, created in the image of God, fell from that pinnacle of eminence, never to be restored to it again (except as God’s plans and counsels will be fulfilled in Christ—the second man, the last Adam). Fallen Adam begets a son in his own likeness, after HIS image (Gen. 5:33And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth: (Genesis 5:3)), while unfallen Adam had been created “in the likeness of God.” Genesis 5:11This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; (Genesis 5:1).
Observe in all this, there was no thought of man being holy; nor could it have been said of him, as afterwards of the “new man” that he of God was “created in righteousness and true holiness.” Ephesians 4:2424And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. (Ephesians 4:24). God is holy—absolutely so. But holiness is relative, inasmuch as it supposes evil to exist, and implies absolute separation from it. This could not be said of man, as God created him. He was pure, and perfectly good, but evil was not for him in existence, until he chose evil, when presented in the form of a temptation, and thus he threw aside the authority and will of God, who had given it to him.
Everything in the sinner now depends on his will, in having to do with God; his salvation and all, depend upon the surrender of his will to Him.
Now Christ is said to be the “image of the invisible God,” (Col. 1:1515Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: (Colossians 1:15)) and the “image of God” Himself. 2 Corinthians 4:44In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. (2 Corinthians 4:4). This is because he fully represents God; but He is never said to be in His “likeness,” simply because He is God Himself, therefore not merely like Him. But it is said that He came in the “likeness of sinful flesh,” and rightly so, because He was not sinful flesh at all. See Romans 8:33For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: (Romans 8:3).
He too, had His own perfect will; and while tested to the uttermost in life and in death, it was always His will to do the Father’s will.
This obedience and subjection found its perfection fully in death. He “became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” Philippians 2:88And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. (Philippians 2:8). Mark, He was not subject to death, as the first man, through his sin. With the first man it was the penalty of disobedience. But it was there that the perfection of Christ’s surrender of a perfect will in obedience, shone out most fully. Or rather, may we not say? the perfect blending of a perfect will in Him with that of God, in obedience unto death itself.
F. G. P.
-Extracted from “A Chosen Vessel”