THEME: Understanding Salvation: Inheriting Incorruptible Nature
LESSON: Two
TOPIC: Salvation: God’s Original Thought and Intention for Man
TEXT: Genesis 1:26, 27; Isaiah 40:28; Hebrews 2:6; Ecclesiastes 1:9-10; 1 Thessalonians 5:23
INTRODUCTION:
In our last lesson, we made an attempt to show what salvation is and how that salvation is a quality of life that is EVERLASTING. We also stressed that salvation is of different types and qualities, i.e., the salvation that God made for man, the salvation of angels, and the very salvation that God Himself has and is in Him. God helping us, we also showed some characteristics of salvation as it has been revealed in scriptures. If you missed the last lesson, please get back to listen to last week’s teaching.
God’s Image: THE VERY REASON WHY GOD CREATED AND FORMED MAN (Genesis 1:26-27; Genesis 2:7)
When God was creating man in the beginning, it was obvious that He wanted and was making man a being that would be as saved/incorruptible as Himself (Genesis 1:26). From the beginning, God has shown that the very reason for wanting to MAKE MAN was for HIS IMAGE. Now that is deep. It is for image’s sake that man was created (Genesis 1:27), and for image’s sake man was formed. Both creation and formation were for the purpose of the image.
Man, a creation and formation being (1 Thessalonians 5:23; Genesis 1:27; Genesis 2:7)
Man is a tripartite being. He is a spirit; he has a soul, and His spirit and soul live in a physical body. In Genesis 1:27, His spirit and soul were created from materials of the earth. His body was formed from the dust of the ground in Genesis 2:7. Both the creation of man’s spirit and soul and the formation of His body were so that He would come and inherit God’s image. It is good to say at this point that man did not eventually fully inherit that image even though He started the process of wanting to. After man died in His spirit, God had to drive man out of the garden of Eden, and the very purpose for creating and forming man could not be fulfilled the way God originally intended until Jesus Christ came (Romans 1:28-29).
The best God could do with Old Testament saints after the death of Adam’s spirit was to paint, show, and give things that look like the image, not the very image itself (the law of Moses and the prophets are all pointing to the real thing—which is what Jesus Christ Our Lord brought, inherited, and became—Luke 24:44).
The coming of Jesus, the restoration of God’s original purpose for man—GOD’S IMAGE (Romans 8:28-29) What we see in the New Testament is the Lord God going back to what He originally wanted to do in man from the beginning, which was to impart His image into man. But this image is not and was not meant to be imparted into the spirit of man, even though man was created in the image of God.
At the new birth, we became new creatures in our spirits (2 Corinthians 5:17), but just like Adam in the beginning, we have not yet gotten or inherited God’s image. If we had inherited this image, Apostle Paul would not say that we are meant to be conformed to the image of the son of God to attain purpose (God’s purpose).
The Soul of Man—The House for God’s Image
The soul is the personality out of the three personalities of man that is meant, created, and designed to carry images. The spirit is not meant to carry image(s) because of it being an image in itself. Man’s physical body that was formed in Genesis 2:7 is not also meant to carry image(s) because it is an image itself. But the soul is meant to bear and carry images, particularly God’s image (Romans 12:2).
As beautiful and true as the new birth is, it has not brought us into inheriting of God’s image, and therefore we have not come into the fulfillment of God’s purpose. We need our souls to be saved through the preaching of the image of the Son of God (image of God) to fully say we have conformed to the purpose of God, which is man being made in God’s image, Hallelujah!