The creation story depicts human beings as the zenith of God’s creative activity. Their uniqueness is portrayed in two separate and complementary accounts. Genesis chapter 1 is a terse overview of all creation while Genesis chapter 2 shows that God lavished very personal and particular attention on the creation of both Adam and Eve. Significantly, it was only humans of whom God said, “Let us make mankind [“human being,” not exclusively “male”] in our image, in our likeness” (1:26), “so that they may rule . . . over all the creatures” (1:26). Neither the previous inanimate or animate creation was so described. In those creative activities, God had simply said, “‘Let there be’...And it was so” (as in Genesis 1:6–7).
Being made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26–27), human beings are free, rational, capable of self-appreciation and self-expression, capable of moral and spiritual understanding, and created for fellowship with each other and with God. That the first human pair, made in God’s image, would fall and lead the race into sin (3:1ff.) was hardly a surprise for the Creator, who nonetheless purposed to create and redeem them through Christ. To …show more content…
Adam is named as the first human in Luke’s genealogy (Luke 3:38) and Jesus pointed out, authoritatively citing Genesis 1:27, that “at the beginning, the Creator ‘made them male and female’” (Matthew 19:4; Mark 10:6). Paul spoke of Adam and Jesus as historical persons, recognizing Adam as the beginning of the human race. “For Adam was formed first, then Eve” (1 Timothy 2:13). “’[T]he first man Adam became a living being’” (2 Corinthians 15:45) and “a pattern of the one [Christ] to come” (Romans 5:14), thus definitively linking Adam with Christ, “the last Adam.” Adam is the “one man” by whom sin and death came (Romans 5:12; 1 Corinthians 15:22). Jude 14 also cited Adam as the beginning of the
Being made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26–27), human beings are free, rational, capable of self-appreciation and self-expression, capable of moral and spiritual understanding, and created for fellowship with each other and with God. That the first human pair, made in God’s image, would fall and lead the race into sin (3:1ff.) was hardly a surprise for the Creator, who nonetheless purposed to create and redeem them through Christ. To …show more content…
Adam is named as the first human in Luke’s genealogy (Luke 3:38) and Jesus pointed out, authoritatively citing Genesis 1:27, that “at the beginning, the Creator ‘made them male and female’” (Matthew 19:4; Mark 10:6). Paul spoke of Adam and Jesus as historical persons, recognizing Adam as the beginning of the human race. “For Adam was formed first, then Eve” (1 Timothy 2:13). “’[T]he first man Adam became a living being’” (2 Corinthians 15:45) and “a pattern of the one [Christ] to come” (Romans 5:14), thus definitively linking Adam with Christ, “the last Adam.” Adam is the “one man” by whom sin and death came (Romans 5:12; 1 Corinthians 15:22). Jude 14 also cited Adam as the beginning of the