In testifying to the supremacy of the Son of God as heir of all things in creation, with special emphasis on the point that even the world to come will be subject unto him, the writer to the Hebrews also identifies Jesus as Son of Man. This oneness of Jesus with man is signified, for example, in the words, “Both he that sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are all of one” (Heb. 2. 1 1).
It is this essential unity of Jesus with man that points to the differentiation of man from the beasts, that raises man in status from the beginning to potential Gods.
Men were designed to be Gods. As early as the first chapter of Genesis, with its summary of the natural creation, man was declared to the made in the image of God. It is important to notice that this designation does not occur in Gen. 1, and precludes any idea of the man of Gen. I being of a different order of creation from the man of Gen. 2. It is to Gen. 1 that Paul is referring where he writes of man being in the image of God, and Jesus also uses the wording of Gen. 1, when he says that he that made them in the beginning made them male and female.
The man of Gen. 1 is the man who is the subject of all the rest of the Bible. The summary in Gen. 1 completes the list of things and creatures made under the order called “natural” (that which is first is natural). The opening words of Gen. 2 say plainly that this creation was finished and that God rested. The implication is that the rest God entered into at that time still goes on. No further creation was planned under the natural order. This resting as it applies to the natural world, is made the basis for the figure of the spiritual completion of God’s work in due time (“there remaineth a rest for the people of God . . .”).
We should not be misled into the idea that, because the natural order was not extended, God had ceased all creature work. We have already suggested that the man of Gen. 1 is the subject of all the remainder of the Bible. While Gen. 1 does conclude the natural order, Gen. 2 begins the record of the development of the “man” of Gen. 1. This development is the burden of all the remaining scriptures.
The creatures, other than man, made under the natural order, were made for the use of man; they contributed to the human environment as did all other created things, serving man in many ways. But these do not aspire to become Gods. Genesis does not say of them that they were made in the image of God.
What is man? Though part of the natural creation, he is clearly a special part of it; the only part, in fact, which the creator was taking further. It was to be the basis for his second phase of creative work: the bringing of natural man up to spiritual man.
Some care is needed in defining the status of man as created under the natural order.
However, we have the Apostle Paul’s economical but revealing phrases in 1 Cor. 15. 46-7, “Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural. . . .
The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven.” These are declarations of the constitution of man as he was created, and, in the wide scope of the words as they span the historical scene, it is clear that man was made lowly by design, as compared with his potential future associated with the Lord from heaven.
Man shared with Jesus the inheritance ordained from the beginning, since man is linked inseparably with him, but it is the glory of God by promise. In the instance of Jesus, it depended upon the successful probation in the flesh of this unique Son. As for other men, their rise to a fuller God likeness also depended upon him—it was so from the foundation of creation.
As first constituted, men were not able to obtain the glory of the incorruptible nature by any means other than that appointed for them—but the design was just that of bringing many sons to glory.
Made in the divine image, man had a higher status than the animals. He has the capacity for communion with God as person to person. By this, man perceives the eternal verities and seeks for immortality, as one feels after something dimly apprehended. If this capacity was a reflection of the personality of God, and allowed man to make responses not possible to lower creatures, it did not make him a finished work of creation. It does identify him as the first phase, the raw material for the further creative work of God. As such, man satisfied the eye of the Creator, who, reviewing all that he had made, declared it to be “very good”. It was all good! The grass, the trees, the beasts—no less than man—all were very good, but compared with the promised Son of Man all, so far, was natural, lowly as the earth from whence it came.
The entry of law into the world is sometimes thought of as a test for man. In human terms, either a finished article may be tested to prove its construction and function, or raw material may be tested to establish its suitability for purposes of design. Unlike man, God required no experiments to study his material. The record of the Edenic prologue to human history, and all subsequent revelation, is to instruct man about himself and about God. The process of spiritual creation, as far as Adam and his family were concerned, had begun with its first lesson. This was to the the foundation of instruction to be learned (or ignored) by each individual as generation followed generation. Men wandered far from God into superstition and by substitution of true worship by self-worship, and this applied even to those who were selected to receive the oracles of God. Man under law, now extended and suited to a nation, only revealed the limitations of human nature more sharply. The lesson was that natural man was not able to redeem himself, that is, he was not able to make the step to God likeness of himself. During the hundreds of years over which the Law of Moses operated, none came from the ranks of the human family with the claim to have kept the law.
Now death came to all men, whether under the Mosaic Law or not, since all belonged to the natural order.
When called to the obedience of law, men disobeyed—and sin was thus defined. The law had proved that men could not rise to its requirements, it proved that man was lowly in his beginning and limited by his nature. The statement, “Dust thou art, and unto dust shall thou return”, was the indication of man’s affinity with all natural life in its cycle. Death, or dissolution, was the natural end of natural life. To man it was counted as an enemy, for he had the awareness of a higher destiny, but he could claim no rights to live eternally or even continuously. So man depended entirely upon God to provide the means of redemption from this bondage of sin and death. And God did provide a way. It is more correct to say that the way was provided from the foundation of the world.
So, by experience, men were brought to the point of seeing themselves, in truth, as being in need of a saviour: “For, when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly” (Rom. 5. 6).
Being Compassionate