Something inherently good in man
“God don’t make no junk”. This expression has been used from the pulpit, on church signs, in various forms of print and seems to point out that there is something inherently good in created man. I use the term created man because God makes a difference between “created” and “born again”. “And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.”
The difference between the “created man” dust of the ground + breath of life = living soul Adam and the you must be born again Adam is, they are not from the same “seed”. The only connection is, the “born again life” dwells in the “created life” vessel.
I was perusing the blogs 4 God, weblogs, to see if I could find anything of a spiritual nature and discovered an abundance of articles on gay marriage, the tsunami, Iraq, catholic church forums, all about me’s and so on, but hardly anything about God. His name was used a lot but mostly as a preposition or an adjective, hardly ever as a noun. Most everything was about the fortune or misfortune in the daily life of man covered in the guise of religion. It would seem the only reason we (mankind) exist on this earth is to satisfy mans religious expectations and God’s expectation is reduced to a secondary (or even non existent) status in the context of the world. H.L. Mencken said “the cosmos is a gigantic flywheel making ten thousand revolutions a minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzying ride on it. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride”. This might have been something Mencken was partly right about.
“And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.”
God’s reason for us being here is somewhat different. We are here not to be what man inherently is, but what man inherently isn’t. Adam was created in Gods image and likeness. The Hebrew here is literally translated, in His shade and resemblance. This shade and resemblance was for Adam to have dominion over the earth and everything in it, including his help meet, (another time) but it did not include Gods righteousness. Adam did not inherit righteousness when God created him. Adams stay in Eden was abruptly ended when his participation in the edenic covenant came to an end through the only act of unrighteousness he could do. “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”
The first man Adam can do “good” according to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil but that does not mean he is being righteous. The last Adam is our only claim to righteousness and the only thing inherently spiritual in us. That Adam is born of God not created in His image We have received of the fullness of Christ and grace for grace. Grace is not a religion.
Thomas Paine, evangelist
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