IN GOD'S MAGE

Genesis 1:26 "Then God said, “Let us make adam (the Hebrew is 'adam' meaning mankind) in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

The use of plural "us & our" should not be discounted. Even in the Shema, the foundational declaration of God's chosen people, "Hear or Israel the Lord (plural) our God (plural), the Lord (plural) is ECHUD (meaning one but not singular). Rabbis say that was to denote the fullness of God. St. Athanasius agreed.

Father, Son and Holy Spirit...the fullness of our God in three Persons, blessed Trinity.

 Adam, by the way, is the generic word for mankind. It becomes the proper name for the first man created by God. It is important to see that God called their name (male and female) ADAM.

Genesis 5:1-2 "This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created Adam, He made Adam in the likeness of God. Male and female, He created them, and He blessed them, and He called their name "Adam" when they were created." 

Human beings were created by God in His image, in His likeness. Life in humanity was the Life of God. He made us so that we could know Him, knowing the fullness of Life. We were made for Him to reflect His authority, His holiness, His glory in the world, to order it and steward it all. 

When Adam and Eve chose to believe the demonic lie that they didn't need God in order to be like Him, that they just needed more knowledge, they spiritually, essentially died. This was confirmed and witnessed that at some point in the future when their bodies ceased to function, and physical death confirmed the reality of spiritual deadness.

We were made to know God, to be filled with Him, to know Him as Life within us. We were made by God to grow in His grace, to grow in wisdom and understanding as we grew in relationship with the One who created us.

Eternal God the Father, eternal God the Son, and eternal God the Holy Spirit, one God in Substance and three in Persons; not three Gods but One God in three persons. Made in His image we have a spirit, we have a soul, and we have a body, yet all are one together making up a singular person made up of three distinct aspects of what we describe as a human being.

We were meant to know wholeness in every aspect of our being. Our spirits are meant to be united to God who created us. Apart from Him, we are spiritually alienated from the Father and spiritually dead. Only God can restore us to life. He has done that through the Incarnation, God the Son taking humanity from His mother, bearing in His sinless self the sin of the whole world on the Roman cross. His Resurrection three days later proved that all He said was and is eternally true. He and the father are one.

Jesus Christ removed the barrier that stood between God and us by bearing in Himself the full measure of God's holy and justified wrath against the sin that stood between rotting humanity and new Life in God. The Holy Spirit was given to all who would believe both to regenerate us and bring us into the Life of God, delivering us from the dominion of spiritual darkness and translating us into the Kingdom of His dearly beloved Son, in Whom we would have redemption by His blood, the forgiveness of all our sins. The Spirit was then poured out on all believers on Pentecost (and even to today) to empower them to live out the New Life God had given them.

Authentic humanity is ONLY found and experienced in a living and eternal relationship with God in Christ Jesus; begun by God and brought to completion by God as it was in the beginning before Adam and Eve blew for themselves and all the children who would draw breath because of them. 

To be alive in the Spirit (from God the Father), to be transformed (by the Life of the Son lived out in you) by His renewing your mind, healing you emotionally and transforming your will to want what God would want if you knew what He knew. And then to have your body (become a temple of the Holy Spirit) sanctified by the Holy Spirit's permanent home in you where He is committed to live out in and through you the very Resurrection Life of Jesus Christ, guarantees the Eternal Life of God will live on in you even after your body fails.

Do you want to become fully human? Believe what God has done for you. Turn from the lie Adam and Eve ingested and surrender all you are to all He is. He wants to fill you with His Life, His power, His purpose and plan for you specifically. There is no other way to finally become fully human again.