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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadR.A. Torrey Collection: Torrey, R.A. - What Bible Teaches (about Man): 01 Man's Original Condition
TOPIC: Torrey, R.A. - What Bible Teaches (about Man) (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 01 Man's Original Condition
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Ch 01 Man's Original Condition
I. MAN CREATED IN THE IMAGE OF GOD. Gen_1:26-27 — "And God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." Gen_9:6 — "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man."
First Proposition: God created man in His own image after His own likeness.
QUESTION: To what do this image and likeness refer? Eph_4:23-24 "And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness." Col_3:10 — "And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him. Rom_8:29 — "For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. 2Co_3:18 — "But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." Col_1:15 — "Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature."
The image and likeness plainly have reference to the intellectual and moral nature of man.
ANSWER: Psa_17:15 RV — "As for me, I shall behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy form." (The Hebrew word used in this passage clearly means a visible form. Compare to Num_12:8 RV — "With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even manifestly, and not in dark speeches; and the form of the LORD shall he behold: wherefore then were ye not afraid to speak against my servant, against Moses?") The image and likeness would seem also to have some reference to the visible likeness. It is true God is essentially spirit ( Joh_4:24) and invisible ( Col_1:15), but God has a form in which he manifests Himself to the eye ( Isa_6:1; Act_7:56; Php_2:6), and man seems to have been created not only in the intellectual and moral, but also the visible likeness of God. (Compare to Gen_5:1; Gen_5:3 — "This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him .... And Adam lived a hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth.") It is perhaps impossible to say how much of this visible likeness was lost by the Fall, but in the regeneration man is not only recreated intellectually and morally in the likeness of God ( Eph_4:23-24; Col_3:10), but when the regeneration is complete in the outward, visible likeness as well. (Compare to Php_3:21 — "Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.") But from Joh_17:5 ("And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was"), compared with Php_2:6 ("Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God"), we see that "the form" of Christ was the form of God.
II. THE ORIGINAL INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL CONDITION OF MAN. Gen_2:19 — "And out of the ground the LORD God formed every best of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them; and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof." Gen_1:28 — "And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."
First Proposition: Man was created with sufficient intellectual capacity to give names to all living creatures and to have dominion over them.
Man was not created a savage, but a being with lofty intellectual powers.
Whatever truth there may be in the doctrine of evolution as applied within limits to the animal world, that truth breaks down when applied to man. It contradicts not only Scripture, but the known facts of history. The development of man from an originally low order of intellectual beings closely resembling the ape is a figment of unbridled imagination falsely dubbed science. There is absolutely not one fact to sustain it. The first view we get of man is of a being of splendid intellectual powers. Gen_3:1-6 — "Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat." Rom_5:12; Rom_5:14 — "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned .... Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come." ( Ecc_7:29.)
Second Proposition: Man was not created a sinner, but sin entered into the world through man by his conscious and voluntary choice.