Genesis 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 that moveth upon the earth.”
Notice that in Genesis 1:27, God created man in his (God’s) own image. The man here did not refer to a particular color or race, but man as a being (which included male and female) as further recorded in Genesis 5:2.
It was in this image of God that man was made that pleased God to bless man (them). So when God created man, he (God) blessed him (man). Hence, the image of God (which man is or was) is still blessed.
The purpose therefore of God creating man is
To bless Him
To be fruitful
To multiply
To replenish the earth
To subdue the earth
To have dominion over God’s creation or creatures on earth.
The Word of God went forth concerning man when God blessed them, and God said unto them, “Be fruitful and multiply.”
This word shall not return to God void. That is why up till today, the blessing continues (even down to the physical aspect to those who have not accepted God’s perfect work for their salvation). The problem is that man fell out of favor with God by his (man’s) disobedience and was henceforth alienated from God, lost the spiritual image of the Godhead and became a stranger, a wanderer in the earth. This was not the purpose for God creating man. Something went wrong to sabotage the original purpose in the Garden of Eden. Here, God having placed man to dress this garden which God himself had planted, God instituted a commandment to man to eat of every tree of the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which he said they should not eat.
Genesis 2:9 showed that the tree of life was also planted in the midst of the garden close to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This means prior to Adam’s (man’s) disobedience, he has been partaking of the tree of life. For the commandment in Genesis 2:17 referred only to the tree of knowledge of good and evil. God demanded and expected obedience from man to live forever (in holiness) and therefore had access to the tree of life as long as man obeyed the injunction of Genesis 2:16–17. But when man disobeyed, this right to eat of the tree of life was denied him because man in his new state of iniquity, if he partakes of the tree of life, will live forever in wickedness and sin. Therefore, no plan for his salvation can work since like wicked spirits, he cannot repent. So another reason (which is most important) why God created man was for man to obey him (God).
Chapter 3
The Fall and Its Consequences
Man therefore disobeyed and lost being in the image (the truthfulness and the holiness) of God. In other words, God’s spiritual attributes embedded in man during the time of creation was lost due to man’s disobedience. Man was now left with the physical attributes alone. Man rejected the substance (spiritual) and accepted the shadow (physical). But God in his mercy began man’s redemption from here in Genesis 3:14–15.
Before this, God made certain pronouncements to show that man had become spiritually dead. Let’s look at Genesis 3:15–19. Here, you find seven terrible disadvantaged positions Adam’s sin placed him based on God’s pronouncements. Reading through these verses, we find that in:
verse 15, man inherited enmity;
verse 16, man inherited sorrow as pains in birth;
verse 17a, man inherited curse to the ground or his capital;
verse 17b, man inherited sorrow as dissatisfaction in achievements;
verse 18, man inherited thorns and thistles or much labor and less productivity;
verse 19a, man inherited sweat of face or suffering;
verse 19b, man inherited death.
If you compare the above verse with Genesis 1:28–30, we see a contrast from man created in God’s image to have seven positive, divine attributes to seven negative, satanic oppressions, from grace to grass. So man lost being in the divine form (Spiritual) but took the repressive form, subjected to satanic attacks, oppression, domination, and possession to being a slave instead of a master which God originally ordained for him. Mercifully, God still allowed man to retain his image in the physical. Man had all the attributes of a physical being to enable God’s divine plan to restore man be effected at the fullness of time. The human body and the five senses were allowed to continue so that man can have a chance to taste and see divine redemption.
For the pronouncement of God against man was meant as corrective measure and not punitive. Otherwise, man would not only have died spiritually (separation from God in the spirit); in the Garden of Eden, man would have also died physically. There would have been an immediate termination of life, and man’s (Adam’s) existence on this planet earth would have ended, thus providing no hope of redemption. For once one dies, there is no more remission for sins. So we see this death in the immediate as being spiritual (separation from God until the initiated time when Genesis 3:15 would be fulfilled), but man still died physically after a period of time.
This was because the death sentence in Genesis 3:19b. “In the sweat of thy face, shalt thou eat bread till thou return unto the ground, for out of it was thou taken, for dust thou art, and unto dust, shalt thou return” was to effect and confirm the Word spoken in Genesis 2:17 as real. Real in the sense that prior to the disobedience, man was to live forever. But on the fall, a day was involved thereupon which the covenant of life was annulled because man disobeyed God. Since then, no man has ever lived to fulfill his day after the fall.
To explain more, the Bible says in 2 Peter 3:8, “But beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day.”
Since this is the case, from the day that Adam sinned, one thousand years (a day in God’s sight) is the day that the fallen man had within which he would live and die. From Adam, this passed unto all men as an inherited problem, Adam being the progenitor of all men. So based on God’s word, man never lived to fulfill that day, for Adam died at the age, 930. He never completed that day (one thousand years) according to God’s reckoning. He (Adam) died the same day. “The day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die” (Gen. 2:17). So it is with any other man born of Adam. From the day he is born, he is born in iniquity and according to God, man should die that same day. Therefore, one thousand years is reckoned to him before God (one day), and no man has ever lived to fulfill that day: even the longest living man (Methuselah) died at 969 years, thirty-one years short of that day. So we see, the deterioration of the human body to grow old and die below one day because of separation from God (spiritual death) who is man’s life and substance to live forever.
Thank God that through Jesus Christ our redeemer, man now has hope to live forever by the power of God as found in Revelation 21:3–4:
Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them and be their God, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death neither sorrow nor crying. Neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away. Behold I make all things new.
Consequences of the Fall in Generalized
