a transient design

It is a well-known picture: Adam and Eve, perfectly happy caring for an idyllic paradise. But with some knowledge of the Bible, it is realized that this picture is not quite correct. Just consider: Adam was given the task to subject the earth (Gen.1:28). That is war language. Enemies are subjected. Adam was to go make a garden of the whole earth.  This means that the earth was not a garden, initially. Adam was further instructed to work the garden and care for it (Gen.2:15). That he had to care for the garden means that it, apparently, had a tendency to ‘grow wild’. When Adam was placed in the garden, it was said to him:  “to die you shall be dying” if you eat of “the tree of knowledge of good and evil,” Gen.2:17), as it, literally, is translated from Hebrew. Eve, also, used those words in conversation with “the serpent” (Genesis 3:3). They both were obviously very aware of what it meant to die. How else could they know of this phenomenon except from nature, all around them? Consider, as well, that Adam and Eve, in themselves, were not immortal, either. It was through access to the “tree of life”, that death had no hold on them. But that only confirms that their bodies were perishable. After they had eaten of the forbidden fruit, they were no longer permitted access to the “tree of life”, so that dying and death, actually, entered the human race. On the day that Adam ate of the forbidden fruit, it was said to him:

By the sweat of your brow shall you eat your bread, until you return to the ground, FOR from it were you taken. For soil you are, and to soil you shall return. -Gen.3:19-

When Adam was taken from the soil of the earth, it was already decided that he would return to it. His origin determined his destination. He was (to express it in the words of Paul): “of the earth, earthy” (1Cor.15:47). His mortality was a given, beforehand. The traditional Christian idea of a perfect creation that was subject to vanity by her own choice, is not according to Scripture. Paul writes in Romans 8:

20 For to vanity was the creation subjected, NOT VOLUNTARY, but because of HIM Who subjects it, in expectation 21 that the creation itself, also, shall be freed from the slavery of corruption…

This creation is transitory by design. When God placed Adam in the Garden, He knew that it was only “a type of the coming” (Rom.5:14). Adam was no more than (expressed in computer terms) a demo-version with limited shelf life and functionality. Christ is the final version, “the last Adam” (1 Cor.15:45). Through Him would “indestructible life” come to light (2Tim.1:10); a new creation (2Cor.5:17; Col.1:18). God “takes away the first to establish the second”  (Heb.10:9). That is the universal, biblical principle. The transience of the first creation is not an accident or a ‘flaw in the weaving’, but is by Divine design and planning. With GOD, nothing ever goes wrong!

Delen: