IN THE BEGINNING

by Elder Tim Brown

1.                    The Unison Purpose within the Trinity: God the Father elected a people (Eph 1:4 According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love). The people were dead in their sin condemned by the law (Rom. 6:2 God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?, Gal 3:13 Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law ,1Pet 2:23 Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously: ²⁴Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.). The Son said he would go and die for them and reap the eternal damnation of God upon himself (Rom 5:8-10 But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. ¹⁰For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.). He was alienated and forsaken by God and sent into outer darkness for He made himself the sin of the elect. Where God sees sin He exacts His eternal judgment, This He did to His Son. The Son bore the punishment of the Elect and brought himself back to life that he may give life to the elect. The Holy Spirit said I will go and dwell within the elect and make them to live unto Thee. Let us create a world where the elect are to live and fall into death through the transgression of the Holiness of God yet The Son will go to Save them. All, that the Sovereign God may be glorified in all things.

2. God created man in His image, and after His likeness.: Adam was made righteous, holy, and sovereign. These attributes belong to God, so Adam was made in the Image of God. Yet by God’s mercy the passage did not end there, it is followed by. “after our likeness”. Adam looked like God,  yet by this we conclude was not God. Adam had a righteousness not eternal but natural as he was sovereign and holy in the same way (Gen 1:26 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. ²⁷So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.)

Righteous in that he was not found guilty before the law because he had no sin yet.  Holy because he had been set aside by God in this righteousness. Sovereign for he had been given power over all of God’s creation.

This righteousness, holiness, and sovereignty were not that of Christ for it was corruptible. This righteousness and holiness was determined by the law not by the imputation of Christ’s righteousness or Holiness. So it was in the image and after the likeness that Adam was created in but Christ was the image and not the likeness, but God Himself (Col.1:15 Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature)  

In the first chapter of Genesis we see the decree for creation to come about.

3. The 2 trees God placed in the Garden: The Tree of Life which Adam was given freely to eat of and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil which Adam was commanded not to eat for in that day He would surely die. The Tree of Life is to demonstrate Life given by God through grace. The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is to demonstrate death given by God through the Law. The Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil was the knowledge of Sin and the knowledge of God’s Holiness. This is the Law. This Shows God’s grace and that the Law was present at the time of creation. Is it not interesting that the Tree of Life was not forbidden?

The time of Adam’s transgression: Adam was made as one who had not transgressed the law, so he was made righteous. Although the Bible does not dwell on this point when Adam transgressed the law, it does conclude that the transgression of the law came by Adam.( Rom. 5:12 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) I conclude that Adam transgressed the Law the minute God commanded Him not to eat of the tree of knowledge and good and evil, for he desired that forbidden fruit, the knowledge of good and evil, so he desired life by the law as so many in error do today(Free-will to make the right choices). Soon after this transgression then Eve was taken out of Adam and thus brought out of the fallen man, Adam. Yet the fruit of the law had not been tasted. Adam and Eve did not know they were dead in their sin (And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: ¹⁷But 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.( Gen 2:¹⁸And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. ¹⁹And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast 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. ²⁰And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.

²¹And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; ²²And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. ²³And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. ²⁴Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. ²⁵And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed).

Eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: God said they would surely die when they ate of this fruit. Eve ate of the fruit first. She was a product of the transgression that existed in Adam at the time of she being taken out of Adam. Sin had already entered into the world before Eve physically ever was. Once Eve ate of the fruit and Adam then followed then they surely died. Meaning they knew that they were dead and guilty before God because Adam had transgressed the Law in his heart and that transgression was passed to Eve. Adam and Eve did not cover themselves until the fruit was eaten thus revealing their nakedness. The Sin was Adam desired life by the Law and not by Grace. Yet he had not eaten of the fruit of the Law. When the fruit was eaten then condemnation was present. Satan did not deceive Adam to sin for in the earthly being of Adam through His heart and mind did he desire that which was not of God. We will deal with this in the issue of the free-will of Adam later. Satan did not deceive Adam to sin and eat of the fruit because Satan is not the creator of Sin. God imputes the sin of Adam unto all the nonelect (Rom. 4:8 Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin).

 Adam was purposed by God to Sin. By this sin being passed to Eve and thus death, it brought no greater pleasure to Satan to be the one to condemn Eve to death by tasting of the Law as he does even now to the elect of God. Satan works to torment the elect and so thus he came to Eve not Adam. It was necessary that Adam ate of the fruit so he would have revealed to him the sin by the power of the law and as many do even now tried to place blame on someone other than themselves for their sin, which is shown when he tried to shift blame to Eve and more than that, God (Gen 3:12 And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat). Adam did not recognize the sin in him, was present before Eve ever was and only recognized that the knowledge of his sin is what he regretted because God had given him a woman to bring fruit that he was so willing to eat of because his first sin, the desire of that fruit long before he ate of it.

4. The fall of Adam: Adam had been given righteousness by way of the law through the grace of God( for when Adam was created, the law had not come into the world. Yet when he transgressed the law he fell from grace and was condemned to hell, as would his line forever be through the imputation of his sin upon his line. Yet the world strives even now to gain the righteousness according to the law, which is corruptible. Adam had all the favor of God and his grace but the day he desired to receive life by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was the day he desired life by the law and no one can stand righteous before the law, because you stand before the holiness of God and are condemned to hell, eternal death, or more fully “surely die” by tasting of the fruit of the law.
5. Free will of Adam: Adam was like no other man. For he had righteousness and holiness according to law but was not corrupted. He also was like no other for he had been created with a sin nature, which also had dominion over him yet, which had not corrupted him. Adam was not in bondage to sin yet, for the law had not entered. In the physical realm Adam had dominion over God’s creation, what Adam did not have dominion over was the spiritual realm. Adam could not control the spiritual dominion of sin and more than the spiritual dominion of God. Adam’s so called free will should be limited to our understanding that he was able to exist physically, but he was bound to do according to the spiritual realm ultimately through the will and decree of God, and by sin. For the day that God brought the Spiritual world and Physical world together was the day that the Law of God was given. The Law is righteous. When the Law entered, it brought the righteousness of God down to Adam, and in order for Adam to live, he would need to remain uncorrupted, by obeying it in the physical realm, which man is unable to do. In the spiritual realm through faith, the righteousness of the Law is fulfilled, and we are justified spiritually.  But in the day of God’s commandment did Adam sin, die, and fall from grace. Rom 8:4  That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. God had created Adam as a living soul  one who was given a so called free-will to do and think outside of the holiness of God. In fact his mind and heart could do no other but think and do outside of the holiness of God when the Law came. Adam could do no evil in the beginning because evil was not revealed, more than this sin, until the Law entered. This is why we can say that man was not made corrupted but GOOD for the act of sin had not been committed and Adam was not corrupted. Adam was not free from God’s decree and not free from sin. Man from their very onset has never been free. They have first and always been ruled by God, and also ruled from within by sin. Even after a believer’s regeneration they are not free for now they are ruled by the spirit. Hence the term a prisoner to Christ or in bondage to death. God by way of his decree saw fit to send Adam to transgress the law and bring Eve the elect out of Adam to be under this penalty of the law and to be dressed in their own filthy rags of unrighteousness yet for Eve and her line to be glorified in sending His own Son to save an unworthy elect nation that He might be glorified in all things unto himself. Adam was damned eternally and by passing the curse to the elect through Adam, God reveals and demonstrates the magnificence of His power, sovereignty, election, salvation, and glorification of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and the riches given to heirs in Christ in the chronicles of history, which are bound by the spiritual realm for eternity. So we cannot say How can God hold blame to Adam since he was made this way for who are we to answer our creator. In fact Adam demonstrates this sinful attitude by his exclamation that God is to blame for the woman God gave him had caused him to sin when in fact he had sinned unto death before Eve ever was physically.

^{Romans 7: 7} What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. ⁸But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead. ⁹For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. ¹⁰And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. ¹¹For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me. ¹²Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good. ¹³Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful.

¹⁴For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. ¹⁵For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. ¹⁶If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. ¹⁷Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. ¹⁸For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. ¹⁹For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. ²⁰Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. ²¹I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. ²²For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: ²³But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. ²⁴O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? ²⁵I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.