Jesus Christ: The Son of Man

1. The Fall

Let's begin in the beginning.

The first book of the Bible, Genesis, records the birth and origin story of Earth.

God is the first character that we read of. The second verse of the Bible records that "the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters".

The first thing I want us to see here is that something – Someone – preceded us. Later in the Bible when God reveals himself to a man named Moses (Exodus 3), God tells him that his name is Yahweh. He says, "This is my eternal name, my name to remember for all generations."

'Yahweh', the personal name of God, means 'He is'. God is the one who was, and is, and always will be. His name reveals his eternal nature.

Your pencil cannot make another pencil, and Earth cannot make another Earth. Temporary things have permanent origins. Similarly, the origin of our temporary planet is the eternal God.

In the first chapter of Genesis, the original Hebrew refers to God as 'Elohim' (אֱלֹהִים). The title Elohim, in this verse, refers to the 'Supreme One' or 'Mighty One'.

This title can actually be used to refer to human rulers and even spiritual beings, but it is used here to display God's authority, power and might because right after we read of the Spirit of God, we see him create everything.

"Let there be light," he said. And there was light. Now that's power.

God creates the sky, land, plants and trees, the sun and stars, fish and other sea creatures, and all land animals.

Every time God creates these things, he says that they are "good". He blesses them all in telling them to be "fruitful and multiply".

Then he creates a different kind of creature; a man. And then a woman.

They're different from the other creatures because they are made in God's image. This distinction is so significant that God gives them authority to reign over every other creature that he has made (verse 26).

Like the other animals, they're called to be fruitful and multiply but they have the special command of governing over everything else that God has created in their world, and teach their sons and daughters to do the same thing. This special and greater command from God has to do with what verse 27 announces; that man was made in God's own image. The simple fact of being made in the likeness of God awards them the great privilege of ruling over his good world.

Did you catch that? Humanity has worth because the God who made them has worth.

When God looks over all he has made, he says that it is "very good!".

Look around you. Things have not been good for a long long time. They will be soon – but that's a story for another chapter.

The world looks the way it does because of the next thing that happens.

A strange creature, a serpent, speaks to the woman and convinces her that if she eats of a beautiful fruit, she will become like God himself. So she eats it, and the man eats it too.

So what's the big deal? It's just a fruit, right? Not right.

The big deal is that God told them not to eat the fruit (Genesis 2 verse 16 & 17), and they ate it anyway. The big deal is that they disobeyed God. They didn't believe him. They treated Elohim like a liar.

One of the most bitter parts of this interaction is the fact that they were already made to be like God himself. God himself had already called them to create life, to speak life, to govern and rule. But their pride wanted to reach a little further than that. They didn't just want to be like God, they wanted to become him.