All right, well, excited to be back with y'all again, going through the Westminster Confession of Faith. Tonight we'll be looking once more at chapter four. So last week we went over chapter four, paragraph one. We talked about how the Trinity, created the heavens and the earth, not just one person of the Trinity, not just God the Father. We talked about how God displays the glory of his eternal power, wisdom, and goodness in creation. We talked about how he creates invisible as well as visible things and how he created everything in the space of six literal 24 hour days and all. Very good. Today, we're moving on to chapter four, paragraph two. Chapter 4, paragraph 2. And we'll get through most of it today, but I think there'll be a little bit more we'll need to do next week. And this is only a two-paragraph chapter, so after next week, we'll be moving on to Providence. So I'll read the words of the divines now to us. This is Of Creation, chapter 4, paragraph 2. After God had made all other creatures, He created man, male and female, with reasonable and immortal souls, endued with knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness, after His own image, having the law of God written in their hearts, and power to fulfill it, and yet under a possibility of transgressing. being left to the liberty of their own will, which was subject unto change. Beside this law written in their hearts, they received a command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which while they kept, they were happy in their communion with God and had dominion over the creatures." So we'll get through a good bit of that today, but some of it will have to wait until next week. That's because I know I've said this many times when working through these Wednesday night lessons, going through all these chapters of the confession of faith, but I'll say it again. This is a very full chapter. It's like the divine's just compressed so much into each sentence. When we speak and even when we teach and preach, I feel like we end up wasting a lot of words. But they didn't waste any word. I mean, they were just very, very concise, jamming everything in. And there's just a lot of theology here for us to unpack. So for starters, I want us to note that the divines remind us here that after God made all other creatures, it was at that point that he created man, male and female. So we're reminded that there is a marked difference, a strong difference drawn between man and between every other creature that God made. We are unique. God made some of the animals on day five, specifically the birds and the sea creatures. Then he made the land animals on day six. And that's when he made man as well. But he didn't make man all at once. He didn't make man simply by speaking his word. He didn't make several people at a time. He started with just making one single man. This is something unique. There's no evidence or indication that he did this with any of the animals. It seems like he made tons of animals all at one time. But with man, he made Adam. One man, he made him first. And then after a period of time, he made Eve. These were the only two humans that he created during this creation week. In fact, these were the only two humans that God ever made in this unique way in all of history ever. Every single person therefore is descended from Adam and Eve. In fact, I've noticed a couple of times over the past few years, I've read one book about it and then also just seeing social media posts and things. Different people, geneticists, anthropologists, various types of scientists have come upon this revelation over the last five or ten years that we seem to have all descended from one couple of humans. And they think it's just like they've stumbled upon this wonderful newfangled truth. Because a few generations ago, When evolution was already very firmly entrenched in the sciences, but they had fewer discoveries of things, they thought that we arose through different populations all scattered about the world through all different groups of animals. Well, now people are saying that don't believe in God and the Bible. They're saying, well, actually, it looks like we probably descended from one common set of parents. And we've known this the whole time, the foolishness of the world. Yeah, it takes so long to catch up to our base level on some things. But it's clear, all human beings are descended from Adam and Eve. And there's a sidebar that we could go down that I don't want us to explore right now in great detail about how Jesus is not in Adam, He's unique. He is not in Adam, according to the flesh. He's the seed of the woman, the seed of Eve, because he had no earthly father. But even Jesus, in a lineal or genealogical sense, and in a legal sense, is descended from Adam and Eve. Luke is very clear on that. Jesus is the son of Adam, who's the son of God. That's the abbreviated version of Luke's genealogy. So all of us are descended from Adam and Eve. And the way in which God made Adam and Eve was much more intimate, we notice, especially in Genesis 2, Genesis 1 as well, much more intimate than how he made the animals. It highlights God's special care for us and his intentionality in designing us. He's creating stars and galaxies and things just by a word. by divine fiat. He says it and it happens. But he's very patient and slow even in the way that he creates Adam and Eve. He goes about it with a exacting process. He's crafting something wonderful. In Genesis 2, we see God in this garden that he's created, this paradise that he's made, and he's shaping and fashioning Adam out of the dirt. He's making a man in his own image out of the dirt. And then after fashioning Adam's body carefully and in great detail, then he breathed the breath of life into Adam and Adam became, God's word says, a living soul. Now God made all the land animals and the birds. out of the dirt of the ground as well. So Adam's not unique in the materials that he's made from. The fish, it's not as clear. God's word doesn't say what he made the fish out of. Since they live in water, maybe he made them out of something different than the dirt of the ground. But only into Adam does God's word say that he personally breathed the breath of life. Now, all the other animals do have the breath of life, they're living beings, but they have it, it seems like, in some type of indirect way. Whereas God very intimately gave the breath of life to Adam by himself breathing it directly into his nostrils. We almost have this image in our minds of like God doing some type of CPR or something, where he just put his mouth as it were over Adam's face and breathed the breath of life into him. And the Bible says that that is how Adam became a living soul, by having the breath of life from God put into him. And then Eve was created also directly and intimately by God, but in a different way, of course. God created the body of Adam out of the ground, but he formed Eve from the body of Adam. So Adam was made out of the dirt, we learn. Then Eve was made out of Adam. So there's like a derivative type of creation, but still very intimate and still directly by God. Eve was made of Adam. And even though Eve came from Adam, Adam is in a sense her material source. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 11, now men come from women, testifying that men and women in our creational design are not independent of one another, that we must depend on each other for our existence and that all things are from God. It's not like man's the source of absolutely everything. No, I think we have this balancing act here that God's showing us that yes, man is not ontologically superior, which means man isn't of a greater essence or value, but he does have a priority of place, he rules, but he is just dependent on woman just as woman is dependent on man. Martin Luther often, because of this account from Genesis 2 about how God created Eve from Adam, Luther often affectionately referred to his wife, Katie, as my dear rib. So we have it left in a lot of his writings when he would be away and he would write letters or in his diary he would speak of his dear rib since God's Word says Eve was made from a rib out of Adam. That's why when God brings Eve to Adam, Adam's not just speaking poetically when he says, at last, this is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman for she was taken out of man. He's speaking very literally. This is me. This is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. So in a very literal sense, Adam was praising God that he had provided a perfect, suitable helper that was made from him. So there's this connection that's very deep, very intimate. But after God created Adam, we'll backtrack just a little bit here. He created him, he put him in this garden. God wanted to teach Adam something. See, Adam's knowledge was perfect in one sense, in that it was not clouded by sin or error. Adam could see the world through a perfectly brilliant, clear lens, whereas today we see through like a dirty window in a lot of ways. So it was perfect in that sense, but Adam's knowledge was not perfect in the sense of being complete. It was a lot of things that Adam had no idea about that God wanted over time for him to learn. And it seems that right at the beginning, God had willed to teach Adam that he needed a wife and a wife that was from his own body in this unique way. So God brings all the animals. You're familiar with this account. He brings all the animals he had created to Adam to see if there was a helper suitable for him. Of course, God knew there was no helper suitable for him, but Adam's like, sure, yeah, I'll check them out. What's this? I don't feel like this is the one. This doesn't seem like, you know, the helper fit for me. You can just imagine the scene. I think we've all probably pictured it in our heads. Adam's standing here and God is just parading these animals in front of him. It's like soldiers passing in front of a general and the general's giving them names. He's naming them, he's exercising that dominion, but he hasn't found the right one for him. are fit to be his helper. Which is interesting because animals are given to us to be our helpers. The ox could have plowed the garden far better than Eve could have. The giraffe could have grabbed the fruit and the leaves that Adam needed or wanted from the taller trees far better than Eve could have. The dog could have played with him in a much rougher, you know, exciting way in some aspects than Eve could have or would have. But what was it that was unique about the woman? It wasn't that Adam needed a conversation partner. He had God. There is no better conversation partner. It wasn't that he needed someone to clean up after him or something like that. It was that all the other animals that God made when he made them, he made them male and female. They could be fruitful and multiply as God had ordained. That was their vocation in life, to be fruitful and multiply. That's the task that God gave the animals. He didn't give them anything else, not in his word. He gave them the vocation of being fruitful and multiplying. And God gave Adam the same vocation, be fruitful and multiply. God made the animals, he blessed them, he gave them their charge. God made Adam, he blessed him, he gave him his charge. But this is not possible without a woman. Adam could not do God's will for his life. He could not be fruitful and multiply without a woman. So that's the chief way that the scriptures tell us that Eve is a helper fit for Adam or a helper meet for Adam or suitable for Adam. The chief way that she helps fulfill this divine mission is through procreation. If God just wanted the garden tended and the world conquered, even if an animal wasn't suitable, he could have given Adam another man. It could have been Adam and Steve. Steve, he's a strong man. He could have gone out and built stuff without him. You know, in a lot of ways, two men working together is more efficient than a man and woman. Not because the woman's not a good worker, but because it's much more distracting when you're working with someone of the opposite sex. When you're working with someone of the same sex, you can just plow away and go for it. But God willed that procreation would be an essential and integral part of the mission of man in this world. So he made Eve. Also, of course, we're gonna get into the image of God later, but the image of God would not be as reflected as perfectly in the world if we were all one sex, if we were all men. There would be things missing about how God wanted to reveal himself in his character and the way he treats his people if there were no women. Very important that we have men and women. So Adam was given the task of tending the garden and expanding the garden as it were into a state of worldwide dominion, take the beauty and order and glory of the garden and spread it throughout the whole world. I know that especially, you know, some of the adults have thought a lot about dominion. It kind of goes along with some of the theology we believe, of course, and the circles that we've run in with post-millennialism and stuff. But have you thought about before why there was this need and this command to exercise dominion before the fall? It's interesting when we think about it. Well, if everything was perfect, why was there a mandate to take dominion? Why did we have to subdue something if we were in harmony with the world and there was no sin in the world. There was no death in the world, but God still commanded that man take dominion. That's because God did not make the world in its final form. God did not make the world in its final form. He made the heavens and the earth and all very good, but then he specifically made this small area, which was the Garden of Eden. And here in this garden, in a way not like the rest of the world, God's glory and God's image and God's order were put on display in a special way. And man was given the job of expanding out of this garden so that the image and glory of God would cover the earth just like the waters cover the seas. And this could not be done with just one man or even with 10 billion men. God planned and willed that this task be done with men and women working together to fulfill his purposes. And this original mandate of being fruitful and multiplying and filling the earth and subduing it is never been abrogated, which is a fancy word of saying it's never been undone. God's never said, you finished it. Or you know what, you messed it up so bad, I'm not even, I'm taking that one away. You clearly can't do what I'm asking. So we're gonna take that command away. No, God still has a will for his people to fill the earth, to multiply, to fill the earth, to subdue the earth, to have dominion. And we see this ordinance of God echoing throughout the rest of the scriptures. It's not just here in Genesis. After the flood, we see almost the exact language again, verbatim, given to Noah and his family. In the exile, even, when Israel is been conquered by a pagan kingdom and has no political power and no presence relative to all the pagans surrounding them in the culture, we still see a similar call on God's people to be fruitful and to multiply and to build. In the new covenant, we're told, of course, to disciple the nations, which sounds a lot like taking dominion of the earth. As anyone can clearly see God's kingdom, even today, we can look around and realize that his kingdom still has a lot of expanding to do before we've completed this mission. We've had 6,000 years we're working on this. And I mean, I feel like it could be more than that until we're done working on it. The confession then says that Adam and Eve were created with reasonable and immortal souls, endued with knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness after his own image. So we have reasonable and immortal souls. The animals do not have reasonable and immortal souls. Yes, you can teach some species of apes, for instance, to do sign language. There was that, I think it was Coco, maybe the name of that gorilla that could do like a thousand signs, which is amazing. Think of an animal that you can have a conversation with. It's amazing. The evolutionists think, well, clearly this is because we are related in this evolutionary graduated process way. And Coco here is just really, really close to being a human while still remaining an ape. Well, this is absurd. You can teach animals all kinds of things. Some animals can talk. like some species of birds. They can say words and it seems like they're having conversation with you. There are other animals that can sniff out bombs or sniff out drugs or they can just by standing next to you sense when your heart rate increases too quickly or your blood sugar drops too quickly and they can like help you out, bring you medicine and bring you water and help you lay down. This is amazing that animals can do these things. And there are people that will tell you, well, that's because, and they wouldn't use the language of the confession here, but they would say, these animals have reasonable and immortal souls. But really what we're seeing here is a couple other things. And this just testifies to the fact that we are very different from the animals. First, God made us all. God made everything. And because of that fact, Even things not made in His image reflect Him in some ways. Just like we discussed last week, we can look at all of the creation and see His wisdom, power, and goodness reflected. That includes the animals. We can look at the animals and see the wisdom of God, the power of God, the goodness of God, and the ways that He created them. We can expect certain reflections of God's power. Secondly, We should expect some limited similarities between us and animals, not only because we're made by the same creator, but we're made of the same materials. We're all made out of the ground. We're all made out of the dirt. And then third, and this is, I think, the most important reason here why we should not be surprised to see animals that can do sign language or animals that can talk. We should expect, in fact, animals to do these amazing things when they're trained because that is built into the fabric of our intended relationship with them. Remember, we were created to take dominion. This is not just a vague dominion with no details. God specifically says we're to take dominion of the animals. That's what he says. We're to take dominion of the animals. So imagine all the things we could train animals to do if we were not infected by the curse of sin. Think about if Adam had never sinned and no one had ever sinned, well, we know the animals wouldn't be afraid of us. God's Word tells us the animals are afraid of us and we're to go kill them because of sin. So what if we were all righteous and holy and the animals and us worked in perfect harmony? I mean, just think, I couldn't even think of a great example because it's so crazy to think of, but think of what we could see animals doing perhaps if there was no sin and we had taken dominion just as God had intended Adam to do in the garden. Impossible that we have lost a significant amount of the potential of how we could interact with the created world in this way. but they still would not have reasonable and immortal souls. It just means our reasonable and immortal souls are working better to do what God has designed us to do with those animals. When an animal dies, scripture doesn't give us any details about what happens, but there is no reason to believe we will see any of those animals again that lived on earth. We will not see our pets again, I don't think. I don't see any way that would make sense with the word of God. Thankfully, we won't see the animals we killed and ate. That would be strange in heaven. Like what if you meet a pig and he's like, hey, you ate me. Do I apologize? I mean, what, you know, thankfully, I think we can be grateful we won't see these animals again. But we, we will go on living forever and ever. It's appointed unto man once to die and then comes judgment. There is a life after death. This is not the end all be all of our existence. If we ever make it to chapters 32 and 33 of our confession, we'll deal with those matters in detail about life after death, what the eternal state of man is, what the judgment is like. For now, we have to move on and just contend ourselves with the truth that for those of us who have been born of God's spirit, that to be absent with the body is to be present with the Lord. So that's wonderful news. The confession also says here that God endued Adam and Eve with knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness after his own image, having the law of God written in their hearts and power to fulfill it. And yet under a possibility of transgressing, being left to the liberty of their own will, which was subject unto change. We're only gonna get to part of this tonight. Adam was created with knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness. God did not make anything bad. He made everything good, and man especially. He made man very good. We see this progression in the creation account, both with intricacy and with glory. It starts out with less intricacy. light and dark moves to more intricacy, stars, planets, animals, human, and it starts with less glory and moves to more glory. So on days one through six, God made trees, he made plants, he made stars, he made fish, he made animals, and all of it, he says, after every day, he reflects on his creation and says, it's good. And then on the sixth day, he made man, but after he made man, he looked out at his creation, he didn't say it's good, he said, now it's very good. Now my image is part of my creation in this unique way that's very good. And then on the seventh day, that's the work of creation is done. God's rested. He doesn't say good. He doesn't say very good. He said it's holy. So we see this progression of God's intricacy and glory being displayed through the creation week. Good, very good, holy. Adam had goodness. He had holiness, righteousness. He had true knowledge, but he lost these things when he sinned. He lost them. Thankfully. In our recreation in Christ, we are getting those things back now. First of all, we get righteousness in a very moment. We get granted Christ's perfect record of righteousness instantaneously when the Spirit makes His abode with us. God's not gonna have any part of sin. So you were declared righteous immediately when you were born again, immediately. But then we do have to grow into the reality of this declaration over time. We don't immediately become righteous in all of, the meaning of that word. We don't immediately stop sinning. We don't immediately become perfect. We're not transformed in that moment of being born again into someone like Christ himself exactly. We have to grow into that reality, into the maturity of the full measure of our sonship. But with Adam, things were different. That's not how Adam had his righteousness and knowledge and holiness. He did not have the blood of Jesus covering him. He was not born again, but he wasn't born in sin like we are. He did not have an inclination to sin even. He wasn't just a tabula rasa. He was not a blank slate. He was righteous, positively righteous, but it was possible that he could fall away. Like the angels, God created Adam and Eve with the possibility of falling from grace. He had a truly free will. Adam and Eve were not tainted with original sin, but they were able to sin. In Ecclesiastes, the preacher says this, says, truly this only I have found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes. How terrible is that? A lot of stuff in Ecclesiastes is difficult to understand. That one's super easy. I found out this one thing. God made man upright, but man has sought out many schemes. It's bad news. But in the new heavens and the new earth, things will be different. Things will be different from now. Things will be different than they were in the garden for Adam. In the new heaven and new earth, we will be righteous just like Adam was righteous, but more because we will be unable to sin. Sometimes it's hard for us to wrap our minds around how it is better for us now than it was for Adam in the garden, but that is true. It is better for us now. If we are in Christ, we are in a better condition than Adam and Eve were in before the fall because we have a guarantee of salvation within us, the Holy Spirit. We have an absolute guarantee, a down payment from God of himself saying, I will not abandon you, you are going to heaven when you die, you will be regarded as righteous before my throne. Adam didn't have that. We're not going back to the garden in Christ. When Christ recreates us, we don't go back to the garden, we go forward to a city. Think of the change of image there, started in a garden, We're going to a city, Hebrews makes it very clear, we're going to a city whose builder and maker is God. We're not going back to that beautiful and sinless wild, we're going to dominion. Dominion, it's going to be accomplished and conquered. We're going forward to where the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. We're not going back to sinless but able to sin. We're going forward to sinless and unable to sin. It will be impossible. Because when we see him, we will be changed. We will be like him in the new heavens and the new earth. And God does not sin. We'll be like him in a way that Adam never was. Paul tells us that even when we sin currently in this life, we're already enjoying part of this reality. Because when we sin, it's not really our true selves that are sinning, if the Spirit of God is within us. We're still accountable, but Paul says, it's your old man within you. It's Adam within you. It's not Christ within you. And who's defining your true reality? You are not a son of Adam anymore, you're a son of Christ. That's not really you. You're still accountable, but it's not really you. In the new heavens and new earth, there will be no old man. There will be no Roman seven in the new heavens and new earth where I keep doing the thing I don't want to do and I don't do the thing that I want to do. Won't be a reality. Christ will have delivered us completely from this body of sin and death when we get our new resurrected glorious bodies. Now, last thing I want us to discuss tonight. What is the image of God though? I think we can all affirm, yes, made in the image of God. Easy, says it right there so clearly. God says, let us make man in our image according to our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. God says, let us make man in our image according to our likeness. He's speaking of himself as a Trinity there. We're not made in anyone else's image. It's not like God is speaking to the angels and saying, hey angels, why don't we make man in our image? It's just God. It's common in scripture for God also to refer, to say one thing and then reinforce it with different language. We see that throughout the Bible. God will say one thing and then reinforce it in other ways. So another note I want us to make before we get into the what is the image, is when God says he's gonna make us in his image and after his likeness, I'm convinced that that's the same thing. I don't think that God's talking about two different things that his image and his likeness are different. There are theologians who've advanced that, especially within the Roman Catholic Church. But historic Protestantism has always been clear here and said, no, this seems really clearly to refer to one thing. Being made in God's image is being made in his likeness. The word likeness is not something we use as often as we used to, but Many moons ago, our fathers would have referred to likeness to mean like a portrait of someone. Oh, your likeness is being painted today. That means someone's drawing you. We can think of God in that way. He's made us in his likeness. We are not God himself, but we are a reflection of him, of who he truly is. But what is this image and likeness of God? What's God referring to? Well, the Bible never explicitly says, this is the image of God, colon, blank, blank, blank. It would be easier, but clearly that wasn't God's will for us to know it in that way. But I think we can deduce a lot of things from his word, and I'm just gonna run through a few of them pretty quickly here. To be made in the image of God, well, first of all, it means much of what we've already said. But to be made in, specifically, to be made in God's image means to be made immortal. Not that we are immortal by necessity. Our immortality is still contingent on God. God's the only being who is necessarily immortal, who cannot die in any sense of the word. But we've been endued with this immortality. We've been given this immortality by God. And that's one of the ways that we reflect His image, that we are not like the animals who die and then they're done. That animal doesn't exist anymore. We die, but that's not the end. And like C.S. Lewis says, that's just the title page and the table of contents. Then the rest of the book gets written in eternity. So we die and we go on to the next life, either to the blessed presence of God or to the fire of God's wrath. Secondly, to bear the image of God means to be able to think and imagine and reason and plan in ways that nothing else in creation can. Think of how a good writer can reflect the image of God when they do world creation in their works. This is one of the things I really enjoy about good writers. Tolkien, I think, is the best at world creation. He just wraps you into this world that he tells you all these details of, Like 70% of which have nothing to do with the plot he's driving at. What's he doing? He's creating a world and you're being immersed in it. And you can just get caught up in this world. We don't know all the details about what animals can think and know, but I don't think they have that level of ability to imagine and plan. But we can, not only can we come up with this thing in our head that does not exist, like middle earth, but then we can communicate that idea with someone else and they can have the same idea in their head. And then you can get caught up in that world and you can think, this is what it's like to be in middle earth. This is what it's like to be at the battlement at Helm's Deep, watching the orcs come and you just have it playing in your head. It's amazing. So you have this ability to imagine and to plan and to share thoughts about abstract things. That's something that is special about God that not all of his creation can do. I think that's part of his image. We are made in his image in that we are moral agents. We are moral agents. The things that we do are either moral or they are immoral. We're not neutral. We're moral or immoral. We are good or evil. We are sinful or we are righteous. Animals, they can be mean or kind in a sense, but animals can't sin and animals can't be righteous. So we're different than them. Of course, plants. Plants definitely can't sin or be righteous. We're unique in that way. And we're made in his image, of course, in that God is the great King of Kings. who exercises his lordship, and then we are told to take dominion over the earth. So it's not only our essence, our being, who we are as humans, but it's our office, what we're supposed to be doing as humans. We are fully human when we fully reflect the image of God the best, when we are in Christ and obeying the revealed will of God. That's when we're reflecting that image best and being fully human. So when we take dominion of the earth, when we are acting like God acts and like he wants us to act, bringing the world under his benevolent reign, we are reflecting his image well. And then kind of final note here, there's been some discussion throughout church history as to whether or not we still bear the image of God. How deeply did sin mar us? Did it taint us so bad that it took the image and likeness of God away? Because you can look around at your fellow man and you can look within your heart and you think, I really don't look like God. I do a lot of ungodlike things. And those people over there, they especially do a lot of ungodlike things. We like to point that finger. But the scripture is clear, Genesis 9 affirms clearly that it is a great sin to murder another sinful fallen human being because sinful and fallen though he is, he is still made in God's image. That's why God says murder is wrong because people are made in my image and I will not have my image assaulted in that way. So we still bear the image of God, very clear in scripture. but we don't bear it nearly as clearly or as accurately as we would have had we not fallen. We did lose something of the image of God. That's without doubt. Theologians, because of this, trying to resolve this problem of we do bear the image of God, but maybe not entirely. They've come up with a way of talking about it. Some theologians will distinguish between the material image of God and the formal image of God. So materially, Materially, think of what things are made of, we always remain and retain the image of God because we don't ever become something besides human beings. We're always gonna be humans, and humans are made in the image of God. Therefore, we are always having the image of God and are the image of God. But formally, the formal image of God is different. Formally, we do not reflect or bear the image of God truly apart from Christ. Because in our fall into sin, we have lost the ability to obey him. Now, unbelievers do have a reflection in a way of how they were made. They are still humans. They still bear that material image of God, but they don't have that formal, moral, godly dominion type of image as he has intended it to be. In Christ though, in Christ, we are being restored to this formal image of God. The Bible says that God's spirit works to conform us into the image of his son. So even though Genesis 9 says we still have the image, if we still have to be conformed to his image, that's where you get that tension and distinction. We have the image, but there's something we've lost. And by the spirit of God, working faith in our hearts, working out our salvation and obedience, God is conforming us into that formal image as well. I know sometimes technical terms can be confusing, so we can talk about that later if that's throwing you off, but we have the image and we're growing into the image. As we see individuals grow in holiness and nations come into the obedience of faith, we will see humanity bearing this image more and more clearly over time. And then the new heavens and new earth will bear his image more perfectly than ever before. Even like we said, more perfectly than Adam in the garden and all to the praise of his glorious grace. All right, we'll stop there for tonight. And we will have to do a little bit more, I think, next week before we move on to chapter five. But what questions do you have? That's a really good question yeah um it is an interesting question because how could God pour out his wrath on his own image in hell there have been people that have wrote on that but it's not something I've studied well nor do I have a great answer right now I will though look into that more and I'll get back to you on it but I I don't feel confident enough to say one way or the other. I feel like I'll say the wrong thing. But does anyone else have a thought on that? Obviously, believers are going to bear his image eternally. The question is unbelievers. We're gonna, because when we see Christ, we'll become like him. We'll be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye. We won't all sleep, but we'll all be changed. So we'll be God's image in heaven. The question, really, maybe not your question, but the base theological question there is, do unbelievers in hell still bear God's image? That's a tougher question. I don't know. Understanding or teaching, I don't know where I came from exactly, but I was taught at some point that how that there's an aspect of being human that's trying, your body and soul and spirit. Soul and spirit are two distinct things. And as an atom all died, it was our soul that died and then our soul was made alive. People that aren't believers, they have a spirit. They can have, you know, a personality and a spirit about them. So, say it's a form of Christ, kind of body and spirit, and our soul is dead, and our soul comes alive. That's the fundamental difference of being born again. And then, when we die, the body is dead, but the soul where the spirit kind of slips on, or is somewhere, like John is alive somewhere. His soul, because he believed in Christ, is alive, and his spirit is alive, so he has his personality, his unique person somewhere, and his soul, alive with Christ, but his body is waiting to be resurrected, and it will be his body, so it's like, In the image of God, God being triune, we are triune in that we have body, soul, and spirit. Have you ever heard that before? I have. I have. I mean, there's a great debate within the church. John has done a lot more research on this, and he would affirm that we are body, soul, and spirit. I hate to do this twice in one night, but I'm just not, I'm not sure. I'm not fully convinced one way or the other. You can't count truth by counting noses. but the majority it seems like of the reformers held to a body soul only, and body soul spirit seems to have grown in adherence more lately, especially within the charismatic movement, the charismatic church, whereas the reformed churches haven't affirmed that. Doesn't mean one's right or one's wrong. I don't know. When I read the text, I'm more inclined to think it's just soul and spirit are referring to one thing, like image and likeness refers to one thing, or like, you know, when Jesus says you have to be baptized with the spirit and with fire, I think it's one thing. I mean, I think it's just one way of emphasizing something, but I could be wrong. And John, I'd love to hear if you want to share briefly about, or as long as you want about that, because I know you've thought well about it. I started a paper a couple of months ago that I haven't finished up yet for us to read and share and look at. Oh, good. It just surveys and combs through the word usage. The two words in the New Testament are pneuma and psuche, two different meaning Greek words, right? I mean, if you look them up in Strong's, they mean Strong's Concordance. They have two very different meanings. I won't say much more except that a touch point is, for instance, in John chapter 3, when Jesus is talking with Nicodemus, he talks about being born again of the Spirit. And so the idea is that we're being born a second time. And he says, Numa gives birth to Numa, is what he says there in that passage. He's saying Numa gives birth to Numa. My understanding there is that the Spirit of God gives birth to, in man, a new spirit that is alive in Christ. Right? Because Paul says you're dead in your sins and trespasses, but now you've been made alive and our soul is I'm still John White, you're still Anna Kennedy, you still have your same personality that God made you with, the same mental faculties and capabilities, with a lot of the same likes and dislikes, you know, colors, foods, whatever. I mean, you're still your same self, but your soul is going to be transformed By the renewing of your mind, like it says in Romans 12, that we're transformed by the renewing of our mind. In other words, our spirit is born again in Christ, but the ground that needs to be taken as we're sanctified comes through our thinking, and it's our soul that's transformed. So that's a couple of touch points, I guess, about the perspective there. I want to neaten it up and kind of pull it together into a more, because I've done a lot of looking at it in years past, but I've never pulled it together into sort of a comprehensive, and so that's what I'm hoping to do. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it, because I think, The argument that John lays out is very compelling, and I think it resolves some tension. Can I add one other thing? Yeah. It wouldn't be right if I didn't mention either Aquinas or Aristotle. Of course not. Of course not. In a derogatory sense. But what I think the reformers made so much progress in reforming away from the heirs of Rome. and especially in their theology, but in some of the philosophical aspects, not so much. The philosophy that came down the pike to Cambridge and Oxford and so forth. But the view, the Greek view of man was that he was body and soul. In other words, he had two parts. It was a form matter dualism. And I think that medieval Christianity inherited that view of man, that anthropology, rather than getting necessarily from scripture. And I think like federal vision, one of its problems is that it doesn't recognize anything in man to be born again, right? Because you've got the same mind and the same personality and the same soul. And so they figure, well, it must just be an external covenantal change. In other words, Man is a body with a mind or with a soul, and that's kind of it. So the idea that man has this third part that is a spirit that's either alive or dead, ethically. It's either alive in Christ or dead in Adam. They don't recognize that at all. But I think what they're dialed into is the Aristotelian view of man that was inherited I'm really looking forward to reading the paper or maybe you could do a Wednesday night teaching on it or something I think we could all benefit so that's a better answer than I was able to give for me the jury's still out but I haven't studied it enough so And I think it's very helpful to think about where our doctrine is lived out. I think I've probably been inclined to think before that, you know, how does this really affect me in daily life? Some things are much more clear and visible. Okay, you know, should I baptize my infants or not? Super clear, like not super clear the answer, but I mean, you see it lived out and it makes a difference, you know, and there's a million things that we could talk about like that. What are the ethics of it? How do you live it out? But I think you gave some clarity on how that could bear out in the way we view salvation, for instance. Or what happens in baptism, or what happens in communion. Yeah, exactly. What spiritual reality is or is not going on there. David or Scott, do either of y'all have points to add? I know you've both been reading theology in the Bible for many years. I just got done reading the Trinity by St. Augustine, and his idea of soul and body is kind of that dualistic view. Man has a body which is corruptible and will rot away, but man also has an eternal soul that will last forever, and he viewed the soul as defaced by sin, and God had to respond with supernatural grace to basically change it back to what it once was and transform it with the renewing of your mind back into God's perfected image. And then he believed in the resurrection of the body and the body would come back and be reunited with its perfect soul. And he, much of the second half of of the Trinity, he's analogizing the Trinity with these aspects of the mind, and he sees an internal Trinity as memory, understanding, and will. Whereas memory is like God the Father, and then understanding proceeds from memory, is distinct from memory, but yet is the same within one person. And then your will ties the other two together. And he had this really interesting view of the Holy Spirit, where the Holy Spirit is like what kind of tied the Trinity together, if that makes sense. And he kind of concludes the work saying, you can't make an analogy. But he goes off of this insane, insane tangent trying to do it, and he talks all about assault at the same time. It was fun. There was a question that our son-in-law Andrew was asking. The other night, he's been bringing a lot of discussion, so just practically speaking, he's wrestling with this. He said, when God said, in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die, and Adam and Eve don't die that day, what is it that died that day? And is that a literal day? Or, you know, we know death entered the world and they did die. Maybe the whole creation started to decay. But in that day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. Did something die? Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think spiritually, Adam and Eve died right then. And physically, they started the process of death, as did all creation right then. They still had a personality. Right. Yep. Could be. I mean, it makes a lot of sense. It makes a lot of sense. So it could be. I mean, I definitely affirm completely that Adam died spiritually that day and that we are all conceived dead spiritually and that we are born again, made alive together with Christ by the Spirit. when the spirit works on our hearts. the reformers inheritance, that good and all that good theology, there's a nail that they keep wanting to hang something on there when you talk about being dead spiritually. And it's a lot, it's expounded upon and sort of speculated about and everybody believes it, but there's not quite a nail to hang it on sometimes. What does it mean to be dead spiritually if your soul is living and your body is still living? So I know it's not that simple, but. Yeah, these are good questions. I'm glad that you're bringing them up. I wish I did have better answers, but it's stuff that we can dig into for sure. What other questions do we have about creation? Any things we discussed tonight or something related that maybe just crossed your mind? You mentioned that animals were created out of the same dust that Adam was. Yeah. It wouldn't surprise me if that was true, but I didn't remember reading that before the creation. Well, let me look real quick. I mean, it could have been, and I just missed it. No, yeah, no. I mean, always go back to the Word. I mean, be Berean about it. I just want to find exactly where God says this. Let's see. Genesis 2, I believe. Or it might be Genesis 1. Out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air. So, yeah. Yeah, no, it's, but yeah, it's in Genesis 2. So sometimes we think of Genesis 2 as just focusing on the creation of man and Genesis 1 focuses on the other stuff, but we do see the creation of animals. and plants and things repeated in Genesis 2 with some slightly different details, which is helpful for us, gives a better picture. Yes. hit on this in the way you treated this part of the text of the confession. And I can agree with the confession. I can come at it from my own angle. It says that Adam was created in true holiness and I can understand holy in the sense of sinless or that God said it was good and he said it was holy so I can understand those ways. But a lot of theologians, I think, kind of tend towards an idea, and again you addressed this tonight, I'm just sort of saying it again, that the idea that what God is doing in our salvation and our sanctification is restoring us to where Adam was and what Adam was like and so forth. And you hit on it by saying Adam hadn't sinned yet, and so he was righteous and holy in a certain sense, but in another sense he still had the ability to sin. So, and the way I've always thought of that is that he, you know, we, we, when we're born again in Christ, we're born again of an incorruptible seed. We're born of Christ when I sin, and you said this tonight too, it's not, that's not who I really am. Who I really am is who I am in Christ. Romans 7 says that if I sin, if I'm a Christian and I sin, it's not really I who do it, it's my Sin that's a squatter that's living in the territory. We're not going back to what Adam was or what Adam had in the garden. we're in being born again in Christ, we're receiving not the divinity of Christ, but the ethical nature of Christ, which is sinless and unable to sin. So a true righteousness and true holiness. And you brought that up well. When I read that in true holiness or in holiness, Okay, I can agree with that, but there's that angle, or that twist, it seems to me real important. Appreciate it, appreciate you bringing that up. Oh, my pleasure, my pleasure. And thank you also for clarifying it. You know, we tend to think we lost everything in Adam, we're getting it all back in Christ. It's true, but we're getting back a lot more. I mean, it is gonna be better in every way. The garden wasn't the end of God's plan. He created it sinless, but not complete. That's why he said, go have dominion. That garden wasn't the end. Yeah, we're going to a city. Yes, that's right. It was perfect in the sense of sinless, but not perfect in the sense of complete. It's an important distinction to make. Well, he blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. The question is, did he make something? He did not make something of nothing. He did not create in the same way he did the previous six days. But the Sabbath was not a cessation of all activity. It was a cessation from his creative activity so that he could reflect on the goodness of what he's done. And Genesis even actually says that God was refreshed on the Sabbath, which is strange because God doesn't get tired. But what he's saying is he was reflecting and being blessed in resting in his goodness. And then that's a model for how we try to regard the Sabbath and keep the Sabbath. So I would not say he created, but it is still the creation week. And then God crowned the creation week Within His creation, He crowned it with man. But overarching, He capped off all His work of creation with rest. And so we're going to a place of eternal rest also. And we're going to be refreshed and reflect. But yeah, made and created are sticky words. I don't know the best way to say that, but I'd certainly say, I mean, the text is clear. He blessed and hallowed the Sabbath day. Does that maybe answer your question? Okay, good. All right, well, let's go ahead. We've gone a little later, but that's fine. I think we had really, really great discussion.