Created with a purpose
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
(Genesis 1:27)
As we saw in “1. Who is God?“, God is the creator of everything, that means He created humans. God did not make humans out of loneliness or curiosity. He created humans from the overflow of His love. Because God is good, He created people to share in His goodness. We were created to be in a relationship with God, where we are in His family, able to enjoy Him and to do good works because His love overflows into us. In whole and individually, we humans are created for a purpose and not by coincidence.
“And God saw everything that he had made,
(Genesis 1:31a)
and behold, it was very good.”
This world and even the universe we live in was made for humans. We were created to be the final touch that made our universe “very good.” The Bible tells the details of the first parents, Adam and Eve. Adam is the Jewish word that means “man.” Eve is the word for “mother of all”, because from Adam and Eve descended all following humans including us.
God prepared a place called Eden. It was a garden, tended and made ready by God as the first place for His human children to live with Him. In Eden, Adam and Eve had a perfect relationship with God; however, it would not last long.
Broken relationship
When everything was created by God, it was very good, and the relationships between nature and man, between man and man, and between man and God were perfect. But what about now? The world is full of problems and disasters, and it is constantly being broken, including human hearts. Something happened back then that resulted in the imperfect world in which we now live.
And the Lord God commanded the man, saying,
“You may surely eat of every tree of the garden,but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat,
for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
(Genesis 2:16-17)
Among the many trees in Eden with good fruit to enjoy, there was a Forbidden Tree – the fruit of which would bring spiritual death and eventually, physical death.
“But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.
For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened,and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food,
and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise,she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.”
(Genesis 3:4-6)
Satan, a created being who had already rejected God, came to Adam and Eve in the form of a serpent and convinced them that they “wouldn’t die even if you eat the Forbidden Fruit”. He told them that in eating it they would become like God and set their own standards of good and evil. Giving in to the devil’s temptations to be like God and “become wise”, Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the Forbidden Tree. From that moment on, all humans have been born into sin.
Adam and Eve tried to hide their mistake from God, but God can see everything, and He knew. Ever-loving God came near to the disobedient Adam and Eve and called out to them, but without coming out before God from their hiding place, they made excuses and shifted the blame without showing remorse for their mistake. The perfect relationship between God and humans, one full of love and trust, had “died”.
God is perfect, pure, and has righteous authority. Thus, He is far removed from imperfection, unrighteousness and impurity. Adam and Eve, who rebelled against their Creator God, were banished from the Garden of Eden and the presence of God, and an un-bridgeable chasm stands between humans and our creator Father.
Because the first humans so sinned against our Creator God, all of the children of the world in every generation have been born into this separated state, often called “the fall of man”. This means we all are separated from our Father, and the relationship with Him as we were originally designed for was broken.
Restoration of the broken relationship
God is not happy to be separated from us. So, He made a promise to Adam and Eve that would echo through time. He promised to send a Savior at just the right time.
God has not abandoned His children. He still creates each one of us with a purpose. The Bible says that each person is given a time and place in human history where they are meant to live, and enough light to seek Him. With God’s help we can live according to our individual purpose, which will be good for us, and for everyone around us, including our family, our friends, our community, our country, and the world.
We are still naturally part of The Fall. “3. What is Sin?” will help us to see what that is.
For more details on this topic, go to Appendix 2. What are Human Beings?
Appendix 2. What are Human Beings?
The role of humans in creation
“Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and
(Genesis 1:26-27)
over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and 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.”
We are not beings that exist by random chance without meaning, purpose or extreme value. We are each amazing and intentional creations of God, designed with a purpose. God created everything as the setting for His most significant creation, humans. Humans are often referred to as the “crown of creation” because all of creation’s purpose is made known by and through humans. As we see in these verses, after God created this world, He gave humans the important role of caretaker. Humans are the uniquely created beings that are made in the image of God.
Humans are set apart from other creations, such as nature, animals and even angels. We alone have free will, thought, responsibility and loving relationship characteristics that resemble the Creator’s. It means we are able to reflect God to other people and to the rest of creation according to His good ways; this is how we bring glory to God, by reflecting His glory like a mirror to creation. The ultimate purpose of humanity is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
Shame as a result of the Fall of Man
Because Adam and Eve sinned against God, they were cut off from their perfectly holy Creator. This state, called the “fall of man,” is passed on to their descendants, the entire human race. This is just like when the head of a family does something dishonorable, the whole family inherits his shame that will not be erased.
As a result of their disobedience, Adam and Eve lost a perfect and loving relationship with God. It was a relationship in which they had nothing to hide before Him and were not ashamed to let everything be known. But after the fall, the relationship became one in which they did not want God to know or question their actions and wanted to hide from Him. This kind of fear of God could be expressed as shame. Even when we do not know or relate to God, we can still feel that there is something missing in us or something shameful we want to hide is within us. That feeling of shame is a result of the fall that destroyed our original state where we would feel completely safe to expose everything about us before God.