LBCF 1689 Reflections (part 53)

Reflections on the Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. 23 Aug 14 began a perhaps unbroken, orderly, and personal journey through my favorite written confession of faith. This will be my personal reflections on this beloved written codification of the Christian Faith which is according to a Baptist flavor.

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Chapter 4, paragraph 2a: “After God had made all other creatures, he created man, male and female, with reasonable and immortal souls…”

Here we see a great fundamental of the Faith affirmed- the existence of a literal Adam and a literal Eve.

People often say that birth is a miracle. When a baby is born people say, “Oh, what a precious miracle”. They don’t say this on the days their parents are pulling their hair out over that little “miracle”, but at the most precious times, we often hear this. It’s a lovely sentiment, but I don’t think that every birth is a miracle. I say this because natural birth is not supernatural in its causality. Life itself from the start, however, now that is a miracle. I read an article today on how our ribs are the only bones in the body that can actually regenerate themselves. The author cited this as evidence of God’s genius in using the rib to form Eve from Adam, Genesis 2:22. Whether that’s true or not, it is a miracle that from the ground, God made us.

On day six, which means at the end of the time(s) mentioned, from the dust of the earth we came. Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust is all. The Hebrew word used for dust here is `aphar. It means dust. Amazing, right?! In the good ole soil resides the carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorous and sulfur needed to sustain us carbon based life forms. God made an earth to seat his highest creation. What a humbling thought that this universe is made for us under God. We are indeed the highest creatures on this planet. Today there are those who would say we needn’t have a literal Adam and a literal Eve in order to maintain Scriptural integrity. This is wrong. The account in Genesis speaks of a literal couple. The genealogies show us a literal couple. Jesus references a literal couple. These literal couple had literal kids. The First Adam is no less a literal flesh and blood man than Jesus, the Last Adam. It’s been well said that in Pauline theology only two men exist in history- Adam and Jesus. These are two actual men.

God made mankind (us) literally “in his image”. This is unlike the rest of creation. This is never even said of angels. Man was given the earth. Man was made male and female. This is God’s plan for marriage alone. No homosexual perversion, no polygamous perversion; one man and one woman. Period. We were made to be a couple. “…It is not good that the man should be alone…” Genesis 2:18. To be made in his image doesn’t necessarily mean we “look” like God. At that time God had no fleshly body, Luke 24:39, etc. What I believe it primarily means is that we speak like he, a Spirit without a larynx, does. That we hear like he, a Spirit without ears does, etc. Jesus later took on our flesh adding flesh to his Deity. He took on the form of mankind that he himself had made us in from the beginning, Genesis 1:26; John 1:14.

Adam and Eve had immortal souls in the beginning. I do not like the phrase “original intent” when it comes to how Adam and Eve were made. It’s the “intent” word I dislike because it applies a circumstantial randomness. God never has two intentions. It’s always just one perfect one. God created man in an “original state” you could say, and then that original state changed. I like that phrase better. Until SIN entered the picture in its qualitative destruction, the souls of our first parents were immortal. God said to them from the start, in their original state: “But 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”. Genesis 2:17. They ate, and die they did that very hour. They died spiritually, and we in them.

Adam represented “you” before God. He still does if you are not now represented by Jesus The Christ.