Genesis
5:1 ¶ This is the book of the
generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God
made he him; 2 Male and female created
he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they
were created. 3 And Adam lived an
hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image;
and called his name Seth: 4 And the days
of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons
and daughters: 5 And all the days that
Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.
A recognizable
device is apparent here that is used earlier in Genesis, chapters 1 and 2 when
describing creation in a more general sense and then being more specific that
has made some foolish skeptics claim that there are two creation stories. God
goes from higher to lower, general to specific, even back and forth between the
two. Adam is referenced here as the name for both the man and the woman and
then as the name of the first man specifically.
With this record
of Adam’s lineage we have a similar reference to Jesus Christ later in the New
Testament with regard to His legal descent;
Matthew
1:1 The book of the generation of Jesus
Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
This book or
record begins with God making mankind, male and female, to look like Him. God’s
body, His physical presence, is the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the
Word, capital W, by which all things were created and are held together. I’ve
already pointed out the verses that reveal that in previous passages.
God called their
name Adam, man and woman. Adam is translated as man or men over 500 times and
as a proper name around a dozen. The name comes from the Hebrew word for earth
or ground as translated in Genesis 4:11, Adamah, as opposed to the word
translated for earth in Genesis 1:1, Ehrets. Adamah can also come from
Akkadian, the oldest attested Semitic language, meaning to make. It also has a
connection to the color of clay as reddish or ruddy according to Strong’s as
man was made from the dirt. Adam was probably darker than Europeans but lighter
than Africans. Man gave Eve as his
wife’s name. This will be important in remembering the distinctions Christ
erased in the church.
Galatians
3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek,
there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are
all one in Christ Jesus.
This is how it was
meant to be but sin caused the great rift in our association with each other
and the resulting cultural divides between men and women came about. God does
not create human culture or civilization. He only attempts to modify it to draw
men and women closer to Him. Holding your culture, your society, or your
civilization as Godly or saying that its traditional order; whether that
tradition be Nineteenth Century Victorian or post-World War II American, is
what God ordained is absurd, a blasphemy, and all such falsehood destroys the
faith of the young and new Christians. Cultural forms of living, for instance,
Father going off to work in an office, Mother staying home to dust and clean,
and the basic family unit living alone, separated, and apart from other family
members, servants, friends, or employees is a relatively new way of living and
should not be mistaken for the time-honored, traditional and
God-approved culture of the family.
In other words, it
is not Godly just because we do it and say it’s right because we are doing it
and slapping the label on it. That was Cain’s sin. Is it yours? Such thinking
is no less humanism than the fantasies of The Enlightenment thinkers. Try to
come to the Bible and leave your personal and cultural baggage behind while God
speaks to you through its pages.
Verse 4 shows that
Adam sired probably many sons and daughters during his long life as the
pre-Flood people lived hundreds of years compared to our typical 70-80. We need
to consider the fact that the genetic damage passed on to each generation would
have been minimal in that time and the damage that the individual takes on with
each cell division would have been just as minimal. Aging would have been a
much slower process and a person stayed “younger” and more vigorous than they
would have in any later generation for a longer period of time. Adam sired children in his own image, or
likeness, as the process of genetic deterioration followed as man devolved from
his first blessed state looking like His creator, Christ.
As I noted
previously, with each cell division and in each generation mankind passes on
more and more deleterious mutations, so much so that some researchers into
genetics have been alarmed at the accumulated damage and amazed that human
beings have not become extinct because of it.[1]
Adam died, as
required by the judgment, a process which began the moment he disobeyed God. We
can presume that Eve died much earlier than he did due to the wear and tear
caused by multiple conceptions over many years or for other reasons, who is to
say? But the process of dying began the moment they disobeyed God in the one
thing they could do that was denied them. Our first human parents, our first
ancestors, died, whether or not it was in what we now call Africa, or somewhere
in Western Asia, and the pattern had been set for all of us until the time the
church is translated out of this dying world, waiting to be reborn.
We shall all
physically die and, in fact, are dying now unless we are walking on the earth
when Christ calls out the church. It is only through faith in Christ as God in
the flesh, believing what He said about Himself, and trusting in His
righteousness and not our own, nor any church dogma, creed, confession, or
man-made set of rules that we can be justified before God and live in eternity
with Him.
Romans
5: 6 ¶ For when we were yet without strength, in due
time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For
scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some
would even dare to die. 8 But God
commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died
for us. 9 Much more then, being now
justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. 10 For 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. 11 And not
only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have
now received the atonement. 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: 13 (For until the law sin
was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law. 14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to
Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s
transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come. 15 But not as the offence, so also is the free
gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of
God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded
unto many. 16 And not as it was by one
that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but
the free gift is of many offences unto justification. 17 For if by one man’s offence death reigned by
one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of
righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.) 18 Therefore as by the offence of one judgment
came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free
gift came upon all men unto justification of life. 19 For as by one man’s disobedience many were
made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. 20 Moreover the law entered, that the offence
might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: 21 That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so
might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our
Lord.
[1]
Alexey S. Kondrashov, “Contamination of the Genome by Very Slightly Deleterious
Mutations: Why Have We Not Died 100 Times Over?” Journal of Theoretical Biology, (1995) vol. 175, pp. 583-594. James F. Crow, “The High Spontaneous Mutation
Rate: Is it a Health Risk?” Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences, (Aug 1997) vol. 94, pp. 8380-8386.
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