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To: mdmathis6

Not really an answer, but what did Adam ‘fall’ from? If there were no standard above what he had then the term is rather meaningless. In my mind I see ‘perfection’ and ‘innocence’ as pretty much the same thing.

At any rate, my point from the beginning of this thread was that everyone born into this world after that ‘fall’ are of the image and likeness of sinful man.

Jesus, being born ‘of the seed of woman’ is not tainted by the curse and sinless.


107 posted on 02/07/2018 8:36:45 AM PST by Pilgrim's Progress (http://www.baptistbiblebelievers.com/BYTOPICS/tabid/335/Default.aspx D)
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To: Pilgrim's Progress

The sin of Adam and Eve was “chalesa” meaning “being wide of the Mark”. It comes from a term archers used in describing missing the target. “Fall” in this case simply means going from a state being innocent and free of unrighteousness and being in fellowship with God to a state of having a broken fellowship and being cursed by having defied the will of God. Hence, we “fell”(in terms of declining spiritual wholeness) from a state of blameless fellowship with God to a state of spiritual death and lack of fellowship with God.

Our humanity went “wide of God’s Mark” but Christ’s blood and grace can bring us back into the center and onto the course of “the race” as Paul described it!

This was the essence of “good” as man was described at the point of mankind’s creation. Ignorance concerning the knowledge of good and evil implied that growth into a larger consciousness of themselves and of the Father was yet to occur but the process was interrupted by Eve’s temptation and her succumbing to sin.

Which leads back to the notion of “perfection”. Is a perfect human to be defined by certain characteristics and modalities of his material parts or does he also have to grow into it consciously, morally, and spiritually?(Adam’s inner man being renewed daily and gradually growing in knowledge of the Father, even though he may never have sinned?)

That’s why the notion of a “perfect” human is an almost unknowable and unarguable concept. Only God knows what he had in mind in terms of a perfected mankind; only he has the blue print. Are cats perfect now as they are or does God have in mind a notion of the “ultimate” cat?

If God had originally made man to have only a 70 year life span (like some “bladerunner type” replicant) who never sinned and had perfect knowledge of everything God was, who after 70 years, slept and then powdered instantly into dust...if that was God’s ultimate concept of what a human should be, could not such a man be considered “perfect” according to how God designed him,(him and others after “his kind”)...that is by the power of his word?

Yet by the above question can we even begin fathom the sense of the magnitude of our loss and fall. God said instead...”If you eat of the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil, you will surely die.” Adam and Eve ate of it and began to know death and lost the perfect knowledge of God and the wisdom previously available to them thru him. (We really don’t know how long Adam and Eve lived in the Garden and we don’t know whether to count the age of Adam from when he was created or from when he left the garden or at least at what age he was when he left the garden.
God told Eve her pain in child birth would be multiplied...had she already experienced childbirth but then afterwards (from the “fruit” incident) experience such more painfully with Cain and then Able being the first of humans birthed in her accursed state? Cain did gain a wife after all (and yes I’m not afraid to tell scoffers it was one of his sisters!).

So a lot of unanswered questions, but I trust we’re not quite ready as spiritual people for the answers just yet. My internal sense is that the answers will someday blow our minds and will cause all to clap and cheer(as the OT says) when God destroys evil off of the Earth and Satan is chained up for a thousand years! The answers I suspect may cause many in our current state of development to despair or lose heart, or as Christ told the disciples “I have many things to tell you but you can’t bear them yet!”.


108 posted on 02/07/2018 9:44:05 AM PST by mdmathis6 (Men and Devils can't out-"alinsksy" God! He knows where "all the bodies are buried!")
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