Page 14 - Fundamentals 7 ebook 1-16-19_Neat

When God first created man in His image, God could look down
from heaven at man and see Himself. When He saw man He
would see His Son. When He saw man as He created man to
be He would be pleased because man would radiate Christ.
That was God’s original plan, that man would reflect Christ all
over the earth. You know the sad story. Adam #1 sinned. What
did Adam lose when he sinned against God? I know he lost
lordship/dominion. I know he lost his innocence. I know he
lost the garden. I know he lost most of his brain. He doesn’t
think like God created man to think. But bottom line, what did
he lose?

I’m suggesting that he lost the very thing that makes man a man.
The thing that makes man a man, as God intended man to be,
he sinned away. The Apostle Paul explains it in Ephesians 2:12,
“…remember that you were at that time separate from Christ,
excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the
covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the
world.” Before you were saved you were without Christ in the
world.

Ephesians 4:18, “…being darkened in their understanding,
excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is
in them, because of the hardness of their heart…” Man was
excluded from the life of God. What in the beginning was a
wonderful plan, that man would reflect Christ, has now been
destroyed; that unique part, the image of God, the life of God.
Are we surprised that man now lives like the animals? That’s
why. They are separated from what makes man a man. He fell
from humanity.

I want to show you Christ as the last Adam. We begin with the
Christmas story but I want to get to the heart of it. It’s not the
virgin birth. It’s not the star in the sky. It’s not the Wise Men.
It’s not the murder of all those little babies. It’s not the
shepherds. It’s not the announcement by the angels. It’s not
the five Christmas songs that we have in the New Testament.