The miracle of eternal life

 After Adam and Eve lost their first two sons, to murder and to exile respectively, they had another. Seth was born "in the image and likeness" of his father Adam (Genesis 5:3). Noah was a descendant of Seth, and everyone on earth today is a descendant of Noah. It follows that each man on earth is an image of an image of ... an image of Noah.

After humans had attempted and failed, for about 4000 years, to live the way our Creator had intended, Jesus was sent into the world. Eve had been promised that someone of her "seed" would come to crush the head of the snake who had deceived her (Genesis 3:15). The images of Adam in all the men had become too corrupt to produce a new kind of human. Therefore Mary conceived Jesus by the power of the "Most High" (Luke 1:35). Paul called Jesus the "second Adam" which is also the "last Adam" (1 Corinthians 15:45-47).

Jesus is therefore both human and divine. Most of the non-Jewish Christians of the first few centuries came from a Hellenistic (Greek) culture. They struggled with the idea that a divine being could live in a material body, since they regarded matter as inherently evil and spirit as good. The early church debated the issue for centuries and drafted creeds to differentiate between catholic (general/orthodox) faith and heresy. If Jesus was not divine, it would be idolatry to worship him. That is why today Jehovah's Witnesses, Muslims and Jews accuse Christians of idolatry. To make sure the flock understood the official position of the Church, the Nicene Creed (AD 325) states among others that Jesus was "begotten, not made, of the same essence as the Father". The Creed of Chalcedon (AD 451) went further and officially declared the Virgin Mary to be "Theotokos", the Greek word for "God-bearer" which some translate as Mother of God. Not all modern day followers of Jesus approve of this designation.

Because "all have sinned", we all deserve to die (Romans 3:23). This is according to the announcement of the Lord (Genesis 2:16-17; Ezekiel 18:4). Jesus never sinned but he identified with sinners, even to the extent that he was baptised. John baptised people who confessed that they were sinners (Mark 1:4). Jesus was baptised by John "to fulfil all righteousness" (Matthew 3:15). This means that he was going to die like a sinner and make it possible for those who believed in him to be regarded as righteous (Galatians 2:16). By faith in Jesus we become new creatures (2 Corinthians 5:17). We are the new humanity of which Jesus, the second Adam, was the first. His claim to this title was confirmed by his resurrection from the dead.

The miracle of life

 I recently had a scare. My blood pressure soared and I had chest pains. It got me to think of the function of my heart. It is a pump that has not stopped working for more than 78 years. It is the engine that moves blood to every part of my body. If any part of my body is deprived of blood for a period, irreversible damage is incurred. The period depends on the body part; for the brain it is minutes, for muscles a few hours. Christian and Judaic doctrine states that the life is in the blood. That was why Noah, and by implication all mankind, was forbidden to eat blood (Genesis 9:4).

My mind went to how my life had originated. A little cell in my mother came into the environment where it was susceptible to unite with one of the thousands of cells of my father. Each cell was a little factory with a very specific instruction set in its DNA. After the cells had combined into one, the new little factory started to make more cells, acting on the information contained in the DNA of the merged cell. That was the beginning of what was to become a fully functional human being. If you'll excuse my satire, when I think of this process, I want to exclaim "Evolution is very clever!"

Where does the human soul come into this? Both the Hebrew and Greek words for "soul" are words also used for "life". Who knows when consciousness dawns on the new baby? What is important is that there is life in each human, life which he/she inherits from the first human (Acts 17:26). That means we each have a "spark" of the Divine, each being an image of God, although a distorted image.

The process of restoration of God's image in each person begins when the person is "born from above" (John 3:3). This means one has to be willing to "live by the Spirit" (Galatians 5:25). But whoever desires to live by the Spirit has to forsake love of the "fleshly life" (John 12:24-25). Jesus did not only set the example, he made it possible (Ephesians 2:1-5).