Thus we see that the human spirit was to be a sovereign under a Sovereign. It was also to be the middleman between the eternal and the temporal; the unseen and the seen; the divine and the human; the heavenly and the earthly. The spirit had its windows opened heavenward and Godward and through spiritual perception, insight and vision it was constantly receiving spiritual impressions which were to be sent outward by way of the soul to the body. The spirit through unbroken fellowship with the Holy Spirit was to be the channel through which the whole being of God's first man would be linked to the life of God and so made and kept spiritual.
This brief study of the threefold nature of God's first man, Adam, shows us that his human personality was so constituted that he could always think, love and will within the circle of God's will. He could choose to live under the authority of his divine Sovereign. There was nothing within himself to hinder perfect obedience to the will of God.
One other question remains to be answered. Was there anything without his life to hinder? Was Adam's environment conductive to complete and continuous obedience to God's will?
God placed His perfect man in a perfect environment. The picture given in Genesis of the garden of Eden is that of a place in which there was satisfaction and sufficiency for every need of man's spirit, soul and body. The Creator had made Himself responsible for meeting bountifully every need of His Creator. Even the brief account given of the life of Adam in Eden reveals perfect adjustment to his environment. Righteousness ruled; therefore, peace resulted. There was nothing within hi environment to hind perfect obedience to the will of God.
God not only placed this perfect man in a perfect environment but His own relationship with Adam was perfect. It was a relationship both of communion and cooperation.
Adam had communion with God. Man was made for God. There is ample Scriptural authority for this statement in such verses as Isa. 43:7, 21; Col. 1:16; Rev. 4:11. The fact that man was made in the image of God in his intellectual, moral and volitional life shows that God desired fellowship with him and made him with the capacity for such fellowship which was not given to any other of His creatures. The beautiful words in Genesis 3:8, "And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day," reveal God even taking the initiative in seeking communion and comradeship with Adam and Eve. So God's first man walked and talked with God as friend with friend; he was able to know and to enjoy God as a kindred nature; he was in inner, spiritual harmony with God.
God's first man also had cooperation with God in His governmental activities. Adam was God's vice-regent, as it were, over all His works: he was the executive instrument by divine appointment to carry out the divine purpose. God made Adam His representative as the visible monarch of all living things. "He had dominion over the fish of the sea, over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." Within his own sphere he was made a sovereign, subordinate only to God.
One thing more remains to be said concerning God's first man. Adam was not only an individual but he was the federal head of the human race. God made His first man the head and representative of man. H. C. Moule in his "Outlines of Christian Doctrine", says: "Adam was a true individual, as truly as Abel. But, unlike his son, he was, what only one other Being has ever been, the moral, intelligent Head of a moral, intelligent race; not only the first specimen of a newly created Nature, but in such a sense the Spring of that nature to his after-kind that in him not only the individual but the race could, in some all important respects, he dealt with." Adam by God's appointment was the source of human life of all mankind: the head of the human family. He was God's first representative man. Through him in creation God established a union with the whole human race. Then He commanded Adam to be fruitful and multiply.
God's first man, then, was perfect; he was put in a perfect environment and he had perfect fellowship with God. Harmony reigned within himself, within all his relationships both with the inferior creatures beneath him and with the sovereign Creator above him. There was everything within and without his life to foster complete submission to the sovereignty of God and perfect obedience to His will. Would he be content to remain a sovereign under a Sovereign? Would he choose continuously to live within the circle of God's will? Would his whole personality be kept under the control of the Divine Spirit and so maintain its life on the spiritual plane? If so, then through this first man, made in His own image and controlled by His divine Spirit, God would people the earth with beings who would also bear His likeness, yield to His sovereignty, serve Him with fruitfulness, and live together in righteousness and peace.
G. Campbell Morgan in "The Crisis of the Christ" states Adam's position before God in the following paragraph, "Finite will is to be tested, and it will stand or fall as it submits to or rebels against the Infinite Will of the Infinite God. Thus unfallen man was a being created in the image of God, living in union with God, cooperating in activity with God, having the points of limitation of his being marked by simple and definite commands laid upon him, gracious promises luring him to that which was highest on the one hand, and a solemn sentence warning him from that which was lowest on the other. He was a sovereign under a Sovereignty, independent, but dependent. He had the right of will, but this could only be exercised in perpetual submission to the higher will of God."
Genesis 2:16-17, "And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ... of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it."
Here is God's will expressed in concrete form. Through this command God puts the test to His first man. Adam had the right to will and he had the power to will Godward.
~Ruth Paxson~
(continued with # 8 - "Life on the Lowest Plane"
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