Are You Thinking God's Thoughts After Him Or Still Thinking His Thoughts For Him?

(v.26) Then God said, Let us create an Adam in Our image, according to Our likeness; in him (double waw-conjunctive (i.e., therefore consecutive), third person, masculine, plural, jussive) they will rule over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and every creeping thing on the earth.

(vs.27-28) So God created Adam in His own image; in the image of God that man was created; male and female He created as many more as them that God has blessed, for to them God has said, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill this earth and subdue it, taking dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

I want to answer the question raised by the booklet “How Can We Rescue Those Being Taken Away To Death?” by addressing first the idolatrous motivation to respond to a sinful problem such as abortion by cheapening the Word of God and exchanging it for lies. While I don’t want to discourage anyone from laboring to answer and respond to this question Biblically, I do want to raise concerns about the motivation and the practice that, from my perspective and Biblical convictions, bring reproach upon the Word and therefore bears no spiritual fruit to God because the response isn’t born out of a proper understanding of the Word of God (Jn.15:5). Christians have been trying to abolish abortion through the legislature and courts for decades, but it never bears any fruit. So if we are making our stand on righteousness, we must ask the question: “Why isn’t the righteousness of our God bearing any fruit?” The answer can only be that we are not exercising it in God’s way. And here’s why:

In the booklet “How Can We Rescue Those Being Taken Away To Death?” several ‘affirmations’ are made to establish the motivational groundwork in demonstrating this call to rescue those taken captive to do the devil’s will. There is much to say about the context of the Proverb that is being used to set us up to act, which I don’t have time to get into now, but they are using it as the foundation for a political agenda in an arena that God has not promised to bless. The devil would have us pour all our resources into combating an evil that he knows we can’t win in the playground of his own kingdom, for he works exclusively through the kingdoms of men. And it is his kingdom that God has given over to this spiritual darkness. As children of the light, we are to promote and encourage righteous laws that restrain evil and keep the darkness in the corners of God’s house (2Tim.2:19-21), but the light that God has given to the world is through Jesus Christ of Nazareth and his church, not through any human institution (Matt.16:18). Therefore, wherever the systems of the world are administrated by fallen hearts, that kingdom operates in the darkness by the doctrines of demons who hate the light of Christ. Therefore the premise of the argument is built on trying to save a system of government that has no light and operates under the spiritual forces of darkness (Eph.6:12). It is a failure to recognize the enemy of our souls, which is created after the image of sin and death (Jn.8:44). It is a failure to behold (yourself) in the mirror of God’s just condemnation of the sin of the world (Rom.3:9-20). It is a self-righteous presumption that any soul deserves the right to life (Gen.18:17-19:26). Therefore the image of our salvation must always be according to the likeness of God’s grace.

Therefore the first affirmation of this booklet begins its argument with a faulty and idolatrous view of man. It presumes on God that all life has equal value in the exercise and demonstration of His glory in the act of His creation. It presumes on God that He must act according to His love and mercy and never upon His justice. It is a failure to affirm what man is according to the just nature of God in the purpose of demonstrating His glory according to His holy will (Isa.46:8-13). It is also a false doctrine created out of fear and unbelief in the sovereignty of God as the Creator to do with His creation as He pleases (Rom.9:14-24). While the enemies of God do believe and so act to usurp His sovereign authority, there are none that suffer and die apart from this divine sovereignty, even in the womb of the fruit of sin’s nature. So all that is seemingly unjust in the mind of the creature is perfectly just in the mind of God. Not even the sparrows fall to the ground apart from the Father’s will. So let’s dig into this presumptive affirmation.

1). From the moment of fertilization, all humans are created in God’s image by, through, and for Jesus to the glory of God, all souls belong to Him (Gen..1:27; 4:1; 21:2; Isa.7:14; Col.1:16; Rom.11:36; Ezk.18:4).

While I must agree and submit to the majority of the above statement, I can only submit to it in part. It is true that all humans are created by, through, and for Jesus to the glory of God, and that all souls belong (to the Father), but not all souls remain the hand of Christ by the image of His perfect sacrifice (Jn.10:26-30; 17:9). Christ is the image and glory of God made in human flesh through which Adam and the spiritual seed of God’s promise are blessed according to the proper authorial intent of the Genesis 1:27 proof text by which ‘the affirmation above’ is using to establish this motivational doctrine to rescue those being carried away to death. But you cannot interpret Gen.1:27 apart from Gen.1:26, for that sets the definition of what God means by the image of God. The image of God cannot be understood apart from the ‘likeness’ of God’s nature and character (Rom.8:8-10; Jn.6:53). Therefore this could only be found in Jesus Christ of Nazareth (Ecc.7:29; Jn.1:14; 8:12; Col.1:15-20). Therefore this image that all persons are created in God must be in conformity to the image of Christ (2Cor.5:14-19), for it is only by Him that world given over to reprobation and sin is reconciled to God (Rom.8:28-30). We cannot go back by way of Adam’s created order and be reconciled (Gen.3:24), for that was the judgment of God (Jn.16:7-12), and that is why Christ had to die as the substitute (Gen.3:22-24; Rom.5:12-21). The ‘likeness’ of Adam’s sin made everyone at conception sinners (in the hands of an angry God (Jn.10:29) because of the nature of God’s truth and justice (Gen.2:17; Rom.5:19; Ps.51:5). In the likeness of Adam’s sin, everyone grows up reprobate until they are taught to call upon the name of the Lord through the discipline of suffering (Rom.1:18-25; 2:11-16; Gen.4:26).

I understand that this is strong meat and is hard to swallow down a throat that is an open grave (Rom.3:13), but it is the necessary food that will sustain your soul from the separation of the children of disobedience from the sons that will be revealed in the glory of God’s light (Rom.8:18-19; Eph.2:1-10; 5:6-11; Col.3:1-7), for reconciliation is in conformity to Christ’s image alone (Col.3:9-11; Eph.2:14-18; 4:17-24). So our efforts should not be in seeking those who are content in preserving the image of this world that God has fixed in his righteous judgment and set on a course and pattern of destruction into the bondage of death (Rev.20:13-14) but to search for the true worshippers of God who are being renewed in their mind by the mind of Christ and have been transformed into the image of Christ’s sacrificial life, death, and resurrection as new creations in Christ (Jn.4:10, 21-24; Rom.12:1-2; 1Cor.2:10-16). Therefore, “from the moment of fertilization,” we are not image-bearers of God that have, as the second affirmation implies, “divine worth, power, and attributes before God” (Eph.2:1; Rom.6:11). Lord willing, I will get into breaking down that argument later, but first, let’s undermine this affirmation as false according to its own presumption of selective Bible verses taken out of context. Again, Gen.1:26-27 is not teaching nor defending that all persons are created in the image of God. But what does it say? I’m not going to get into any translation debate right now, but I will defend and am prepared to defend my translation if I have to.

(v.26) Then God said, Let us create an Adam in Our image, according to Our likeness; in him, they will rule over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and every creeping thing on the earth.

(vs.27-28) So God created Adam in His own image; in the image of God that man was created; male and female He created as many more as them that God has blessed, for to them God has said, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill this earth and subdue it, taking dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Image is not defined here as simply an intelligent being that supersedes the value of the animal kingdom, which is able to reason above it in such a way that it understands its own created order. No, image is defined here as being able to reason with God according to God’s own ‘likeness.’ This is contrary, however, to what the Bible teaches about the fallen nature of man born ‘under’ sin when we apply the rest of Scripture to our definition of the image and likeness of God. Therefore we cannot and must not use verse 27 as a proof text without verse 26 that qualifies the image of God to His own likeness (1Cor.2:6). This is a sword of truth that only the spiritual man can swallow. So are you mature enough to receive it (Jn.1:12-13)? The natural man is not able to receive the things of God apart from the likeness of God (1Cor.2:10-16). Therefore we have to plow this unholy ground thoroughly so that the gospel is our true motivation to “hold back those being taken away to death.” The gospel isn’t about our glory but God’s. Therefore we have to swallow every hard truth. We must take all of Christ in, or we will remain full of our sinful self. To be truly conformed to Christ’s image, there must first be the emptying of self (Jn.6:63-70; Matt.16:15-17; Jn.3:30).

Therefore the motivation to love the lesser creature must not be what we dream of the creature to be for us, as we see what Eve has done regarding Cain (Gen.4:1), but rather from what that lesser creature requires in order to be built up into the glory of God, as what we see in Abel who was the substitute for Eve’s sin (Gen.4:25). This requires a true confession of what that lesser creature is under the Almighty hand of God, for all who come through Adam’s seed are the lesser creature (Gen.5:3, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, 27, 31, (i.e., “. . . and he died”); Jn.3:19-21, 36). Such a creature needs to be saved from God’s wrath, which is (the work) of the law written upon the emptiness and void of darkness in the human heart (Isa.45:7; Ecc.3:11; Pr.4:19). This void of darkness and emptiness is the absence of God according to the likeness of God’s own light (1Jn.1:5). But Eve was promised salvation through her seed (Gen.3:15-16) but was not seeking to conceive by “the Spirit of God” (Isa.7:14; Matt.1:18, 20; Lk.1:31, 34-37). Therefore to impart life to a child born in darkness requires the light of Christ’s life (Ps.139:15-16; Acts 2:25-36), who is the eternal Word and image of God (Phil.4:3; Rev.3:5; 13:8; 17:8; 20:12, 15; 21:27; 22:19). To save souls being carried away to death, we must bring the light of Word into the world that fell under the darkness of the spiritual lie of the evil one (1Jn.5:19; Jn.8:44).

Now, again, the image described here is both through Adam and through Christ, but since this image was corrupted by Adam according to the likeness of his sin (Rom.5:12-21), the dominion by which Adam rules the creation was covered over in darkness, as it is written, “. . . [in him] they will rule over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and every creeping thing on the earth.” But the creation became a curse to Adam and his children because of sin, for it is no longer “blessed” unto him to bear fruit (to God) as was the original creation mandate (Gen.1:28; 3:17-19). Therefore the blessing was removed in Adam so that the blessing (and the glory) would come through the exclusivity of Christ (Jn.14:6; 15:5; Heb.11:6). Therefore the motivation of all our love must be born out of the incorruptible seed of God’s glory in the image and person of Jesus Christ (1Pet.1:23), not for anything that we see of value in the creature for us (Rom.1:23; Matt.16:26). All our love towards the creation must first be out of obedience to God our Father, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing “in Christ.” To return by way of the image of God in Adam is to return to the image of sin and death (Gal.3:10-14), which is the way of works, and works that bear fruit unto death, for to this end is for which the last Adam (Christ) died to bring an end to the curse of sin and death according to the course of this world and the pattern of Adam’s likeness (Rom.10:4; 1Cor.15:42-49, 54-58).

Therefore “as many as” the Lord our God will call according to His own blessing (in Christ) are those who will inherit the final dominion when God restores this spiritual kingdom of the Son of His love (Acts 2:39; 13:48; Ps.37:11; Acts 1:6-8; Col.1:13), replenishing the whole earth according to the glory that is in Christ (Isa.6:3; Ps.72:17; Acts 3:19-21). God loved us while we were still enemies in nature (Col.1:21; Rom.5:8-10), and therefore the Son endured our hostility against this great love for His own glory (Heb.12:1-4), but its joy nonetheless was the motivation of His love towards us. This mind, too, must be in us as the motivation of our love towards sinners of our own likeness (Phil.2:5-8). To the degree that we have loved ourselves in the glory of God’s love, we are to love our enemies, having once been enemies according to the same nature (Rom.12:3; Eph.2:1-3; 4:13). Since we were of the same likeness, we should be able to show great mercy without ever denying the sinfulness of sin in every creature and the righteous justice of God against those creatures in the sufferings of sin and death in and according to the Providence of God’s creation (Rom.11:22; 1Tim.2:12-15).

Therefore according to Providence, “at the moment of fertilization,” all persons are made sinners according to Adam’s likeness and deserve death and Hell (Heb.3:7-15), but since God has shown us mercy, we are commanded by the liberty of the Spirit to triumph over this justice according to God’s good grace (in the glory of Christ) (James 1:25; 2:10-13). But this doesn’t mean that we are able to force people to walk in the pattern of this newness of life according to the likeness of God through civil law (Isa.10;1; Jn.3:3; Ezk.36:22-34; Jer.31:31-37). It does, however, mean that we should restrain the evil of murder by promoting God’s law and reinforcing God’s restraining law in the legal system (2Thess.2:3-7), but for men “to be motivated” to do this through civil law is not possible apart from the new birth in Christ; therefore judgment begins with the church (1Pet.4:17). We must elect people, while we still have free elections, who are righteous (in God’s sight) that will conform the legal system to God’s restraining grace (Rom.6:23). But neither should this be done apart from being motivated to love God’s glory first and not to promote our own glory by merely standing on a love for righteous cause (Matt.6:33). It will not bear fruit to God that will endure in this age or the one to come if it is motivated by anything less than God’s glory in Jesus Christ (1Sam.17:45).

What we see in our present generations are politicians who are seeking first their own glory, banking all hope in this political lie that the enemy of our souls would love for us to hold onto so that we waste our present resources on what does not profit our souls, which are the politics of men (Ps.146:3; Pr.28:2; Dan.8:25). No, we must cut the heart of this evil out from the pride and glory of our chests and humble ourselves by returning to the only resource God has promised to bless, which is the church that Christ has redeemed with His own blood (Hag.1:4). God has not promised this blessing to every State institution, for He has only one elect nation, and that nation is also presently under judgment for exchanging the glory of God for the lie. Let us hold fast to the pillar and buttress of the faith, which is the church of Jesus Christ (1Tim.3:15). That is the institution that God has promised to use to bless our hearts with salvation and the motivation to do righteousness and justice in the land.

The next objection to the above aforementioned ‘affirmation’ is regarding using Genesis 4:1 as a proof text. First of all, it is not sufficient in affirming the argument for several reasons. God is not the author of this statement, so we can’t say definitively that God is saying anything directly about the image of God beginning at fertilization, according to this text. Second, God never speaks affirmatively of Eve’s thought here. Since we are to think God’s thoughts after Him, it is proper to ask the question if Eve is thinking God’s thoughts after Him. And if God is speaking here, it is not in harmony with what Eve is proclaiming for herself. Therefore God is not associating Himself with Eve’s statement of faith here, for it is not according to His likeness. Consider what she says, “I have acquired a (male) from the LORD.” But let’s break down this thought as it unfolds in God’s sovereignty. The Hebrew term here translated as man is not the same Hebrew word as Adam. She is not saying that she acquired another Adam. It is the Hebrew word for male, and it progresses into the term for husband throughout the Hebrew Bible. So what Eve is saying here by naming this male child “Cain” is that she acquired “a possession” from the LORD, for the very name Cain means “possession.” But the fruit of this thought is not blessed by God from its very beginning. The fruit of her womb grew up into sin, and that sin led into another death, which also was the fruit of her womb by virtue of Adam’s seed and the combination of her faith to acquire a possession from the LORD. So if God is saying anything here, He is not saying she acquired it from the LORD, for it was worked out through her own resources (Jn.8:44), which led in effect to sin and death. Therefore this was not a spiritual seed of the LORD, for she never offered the conception up as the LORD’s possession since Cain was her firstborn (Ex.34:19; Num.3:13; 8:17). She thought she could raise the child in her own way to be her deliverer from the rule of Adam, for she was Adam’s possession (from the LORD). So, according to her own possession, she gave birth to sin and death after her own wicked imagination (Gen.6:5-7; 8:20-21).

Therefore if God was saying anything by this conception, He was saying “sin and death” is her possession because she tried to create a deliverer according to her own likeness. But God is going to deliver her by His own image according to His own likeness. This she could not learn until she saw Abel’s blood associated with the righteous offering that the LORD accepted in Abel’s sacrifice (Gen.4:25). In this, she was made to see that it is God who “appoints” the righteous seed that is to be built up according to His own spiritual seed of truth and justification after the faith and image of the promise. Therefore to use Isa.7:14 as the affirmation that all persons are made in the image of God at fertilization is a heresy and a false application of the Scripture. Isa. 7:14 is speaking only of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who is “acquired” by faith according to the grace of the second birth, not through our fertilization into the state of sin and death (Rom.3:24; 6:23).

So how can we rescue those being taken away to death? Preach to them about a second birth, and pray to God that they would be raised up in the light and life of Christ’s Word. But secondly, fear for them where they do not fear for their own souls. For as the latter affirmation says, “. . . all souls belong to Him.” Now they mean Christ, but the Spirit means God the Father according to the Ezk.18:4 passage, and since they belong to God under His Almighty wrath, they should learn to fear Him who has the power, after He has killed, to cast the body and the soul into the torments of the eternal fire of Hell. Because all souls are God’s, all souls are at God’s disposal. But God has commanded His own children to love the enemies of God a particular way, and that way is according to Christ’s manner of love, walking in the fulness of grace and truth according to the measure that Providence has dealt each one of His spiritual children with under the rod of Christ’s substitution (Ps.23:4). We must understand how to walk in the steps of Christ with the Word as the lamp to our feet and the guiding light to our path. We must come under and disciple others to come under the headship of Christ according to the image of 1Cor.11:7.

“Hyparchon” does not permit “eikon” ( the image laid out here) to be referring to humankind. If we parse the verb hyparchon, we get “hyp” and “archon.” “Hyp” means (below) or (less than normal). But “archon” means (beginning) or (ruler). This means that “the” man or the husband of this wife is less than who is his head and ruler being antecedent to Christ in verse three (1Cor.11:3). Therefore since the verb is active, it would be better translated as “becoming,” having his (beginning) in Christ as his head, whereas without Christ, he remains “less than” according to Adam’s dead image, but the image being represented here is “doxa” and “archon” of the headship of Christ. But this ‘becoming’ is essential to the headship of Christ’s image being the highest dignitary (doxa) or glory of God according to the “likeness” of God’s Spirit (Gen.1:26) as 2Pet.2:10 and Jude 8 make the distinction between the spiritual race and the carnal race of Adam’s likeness in “flesh and blood” (Acts 17:26; 1Cor.2:14-15; 3:1-3; 14:37; 15:44, 50; Gal.6:1; Eph.6:12; Rom.8:6-7; 2Cor.7:1; Gal.3:3; Acts 2:17; Matt.16:17). So it could be as easily translated, “For indeed a praying man should not hide his headship, since he is becoming the image and glory of God, even as the wife is becoming the glory of her man.” This headship doesn’t have a beginning except in marriage. Therefore, in the same way a wife is made willing to submit to her husband through marriage, the praying man has his beginning in God’s image through submission to Christ’s headship. Therefore it cannot generally be speaking of all humankind. It is qualified by a man who prays without a covering, which symbolizes submission to the governing culture as his headship. Therefore it is describing a man who is not ashamed to publically identify that Christ is his headship as Christ is in God, indicating he has no other ruler above him but Christ in God (Matt.10:25). A prayerful man is not to hide his headship.

What man “represents” God according to the likeness of God?

The Hebrew word “selem” cannot be referring to how Adam represented God (Rom.5:14), for that “eikon” now represents the “likeness” of sin exchanging the “doxa” of God for the “doxa” of flesh and blood in submission to his wife (Rom.1:23; 8:3; 1Cor.11:7). Sin brought down the likeness of God to the likeness of the fallen men to redeem this headship in God. Therefore the image referred to here cannot be the cheap imitation of humankind referenced by the use of “eikon.” Rather, the masculine participle “hyparchon” (he) is antecedent, not to the husband who is a cheap imitation of Christ, but to Christ himself acting as the head of every man and God the head of Christ. Nevertheless, since the verb is ‘nominative,’ it is antecedent to the husband. But it is referring to him as one literally “under rule” (hyparchon) according to the image of Christ under God (Gen.1:26; 3:22; Phil.2:5-11), not according to Adam’s likeness under God’s Almighty wrath (Gen.5:3, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, 27, 31, (i.e., “. . . and he died”); Jn.3:19-21, 36). Therefore the image of our worship must not be in the likeness of Adam’s sin, which blasphemes the image of Christ (Ps.51:5; Gen.3:1-6), but must be transformed into the image of Christ where our worship is living and active (Heb.4:12) and not held under a pattern of dead works that have no life in God. Our fading pattern of works according to Adam’s death cannot reflect the light and life of Christ. Such works are dead works in God’s sight. But a new creation in Christ cannot fall away into the apostasy that is the life of the reprobate and of the sons of perdition. So it can also be easily translated, “For indeed a praying man should not hide his headship, since he is under rule according to the image and glory of God, even as the wife is the glory of the man.” Hiding this headship is exactly what Abram did when he lied about Sarai being his wife before the Pharaoh of Egypt (Gen.12:10-20). Therefore this image is according to a likeness that is upright in God’s sight (Ecc.7:29; Jn.4:22-24).

This is all I have time for in this look, but may the Lord bless it to your heart for a proper motivation according to the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.