Man in Adam and in Christ

The papers in this volume were published over a period of some fifteen years. The experiences of those fifteen years only confirm in my mind that man is indeed a fallen creature in whom there is no thought, word, or deed that is not corrupted in one way or another. This is the burden of the first paper ("The Fall Was Down").To pretend that human nature has improved or is improvable by natural means is the worst form of deception. Other creatures do not suffer this fatal sickness, except in so far as man has corrupted their God-given instincts--which are surely nothing less than the laws of God written in their hearts. In this sense, animals (all living things, in fact, apart from man) are still "in God" and therefore part of His kingdom. This is the subject matter of the second paper ("Nature as Part of the Kingdom of God").But man has possibilities which these other creatures do not have, because he was once stamped with something which Scripture calls God's image. Many different interpretations of what this image is have been proposed. The third paper ("The Terms 'Image' and 'Likeness' as Used in Genesis 1:26") explores some of these and proposes one which has obvious merits of its own.Once this image is restored by an act of re-creation on God's part in response to a saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, a new work then begins: the formation of a personality pleasing to God. The fourth paper ("The Development of Personality: The Old and the New") looks at this process to see how much is entirely new and how much is retained of the old; that is, in what way man is both entirely a new creation in Christ, yet still recognizably the same individual