Page 26 - The Divine Unfolding of God's Plan of Redemption

These two principles are utterly at variance with one another and cannot permanently
inhabit the same domain.

It is obviously the divine purpose that the king and queen, Adam and Eve, that
shining couple fresh from the Creative hand, should not only be the heads of all parts
of the cosmic order but should also produce a posterity of God-conscious ones who
could share their intimate fellowship with the Holy One. The command was to “Be

fruitful and multiply.” We read in Gen. 2:7 that when that Lord God formed man of
the dust of the ground He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a
living soul. The interesting thing is that instead of the mere singular of his own life
being breathed into him, he represented corporately the lives of all those who should

proceed from him.

We see then the great responsibility resting upon Adam. He was not merely the
head of the lower cosmic order but he was also the head of a posterity of creatures like

himself, who in filling the earth and subduing it were to carry on the same sort of
spiritual dominion vested in him.

Any action on his part must affect not only the creation that was placed under him,

but also the countless lives which he yet contained within himself. The warning and
prohibition against the eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was only
enunciated once, as far as the record goes. There was, however, no lack of clarity in its
statement, and it was clearly understood by both Adam and Eve.

Oh, that the beauty of this condition of things might have been maintained! that
death and all its concomitant evils might never have entered, is the thought that comes
to our hearts! Our first parents were said to have been “naked” and yet not ashamed. It

is eminently significant that the word used in Gen.2:25 for “naked” is different from
the one used in 3:10 after the fall. The first simply means unclothed, and the second
has the force of “disrobed.” In the first case they were unclothed as far as having any
covering for their physical bodies was concerned, but they were then clad in the

garments of righteousness and light; in the second instance they were disrobed of their
attire of holiness and knew that they had not wherewith to stand in the presence of
God. The words of Thomas Binney come to our mind:

Oh, how shall I whose native sphere is dark,
Whose mind is dim,
Before the Ineffable appear,
And on my naked spirit bear

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