Work Shop The Four Aspects of the Divine Decree

When the Lord God created man He made four decrees:

Man is to be in the image of God.

Man is to be male and female.

Man is to be fruitful.

Man is to have dominion over the other creatures.

Such is God’s eternal will concerning mankind. God has no intention of saving our first personality. Adam simply cannot enter the Kingdom of God Kingdom of God. God’s provision for the first, adamic creation is the cross. The world has been crucified to us and we to the world.

Christianity has been a religion in which the first, soulish creation seeks to adorn itself so God will bring it to Heaven to be with Him. One might as well expect a pig to be a suitable guest in the parlor. The proud, stubborn, self-seeking, natural mind of man always is the enemy of God.

We can neither see nor enter the Kingdom of God Kingdom of God until we are born again of the Divine Nature. That which is born in us is Christ. It is the Kingdom of God Kingdom of God. It is of God. Everything that God intends to preserve from our first nature must die in Christ and then be raised again in Christ.

Primary Scriptures

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." (Genesis 1:27,28)

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: (II Corinthians 5:17 ,18)

You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. (John 15:16)

To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne. (Revelation 3:21)

Essential Points of Emphasis

To the present hour, the only man that ever lived on the earth in the eternal fulfillment of the proclamation concerning the image of God is the Lord Jesus Christ. We are to become as our Lord is—son of man and son of God. Our adamic nature serves as a root on which is grafted the Divine Life of God. Our physical body is adopted. The coexistence of the human and Divine constitutes a new kind of humanity which can fulfill perfectly the four aspects of the Divine fiat concerning man.

Suggested References

The Creation of the Eternal Personality; The Great Design; A Suitable Helper

Follow up Activities

Answer Review Questions for this topic. 12

List additional Scriptures which support this concept.

Summarize this topic in your own words in one paragraph.

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