Gods Plan of Salvation | Page 2

man in our image, in our likeness, and let them
rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over
the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures
that move along the ground." 27 So God created man in
his own image, in the image of God he created him; male
and female he created them. 28 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." 29 Then God said, "I give you every seed-
bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every
tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for
food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds
of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground —
everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every
green plant for food." And it was so. 31 God saw all that
he had made, and it was very good. And there was
evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
First of all let's note that God said, “Let us make man in
our image” This really points us to the fact that God is
within himself a social person. This means two things:
a) that God in making us in his image made us a social
beings and
b) that God desires relationship with himself. W e are
reminded of the saying of Augustine of Hippo: “Thou hast
made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless till they
rest in thee.” Verse 28 also reminds us that God left us in
charge of the earth. We are his vice-regents. These are
important points.
BUT:
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Read on into Genesis chapter 3 and we see how it all
went horribly wrong when Adam and Eve were tempted to
eat of the fruit which God had forbidden them.
So the fellowship between God and man was broken, and
not only that, man had abrogated that position as God's
vice -regent on earth. Human relationships were
disrupted, human work became toil and even the creation
itself suffered. But God was not about to ditch his
creation, least of all mankind, the pinnacle of his creation,
made in his own image. Even before God placed curses
on Adam and Eve and on the Creation, he had placed a
curse on Satan who had begun it all by tempting Eve. In
Gen 3:15 we read of God's curse on the serpent:
And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and
between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel."
Then, you notice, we are given the promise..of the certainty of the
triumph of God and His way. The serpent was going to be
bruised...he would be destroyed. Can you not see that there is a
prefiguring of Calvary?...And there, in the light of subsequent
Scripture,that the real Seed is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ 1
If we read this carefully, we read that while the serpent
(Satan) would bruise Adam's heel, yet Adam's 'offspring'
would crush his head. The word used for 'offspring' is
actually singular: one man in particular would crush
Satan. God, from the outset, had planned how he would
overcome the effects of the Fall.
That really takes us to the point of the rest of this book
and of its title: God's plan of salvation. But one point we
need to get in mind straight-away is the fact that God left
us to be his vice-regents; to care for his creation.
Charles Colson puts it to us quite directly:
The Fall affects all of nature. Because Adam and Eve were given
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dominion over the rest of creation, their rebellion injected disorder into
all of creation......Scripture clearly teaches that sin ruptured the
physical as well as the moral order.2
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2. SALVATION
Human sin in Adam and Eve had brought curses on
themselves, on Satan and on God's creation.
Salvation, which means rescue, meant God's reversal
of the results of the Fall, so there is a way back.
Justification by faith.
For our western ears and minds, we could almost write an
equation “Salvation=Justification” For a great majority of
evangelical Christians, this is a truth, to denounce which
brings to us outright condemnation!
But: W hat do we mean by 'justification'? And how did it
become to be such a sine-qua-non doctrine?
Let us first see how we came by this doctrine. Martin
Luther was a Catholic monk, who was tormented in his
soul by the righteousness of God, which he felt could do
nothing but condemn him. He had spent years in self-
discipline, in