Wednesday What is man?

What was man like before the fall?

What were his abilities?

Acts 17:28 for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His descendants.’

Ge 2:7

then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

Ps 8

title To the choirmaster: according to The Gittith. A Psalm of David. 1 O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. 2 Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger. 3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, 4 what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? 5 Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. 6 You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, 7 all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, 8 the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. 9 O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Eph 2:1–3

1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

First, Man was then a very glorious creature.

Man was then a very glorious creature. We have reason to suppose, that as Moses' face shone when he came down from the mount, so man had a very lightsome and pleasant countenance, and beautiful body, while as yet there was no darkness of sin in him at all. But seeing God himself is glorious in holiness, (Exod. xv. 11.) surely that spiritual comeliness the Lord put upon man at his creation, made him a very glorious creature. O! how did light shine in his holy conversation, to the glory of the Creator! while every action was but the darting forth of a ray and beam of that glorious, unmixed light▪ which God had set up in his soul; while that lamp of love, lighted from Heaven, continued burning in his heart, as in the holy place; and the law of the Lord, put in his inward parts by the finger of God, was kept by him there, as in the most holy: There was no impurity to be seen without; no squint look in the eyes, after any unclean thing; the tongue spoke nothing but the language of Heaven: And, in a word, The King's son was all glorious within, and his clothing of wrought gold.

He was the favourite of Heaven: He shone brightly in the image of God. who cannot but love his own image, where-ever it appears. While he was alone in the world, he was not alone, for God was with him: His communion and fellowship was with his Creator, and that immediately; for as yet there was nothing to turn away the face of God from the work of his own hands; seeing sin had not as yet entered, which alone could make the breach.

perfect obedience was the condition: life was the thing promised, and death the penalty. As for the condition, one great branch of the natural Law was, that man believe whatsoever God shall reveal, and do whatsoever he shall command: Accordingly God making this Covenant with man, extended his duty to the not eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; and the law thus extended, was the rule of man's covenant-obedience. How easy were these terms to him, who had the natural law written on his heart; and that inclining him to obey this positive Law, revealed to him, it seems, by an audible voice, (Gen. ii. 16.) the matter whereof was so very easy ? And indeed it was highly reasonable that the rule and matter of his covenant-obedience should be thus extended: that which was added, being a thing in itself indifferent, where his obedience was to turn upon the precise point of the will of God, the plainest evidence of true obedience, and it being in an external thing, wherein his obedience ...