Encore Post: Moses tells the story of creation twice. Hebrew writers believed that if something is important, you repeat it, but cover different details each time. The first story tells us how God created most of the universe simply by speaking — and it came to be! The creation of Adam and Eve is much different. God gets down on His hands and knees and makes us with His own hands. He does this because we are much more important to Him.
When God said, Let us make man in our own image, He did not mean that we look like Him or that we are the only beings that make decisions like He does. God made Adam and Eve to be holy like He is. Sadly, by trying to be just like God, (Genesis 3:5) Adam and Eve became less like Him. By the Cross, God once again makes us to be just like Him by making us to be just like Jesus. (Romans 8:28-29)
The creation of Adam and Eve reveals more about God and people than just that. God made Adam first and all alone. His first task was to name all the animals. Along the way, Adam noticed something was missing. There was no one just like him. God sums it up when he said, “I will make him a helper fit for him” So God made Eve from one of his ribs. With joy, Adam said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” (Genesis 2:23)
In doing this, God established marriage. From that day forward, a man and a woman will leave their parents and form a family, which, when God blesses, includes children. No other relationship prospers like this one, made and blessed by God. In it human beings come as close as they can come to reflecting the Holy Trinity. Two persons, distinct and their own, become one. Although sin has damaged the relationship between husbands and wives, parents and children, still God blesses families where father and mother love each other and care for their children. Those who grow up in families do better than all other situations in which they might find themselves. God was right. It is very good indeed.
Rev. Robert E. Smith
Concordia Theological Seminary
Fort Wayne, Indiana
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Yes!
Very good!!!
Thanks!