Let's Come to UNDERSTANDING!
To understand the plain whys and wherefores of salvation, we need to be corrected, first of all, on two points: 1) that God created man MORTAL, not IMMORTAL, and 2) that God's inexorable spiritual Law is GOOD, and that sin is the transgression of that spiritual Law that God set in motion.
So let's begin now at the very beginning. Let's turn, now, to the Scriptures that are able to make us wise unto salvation — and are profitable to correct us! The only Scriptures that Timothy had known from his youth were the Old Testament. So let's turn back to the very first chapter in the Bible, in Genesis, the first chapter. Beginning with the 24th verse:
"And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind," that is, they would reproduce in the same form and shape, the SAME IMAGE, the same likeness, so that each calf looks just like its mother before it. They reproduce after their kind, the same form, the same image, exactly.
"And God said, Let us make man in OUR IMAGE."
Here, the word for God is Elohim, and it's a uniplural word. This was written, originally by Moses, in the Hebrew tongue thousands of years ago. The word translated into the English word God is, in the Hebrew language, Elohim. Elohim is uniplural. It means more than one person. In other words, one family, a kingdom of persons; one kingdom, but more than one person. Only one God, because Elohim is not a person. GOD IS A KINGDOM! God is a Family!
We have the mineral kingdom and we have the plant kingdom and the animal kingdom. There is an angel kingdom that God created, and then high above all is the Creating Kingdom, the GOD KINGDOM.
In the God Family there is the Father. Jesus Christ is called the Son of God, and we can become sons of God. There is a Father and a Son — a family relationship. And so, God is more than one person.
What Is Man?
"And God said, Let us make man in OUR image, after our likeness" [the same form and shape], after OUR kind.
GOD IS REPRODUCING HIMSELF!
That is the very purpose of God, to reproduce Himself. But, what is man? And what is man made out of? Let's read a little further, now, in chapter 2, verse 7 of Genesis:
"And the Lord [Eternal] God formed man of the dust of the ground," not out of spirit. He formed man of the dust of the ground. Man is dust. "Unto dust shalt thou return," said God to the first man. "And [He] breathed into his nostrils the breath of life," just as He had done into the nostrils of animals. Man, too, became a living soul; not that man has an immortal soul, but he became a living soul.
The Hebrew word for "soul" is nephesh. It means "the life of animals, animal life, mortal life that is certain to die." That is the meaning as Moses wrote that word.
So man has NO IMMORTALITY. Man was made flesh and blood — the same as ANIMALS, and he is considered to be in the animal kingdom, mortal, subject to death.
BUT - since God is reproducing Himself, man can be born of God — born of the SPIRIT of God. Now Adam could have been begotten of God so that he could have been born of God. You will read in Genesis 2:8, 9:
"And the Eternal God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Eternal God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden." There was the tree that would have given the man immortality. He didn't have immortality, but it was made available in this garden through the tree of life. There was also another tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
The Spirit of God was AVAILABLE through that tree of life. It was offered to Adam. God freely gave it to him so that he would be begotten as a child of God, but now notice verses 15 through 17:
"And the Eternal God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the Eternal God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat." That included this tree of life and immortality. "But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."
Man Must CHOOSE
Man possessed FREE MORAL AGENCY. God made man a FREE MORAL AGENT. Man had to CHOOSE. The very fact that God said, "in the day that thou eatest thereof" — the very thing God condemned and forbade him to partake of — means that God allowed him to do it.
God said later to His people, "I have set before you life and death," the right way of living, and the wrong way, "blessings and curses." He said to man, "CHOOSE!" He commanded the man to choose the right way, but He allows man to choose disobedience and the wrong way. That's what God allows, and that is precisely what man has chosen.
God is the Supreme Ruler! God has decreed, as the Supreme Ruler, that man must CHOOSE. Man must make his own choice whether to obey God, whether to OBEY the laws that God set in motion, or whether to Disobey.
God is the Creator, not only of the LIFE of man and animals, but God is the Creator of force, and of energy and of every LAW that exists.
God's Spiritual Law
God also set spiritual laws in motion that regulate man's happiness, that regulate man's relationship with his Maker, with his Creator, and with his neighbors. That Law was given in LOVE, and that Law is LOVE. It's the very essence of love. It is the very principle of God's nature. It is love toward God, so that we can have the blessings of God, and the things that we need to receive from God. It is love toward our neighbor so we'll be kept in a right relationship with our neighbors, and have peace and be happy.
That's the law that God commanded man to obey. And when man breaks that law, man brings heartaches and headaches, and he brings every kind of wretchedness and unhappiness that this world has reaped because of its Disobedience to God.
Adam chose disobedience. Mankind ever since has chosen DISOBEDIENCE. Adam, our first parent, the first created man, was driven out of the garden of Eden and away from access to that tree of life. Now turn to Genesis 3:22:
"And the Eternal God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, LEST he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, AND LIVE FOREVER . . ." If man had taken of that tree, he would have lived forever, "therefore the Eternal God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way." Why?
"To keep the way of the tree of life" — lest he go back and gain immortality. The man did not have immortality. He did not have eternal life. He was born subject to death. God said that when he took of that wrong tree, he would die; and men have been dying ever since.
World Is Cut off From God
From that very minute mortal man was cut off from contact with God! He was cut off from access to the Spirit of God and the gift of eternal life!
God imparted precious and sacred knowledge to the first man, knowledge of what man is, knowledge of GOD and contact with the Creator. But observe. Man rejected God's knowledge — and God allowed man to go his own way. He has been allowing it ever since.
God set apart 6,000 years for man to go his own way. That 6,000 years is just about up! But we're still rebelling against God, and the way of God, and the way that would bring us peace, happiness, joy, and everything that the human heart really wants and desires.
Later, humans multiplied and they spread out into different nations — cut off from God and from knowledge about the possibility of eternal life. Man then began to evolve His own religions, his own ideas. Man evolved and set in motion his own pattern of society — and his own kinds of governments — all cut off from God! Man set up ways on this earth and a civilization diametrically contrary to the ways of God — ways that would have brought peace to the world and happiness and prosperity to all of the individuals in the world.
You people in the many different nations reading TOMORROW'S WORLD — you, too, are the children of this first man and this first woman, no matter what your nationality or your race. You, too, are mortal humans that were put here on this earth by the one Creator-God. You, too, were born cut off from God and from the truth about life, cut off from the way to peace, the way to happiness and the gift of eternal life.
About 4,000 years after Adam, God sent His own begotten son, begotten by God as a human son, born of the virgin Mary. This Son of God was also a son of man, because He was born of a human woman. Jesus Christ was human. But Jesus had within Him that which Adam had REJECTED, and had been separated from — the HOLY SPIRIT of GOD!