Man, A Being of Light!

Have you ever considered what we looked like before the fall? We were created in His likeness. When God breathed His Breath of Life into us, we became living souls. 

A living soul prior to the fall was a much higher state of being than what we know and experience today. Prior to the fall, we were beaming beings. Borrowing from the Jewish sages, much like if God were the Sun, we were sunbeams, rays of Him. We became a someone – some of the One, the Holy Bright One. We were luminous by nature; we were like the Light Himself, we are not the origin of Light, but the conduit of His Light!

For an example, we don't see the connective little, bitty, itty, witty wire the electricity connects through in a light bulb, but when on, we see beaming light. That is a picture of Mankind before the fall. We were absolutely radiant in holy righteousness, joy and peace -- an inner illumination of His holy electricity through our little, bitty, itty, witty, wire of our natural bodies. 

We often think of Adam and Eve running around in the Garden of Eden buck naked and not embarrassed about it! This is not the right view in mind. The word naked עֵירֹם, arum (Gen 2:24, 25) refers to their inner being, more in-tune with self awareness, not being ashamed of their identity. But when used after the fall, the word is used as עָרוֹם aram (Gen 3:3,10), now describing their physical nakedness. Interestingly enough, it does not just describe the opposite, unashamed to shamed, but describes their state now as being afraid!  The state of fear then became the dominant destructive force of our being and shame is the secondary outgrowth from  fear. 

Nowhere in Scripture do we see the goal of God's redemptive work being illustrated that Mankind will once again run around physically naked, not in the heavenlies, among the angels, not in God Himself  -- nope, nowhere! In fact, the opposite is true in that we see The Lord's goal is to restore us to garments of His holy righteousness, joy and peace, garments of salvation, and garments of His royal priesthood -- to beam brightly once again in the likeness of His Light! 

Beyond the physical realms of creation, God created a spiritual realm for shining Mankind to rule. It is an extraordinary realm, unlike the exhibits in the natural realm – He created the realm of choice, our free will. The realm of choice is an unseen realm, although it finds manifestation in the seen realm by the laws of cause and effect. Once again, God uses His divisionary process in His creative order. In the realm of choice, He divides life from death by placing a choice between the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil within the Garden of Eden, which by the way means pleasure. In Genesis 2:16, 17, God clearly instructed man,

And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat;  but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

We had no concept of death. All we knew was the existence of being in and like Him. It was beyond our very comprehension of being separated from Him in death. An artistic paraphrase of the inauguration of this realm might have sounded something like this, 

“You can enjoy all the trees of fruit you want, BUT the moment you eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, you will die! Stay with Me here in this good and holy, pleasurable union. I won’t dictate, control or manipulate your choices, I empower you with both the responsibility and power to choose for yourself. Choose life, choose Me!”

And then came the fall. Ever wonder where we fell from? We fell from an extremely high place of being upright and full of light down into a bent over, darkened and confused state of soul. The part that was designed most like God, died, and we went from being an expression of God’s Light to hiding from God’s Light! That’s a long way, longer and further than we could ever imagine – literally beyond our very comprehension.

It is important to view the collective body of Scripture from this point on as God working His divisionary process to bring us back into the realm of pleasure (Eden), our high place of unbroken, good and holy fellowship to Sabbath with Him!  In fact, the call to repentance means, quite literally, return to your high place!