Ge. 1:26 Then God said, “Let us make 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.”

“In our image, in our likeness” shows that in the beginning, God created some divinity into man. There is often some confusion about the plurality in God’s statement, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness”. Who were/was the other people/person with God at the point when He created man? Christians go off all sorts of tangent in answering this question. The reality though is that angels were with God during the creation of man. God is permanently stationed in heaven and reaches the whole universe through His Spirit. If He is ever to do anything, He does it through His angels. In all His supposed appearances on earth, God was actually represented by an archangel. The earth cannot contain the fullness of God’s presence.

Ge. 2:7 the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living soul.

Here we see how God put divinity in man. God breathed His Holy Spirit into man and transformed man into a living soul. A living soul, though a spiritual entity, possesses some properties of a living thing, especially the ability to grow or decrease through nutrition or lack of nutrition. The angels didn’t find this arrangement funny though. Even though man was created at a divinity level a little lower than that of angels (Ps. 8:5), the implication of being a living soul is that man could grow in divinity and rise above the divinity level of angels. One third of God’s angels rebelled against God because of this.

Ge. 2:8 Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed.
Ge. 2:9 And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground — trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Ge. 2:15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.
Ge. 2:16 And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden;
Ge. 2:17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”

In the Garden of God, which God made for man, there were all sorts of trees that produced fruits that serve as food to the body of man. Only two trees produced fruits that could serve as food for the soul. Since the soul is spiritual, the trees and their fruits are also spiritual. God commanded man to never eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The Fall of man

Mt. 4:4 Jesus answered, “It is written: `Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’“ [Deut. 8:3]

God is the tree of life; every word that comes out of His mouth is the fruit of the tree of life. Satan is the tree of knowledge of good and evil; every word that comes out of his mouth is the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Ge. 3:1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
Ge. 3:2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,
Ge. 3:3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”
Ge. 3:4 “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman.
Ge. 3:5 “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Here we see the tree of the knowledge of good and evil present his fruit to man, after the tree of life had presented His fruit to man. Which of the two fruits would man choose? We all know what happened. Man chose the wrong fruit and sin entered into him. Sin alienated man from God (Col. 1:21, Ge. 3:22-24). Man could no longer eat the fruit of the tree of life. Divinity in man began to decrease. After the fall of man, people had a lifespan of close to 1,000 years. As divinity in man continued to decrease, lifespan decreased. When divinity in man reached the bottom, lifespan of any man could hardly reach 120 years.

Jn. 8:44 You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

Satan murdered man through a lie.

Redemption of man

The first move that God made towards the redemption of man was to send His word into the world. God gave His word to Israel. Along with His word, God established His presence in Israel through the tabernacle and then the temple. This should be a lesson that the presence of God goes together with doing His word.

Even though both the word and presence of God were in the nation of Israel, which made the nation of Israel son of God, the presence of God was not in any individual Israelite, not even the High Priest. This means that no individual Israelite was a son of God.

Ro. 3:23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Sin reigns in Adam and his bloodline. The presence or Spirit of God cannot be in Adam’s bloodline due to sin.

Lk. 5:37 And no-one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined.
Lk. 5:38 No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins.
Lk. 5:39 And no-one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, `The old is better.’“

Members of Adam’s bloodline are old wineskins that are used to old wine (sinful living). God cannot establish His presence in a sinful human being, otherwise His presence will bring deathly judgment to the human being. No human being who enjoys sinful living wants the presence of God, anyway.

He. 10:5 Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said: “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me”.

When it was time for the presence or Spirit of God to come into man again, God formed a new man or Adam for that purpose. The new man was Jesus Christ. He came into the world as the seed of the woman (Ge. 3:15), being that he had no biological father. During his baptism by John the Baptist, God breathed into him His Holy Spirit (Mt. 3:16), the same way He breathed into Adam (Ge. 2:7). And just as God moved Adam into the Garden of Eden where he was tempted by the devil, in the same way, God moved Jesus into the desert where he was tempted by the devil. Whereas Adam followed the word of Satan, Jesus Christ warded off words of Satan by words of God. Jesus Christ totally rejected Satan’s words and upheld God’s words.

Mt. 4:11 Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.

Lk. 4:14 Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside.

Because Jesus Christ rejected words of Satan and held on to God’s words, God increased the level of divinity in him. Then, he started his earthly ministry. The earthly ministry ended with Jesus Christ offering himself as a sacrifice of atonement for the redemption of man.

How does the redemption work?

Years ago, I heard a follower of Judaism remark that people say that Jesus Christ saved man, yet people still get sick and people still die, as always. So, where is the salvation or redemption? There is need to understand how the redemption of Jesus Christ works.

Mt. 13:31 He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field.
Mt. 13:32 Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches.”

Jn. 15:1 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.

Mt. 3:10 The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

Adam was like a mustard seed, which God planted on earth. His bloodline has grown to billions of branches. Unfortunately, evil spirits (birds of the air) lodge in those branches. Similarly, Jesus Christ is like a vine tree, which God has raised up on earth. The vine tree does not produce branches of his own; instead, branches of the old Adam are grafted into him. The old Adam tree is already slated to be cut down and thrown into the fire. It is up to the branches of the old Adam tree to choose whether to be detached from the old tree and be grafted into the new tree.

Ro. 6:3 Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death?

Ro. 7:1 Do you not know, brothers — for I am speaking to men who know the law — that the law has authority over a man only as long as he lives?
Ro. 7:2 For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage.
Ro. 7:3 So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man.
Ro. 7:4 So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God.

The death of Jesus Christ on the cross atoned for the sins of man and also created the mechanism for a human being to disconnect from the old Adam’s bloodline. Baptism into Jesus Christ is actually baptism into his death. The person baptized becomes crucified with Jesus and so has died with Jesus Christ (Ga. 2:20). Through joining Jesus Christ in his death, the person is freed from Adam’s bloodline and becomes a branch of Jesus’ bloodline. Once a person is grafted into Jesus Christ through baptism, the person could receive the Holy Spirit and could begin to grow in divinity by continually eating the fruit of the tree of life.

Jn. 15:2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.

If a person is baptized into Jesus Christ, but does not grow in divinity, God could cut the person off the Jesus’ tree.

Man is a spiritual being having a human experience..

Man = God's breath (God the father) + body from dust of the earth (God the mother)

So the "US" in the book of Genesis is God and the earth.

Man is a soul. Man does not have a soul...
When Man experiences death, the breath returns to God who owns it and the body turns to dust and returns to the earth.

I really don't know how Jesus is relevant to anything or what he is saving?

This is the part I don't get....

Any ideas??

Hmmmm