The world turned down the wrong lane, and has been going that way pell-mell ever since.  Yet so close is the wrong lane to the right that a single step will change lanes.  Though many results of being in the wrong lane will not be changed by the change of lanes.  It takes time to rest up the feet made sore by the roughness of the wrong lane.  And some of the scars, where men have measured their length, seem to stay.

The result of that wrong turning has been pitiable. Separation from God, so far as man could make separation.  There is no separation on God’s part.  He has never changed.  He remains in the world, but because of man’s turning his face away, He remains as a stranger, unrecognized.  He remains just where man left Him.  And any one going back to that point in the road will find Him standing waiting with an eager light glistening in His eyes. No!  That’s not accurate.  He is a bit nearer than ever He was.  He is following us up.  He is only a step off.  Jesus is God eagerly following us up.

The Early Eden Picture.

But one will never get to understand this Jesus until he gets a good look at man as he was once, and as he is now.  The key to understanding Jesus is man, even as Jesus is the key to God.  One must use both keys to get into the inner heart of God.  To get hold of that first key one must go back to the start of things.  The old Book of God opens with a picture that is fascinating in its simplicity and strength.  There is an unfallen man.  He is fresh from the hand of God, free of scar and stain and shrivelling influence.  He is in a garden.  He is walking hand in hand with God, and working side by side with God:  friendship and partnership.  Friends in spirit:  partners in service.

The distinctive thing about the man is that he is like God.  He and God are alike.  In this he differs from all creation.  He is God’s link between Himself and His Creation.  Particular pains is taken by repetition and change of phrase to make clear and emphatic that it was in the very image of God that man was made.  Just what does it mean that we men were made in God’s likeness?  Well, the thing has been discussed back and forth a good bit.  Probably we will not know fully till we know as we are known.  In the morning when we see Him we shall be like Him fully again.  Then we’ll know. That morning’s sun will clear up a lot of fog.  But a few things can be said about it now with a positiveness that may clear the air a bit, and help us recognize the dignity of our being, and behave accordingly.

Man came into being by the breath of God.  God breathed Himself into man.  The breath that God breathed out came into man as life.  The very life of man is a bit of God.  Man is of the essence of God.  Every man is the presence-chamber of God.

God is a Spirit.  Man is a spirit.  He lives in a body.  He thinks through a mind.  He is a spirit, using the body as a dwelling-place, and the mind as his keenest instrument.  All the immeasurable possibilities and capacities of spirit being are in man.