Adam was God’s agent to rule over the earth. When man sinned against God, all that had been placed under man’s dominion suffered the consequences. Death entered the world and all living things on earth must suffer it. Through one man death entered the world and through one man, Jesus, death will be removed from the world. This is why Jesus is referred to as “the last Adam.”
After the Fall, the Lord immediately began to work toward the redemption of man. If you read the first three chapters of The Bible and then read the last three chapters, you will have a complete story. Everything between those six chapters deals with one basic subject: restoration, restoring mankind and the earth from the consequences of the Fall. Everything that God is doing in the earth today is basically for that one purpose.
Restoration begins with redemption. From redemption, we have reconciliation to God. Only by being reconciled to God can restoration work in our lives. If we wanted to measure the degree to which restoration has worked in our lives, it would be measured by how close we are to God. The first and ultimate purpose of man is fellowship with God, and that is the ultimate and most basic work of restoration—bringing us back into the close union and relationship we were created to have with God.
For this reason, the ultimate purpose of man is to love God, and the most basic human success is determined by how much we love Him. God is love, and we cannot know Him without loving Him. We cannot learn one truth about Him without it causing us to love Him more.
The ultimate reality of the creation is that God is love. Therefore, the more we love God, the more ultimate truth we will see and walk in. The more we walk in this ultimate truth, the more we begin to see and understand the rest of the creation. As we considered before, this is why the Apostle Paul wrote in Philippians 1:9, “And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment.” Real knowledge, or accurate knowledge, and discernment can only be received to the degree that we walk in the love of God. Anything else will cloud our vision.
This we will review often because it is the foundation of a Christian worldview, and it is the most important thing. As Peter Lord said, “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” The main thing is to love God above all else, and thereby, to love one another as we should. Then we want to love His creation and all the good gifts He has given to us. Then we want to apply that love so that it results in redemption, reconciliation, and restoration for all.