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Jesus has been hanging for six hours on a rough, Roman cross.  His body is wracked with pain, His mind oppressed by forces both natural and spiritual.  Suddenly, with a cry of triumph, He lifts His voice and declares, “It is finished!”  The air resounds with the declaration!  There’s a finality about it.  All creation is suddenly arrested with the awareness that a most important work is now completed.

But what was finished?  What work was now completed?

The clause “It is finished”, in the Greek language in which Jesus spoke it, means to reach a goal.  It also means to pay a debt in full, so that the books balance.  Jesus had reached His goal of paying our debt.  But to understand the “debt” Jesus was paying, we must revisit the scene in the Garden of Eden:  When God begins to work with a pile of dust.  He carefully shapes it into the form of a man.  Once this human body is finished to perfection, God “blows” His own breath into the nostrils of this pile of clay.  All of a sudden, the form moves!  Light comes to its eyes!  It gets up and stands erect like God.  I can see Father God turning to the rest of His creation and saying, “This is man. He is made in Our image, after Our likeness, to have dominion over all creation.” (Genesis 1: 26-28)  At that point every animal, plant, and element bowed in submission to their newly appointed ruler.

Here was man—made in the likeness of the Creator God.  He was the very image of God:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  He is endowed with earth’s highest form of existence.  He is made in the “image and likeness” of God—capable of looking, living, and ruling like God.  A vessel in which God can come to dwell and through which He can express Himself to the world.

Man, who (in our language) God calls Adam, is not created as a separate entity with a destiny separate from that of his Creator.  He is literally a mobile house, a place in which God can dwell on this earth.  He is a channel through which God can flow to all creation.  Man is not his own.  His life is a stewardship gift from the Creator.  Adam’s life was not his own to be used for whatever he wanted.  His existence on this earth was to be a distribution point from which God’s life could flow to the world.  This is why Paul the Apostle would later state, “…in Him we live, and move, and have our being.” (Acts 17:28)  As the Bible declares, man was not his own. (1 Corinthians 6:19)

Think of the potential:  Adam had the possibility of being a dwelling place for his Creator!  God, the Almighty, wanted to take up residence inside Adam.  He wanted to fill man’s mind with His mind.  He wanted to fill his will with His will.  God wanted to fill our emotions with His feelings.  Man had the opportunity to be the channel through which God could flow to the world.  Think what this could mean to Adam’s sons and daughters.  Through their father, they would be able to receive the life of God and, in turn, become a channel through which their own children could receive that Life. However, their children would not experience God through some “osmosis process”.  Rather, it would be the natural result of God speaking His truth to them through their parents.  Likewise, because God would be living inside their parents’ souls and bodies, He would be able to demonstrate through those parents how He could live out the truth He was teaching them.  Thus, the next generation would receive both the form and the Spirit of God’s original purpose for man.  Their potential was astounding!

Are you living out that potential?  Or are you still enslaved to your debt to God?

Think about it; because if you don’t, someone else will do your thinking for you—and for your children!  And you won’t like what that brings to you.  I’m Don Pinson; this has been Think About It.

(This message has been taken from our book Why God Birthed America.  You can order a copy of Why God Birthed America  HERE )