Bible Reading

Genesis 1:26–31

Genesis 2:7, 15–17

Genesis 3:1–7

Illustration — Two Chairs:

Rule One: always sitting in this chair.
Rule Two: always sitting in that chair, at the same time.

The moment is named: that is what we call a dilemma.

Hold onto those two chairs. We are going to come back to them more than once this morning.

Genesis 3 tells us that on the day sin entered the world, something in God's own creation broke — not something small, the single most valuable thing God had ever made. This morning's question: did God decide it was worth saving, and what did that actually require of Him? Four points. It gets heavier before it gets good.

1. God Made Us to Show Him

God made man in His own image and likeness so that man could know Him and reflect Him to the world.

Genesis 1:27 “27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

A. Made by Deliberate Pattern

The rest of creation is spoken into being — "let there be..." Man is patterned on purpose, not just spoken.
"Let us make man" is one of the earliest suggestive hints in Scripture of more than one Person within the one God.

B. Made to Represent God, Not Resemble Him Physically

"Image" is representation of His authority. "Likeness" is resemblance of His character. The two are closely connected, not separate categories — you were given both together, not just the job.
Illustration — The Ambassador: An embassy flies a flag for a king who isn't in the room. Everything inside represents him. Eden was the same — not gods themselves, God's flag planted in the garden.
Dominion is a representative's job. Adam functioned as God's vice-regent over creation — ruling the earth not autonomously, but under God's authority and on His behalf.

C. This Gives Every Human Life Inherent Worth

Not based on usefulness — based on being made after God's pattern. This is the foundation under every later Bible teaching on human dignity.
Application — NIL: College sports now runs on Name, Image, and Likeness deals. One player's image is worth millions; the guy next to him, same roster, same work, gets nothing — the market decides. Genesis 1:26 is the opposite: worth already infinite before you earned a thing.
This dignity holds from conception until death. The image is not something a person grows into, or can lose through weakness, age, or dependency.

D. This Set Humanity Apart From Every Other Creature God Made

Genesis 1:31 “31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.”

"Very good" appears only after man — every earlier day is just "good." No fish, bird, or beast is ever called God's image. Humanity alone.
Psalm 8:4–5 “4 What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? 5 For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.”
Man is the climax of the creation week. Everything in Genesis 1 builds toward, and culminates in, the making of man.

Transition: That's what we were made for. But the reflection didn't stay intact — and what happened to it runs deeper than most of us are comfortable admitting. So what was God going to do?

2. Sin Broke What We Were Made to Show

Sin was not merely a broken rule but an assault on the image itself, and it corrupted man so completely that Scripture calls him not wounded, but dead.

Genesis 3:4–5 “4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: 5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”

A. Sin Has a Precise Biblical Definition

1 John 3:4 “4 Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law.”
Sin is rebellion against God's spoken word specifically, not just a vague moral failure.
Romans 3:23 “23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;”
James 4:17 “17 Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.”

At its root, in the simplest terms: sin is refusing God's rule so that we can rule ourselves.

B. Eden's Temptation Targeted the Image Directly

"Ye shall be as gods" — not a rule broken, an attempt to stop reflecting God and start replacing Him.
The serpent's lie directly contradicted God's own word — "ye shall not surely die" set squarely against "thou shalt surely die".
Genesis 2:17 “17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”

The very first sin was a dispute over whether God's word could be trusted — the exact tension Point 3 is built on.

C. God Did NOT Erase the Image When Man Fell — He Reaffirmed It

Observation: If you break something ordinary, you throw it away. If you break something precious, someone has to decide whether it's worth saving — and what they're willing to pay. (Garage Floor Test)

Genesis 9:6 “6 Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.”
After the fall. After the flood — the closest thing to a divine "start over." Still called "the image of God." Present tense. Not erased.

D. The Corruption Ran Deeper Than Surface Damage

Romans 1:21 “21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.”
Ephesians 2:1 “1 And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins;”
Not dying. Dead.
Isaiah 59:2 “2 But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.”
Separated — God's face hidden. A dead man does not feel dead — not always miserable, not always aware, but genuinely dead, genuinely separated, unable on his own to do a thing about it.

"Genesis 3 teaches that sin is not merely breaking a rule. It is rebellion that makes us guilty, corruption that makes us sick, slavery that binds us, death that claims us, and separation that keeps us from the God we were created to know. That's why the gospel had to be so much more than a pardon. We needed a Redeemer, a Physician, a Liberator, a Resurrection, and a Reconciler."

E. Left Alone, Sin Didn't Just Corrupt the Image — It Inverted It Into Idolatry

Romans 1:22–23 “22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, 23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.”
Man made to reflect God outward — fallen man reverses the current, manufacturing gods in the image of the creature instead. The reflection doesn't dim. It runs backward.
Exodus 20:4 “4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:”
Not arbitrary — God protecting the one thing sin most wants to corrupt.

Transition: A dead man cannot revive himself, and if his worship runs backward, he cannot even want to be revived rightly on his own. But the deeper problem isn't only what happened to man. It's what this now demanded of God. So what was God going to do?

3. The Great Dilemma

Man's corruption placed God Himself in a genuine dilemma, because His unchanging truth required death to follow sin exactly as He had said, while His unchanging goodness would not allow His own image-bearers to be lost forever.

Genesis 2:17 “17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”

A. God's TRUTH Was on One Side of the Tension

Disobedience brings death, exactly as stated above — overlooking sin means God breaking His own word.
Numbers 23:19 “19 God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?”

B. God's GOODNESS Was on the Other Side of the Same Tension

Letting His image-bearers be lost forever, deceived by an enemy with no right to claim them — equally unthinkable. What would it say about God if His handiwork could be undone by a liar in a garden?
Illustration — Remember the Two Chairs. Who will sit in that chair?

C. Neither Option Alone Could Resolve the Tension — No Human Could Resolve It for Him

Man had no currency to pay a debt he was already inside of.
Future obedience can't erase a debt already owed. Only God's own character could satisfy both truths without either giving way.

D. Silence Was Never a Real Third Option

Inaction isn't neutral when the One deciding is perfectly good. Doing nothing while His image-bearers stayed dead forever would itself be a failure of goodness.
Question: Someone here is probably thinking: couldn't God just forgive us?

A forgiveness with no cost isn't forgiveness — it's permission. Throughout the New Testament we learn that forgiveness is never the ignoring of sin, but the bearing of sin.
1 Peter 2:24 “24 Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.”
This is what we learn about forgiveness throughout Scripture. God never denies justice. He satisfies justice through Christ. Someone was always going to carry what sin cost — us, forever, or Him, once.

Transition: No human problem before or since ever required God to answer to His own nature. If the tension was inside God, only God could resolve it — but resolving it would cost Him everything. So what was God going to do?

4. Jesus Sat in Both Chairs

Because no angel and no other human being could resolve a conflict within God's own character, God the Son took on a body capable of dying, so that His one death — carrying infinite worth — could pay the debt owed by all and rise again to prove the debt was paid.

Genesis 3:15 “15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.”

Even in the middle of pronouncing the curse, God had already planted His answer. The rest of this point is that promise unfolding.

Observation: Was Jesus truly God, truly man, both at once? At the Council of Nicaea, AD 325, this was wildly debted and settled. Settled centuries ago — but settled doesn't mean remembered.

That debate is where the two chairs finally get their answer. Jesus didn't send someone else to sit in the chair we couldn't sit in. He became human — sat down in our chair Himself — while never once leaving the chair marked "fully God." That's the doctrine Nicaea was fighting to protect.

Explanation: A pastor named Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, gave nearly his entire life to teaching exactly this — that the incarnation, God becoming man, was the only solution to our dilemma. He wrote the argument as a young man, around AD 318, and spent forty-five years refusing to soften it. Exiled five times by four emperors. Fleeing one who wanted him dead, he escaped down the Nile in a small boat — when pursuers asked how far off Athanasius was, he answered, "Not far," and kept rowing. History calls him Athanasius contra mundum — "against the world." Never martyred, but willing to be, for forty-five years, over this exact truth.

"Is the world against Athanasius? Then Athanasius is against the world."

"You know what happens when a portrait that has been painted on a panel becomes obliterated through external stains. The artist does not throw away the panel, but the subject of the portrait has to come and sit for it again, and then the likeness is re-drawn on the same material. Even so was it with the All-holy Son of God. He, the Image of the Father, came and dwelt in our midst, in order that He might renew mankind made after Himself, and seek out His lost sheep."

Athanasius, On the Incarnation

God did not throw the picture away. He sent the only One who bore the resemblance — to sit in the wreckage with us.

A. No Angel and No Other Human Being Was Qualified to Solve This

Hebrews 2:16–17 “16 For verily he took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham. 17 Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people.”

He had to take on OUR nature specifically, because the debt was ours.
Another human was already inside the corruption — no untainted currency to offer.

B. Only the Eternal Word, Made Flesh, Was Sufficient

John 1:14 “14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.”

As God, the Son cannot die — He is life itself. He took a body specifically so death would finally have something real to touch.
Because that body belonged to the eternal Word, His death = the Life entering death on behalf of ALL.

C. This Is What the Entire Old Testament Sacrificial System Had Been Pointing Toward

Once a year, on the Day of Atonement, Israel's high priest carried blood into the Most Holy Place — and had to bring blood for his own sin first.
Leviticus 17:11 “11 For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.”
Hebrews 9:22 “22 And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.”
Every lamb, goat, bull = a receipt. Proof the debt was real, not yet paid.
Colossians 1:15 “15 Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature:”

Only He was worth enough.

D. Because Death Could Not Hold the Source of Life Itself, He Rose

The resurrection is the receipt marked PAID IN FULL.
1 Corinthians 15:22 “22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”
Romans 1:4 “4 And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead:”
This also settled, publicly, the very question Nicaea would later defend. Full circle to Point 1: the image broken in the first Adam is remade in the last Adam.

Observation: No other worldview offers this. Islam denies Christ died at all. Naturalism has no God to be truthful or good in the first place. Only this account gives a God who is both the offended party and the substitute, fully just and fully merciful in the same act.

The Just and the Justifier

Let’s turn to Romans 3.

Everything we've traced this morning — the image, the fall, the dilemma, the cross — Paul writes down in a few dense verses near the beginning of his letter to the Romans.

Romans 3:21–26 “21 But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; 22 Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: 23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; 24 Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: 25 Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; 26 To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.”

Notice what most people miss on a first pass. Paul does not say Christ was set forth primarily to save you. Look at verses 25 and 26 — he says it happened "to declare his righteousness," twice, back to back. Your salvation is real and glorious. But according to Paul's own logic, it is not the center of this passage. God's own righteousness is.

Explaining the passage:

• Verses 21–23 restate Point 2: no one has righteousness of their own.

• Verses 24–25: God set Christ forth as a "propitiation" — the actual means by which God's wrath against sin was fully satisfied.

• The problem underneath verse 25: God, in His forbearance, had passed over sins committed in ages past without yet fully punishing them.

• Verse 26 is why the cross had to happen when it did, publicly, decisively — that He might be just, and the justifier.

Mankind is not the centerpiece of Romans 3. God's righteousness is.

Our instinct is to assume the gospel exists mainly to solve humanity's problem. But Paul's own logic runs the other direction. Our rescue is real and wonderful — but it is the by-product of God vindicating Himself, not the main event.

That is the Great Dilemma, in Paul's own words, from the heart of the New Testament. God's justice on one side, God's mercy on the other. The resolution — not God choosing one over the other, but God, in Christ, being both at once. Just, and the justifier.

Approaching the Table

Which brings us, finally, to this morning.

Jesus Christ is not another marred reflection trying to repair Himself. He is the perfect Image of the invisible God — the Original, wearing our flesh, walking where Adam failed to walk, obeying where Adam disobeyed, and finally bearing in His own body the death God's truth required, so that God's goodness could be free to save without contradiction.

Application — Who This Table Is For: Before we come to the bread and the cup, a word about who this Table is for, because it does not belong to us to open or close by our own preference — it belongs to the Lord. This morning we observe close communion: this Table is for those who have been born again by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone, and who have publicly professed that faith by believer's baptism. If that describes you, we welcome you to the Table with us this morning.

1. Gospel Invitation

Remember where we've been this morning. Dead in trespasses and sins. Separated, with God's face hidden. But Ephesians 2 does not end at verse 1:

Ephesians 2:4–5 “4 But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, 5 Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)”

God did not start over. He sent the true Image to sit again for the portrait — to bleed in our place.

2. Time of Prayer

Invite the church to bow in silent prayer, examining their own hearts.

1 Corinthians 11:28 “28 But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup.”

3. Song During Distribution

5. The Meaning of the Elements

• The bread reminds us that the eternal Son truly became man.

• The broken body reminds us that God Himself entered our dilemma.

• The cup reminds us that without the shedding of blood there is no remission.

• The resurrection proves the payment was accepted.

6. Prayer Read Before the Bread and Cup Are Taken

Bread

1 Corinthians 11:23–24 “23 For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread: 24 And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.”

1 Corinthians 11:25–26 “25 After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. 26 For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come.”

Thanks be to God, who is both just, and the justifier.