I remember one of my first desires. It was for a doll I had seen in a Grace Brothers catalogue that came in the mail once or twice a year. It was the perfect doll and it bespoke companionship to an only girl on an isolated farm.
My longing for the doll seemed to fall on deaf ears so if the devil himself had offered to get it for me, I would have accepted. Fortunately my Dad had a poverty that made me too small a target so the devil did not bother.
The memory of my desire is still so vivid it is the mother of all my desires. Desire motivates and focuses me because I have glimpsed another perfection. It is a perfection pictured, not in a Grace Brothers catalogue but in God’s very own catalogue, the Bible.
The word, desire, first comes into the Bible in Genesis 3:6, when Eve saw that the “tree was desirable to make one wise.” Eve “desired” and the thing she desired was deathlessness and wisdom.
It was a good choice and demonstrated that Eve was no longer a passive recipient like a child with a perfect doll. She observed the goodness all around her in the Garden bestowed by the hand of grace and she was maturing. She now wanted to actively involve in the wisdom of the Creator behind the gifts. She wanted to understand more of the God behind the gifts.
Satan very cleverly tapped into her desire, the driving force of maturity.
He offered Eve instant wisdom. He said that the moment she accepted his gift of fruit two things would happen to her. One was that she would not die. The second was that she would know all that God knew about good and evil.
Adam and Eve were the result of a covenant made within the Godhead, Father, Creator and Holy Spirit, who covenanted to “make man in Our image.” It was an incredible gift of grace made by God to the world he had created.
God could offer no higher honour, no higher state of being than to make another being like himself.
If you had a Renoir painting in your room you would say it was a perfect painting. If I added a few daubs of paint to it, you would say I had defaced Renoir’s perfect picture. That is exactly what Satan did to Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve were the ultimate creation, the mother of all creation and Satan took the perfect image of God, adding a few strokes of his own.
Satan’s offering of wisdom came with a computer virus. It came with a “bite” that brought the downfall of all systems through the corruption of the image of God in Adam and Eve.
Adam and Eve were the real deal and anything that corrupted them, defaced the image of God and made an altered image. It was the first breaking of the commandment, not to make a likeness of anything that is in earth or in heaven.
Because Adam and Eve were created beings made “in the likeness of God” in their relationship with all things of the earth, when they were corrupted everything else was also corrupted because the computer virus spread through the entire creation.
Eve’s desire was a good desire but Satan fulfilled it with a bribe. He took what was good to himself and “after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.” (James 1:15).
Satan desired to obliterate the image of God in man, to make man subject to death and take control of the earth. He broke the commandments not to kill, not to steal and not to covet.
However, the covenant God had made still remained. He desired to “make man in our image” and through the centuries to follow, God was working his purpose out.
The Creator, whose blood was on the line from the moment of the covenant because he was “slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8,) became the second Adam. The Christ, the second Adam, was “the image of God” (2nd Corinthians 4:4), and “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation” (Colossians 1:15).
So then, “Since death came through one man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.” (1st Corinthians, 15:21,22).
What I desire most in life is that all I love should belong to the family of the Man made in the image of God.
Elizabeth Price