We now have developed robots that move about their work area until their batteries run low. Then they internally sense their need for more power and go plug themselves into an electrical outlet and recharge their batteries. Similarly, so long as men and women remained in touch and harmony with God, they could tap the resources of God’s power to

But the death that befell Adam and Eve in the moment of their initial sin was also the death of this interactive relationship with God, the loss of this central closeness as a constant factor in their experience (Gen. 3). And with this loss came the loss of the power required to fulfill their role as God’s rulers over the earth. This original job

Let us try to make this point as clear as possible since everything turns upon it in practical theology. In creating human beings in his likeness so that we could govern in his manner, God gave us a measure of independent power. Without such power, we absolutely could not resemble God in the close manner he intended, nor could we be God’s

Whatever the precise details of the process—and we must beware of filling them out in a manner that would be blasphemous of the nature of God—the human too becomes a “living being,” with an animal nature, but with a vast difference—we have a nature that is suitably adapted to be the vehicle of God’s likeness. The two sides of the great human

Animal sacrifice in religious ritual signals the effects of our failure to do what we were meant to do—whatever else its point. The poor animal “pays” with its life for humanity’s sin. In the most graphic way imaginable, this portrays our failure through history to serve God in the appointed fashion.

humankind’s job description is clearly stated. We were not designed just to live in mystic communion with our Maker, as so often suggested.2 Rather, we were created to govern the earth with all its living things—and to that specific end we were made in the divine likeness.

The biblical perception of the simultaneous magnificence and triviality of the human creature comes squarely and firmly to rest in the Bible’s account of our origin. People were, for all their physical dimensions, made to be like God, and in that likeness they were made to exercise lordship, care, and supervision over the zoological creation. As

The faith of the New Testament is a distinctive life force that originates in the impact of God’s word upon the soul, as we see in Romans 10:17, and then exercises a determinating influence upon all aspects of our existence, including the body and its social and political environment.

Once we have come to understand that faith is the powerful life force described by Luther, we can then recognize it as it displays itself on the pages of the New Testament in three major dimensions: 1. The presence of a new power within the individual, erupting into a break with the past through turning in repentance and the release of forgiveness.