The Precocious Savior

So we have, in Luke 2, Jesus being observed as a bit precocious (in particular, when he tells his parents he had not traveled with them because he was 'about his father's business' ... imagine your 12 year old son telling you that he had stayed at the store because 'he was about his father's business') - I believe that Jesus was a genius. In addition to the fact that He was the physical embodiment of God, He was also probably as close to the goal of human perfection as we'll ever get - the closest of which is Adam. And I believe Adam was probably one of the brightest men that ever lived. Now, we don't get any direct evidence of this, and certainly the concept of intelligence quotient was likely unknown in the Garden of Eden. But three events suggest he was a thinking, reasoning person, one of which implies a certain degree of creativity.

- As a side note to this is the fact that God didn't make Adam in the Garden of Eden! For some reason, possibly Sunday School or someone's opinion, I have always assumed that Adam's first home was Eden, specifically the Garden (and, by the way, in our tongue, if we say the Garden of XXXXX, we usually mean that Eden was a place, or a city - and the first city was created by Adam's first born, much later ... so what was Eden?), which you can find in Genesis 2:8 and Genesis 2:15. -

The first event [Genesis 2:15]was God's assignment for Adam while Adam was in the garden, "... to dress and keep the garden." I always assumed that to 'keep' a garden referred to the idea of maintaining it. And, because later in Genesis, the ground was cursed for Adam's sake, the suggests it wasn't cursed before he sinned - that, in fact, the action of gardening was in-and-of-itself fulfilling without being overly hard work, something that anyone, of any age, could reasonably do. So that is the second verb, but what of the first? I have always imagined the verb 'dress' to have a kinship with the item of clothing - the idea being that to dress something is to make it presentable and attractive. Hence, Adam's job was to fold: to make the garden look nice and to maintain that garden.

Allow me to rudely interrupt myself by stating - there is a rare task that isn't improved by a mind. Granted, after a certain point, the capacity for intelligent thought and personal creativity, can impede your function and be a useful servant - but, as long as one remains focused one's task, having that creativity and capcity for thought can only enhance one's efforts. And so it was with Adam. Given Adam was God's first attempt at humanity, it was likely perfect. Everyone after Eve, being our own copies of Adam and Eve, will likely be less perfect, both because we don't really know what we're doing, but also because we don't have the tools God has. And so I believe Adam had the best of all our attributes. Probably amazing endurance, astonishing wit, and abundant capacity ... and likely, all the most intense of our appetites.

So, I believe that the very best garden was maintained by the world's most amazing gardener - Adam! Adam was probably designed to live and work in the Garden of Eden. He was probably insightful, intuitive, had a feel for the ground, and had any other automatic feel for how things worked ... and clearly, he could ask God anything that he had a question about - for God walked in the Garden while Adam was there! So, I leave this point with the observation that Adam was likely a reasoning, thinking human, with a his own share of creativity.

The second event [Gen 2:19-20] is with Adam's second job - to name every living creature. I imagine that this second task was to be temporary, and had other motives, but it likely took a while. Imagine how much love God felt for Adam at this point, something akin to "The man, that we have formed from the red clay, will name our animals, and Adam shall know the love we feel for him in the naming of the animals!" And Adam was at it quite a while, for he gave names to all cattle, to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field [Gen 2:20]. The ability to come up with distinct labels for animals is a gift that isn't revealed to be distinct, or supplementary, to Adam's design; instead, it was clearly something Adam was made to do as well. So we have someone who, in his first profession (and we don't know how long he was in that profession), was clearly made to do multiple things. And, distinct even from the first event, it is clear that Adam's creativity was amazing. How well would you, or I, been able to name even a few hundred animals. Adam named them all! So this second event indicates to me that Adam was a brilliant man. And, given how language works, the fact that the animals were likely named after body parts, or functions, or their appearance, suggests also that Adam had a facility for reasoning as well.

The third [Gen 3:6] is his reaction to Eve's decision to eat of the Tree of Knowledge. It, to me, plainly reveals that he was consciously reacting to what Eve was choosing to do. Certainly, it does not state it specifically - it says merely "...and gave also unto her husband WITH her; and she did eat." It clearly indicates that Adam was near enough, likely to watch what she was doing, and didn't react. And so we have this third aspect to Adam's character. Above he is revealed to be inventive, creative, and a reasoning being. This third event reveals him to be a thinker as well - for it is clear that Adam saw Eve act and did not. Of course, the "why" can only be revealed by the Holy Spirit - but the fact is that Adam has been a doer his whole life, up to this point. As far as we can surmise, everything available to him seemed to be something he had a hand in. It would have been easy for him to assume, because he appeared to be the only thinking being on the planet, and because God had given him charge to name everything, that Adam felt a kind of kinship, but also a kind of ownership, over these things. Certainly it would have been a natural expression of the "keep" task he had already been charged ... likely years before he was given the task of protecting Eve.

Regardless, we can at the very least conclude that, based only on Genesis 2, Adam was no mental slouch. And Jesus was made from Adam's seed, but had no sin. Imagine how amazing Jesus would have been in comparison to his family and peers.

And so, it would be so easy to respect Jesus' genius as being evidence of God's love for us ... for it would have taken an anointed genius to be who Jesus was for us .. it took Jesus to be the Jesus we needed ... someone who would sin not and be the intentional sacrifice for us all. But, instead of resting on His intellectual laurels, he required himself to only communicate using scripture, implying that any of us could do the same. What an amazing testimony!

God is so good!