Psalm 8:4 records one of the most staggering questions ever asked: "What is man, that you are mindful of him? The son of man, that you care for him?" It was not a question that diminished man. It was a question that astonished the Psalmist because the answer was so unexpectedly grand.

But there is another version of this question that has been echoing through the spirit realm long before the Psalmist wrote it. In Job chapter 7, verse 17, Eliphaz the Temanite also cried it. And in Hebrews 2, the writer quotes this same Psalm and applies it directly to Jesus , and then, through Jesus, to every believer. The question of what man is has never been a theological abstraction. It is the most urgent question facing the Church in every generation, because the answer to it determines everything about how believers live, what they believe they are capable of, and whether they press into the fullness of what the cross purchased for them.

This message does not start with what man can do. It starts with what man was , before the fall , what man lost, what Christ recovered, and what is available to every person willing to press into the reality that God designed from eternity.

Before a single cell of creation existed, before time was measured and space was stretched across the void, you were already in God's heart. The Apostle Paul is explicit. This is not poetry. This is covenant architecture.

We start in John 1 , not because it is a New Testament text, but because it is the oldest text. It begins in eternity, before time, before creation. And the Apostle John builds the foundational architecture of everything the message is about.

Let's draw attention to verse 4 with extraordinary precision: "In Him was life, and that life is the light of men." These are not two separate things. Life does not produce light accidentally. Life intentionally becomes light so that men, in their fallen state, can receive what they could not receive in its original, undiluted form.

In our original state , in the spirit realm, in the kind of existence Adam had before the fall , what operated between human beings and between human beings and God was pure life. Not information. Not language. Not explanation. Life itself was the medium of communication. A conversation that would take three hours through words could be communicated in a single gaze, a single exchange of knowing.

But when man fell, God could not simply pour undiluted life into a broken vessel. So He broke life down into its derivative form: knowledge. Information. Teaching. Words. Light. This is why the entire redemptive economy runs on the Word , spoken, written, preached , because light is life translated into a form that broken humanity can receive and process.

Genesis 2:25 contains a statement so familiar it has lost its power: "Now the man and his wife were both naked, but they felt no shame." Most readings treat this as a description of pre-sin innocence. But let us presses deeper. The nakedness of Genesis 2 is not the problem that the fall created. Adam and Eve were already naked before the fall. Nakedness was always the condition of their physical bodies.

The question is: why were they unashamed of their nakedness? The answer is one word: Glory.

And when man fell, two things immediately happened. He experienced fear in the domain of spirits , because the covering of God's presence was gone , and he experienced shame in the domain of men , because without that glory, he was exposed before his fellow human in a way he had never been before.

This theological insight has breathtaking practical application. Every form of human insecurity, every compulsive need to make impressions, every manufactured image, every performance of status , all of it is the ancient appetite of naked flesh trying to create for itself what only glory can provide.

And the resolution to all of it is not better self-image or improved confidence. It is the return of glory. When glory comes, even a simple shirt is sufficient, because it is no longer the garment that carries the weight , it is the person inside it.

One of the most transformative sections of this message deals with human identity , not psychological identity, but covenantal identity. Let's draw from a comparison between the creation of Adam and the incarnation of Jesus, and the implications are staggering.

In Genesis 1:26, God says "Let us make human beings in our image." But at that moment, no human being existed. Who was God speaking to? The answer goes beyond the Trinitarian explanation. God was speaking Adam into existence through declaration before He formed him from the dust in Genesis 2:7. The speaking preceded the forming. The word preceded the flesh.

Jesus says "It is written of me." Before He came, a voice had spoken Him into existence. The volume of prophetic books from Genesis onward was the description of one who had been declared into being before time. And the argument of the message is that this is not unique to Jesus. This is the pattern for every human being who has ever lived.

Your birth date in your birth certificate is not your beginning. Your beginning is from eternity. God spoke you into existence before the foundation of the world. The details of your assignment, your calling, your precise purpose , they are locked in the scrolls of heaven.

What Adam lost through disobedience, Christ recovered through obedience. The Bible presents this with crystalline precision: there are two Adams. The first brought death; the last brings life. The first gave the spirit realm access to a naked humanity; the last clothed humanity in righteousness and restored the path to glory.

The first Adam received life. The last Adam gives life. The distinction is total. You do not merely follow Jesus as a moral example or religious guide. You receive from him a life-giving Spirit that is categorically different from what the first man ever carried. Every person who is born again has received not an improvement on Adamic life, but an entirely new quality of existence , the life of the last Adam, poured into a vessel that time and eternity will spend exploring.

The theological summit of this message is Colossians 1:27. I call it "The mystery of the Age" , not a mystery in the sense of something unknown, but in the sense of a revealed secret that transforms everything it touches.

The phrase "the hope of glory" does not mean a future aspiration with no present reality. In Pauline theology, hope is a confident expectation rooted in present possession. You are the candidate of glory from the moment Christ enters you. But there is a crucial distinction: being a candidate is not the same as walking in the reality.

Let's draw from Ecclesiastes 10:7 , "I have seen servants on horses and princes walking on foot." A prince walking on foot is still a prince. But he is not walking in the reality of what he is.

This is the condition of much of the Church. Born again. Spirit filled. Carrying the very glory of God through Christ who dwells within. And yet walking on foot. Defeated by sickness that the eternal life inside them was designed to repel. Overwhelmed by situations that the glory inside them was designed to override. Not because the glory is absent , but because the revelation of the glory has not been pressed into.