Fractures healed

In Eden man is a social being living harmoniously in all his relations:

• With God;
• With woman (i.e. the rest of humanity as it was!);
• With the environment; and
• With himself.

[Incidentally, I think we often forget that final one. He felt no shame, didn't wish to be someone else; someone taller, cleverer, fitter, etc.]

With the Fall "the bond of fellowship between God and man is broken by rebellion and sin', and because it "belongs to the nature of sin to divide", and because when God's rule is rejected Sin rules instead, that crack spreads to all man's other relationships.

Man cannot heal the rupture by starting with self-healing because it is the bond between man and God which "really makes man man". Jesus Christ gave us unity in ourselves by restoring the bond between God and man in an "eternal union between God and man in himself". That inner unity and harmony in Jesus Christ, and not us with ourselves without reference to God, spreads, binding up all the ruptured relationships in the world as his Kingdom increases.

(Quotations from pp. 38-50, TF Torrance, The Incarnation)