The establishment of faith that Adam and Eve were formed in the image and likeness of God, in the book of Genesis (1:26), helps us to understand the nature with which man and woman were formed. Man although taken from the earth, his nature is spiritual, the image and likeness of God in him means that he was formed with a spiritual constitution similar to the nature of God, hence his faculty to establish direct ‘communion’ with Him, and to understand the language of God with all its meanings.
But this is not the only attribution of its meaning, the image and likeness of God, also means that man and woman were formed to be eternal beings.[1] Adam and Eve were not formed with the design that they would one day disappear, the fact that God warns them and emphasizes that if they disobey, they will die, helps us to understand that death is not part of their original design, that such a condition was grafted on man as an attribute of the new nature forged by their submission to Satan’s deception.
Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?
Romans 6:16
Man was not born to die but to live eternally, but disobedience to the voice of God introduced into him a new nature of sin and death,
Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:
Romans 5:12
For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.
1st. Corinthians 15:21
For that reason, the Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven proclaims in its message the resurrection of the dead as the measure in Jesus to ‘recover’ all that Adam lost by his disobedience.
35 but they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: 36 neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection.
Luke 20:35-36
So, in synthesis, image and likeness of God in man means that his constitution is of a spiritual nature, similar to that of God, and above all, that his constitution is eternal; Adam and Eve were exempt from death.
It has been important to take time to highlight these two formative attributes, because it is imperative for us to establish a statute of faith regarding man’s ability to eat, and therefore, the value of the food that God established for them as part of their functionality in Eden. For our purposes, the spiritual value of the food we eat.
Because of the habit we have of eating as part of our existence, it seems to us that such a function has always been the same since man has existed on the face of the earth; however, reviewing the Scriptures and verifying that Adam and Eve did not necessarily have the same functions as man and woman today, leads us to understand that some functions in man and woman have a specific purpose other than simply helping us to subsist.
Such is the case with food as a resource of subsistence, and let me explain. If Adam and Eve were formed as beings with a spiritual constitution, and as eternal beings, there was absolutely nothing that would have harmed their existence, except disobedience to the voice of God, as we already know; in other words, their strength did not come from the food they ingested,[2] and this leads us to ask the following question: why then did God provide food for them to eat?
In Genesis, we read:
And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
Genesis 1:29
Later in the story, in chapter two, this same provision is reemphasized. In chapter 2, we read:
16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
Genesis 2:16-17
Was the food a resource to subsist physically, or to nourish their spirit in order to keep alive the purpose of their formation in God?
We have already noted that food was not a subsistence resource, they ingested food, herbs and fruits, not for strength or to ensure their subsistence. What was God’s purpose in feeding them?
In the book of Revelation we read that the tree of life, the same as in the book of Genesis, produces fruit for the ‘healing’ of the nations,
In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
Revelation 22:2
By this reference we understand that food, originally, was not intended to be a resource of physical strength; food became a resource of strength and physical subsistence from the disobedience of man, proof of this is the fact that the book of Exodus relates two stays of Moses in the Presence of God, for forty days each, and he did not eat food during his stays, and did not die for lack of food.
And Moses went into the midst of the cloud, and gat him up into the mount: and Moses was in the mount forty days and forty nights.
Exodus 24:18
And he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.
Exodus 34:28
The order that God established in Eden with respect to food was that it was intended to ‘nourish’ the vision with which the man and woman were placed in the garden, we read this clearly in the Creation account in chapter one:
26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
Genesis 1:26-28
The food in Adam and Eve was meant to ‘feed’ their vision, their purpose of formation in God, hence when they tasted the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the first thing that changed in them was their vision about things:
And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.
Genesis 3:7
Thus, when transferred to our context, everything described above has a faith value, and helps us to understand about the spiritual state in which a person is with respect to God. The food a person eats is useful to measure the spiritual condition in which he is with respect to God.
Food retains a spiritual value from God, it is intended to nourish the spiritual constitution of faith; a person in open rebellion toward God will seek to ingest foods that deteriorate his physical condition and health.
What is our spiritual condition before God: obedience or rebellion? The kind of food we eat reveals it. Let us check for a moment the account of man’s fall into disobedience.
10 And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. 11 And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?
Genesis 3:10-11
Notice the dialogue. The man and the woman have just disobeyed, in other words, they are estranged and hidden from God, their condition is one of rebellion; God comes as He used to do, seeking Adam, and finds him hiding from Him, and asks: Who told thee that thou wast naked?; now notice how God Himself answers his first question: Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?
The two questions God poses to man establish a direct relationship between man’s spiritual condition and what he eats.
How did God know that the man and the woman had eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?
God knew that the man had eaten of the fruit of the forbidden tree, besides the fact that He is Omniscient God, because with the statement, in the day that you eat of it, you will die, God established a parallel between the spiritual condition of a person and what he usually eats; this relationship serves us to establish the following statement: If the spiritual state of a person weakens, sleeps, and even moves away from God, look for the answer in the food he eats, and the conditions under which he eats it, and you will know the reason for his condition.
The apostle Paul established by the Spirit that the Kingdom of Heaven is neither food nor drink,[3] establishing with such a statute of faith that the man and woman of faith does not ‘depend’ on the amount of food they ingest to subsist, not even to stay strong, for as it was well established from the book of Deuteronomy, man shall not live by bread alone,
And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live.
Deuteronomy 8:3
The strength of the man and woman of faith comes from the Lord, through the operation of the Spirit in them,
He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.
Isaiah 40:29
The man and woman of faith learn by the Spirit to ‘fast’ food, and not for dietary reasons, but for the purpose of attaining that for which he or she was attained.
6 Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness,
Isaiah 58:6-8
to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? 7 Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh? 8 Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the Lord shall be thy rereward.
There is food that brings spiritual death to men and women of faith, and many deliberately ignore it.
For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep.
1st. Corinthians 11:30
How to recognize a spiritual state of demonic contamination?
From the teaching established in this story, we can understand that every situation in man and woman where an activation arises at once by the desire to eat, or to taste some food, without justification, is because there is in the environment a demonic operation that seeks to establish contamination through food.
Food in itself is a source of physical and spiritual strength for man, but a food that does not fulfill this purpose, that is, a food that is ingested only for the pleasure of delighting the palate, is a food that becomes a focus of spiritual contamination; the same happens with the origin of food, or the excessive use of the same kind of food. The not warning about the origin of the food, and/or the imbalance in the choice of the same ones, turns the person prone to develop a spiritual disintegration.
The righteous eateth to the satisfying of his soul: but the belly of the wicked shall want.
Proverbs 13:25
The words of a talebearer are as wounds, and they go down into the innermost parts of the belly.
Proverbs 18:8
Demons use food as a means to contaminate man’s spirit and have the right to enter his inner self.
And after the sop Satan entered into him. Then said Jesus unto him, That thou doest, do quickly.
John 13:27
A person who manifests an anxious need to eat food without restraint, even without considering its origin, even if he or she is a man or woman of faith, is simply a sign of a spiritual condition in open rebellion to God; the apostle Paul makes a reference to this very thing and identifies in the excessive need to eat, a demonic force that operates from within the one who acts in such a way,
whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.
Philippians 3:19
The rebellion of a man or woman of faith is shown in his or her intolerance to follow instructions from the Word, and intolerance to allow the life counsel of others. A condition of rebellion is shown by an attitude that minimizes the seriousness of the situation.
If the person, even a man or woman of faith, cannot control his or her need to eat, a spiritual contamination of darkness has definitely taken hold of the person; a person free from contamination is guided by the Wisdom of the Word,
and put a knife to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite.
Proverbs 23:2
Food can never be an object of worship or ritual, if the person enters into rituals about what he eats, and how the food should be prepared, definitely a spiritual contamination of darkness has been established, and the food is simply feeding a demonic activation in the person, even if he or she is a man or woman of faith.
They that sanctify themselves, and purify themselves in the gardens behind one tree in the midst, eating swine’s flesh, and the abomination, and the mouse, shall be consumed together, saith the Lord.
Isaiah 66:17
I do not intend to exhaust the subject, I intend to show by the Word the risks to which we expose ourselves every day for lack of wisdom. Each one is judge of himself, and each one will give an account to the Lord, besides, each one will suffer the consequences for what he eats. Peace.
Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats: but God shall destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body.
1st. Corinthians 6:13
Other recommended reading:
Liberation through the food we eat? https://earthenwarevessels.com/2020/07/18/deliverance-through-the-food-we-eat/
Scripture quotations are taken from the Authorized King James Version, (AKJV)
Pastor Pedro Montoya
[1] Ecclesiastes 3:11: He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end. (New King James Version)
[2] John 4:34: Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.
[3] Romans 14:17: for the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.
