Dear Bishop Macedo, good morning!

The messages you are talking about, concerning the image and likeness of God, made me curious about the moment when God told Adam, “If you eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you will die!”

The human concept of eating something and dying usually relates to eating something poisonous.

I read an article on the ten most lethal poisons for the human body and the deadly action of each one of them is very clear. They all have the same function: to cause a devastating separation in the body – That means that the poison interrupts all communication between the human body’s blood, oxygen and functions. Everything stops, and then comes death.

However, God was not referring to physical death, but to the spiritual separation of man from God, as well as his separation from his neighbour. And that’s exactly how it happened – as quick as deadly poison. In the exact moment Eve ate the fruit, she separated herself from God and soon after, she also separated Adam from Him.

When Adam tells God the reason why he ate the fruit, instead of asking for forgiveness for his disobedience, he turns against God and Eve, saying, in other words: “I ate it because of the woman the Lord gave me.’’

Thus, God’s companion and Eve’s husband died, for he did not even care to defend her. Perhaps he could even have said something like, “Lord, she ate it because I didn’t watch over her; I didn’t take care of her as I should have.”

That’s where death lies! It’s the separation of man from God, and of him from his neighbour. Now, only another death could solve the first one: Jesus’ death on the cross.

Through His sacrifice, our Lord Jesus Christ brought back the opportunity for man to be united again with God and to love his neighbour. This is because to carry our cross, to deny ourselves and to follow our Lord enables us to have an encounter with God, and His image and likeness returns to us!

This is very strong!

God bless you and best wishes to Mrs Ester!