When God created human beings, he created them as his children whose role was very special, and whose spiritual status was very high with many rights and privileges. This truth is alluded to by the expressions like “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness” and “let them rule over …”

If being children of God is about the rights and privileges, then, being priests is about the duty that the children of God have. These two are closely connected to each other as all priests need to be born as sons of priests.

The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it (Gen 2:15, NIV).

According to the translation of the above scripture, God put the first man in the Garden of Eden to “work it and take care of it.” It sounds as though the man was a farmer and had to cultivate the ground, sow seeds, water it, pull out the weeds and thistles, and control pests so that he could have enough food and live. Do you think the Garden of Eden was a place like that? It must be mentioned that the two verbs in Hebrew “to work (avad)” and “to take care of (shamar)” are often used as a pair to mean the kind of services that priests performed in the temple. Avad is a common word for worshipping God, and shamar is frequently used in the meaning of keeping the Sabbath and other commands. Thus, the obvious implication of this scripture is that the man was appointed as a priest serving God in that garden, the holy place where God walked around everyday.

Ironically, these two pair verbs come to be used again at the end when the man was driven away from the Garden of Eden.

So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work (avad)the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard (shamar) the way to the tree of life (3:23-24).

Here, not only the work (avad) he once did as a priest has been degraded to the working of the ground, but also the priestly duty (shamar) he had has been taken away, and the verb is now used to mean his inaccessibility to the tree of life. All of us were created as God’s children, and were once appointed as priests. But when we sinned, we were fired from the priesthood, and had to work the ground with the sweat of our brow. But look at the following scripture in the New Testament:

… you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ (1 Pet 2:5).

And about our sonship, we have the following scripture:

But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons. Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, "Abba, Father." So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir (Gal 4:4-7).

Keep in mind, however, that it was through Jesus Christ that the priestly status and the rights of sonship have been recovered for those who believe him. Everything he did on earth was something for our redemption. He became poor so that we might become rich. He was wounded so that we might be healed. He was made a sinner so that we might become the righteousness of God. So, what kind of redemption does the following scripture signify?

About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?"—which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me (Mat 27:46)?"