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Session 4 – Anthropology (Abstract of Systematic Theology by James P. Boyce)

Video: Session 4 – Anthropology

Abstract of Systematic Theology by James Petigru Boyce
Session 4 – chapters 20-24
Subject: Anthropology, & Hamartiology (Man, & Sin)
Wednesday Logos – 6-24-26

Sermon Transcript

The following is a lightly edited transcript generated from the audio; it may contain small errors.

Opening

All right. You know what my name is. To begin, tonight is anthropology. I’m going to hand it over to Pastor Vaughn. All right. The introductory remarks is, as I’m leaving the home, my wife says—she’s on the phone—she says, whatever you do tonight, don’t talk like you’re on speed. And so apparently she listened to the recording of last time I talked, she said I was going too fast. Really? Okay, so I’ll slow down. I don’t know how I disconnected. What disconnected? I don’t know, I can hear you. Okay, while they’re working on the tech, let me say a couple of things. [audio unclear] And yet the thing is, my computer just [audio unclear] the day. And I couldn’t get my PowerPoint on. I want to be amazing. I got so frustrated with this thing. So I almost said a bad word. Okay, so that was my intro. Can I pray real quick? Take us with you, pretty quick. Thank you very much. Very good to be with you. Father, Lord, we are thankful that we could come here tonight, that we can learn more about you as we study systematic theology. Lord, I pray that you would give us hearts and minds that are receptive to your truth, Lord, that we would learn and glean as much as we can. Lord, we want to because we love you. Lord, I pray that you be with Pastor Vaughn and give him what’s necessary tonight for us, that your Spirit speak through him. I pray that you would heal him, Lord, and that he would feel much better, and more, we love him too. So help us love on him as well. Lord, be with us and we thank you. In Jesus’ name, amen. Amen. Thank you. Go for it.

An Overview of Anthropology

Okay. I want to begin with kind of an overview. My wife said to me also on the phone, she said, how’s your preparation going? I said, well, it’s kind of like putting the ocean in a cup. It’s not what you say, it’s what you not say. Because as you know, if you read a Scripture, study it, it’s like it’s pregnant, right? The more you study it, the more there is. It’s like a mine that you can never reach the bottom of. So I’m going to—here’s a general introduction. These are the topics you will find in any theological book dealing with anthropology. Now something I’ve said many times in the pulpit is you can read a book which is not a doctrinal book necessarily, but it has doctrine in it. Matter of fact, every book has doctrine in it. And the most dangerous books are the ones you don’t know that the doctrine is being taught to you because you’re not recognizing it. So any book you read on family, any book you read on marriage, any book you read on gender, any book you read on any of those topics—anthropology. The nature of man. Well, we’ll get to it. So generally what’s covered is the creation and nature of the soul. Creation and nature of the soul. The second thing that’s usually covered is the propagation of the soul. Now you’re thinking, maybe you’re thinking, what’s the difference? The creation of the soul is the original creation of mankind on the earth, versus the genesis of the original. The creation of Adam and the being, right? That’s when God created humanity. The propagation of the soul is how do my kids get a soul? Or do they get a soul? Or they get a soul? How do they get a soul? They get it straight from God, they get it straight from me, they get it from God and—where do they get this thing? How is it propagated down in generations? The third thing anthropology talks about, and none of those two, by the way, there’s other topics we’ll get to. A third major feature of anthropology is the Fall. With it, the nature of sin, what is sin, where did sin come from, the origin of the Fall, where did the sin come from? Did Adam start sin? Did he? No. There was already sin. Satan is the one that tempted Eve, right? So sin existed before him. Now, you could say that Adam originated sin in humanity, that’s true, but the devil was the one who originated sin, not Adam. So you have the topic of the Fall. Now here’s the topics that are needed.

Family and Civil Government

Now, I’ve read many books on systematic theology, and I’m not saying that because I’m smarter than anybody. But there are patterns that you see, and I’m talking about folks go back to 1600 to now. And that is they covered, they rarely, almost never, except for one that I have right now, I’m going to show you—because when you think about humanity, so much of your life is your family. You’re born into a family, you grow up with a family, then you become your own family, you raise children. That’s such a huge part of your life, and there’s no theological word on this. It’s crazy. Now, I’m not saying there are Christian books on it, because there are. I think it’s a huge oversight, and maybe one of the only, one of the reasons for the family being in such a mess today. I think it’s a huge oversight. Maybe one of the only, one of the reasons for the family being in such a mess today. The church has not really been taught from a theological perspective the nature and function of the family. And another topic is the civil government. Now, a lot of Reformed systematics, and some Lutherans, will have a section on the law. Okay, the law means the Ten Commandments, not as a means of salvation, but the Ten Commandments and the rule of life. In other words, the Ten Commandments are a standard for how we are to live, treat our neighbor, love God, etc., not as a means of salvation. And so you will see in some systematic theologies, under the guise of the law, you will see some teaching on civil government. But many of them again omit that. Now the amazing thing about that is, what this shows—you might think, what does it matter, because what this shows is a very deep Gnostic strain in the church. Yes, it is. To have your theology compartment up here, but it doesn’t really touch your life. It doesn’t tell you how to live other than don’t be [audio unclear]. There will be the ecclesiology section, which is church, how to run the church. That’s good. But how do you run the family? How do you run the government? I guess it’s just a few, but it’s very detached from man as man. I’m using man as a human. Adam. The name Adam really helps us out in the end. God made him, and God made that Adam. Adam is found in the name of humanity, really. Of course, human. So that strong Gnostic strain in the church, it’s in the theology way back. I think it goes all the way back to the first century. I’m not ready to give you a lecture on Gnosticism, but Plato came in early, and it affected a lot of theology, and you see extreme examples of this in different parts of the church. Now, this is an ideal locus right here of what anthropology covers at a minimum, and many don’t, unfortunately. First, the creation and the nature of the soul. What do we mean by the soul? Secondly, propagation of the soul, that is the transfer of the soul throughout generations. The Fall. Then the family and the civil government. You can put the family and civil government under one heading and just call it [audio unclear]. You know, it struck me today. I thought about it. It’s going to really hit me today for some reason. Would you read Genesis 1 with me? Bible. Genesis 1. What page? Well, in the version that I have [audio unclear]. 126. It says, then God said, 126:

Then 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 birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

(Genesis 1:26–28)

Now, as this account unfolds, we get a repetition of the creation of Adam and then the creation of Eve. But they’re really what the author is telling us. God created them both. He did a separate kind of work. They’re both human. Whatever it needs to be human, male and female are human. On an ontological level—that’s a big word, ontos, it simply means being. When it comes to our fundamental nature, our fundamental humanity, not our gender, but our fundamental humanity, male and female are equal. Men are not better than women, women are not better than men. Now, their different roles, their functions and all that sort of thing. But that’s not your ontology. Your fundamental being is this: male and female are human. Then it says God blessed them and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it,” and have dominion over the fish of the sea, birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth. The very first command of God: to have lawful sex. Now that is the most anti-Gnostic statement. You can never read the Bible—no, I wouldn’t really think about this. So man’s created, the first thing God says, “Be fruitful.” That shows how deeply humans are rooted in the natural, in the body, in the physical. Now, when I say that, some of you think, well, that’s carnal. But that’s your Gnosticism talk. We have divorced so much of our physical life from the Scriptures and from true spirituality that our physical life is taken out of our Christian life. So, we’ll get more into this more. So this is an ideal locus. Okay. All these distinct topics here would be covered in a book, course, whatever, on anthropology, and this is a minimum though. Now these do have subcategories and we’ll get into a few.

Creation and the Nature of the Soul

Now right, what happened? I don’t know what I’m doing here. Just leave it. We’re just going to go off this. You want me to turn it off? No, leave it on. I’m going to go on. What, on up there? I don’t care. If I were on up there, I’m going to look at that one. Okay, we’re going to talk about creation and nature. So, go to Genesis 3. Go to Genesis 2, I’m sorry. Chapter 2, verse 7.

Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

(Genesis 2:7)

And it says, God had planted a garden. Verse 15: “Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and to keep it.” Okay, so the garden was Adam’s original home, but it was also the place where he was going to learn communion. He had a job. His vocation was to guard, to tend it, to nurture, but also to keep it, to guard it. So his job, when the serpent showed up, was to whip him, you know what, and throw him out of the garden. And he did do that, did he? No, he was passive. So he had a command, he didn’t obey that command. That was the real root of the problem in the garden, was that Adam failed because of his [audio unclear]. And then he talked about the trees again. Let’s see. If anything, he, because it wasn’t good for him to be alone. What? Are you okay back there? Water’s hard to breathe. Water? Yeah, that’s your face, right? Okay, so Adam named the animals. Okay. Now, it says, God breathed into Adam. That word is—his name—the breath of life. That was neshamah. Okay? Some of you want to pronounce it nephesh. N-E-P-H-E-S-H. Which just means wind or breath. It’s all it means. You can’t get anything else out of it. You can’t make up any of your doctrine out of it. It’s all it means. You’ve got to breathe. Life. Because God is the author of life. He is the originator. The originator of life, right? Okay, now, generally there’s two main things that are discussed under the soul here. One is what you can call the essential nature of the soul. And that’s where we’re going to talk about things like dichotomy and trichotomy. Does anybody know what that means? Somebody tell me what it means. Come on, Sheldon, come on. Two and three. You said—two and three, what? Two and three parts. Body and soul and spirit, or body and soul. Thank you. Whew. Good job. The other aspect of the soul is the discussion about the image and likeness of God. Those are the two main things that are discussed under this topic. So I hope I won’t do them in that order actually. And I already mentioned also the transmission of the soul. I think it’s a big word in the theology class.

Dichotomy and Trichotomy

Okay, let’s talk first about the essential nature, meaning dichotomy or trichotomy. How many of you have heard that they are the same thing? You have a spirit and a body? You’ve heard it, because it’s very common in evangelical theology. You have a spirit and a body. It’s actually not theologically correct. According to the Bible teaching about the nature of man—and therefore if you got man wrong, guess what, you get the doctrine of salvation wrong. Have you ever asked yourself why did Jesus come back from the dead? Not only that, but you can say, well, to prove the truth you’ve got the resurrection. You’re right, but there’s something else going on. Why am I going to come back from the dead if I’m off to morning light in heaven? Put that body back where it is here. Because that body is who I am as much as my soul. And a complete full redemption means that my body and soul must be reunited. It’s torn asunder by sin, and the result of sin, death. But Jesus’ salvation reunites and redeems not only the spirit or soul, but also the body. We will have a glorified body, just like Jesus. Amen. That means we’re going to walk through walls, and we’re [audio unclear]. I’m hoping that if we can, like, think like, hey, I’m going to go to Mars today. I’ll talk to you later. We’ll see. What? I think it’ll just be there. Now we can—we just don’t know. But it’s going to be exciting. It’s going to be exciting. I won’t be limping around with a cane. Oh. So, we are—what we are, essentially, is—I want to say two things, but I don’t like that because it implies that in some way they’re really separate. They’re different, but they’re not separate. Can I understand one thing? So, the dichotomy view, as Jake said. The dichotomy of the human being, the human nature, is certainly made up of two parts. An immaterial or spiritual part, we call that the soul or spirit part, and then a material part, called your body. And the body should not be denigrated in any sense of the word. The body is being redeemed as much as the soul or the spirit is being redeemed. Okay, now the trichotomy view is similar except in trichotomy they think that we have a soul and a spirit and the body. If you see a drawing of these you will see like concentric circles and the outer one is the body, the body, the inner one is the soul, that inner one is like the spirit now. Now I am of the dichotomy rather than the trichotomy, and I think you can turn to the Scripture on it, which you don’t have time to cover. But this topic is a great example of why you study systematic theology, because an error in one area of theology has ramifications down the road. I have heard all kinds of strange teaching based upon the trichotomy view. Like when you’re born again your spirit is perfect. Your spirit is perfect. Your spirit—your soul is not, but your spirit is perfect. One very excellent, very popular commentator, he actually taught that before salvation you have a soul and a body but you don’t have a spirit. Now when you’re born again you get God’s Spirit and that’s your spirit. That’s not biblical either. When you talk about the doctrine of sanctification this is relevant. Okay. What am I sanctifying? My soul or my spirit or both? Now I promise you I will give you notes that have tons of descriptions but not tonight. Sorry, like the dog ate the homework. And it’s really true, it’s not like the dog ate the homework. It really is. But the point, the main point I want you to understand is that these two views have implications down the road. Now you may be, I mean I was raised in church taught the trichotomy and I just assumed it for many, many years. Never really thought about it. But then the more I studied other doctrines and realized that it wasn’t compatible with other doctrines, I had to change something because there’s a huge clash in my theology, you know. Now it’s easier to explain the language of Scripture with dichotomy, I believe, than trichotomy. For example, when people say, you know, you notice that once we’re put—that’s the one they always go to, being sanctified, 1 Thessalonians. That’s looking—1 Thessalonians 5:23:

Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

(1 Thessalonians 5:23)

That seems like an obvious part, right? It’s a trichotomy verse. It says it right there. But it also says, in other Scriptures, actually many Scriptures have no allusion to the two. They’ll call us, sometimes, a soul. And then sometimes, we’re called a spirit. Being referred to as spirit and soul is actually very unusual in Scripture. I believe what Paul is doing here is, what Scripture does in many places, it’s kind of like in the Great Command, you know, where the Lord says, love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul. Is your heart and your mind different in Bible terminology? I don’t mean your heart and your inner man. It’s your inner man. What’s the mind? The inner man. So what Scripture is doing here, I believe, it’s talking about the same substance or essence as a whole with different functions. So you can think of the, for example, the word mind. One expression of that—recommendation says I’ve looked up “all your mind.” Okay now what does your mind do? What else is in all of us? Reason. That’s cognition. Come on, do you think that’s words? What? Memory. What else is in there? What? Does your body look good? Does your body look good? That’s your appetite. What else? Your [audio unclear] is to come up with imagination. Imagination is not cognition, it is not memory. You have all of these functions of the mind, and I don’t think the mind is either one substance or essence or one thing, many functions. So there’s an important difference here, and really throughout all theology, between a faculty and a function, or between a substance and a function. Like with the male and female. We have the same basic essence. Yes, we have different functions. So, I think the tension here on this teaching lies in that fact. It’s, you know, is that in some places the writer or the apostle or whoever’s talking is highlighting or stressing something. So you know, it says for example, and I think it’s 2 Corinthians, “let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of flesh and spirit.” Flesh and body—well there’s no flesh, not soul and body, not spirit and body? Because these words, these descriptions of the soul, are looking at different angles, difference, showing more light on the object that we’re talking about.

The Unity of the Soul

Okay now the important, in my opinion, you can try to find this on the diagram. I’ll later you can mull those over. The important point though, the ultimately important point about a biblical anthropology is to understand the unity of the soul. Okay, you can talk about the mind, the Bible talks a lot about the heart. It’s a big one. You know, anyone else the Bible talks about? The kidneys. The kidneys. You ever read the King James phrase, the bowels of compassion? Talks about your bowels. Your bowels. You believe that. It talks about our mind, our soul, our spirit, our bowels, our kidneys, our heart, and many more. And all of these things shed some kind of light on our basic human, or fundamental essence, our fundamental humanity. But it doesn’t mean my soul is made up of 25 parts or hearts. It’s not. It’s one thing that functions in many different ways. So the unity of your own body is a profoundly important point, and not only theoretically how you want to think about how you live, how you take care of your body or don’t take care of your body. It affects your soul or spirit. I don’t know about you but I find it when I don’t sleep well and I’m tired I’m much more susceptible to temptation. Anybody else have that? Man, why am I so tempted? I’m so tired. So your body and your soul aren’t just related, they’re connected. Now there is one writer that I have in the back who tries to argue that basically you have a body and you have a spirit and the soul is kind of the place where they meet. It’s like a conjunction, you know. This coordinate form, two edges you’ve got to connect there, and the soul sits in the middle. I don’t think it fits with the picture. That’s also a man being for you. You come across. It’s like saying, well, it’s not really another thing, another substance. It’s kind of, you know, somehow it takes the properties of both. I don’t really agree with that, but I understand the tension, because you look at all the Scriptures on this. There really is a tension. I’d say you have to parse the pictures very carefully. Okay. Now, what time am I going till, nine or ten? That’s ten minutes. Um, I thought it was funny enough to hear.

The Propagation of the Soul

Okay, now, this is going to play now. Okay, the origin of the soul. So we know—[audio unclear] Do I have air going or blowing or anything? No, they’re about the same. It’s what? They’re about the same. What do you mean? About the same as what? [audio unclear] Okay, I’m sorry. Okay. That was bad, I’m sorry. You can know what’s funny with that. Okay, there are three views about the origin of the soul. Not the origin as in like the original creation of man, but the transmission of what’s called a propagation of the soul. How you got a soul, how you did get a soul. How the humans after Adam got a soul. And the first one, I don’t want special treatment, guys, I just want air blowing. The first view is that all souls were created by God before time. It’s called pre-existence, or it’s also called creationism, which I don’t like because that confuses it with creationism versus evolution. About that creationism, this is the creation of the soul. But in this case, it’s a pre-existent creationism, where God created all souls. And they’re just up in heaven. I don’t know what they’re doing. I don’t know why he would do it that way. But again, this is the Plato thing that came into the church, I believe. Most authors would say that. So there’s not much else to say of them, I think it’s kind of wacky. And there’s no Scripture for it. Now there are a couple Scriptures of the Lord says, you know, like Jeremiah, “I knew you before you were born.” Well, that sounds like you must have been there before. But I think obviously that’s just figurative language to stress his intimacy, the omniscience of his knowledge and intimacy with Jeremiah’s ways. The second view is probably the most common today in evangelicalism, and that is what’s called creationism proper. This is the view that you, at some point in your existence, as you begin to exist, at conception, between conception and birth, at some point in that process God infused the soul into your body. You got that? It could have been at the moment of conception. That, but the original, you know, they say that once sperm met egg and the conception really happens a little, like those old—that is when God zaps it, so to speak, and he puts your soul in there. That’s common, very, I’m probably the majority of you know, and you can look at the text like Psalm 139 which certainly sounds like that. Perfect. Why don’t we just read that. I’m going to hand the reading off to Jake.

First one, just start. I am the New American Standard. Each individual is 1995. [audio unclear]

O Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar. You scrutinize my path and my lying down, and are intimately acquainted with all my ways. Even before there is a word on my tongue, behold, O Lord, You know it all. You have enclosed me behind and before, and laid Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is too high, I cannot attain to it. Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, even there Your hand will lead me, and Your right hand will lay hold of me. If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me, and the light around me will be night,” even the darkness is not dark to You, and the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to You. For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; wonderful are Your works, and my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth; Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Your book were all written the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them. How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand. When I awake, I am still with You.

(Psalm 139:1–18, NASB 1995)

Amen. Thank you. Well, this is a very common text. You’ve seen it on all the pro-life ones here. Very appropriate for that. And he just reads it and says, well, there’s God doing it. God’s fashioning the body. Yeah, okay, what also says—Jesus talks about the lilies of the field that God dresses. God really making them? Well, he is. But he’s using something, the law of propagation. It’s not God versus something else. It’s God in something else. It’s not nature versus God. It’s God governing nature. It’s God working through nature, not identical to nature. It’s [audio unclear]. It’s working through nature. So things that we think of as natural laws are often just God being regular. This is a God of order. Saying that something happens via God doesn’t mean it’s not also being done via the laws of nature. They’re not contradictions. Okay, so what we mean is that God acts, or he acts through nature. He’s controlling it. Now, the other thing about this passage is, it doesn’t exactly say God infused the soul or imparts the soul. It focuses more on the body, the formation of the body, right? So, well, you may think, okay, well, if God doesn’t give me a soul, where do I get a soul? Well, if you get stuff from God, you just get it a different way. Some guys are taking a pre-existing soul that just kind of took it from heaven, and like once they go down to earth—I’m not sure any soul would want to do that. You mind? What’s going on down here? Or God just makes a brand new soul, and puts it in that. Now, I want you to think about that, since that’s the prevailing view. How do we make that jive with the biblical teaching that’s in—are we born sinful? Yes or no? We’re born sinful, right? But if God creates my soul and puts it in this preformed tiny body, God created a sinful soul? No. Well, that’s a problem. Now, the other last one would be, well, okay. Yeah, he makes a perfect soul. He forms the body, and when it unites to the body, the body transmits sin to the soul. Now the problem with that is you have another big Gnostic thing going on. That is that sin resides in matter. Matter is evil. Very common doctrine, which is why over the centuries, Christians did all kinds of terrible things to their bodies. Heard of asceticism, right? Very cruel monastic traditions where people would beat themselves and flog themselves because the body was just evil. The body’s not evil. When Paul talks about it, he says, there’s nothing good that is in my flesh. It doesn’t mean this. He means your soul. The soul, it’s carnal. The soul that has what we say is worldly desires. It’s not your physical bodies, people. So, there’s a big dilemma here. For the idea that God creates a perfect soul and puts it into the little one or whatever you call it. But it comes out sinful. Now, some people think children are born perfect. Or should I say at least sinless. You’ve never met me before? Every kid I’ve ever met never had to be taught to sin. So that’s a fundamental problem of creationism. So then what’s the third thing? It’s called traducianism. It’s Latin, because I can’t spell it. This is the teaching that the soul and the body are derived from the parent. In other words, the natural—they’re called the natural laws of propagation that you see in humans and animals all throughout nature. Natural propagation is God’s means, if you will, but the soul comes through the parents. Well, it doesn’t mean God’s not part of this whole process, but it just means that he doesn’t just put a perfect soul in at the moment. It comes out sinful, because that’s a hard problem to resolve. So this view, traducianism, was more popular probably in the early church. I’d say probably the creation view is the most common, but as I said, there’s a problem with the sinful—how do you get a sinful person? We’ll come back and talk a little bit about sin, your favorite topic. All right, take five, maybe five.

A Short Break

[audio unclear — class break]

The Image of God

Okay, before going on to the doctrine of sin or something, the Fall. Have you usually mentioned the image of God? Oh yeah, oh yeah. So, the text I read earlier, “Let us make man in our image.” Who’s the “our”? It’s God. It’s a hint there is this Trinity, right? Basically make man like us, like God. The irony of course is when God says, don’t eat of that one tree because you’ll be like God, knowing good and evil. He said you’d be like God, and he said, you’re not going to eat it. Yeah. That’s good. Yeah. But that doesn’t mean it’s God. Okay, so I want to hear your opinion for a couple of minutes. What does it kind of mean, or this type of theme, what might it mean? Does it remind me of a—pick a stab at it? I like it. I like it. I can’t what? Well, it says in again like this. So what’s the likeness mean? Well how are we like God? Well how are we an image of that? Can you say it a little louder? Things that work with humanity but not just like jobs in terms of the job. All right, someone else? Rational. We’re rational? Of course the engineer would say that. Yeah. So we’re like God because we’re rational. Yes. We’re getting the, you’ve been fighting for it, so it’s a single nature. Single nature? Yes, it’s a single nature. Okay, someone else? That’s it? Come on, guys. Is the capacity to create? What? Capacity to create, yes. I don’t know, because we’re creating a new capacity image. Say that again, sir. Okay, we’re in his image. Explain like that. What does that mean? I hear some. What does that mean? Does image and likeness mean the same thing? Different words? Or are they different things? Yes. Yes. We have a soul, we have a God-consciousness, animals don’t have that. Yes, we have a soul, a God-consciousness. God [audio unclear] animals. What else? Excuse me? What? What do you mean, huge? Jesus has physical? No, I wouldn’t say that. What’s that? Do you want to feel love? Okay. What’s that? Okay, capacity for community. So a simple summary might be that the image is what they call the fundamentals of personhood. Now we have a soul. God doesn’t need, right, to take on a soul, but Scripture actually says that, and in a couple of places calls an animal a soul in order to [audio unclear]. So what do we have? We have some of the, Jake said, reason, rationality, cognition, what we call, for the mind, but we have emotions, we have volition, we have appetites. Now we also have physical appetites because we have the body. God doesn’t have physical appetites. He has appetites, if you will. So as Paul pointed out, there’s a fundamental distinction between humanity and animals. We’re not just the highest level of the animal kingdom. There’s a break, if you will, a divide between us and the animals. Animals in Scripture are often called a soul because that’s the word of a living being, but they’re not humans. They cannot commune with God, right? They don’t pray. So it’s really, I believe that the image is our basic personhood. I think the likeness, some scholars say the likeness is just another word for the image and what’s the author just kind of emphasizing it by repeating a different word. I think something else is going on there. I think, if you remember the creation account, 1:26–27. After that, God says, be fruitful and multiply. So what does he say after that? Have dominion. Can’t hear you. Have dominion. So that’s very much connected to the part about reproducing. They go together. Because culture is accumulated over generations. Right? The knowledge of former generations passed on, and this generation adds a little bit to it, and that’s an improvement, if you will, of knowledge, science, art, many wonderful things that would fall under the category of dominion. So the dominion of Adam, he was created to be God’s vice-regent on the earth. He was to reflect God to the animal kingdom. He was to govern in God’s name the animal kingdom. So I think the image is a person, I think the likeness is the similarity of function. Of course, God’s the ruler. He’s the only real ruler. But I believe he appointed man, and his function of dominion was a function in which he was God’s vice-regent of the earth, into the care and protection of the earth, not just the garden but the entire earth.

The Origin and Nature of Sin

Okay, what was I talking—a little bit about sin? You know, you’re just dying to talk about this. I don’t know about you, but I’m talking about hearing sermons and reading books about sin as a downer. It doesn’t. I kind of like it, actually. Because when you understand sin, you end up understanding a lot of other doctrines. I told you before, in my time in the pulpit over the years, I was a young guy, young buck. I didn’t mean that I would say it has to leave the church. Okay. Why? Because you talked too much about sin. Now, there’s a good way and a better way. And if you go to church, every way you leave, your mind, you just are wretched, because the preacher’s condemning you because of your sin. That’s not the whole point of the church. Now, in some contexts, that is the main point of this meeting. There is a function, a prophetic function of the pulpit. [audio unclear] What’s the point of that energy? That’s to lead people to a place of repentance. That repentance that opens the door for grace. It’s not just making people guilty. It’s to open them up to their need for salvation, their need for Jesus, their need for grace. So the sin thing and the sin and salvation connect together. As I said before, you get one wrong, you’re getting the other wrong. So I’m not here to condemn you. Here to help you understand the word better. Okay. The origin of sin. Sin originated not in the garden. Sin, as far as you can tell, sin originated with the devil. And you can read about it in the text. Let me find the text real quick. In Isaiah 14, first of all, does anyone want to go there? It says,

“How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, you who weakened the nations! For you have said in your heart: ‘I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation on the farthest sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High.’”

(Isaiah 14:12–14)

What sin is that, folks? The origin of sin is demonic, Luciferian, satanic, pride. When Eve was tempted, also Adam, [audio unclear] what was the first sin, what was the original sin? I think it was pride. It was believing that their counsel was better than God’s counsel. When you think about the creation account and the garden account, what you have is you have every—they got the divine word, then they got the demonic word, right? They had a question in front of them. They lived by the word. They were living by faith. Do you believe? The issue is, are we going to put our faith in God’s word? And they picked the satanic counsel. I think at the heart of sin is a notion, somehow we can actually exist apart from God. And when you think about grace, and there’s something I’m thinking about, you should think about the fact that God—the only self-existent thing in the universe is God. Aseity, in himself. Our life is derivative. So the origin of sin was not in Adam. Although Adam became the human vehicle for sin to be transmitted through humanity, through his tragedy. Okay? So, originated in the satanic, was transferred to humanity through the Fall. And now it is spread to all of mankind. In other words, sin is a universal phenomenon. Understand? Universal. No one is perfect. No one is perfect. There’s none righteous, no not one. That’s what Scripture says. Little babies are not little angels. [audio unclear] Sinners. They’re born with a nature which is bent and inclined towards sin. You don’t need to teach a kid to sin. They’ll find a way. And you see it early, early on. So it’s a universal phenomenon. When we say the word sin, why don’t we ask, what does it mean? Well, in some ways, it’s hard to summarize, because in the Greek language, and the New Testament’s written in Greek, there are actually about 10 words for sin. 10 echo words from iniquity, transgression, [audio unclear].

How do we sum them up? Well, the Westminster Confession summed it up this way: Sin is any lack of conformity to, or any transgression of, any law of God, given as a rule to the reasonable creature. So what you see here is two aspects to sin. Omission and commission. Now we tend to think about commission, right, of doing a sin. Is there anything about sinning by not doing something? That is probably, it could certainly be more common than doing sin. So [audio unclear] You sin by ignoring, basically, a command of God. When he says, do this. And we don’t do it. That’s as much a sin. But those sins, I don’t think we feel guilty about those sins, you know? And there’s also a distinction in Scripture about practice, omission, commission, is the use of the word sin and the use of the word sins. Sins, plural. Because sin, in the singular—when the Bible talks about sins in the plural, it’s talking about acts of sin. That can be an act of commission, omission, commission. Sins, things that are done or not done. But sin is a principle. Sin is a power, if you will. Paul says, in me, that is in my flesh, is no good thing. That was the sin. Some people call it a sin nature. I don’t like that word, but so be it for now. A sin nature operating inside of him that produces, if you will, the acts.

Guilt

One of the results of sin in humanity, what happened when Adam and Eve ate the fruit? First, they became guilty. They became guilty in the eyes of God. Before they sinned, they were not guilty in the eyes of God. They were standing in God’s favor. After sin, they became guilty. The thing I thought I had about biblical guilt is that it’s not a psychological guilt we’re talking about. Now, there is such a thing as psychological guilt, and even in the Bible we see times when people even feel that guilt here. But often the word guilt is not used that way. It’s used as a judicial term. Let’s say I get pulled over for speeding. I would never speed. So I didn’t think I was speeding, and I wanted to—no, I wasn’t speeding. I’m going to go to court and plead this. I’m going to go to court. The policeman talked, and the judge rules, sorry, Mr. Vaughn, I’m going to take the policeman’s word. You were speeding. You’re guilty. You are guilty. I would walk out of that place and I’ll feel—psychological guilt is not the same as judicial guilt. And this is very important when we talk about justification. You know, you’re going to learn soon when we look at soteriology. Justification is not God making you holy. What is that thing? God makes you holy. What is that? Sanctification. Sanctification. Then what is justification? It’s God declaring you innocent. It’s God saying not guilty. Why? Because all the debts that you owe for those sins or crimes [audio unclear]. Okay, so in guilt, I am primarily talking about judicial guilt as a result of sin. Now there was some actual guilt, and you know how we know this, because it says that after Adam and Eve sinned, what was the first thing they did, they covered themselves and they heard him coming. They hid. Why would they do that? They felt guilty. They were ashamed. But they were also guilty. Not just psychologically guilty. They were guilty. Another observation about guilt is that although all unsaved people are guilty before God, and all sin incurred guilt, the Scriptures nevertheless recognize what we call degrees of guilt. Now, you all say, oh we’re all sinners. Yeah, we’re all sinners. Well, it’s a struggle. And you’ll hear it’s like, well, if you commit one sin, doesn’t one sin send you to hell? Actually I guess you could say that it’s true also, but it’s a little more complicated than that. But all sins have not incurred the same amount of guilt. Why? Because God is just. Some sins are worse than other sins. Committing murder is much worse than, I don’t know, speeding or whatever. And so God takes all that into account in the judgment. And Luke, I think it’s in Luke 12, the Lord talks about—let’s see if I wrote this correctly. Yeah, Luke 12:47. Let’s have a description of it. You can look at this one real quick. 12:47. Verse 45 says, one of the parables is about the servants. It says, but if that servant, 12:45, the servant says in his heart, my master delays his coming, and then begins to beat the male and female servants, and to eat and drink and be drunk. The master of that servant will come on a day when he is not looking for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in two and appoint him his portion with the unbelievers. And that servant who knew—this is the key—the servant who knew his master’s will, and did not prepare himself or do according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. But he who did not know, yet committed things deserving of stripes, shall be beaten with few. More knowledge, more accountability. More guilt, legal guilt. So there are other texts that talk about the same thing, and actually we won’t go there now, but it has different sacrifices for different offenses, different sins, because the guilt is not identical for every sin. Some of the same guilt tests were also crimes that demanded either execution or demanded the person be literally exiled from the community. We have that today in the church called excommunication. We don’t have the power of the sword, but we do have the power of fencing. It’s called fencing the table. It’s protecting the testimony of the church to the world, and also protecting the church from the pollution of sin via its own professing members. Okay, so, yeah, some degrees of guilt.

Wrath and Enmity

Another result of sin is the wrath of God. Now, I’d love to teach on this, really teach on this, because I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding about this, and a lot of Christians just don’t believe it. It’s all over the Bible, Old Testament and New Testament. I took a young—sort of, I love this young girl when I work with young people, college students [audio unclear] she was excited, I got her a Bible, about a month or two later she said maybe at the meeting, you know, I think the Old Testament God is done better—hahaha—innocent, innocent observation. On the surface it appears that way. When you really read the Old Testament closely, God is full of grace. When he proclaimed the name of the Lord to Moses, the first thing you see, God’s merciful, long-suffering, and all the rest, you got to describe him with loving compassion, patience, long-suffering, he’s merciful, but he’s also just. And that’s the dilemma of the cross. I mean, that’s what the cross came to fix, at the level of the God who loves us and wants us redeemed and reconciled, not being with him, but the God who also can’t just [audio unclear] because that would violate his justice. He would be an unjust judge, unjust God. And let me tell you something. You may not like the idea of God’s wrath, but something worse than that is a God you believed in, all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present, and he was evil. That sounds like hell to me. And actually a lot of people think of God that way. That’s why they’re running from him. That’s fundamentally their fear. They don’t understand the great mercy of the Lord. But the wrath of God is simply his judicial will against sin. That’s all it is. That’s not God throwing a fit. It’s simply an acknowledgement of his displeasure of sin. And nothing I’m going to say is, my question about God’s enemies. God’s wrath is not a natural one. Wrath is a reflection of a different attribute. Do you know what that attribute is? What? Holiness. Do you want to say it again? What? Holiness. He exercises wrath because he’s a just judge. Because he’s holy and righteous. Those are the answer to this. So if you don’t have God’s wrath, fine, you’re not going to have a just judge. He’s not going to be righteous and holy. You’re going to have an evil God. No. He’s absolutely pure and just. And his wrath is not primarily an emotional reaction or feeling. It is an act of his holiness in response to sin. Can I just talk a couple minutes? Mike? Sure. So, another result of sin is we became the enemies of God. Now, when people first hear that they don’t understand, because their view is, you know, I don’t think God, as long as he leaves me alone, we’re good. I don’t hate God. I don’t even think about God. Well, that shows how much you do hate God. You don’t even think about him. The being that’s holding you up at that very moment, that’s giving you every breath you’re taking at that very moment, you don’t even think about him. You ignore him from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep. You just ignore him. Scripture says God is not in all their thoughts. That means all day, the time. God is not there. That’s how much they really don’t like God. So the result of the Fall is that we now inherit from Adam moral corruption. We’re not born perfect. We’re born depraved. It’s just a Latin word for bent. In our human nature, we are bent towards sin and we are bent away from God. So the Scripture then says—we are in Romans. Paul, if you read Romans, you’ve probably seen the outline, because it’s right. Paul talks about in 1:18, the wrath of God has been revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. In other words, they don’t want to know God. Because they’re bent. They don’t like light because they’re living in darkness. So then he says that we see them all declared, there’s none righteous, no not one. And then in chapter 3, he talks about the redemption that’s in Jesus. Redemption, reconciliation, all these beautiful things that Jesus did at the cross. And then chapter 5, it says, therefore having been justified by faith, and we’ll get to that in a few weeks, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith. We have access to God. Think about that. Really think about that. Into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Verse 6, for when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. You know what the average person thinks? They think if they come to Jesus, that means they have to get through wrath first. That is our nature. People think that. Oh, I can’t go back to church because I got to fix my life. You can’t fix your life. Jesus can fix your life. Verse 9, much more then, having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. So we’re enemies, meaning we, in a fallen state, we have hostility toward God. God has hostility, not toward us, but toward our sin. He really does detest it. It says the eyes of the Lord are so pure, he cannot even look at it. The Lord, as such, hates it.

Death

And then the last result I want to mention is death. Death is not normal. And there’s nothing, there’s no way you can really convince yourself in the moment you lose somebody you love, it’s not normal. We were not created to die, we were created to live forever in righteousness. And Scripture says, the Lord in the end will give us a new heaven and new earth. Sin will be totally removed, literally burned away, and then we’ll be in a heaven and earth which is completely purged of all sin. Perfect righteousness. That’s bliss. Because one of the realizations is, the source of all sorrows is not the circumstances. It’s sin. That’s a fundamental problem. So we die physically. That’s obvious. But we also die spiritually. And when God said to Adam, [audio unclear] And the death is physical, it’s spiritual, meaning that in their natural state they will be cut off from communion with God. The one thing that makes us human is that ability to communicate with God, and yet in their natural state they will be cut off from him because of their sin. And then, besides the spiritual death, we have physical death, spiritual death, and what the Bible calls eternal death. If you read Revelation you’ll find that you see those texts talk about the lake of fire that burns forever and ever. The smoke that goes up forever. Now I know a lot of people don’t believe in hell anymore. Very common. One of my old heroes, Kirk Cameron, came out recently and said he didn’t believe in hell anymore. Well, I don’t know how to describe it. Well, that would require a deep dive into the last picture. Hell’s real. Sin’s real. Guilt is real. The salvation is real. The love of God is real. The atonement, the sacrifice of peace at the cross, our sin’s real. And no one need go to hell. As Lewis said, hell is God saying to people after they die, thy will be done. It’s their whole life, they didn’t want God in their life, and God says, okay, I’m going to give you an existence without me. I mean without any of him. None of his common grace. Nothing, really.

Closing Prayer

Let’s pray real quick. Father, I thank you for tonight. I thank you, Lord, that you have shown us truth. And I pray for everyone here, Lord, I don’t know some of these people at all. I don’t know their standing with you. I don’t know their testimony. I don’t know their lives. Maybe they came here thinking they were a Christian, but they’re really not. Or maybe they came in knowing they’re not a Christian. Help them to understand that the cross was all about removing this wrath that we should experience because of our sin. And Jesus taking the wrath upon himself is, in a sense, the perfect Lord. Jesus became sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God. Jesus gets my sin and I get his righteousness. And you declare me not guilty. And because of that I then have access to you. You give me your Holy Spirit, and through your Spirit I have access to you and can commune with you and know you and have life, Lord. So I pray for everyone here, Lord. Move them. Move them, Holy Spirit. Open their eyes. Open their hearts to what a good and awesome, merciful God you are. I pray all this to the glory of Jesus, in your name. I pray in your name. Amen.

Yeah. Well, I got a picture of it. Thank you. Come get it. Don’t get up. [audio unclear]