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ABOUT HUMAN NATURE  1. Where Did Man Come From? The Bible tells us that God Himself is man's Creator. God said, "Let Us make man in Our image" (Genesis 1:26, KJV). This meant that He was going to create a spiritual being, for God is a spirit; that He would create a moral being, because God is a moral being; and that He would create a rational being--someone who had a mind and could think. That much we know. Just how the human body, for example, or the human brain images God, we do not yet know.The Bible tells us that God took a handful of dust (which speaks of the earth), and He breathed life into it (which speaks of spirit), and "man became a living soul (nephesh)" (Genesis 2:7, KJV). Thus, the merger of the spiritual with the physical elements of the earth created a human soul, made in the image of God. Man is therefore the only creature we know of, other than the angels themselves, who has the ability to relate to God and to worship Him. You do not find horses and cattle on their knees praying for wisdom and guidance! Yet man not only prays but builds churches and cathedrals in which to worship God. God gave that desire to man. We were made with the precious nature of God, in the image of God, by God Himself.
2. What Is Man Like? Man was created in God's image and has a spirit, which the Bible often speaks of as the heart (see Romans 10:10). He has a soul, which is essentially his sense of self, the center of which would be the mind. And he has a body, which holds it all together. Human beings are made up of body, soul, and spirit. God intended that the spirit of man be continuously in touch with the Spirit of God. The spirit, in turn, is supposed to radiate through the mind and the body to the outside world.The problem we are facing today is that most people are directed instead by external stimuli that come to us through the bodily senses. So the body begins to be the controlling factor through gluttony, sex, pride, or whatever. Because the body controls the soul, the soul is able to conceive of schemes to make the body happy. And the end result is that the spirit of man is submerged by selfishness. The spirit of the first man was like a mirror, reflecting the glory of God. He had the imago dei, "the image of God," clearly within him. Because God was personally revealed to him, God's way was uppermost. But when man sinned, his inner mirror was clouded or darkened. He could no longer see God clearly. As a result, instead of being directed by God's Spirit, people are manipulated by their bodies or their minds toward evil. In Genesis we read, "The imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth" (Genesis 8:21). When man was created, he had the capacity to serve God, and doing that came naturally because he was in the presence of God. As long as man's spirit functions as it should, serving God is natural, so man tends toward good. But once he is removed from God, self-preservation becomes more important; and man will kill, lie, cheat, and hurt others in order to preserve his self-esteem, his self-image, and his life. Humans have a tremendous capacity for good or evil because they are made in the image of God. Man can do more good, but also more damage, than any animal because man has a godlike capacity. Theologians have a saying that Adam in the Garden of Eden was posse non peccare (able not to sin), and if he had continued in that, he would have come to the point where he was non posse peccare (not able to sin). He would have become so established in righteousness that he would not have been able to sin. From then on he would have been transformed to ever higher righteousness. But instead, he fell, and as a result became evil. That is why Jesus said that every man or woman had to be born from above, or "born again," in order to see God's kingdom (see John 3:3). Man's spirit has to be restored by being cleansed from sin by Jesus Christ, then created anew by operation of God's Spirit. With his own spirit under the control of God's Spirit, the remainder of man's being--soul and body--would be controlled from within instead of from without.
3. Were Adam And Eve Real, Or Is The Story These original humans were not subhuman or Neanderthal creatures. They were beautiful human beings, created in the image of God, with tremendous intelligence and ability. If man has gone away from that, he has gone down instead of up. Some people may ask where the Garden of Eden was. The Bible says that it was to the east (of Israel) and mentions four rivers relative to it: The Pishon, the Gihon, the Tigris, and the Euphrates (see Genesis 2:10-14). These meager references would place the garden somewhere around modern Iraq or possibly northern Syria. Ancient Chinese culture may refer to Eden. The written Chinese language symbol for west means two people in a garden. This character dates back at least three thousand years. If a Chinese person were asked to explain the word west, he would have to say, "Well, that is where two people lived in a garden." The existence of this remarkable symbol would indicate a pre-Christian tradition that the people who populated China came from the west, perhaps someplace in the Tigris-Euphrates valley, and that the early Chinese ancestors were familiar with the story of the first couple living in a garden--possibly the Garden of Eden.
4. Where Did All The Races Come From? According to the book of Genesis, the races all came from Noah. The human race started with Adam and Eve and grew evil very quickly. Pretty soon, "Every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually" (Genesis 6:5). When God looked at the earth He saw violence. The earth had become a terrible place to live, because lust for self-preservation had grown so strong that in order to eat and find a mate and protect their families, men were killing each other. So God said He was going to destroy all the people and start a new race with Noah and his sons (see Genesis 6:7-8). God did this by bringing a great flood upon the earth. After the flood there were Noah and his wife and their three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and their wives.Ham became the father of the Egyptians, the Ethiopians, and the other black races, as well as the Canaanites who once lived in the land now occupied by Israel. Japheth was the father of the Greeks, the people who lived in the islands of the sea and who settled Europe and Russia. Shem was the father of the Semitic people--the Jews, Arabs, and Persians.
5. What Is Original Sin? Original sin is a theological term that goes back to the fall of man. As I said before, man was created in God's image, righteous and free. He was a free moral agent, freely able to choose God or turn away from Him. By eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he did the one thing he was asked not to do. Breaking God's one commandment to him was sin. At that point he was driven from the Garden of Eden and cut off from the tree of life (see Genesis 3:2-24).From that moment on, the spirit of man was damaged. It is as if man is now born with a moral handicap. He is lame in the most important part of his being--his spirit. That is original sin. The Bible says, "They go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies" (Psalm 58:3). There is a rebellious nature in most children. They just like to do whatever you tell them not to do. This natural rebellion stems from man's original sin. Instead of being morally free, man has a decided tendency toward sin--urged on toward evil by what is called "the world, the flesh, and the devil." Only those who come to Jesus can be rid of this tendency. That is the whole concept of being born again. Our spirits are re-created. Our spirits are now joined with God's Spirit, and we have the ability to live a godly, holy life in Jesus Christ. On our own, we simply cannot do it. The apostle Paul says, "O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death" (Romans 7:24)? He says, the thing that I want to do, I cannot do. The good I would do, I cannot do, whereas evil lies close at hand (see Romans 7:15-20). Paul struggled against his fallen nature until he realized that "There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit" (Romans 8:1). He also said, "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death" (Romans 8:2). The renewal and change in Jesus Christ can free people from the bondage of original sin. We should keep in mind that original sin is a tendency to do evil, not an act of evil. Guilt comes when we commit acts of evil. There is no such thing as "original guilt." God does not punish people for tendencies, only for what they do in light of what they know. Therefore, little babies do not go to hell because of original sin, because babies have never committed any sinful acts.
6. How Can I Have Free Will If God Knows His foreknowledge could be likened to a motion picture. If we watch a movie we see the frames in sequence, so it looks as if Act 2 follows Act 1 and Act 3 follows Act 2. We see what looks like consecutive action. But if you were to take that same piece of film and hang it up on the wall, you could see the end, the beginning, and the middle all at once. You really would not have to control the action in order to see what was going to happen. In an imperfect sense this illustrates how God's foreknowledge and our free will can coexist. Yet there are dimensions of life that are beyond our understanding. The concept of predestination and foreknowledge, as opposed to free will, makes up one of those dimensions. If we say, "Well, it is all up to man," then we err, because that is not the case. If, on the other hand, we say, "It does not matter what we do, because God has prearranged it all anyhow," we are wrong. There seems to be a tension between two ostensibly irreconcilable points: The free will of man, and the foreknowledge and predestination of God. Our theology is lopsided if we fail to include the reality of free will and predestination together. The way I like to look at it is as if you have a basketball game consisting of visible and invisible players. The ones who make the points are the visible players, and yet the invisible ones are there feeding the ball and strategy to the visible players. Assume that the invisible players could act and interact with the visible players, or at least they could whisper signals and directions over the shoulders of the visible players. In this illustration, the invisible players would be controlling the action. But from all an onlooker could see, the visible players are in charge of the entire game. In this analogy, the visible players represent man's free will, while the invisible players represent God's Spirit, angels, and demons. Visible and invisible are working and interacting together. There is not some timeless, immutable decree from God that governs man, but constant, loving help and direction from Him as well as hindrance from the enemy. We will understand the full mystery when we know God better. 7. What Is Predestination? Predestination is a term that refers to God's determination in advance that something will happen in accordance with His fixed purpose. Although the noun predestination is never used in Scripture the verb predestinate is used four times (Romans 8:29,30, Ephesians 1:5,11) and refers to God's determination that the Christian will be blessed as a result of salvation. God's choice of individuals who would be saved is referred to by the word election.Two seemingly opposite concepts are involved in the idea of predestination and election. First, God, who is sovereign in the universe, is in complete control of human events and the lives of individuals. If that were not so, He would not be sovereign, and, thus, would not be God. Second, God has given people a freedom of choice to do as they will. We are accountable for our own actions and nobody can say, "When I sinned, I just did what God wanted me to do, and so why is He holding me accountable for it?" Scholars have struggled with these seemingly opposed concepts for centuries, and two major views of predestination have developed. Calvinism holds that God offers irresistible grace to those whom He elects to save. If you are among the elect, you cannot say "no" to God. Arminianism, on the other hand, holds that God's grace is the source of redemption, but it can be resisted. In Calvinism, God has chosen the believer; in Arminianism, the believer has chosen God. The apostle Paul, in explaining the obstinate refusal of Israel to accept the gospel of Jesus Christ, could have given a synthesis of predestination and free will that appeals to human reason and fairness. Instead, he said, "God has mercy on whom He wants to have mercy, and He hardens whom He wants to harden" (Romans 9:18). Then he described Pharaoh, King of Egypt, about whom the Bible says, God hardened his heart (see Exodus 9:12). We must remember, however, that sunlight hardens clay and melts wax. It all depends on the substance being dealt with. If Pharaoh's heart had been tender, God's power would have softened it, not hardened it. Therefore, the concept of predestination and election is never an excuse to sin; as the apostle concludes, "O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His paths beyond finding out" (Romans 11:33).
8. Does The Bible Teach Evolution? To answer this question we must first define evolution. To the scientist the theory of evolution customarily means a process by which the whole universe came about through a progression of interrelated phenomena. In biology or zoology the theory of evolution supposes that existing animals and plants have their origins in simpler forms that have been progressively modified through successive generations over extended periods of time. Scientific evolution eliminates belief in God or special creation and ascribes the origins of all life to the action of random chemical and physical forces.The Bible does not teach random evolution. The Bible does teach an act of creation by God of a universe out of a formless void, and then individual acts of creation in an ascending order from the simpler forms of aquatic life to the mammals and finally to a creature made in God's image--man (see Genesis 1:20-25). Human beings did not evolve out of the primordial ooze. They are the special creation of an all-powerful God (see Genesis 1:26-27). Therefore, it can be said that the Bible teaches "creation in ascending order." When the scientists discover the ascending order of the plants and animals on earth, their factual observations are generally in harmony with the Bible. The scientists go wrong, however, when they attempt to draw theological theories of origins from their findings. The ascending order of living creatures is an observable fact. Apart from the Bible or the revelation of God, the source of their origin is unknown and scientific speculation about their origin can only be theory--never fact. However, one major empirical fact negates the theory of scientific evolution. There has never been one observable case of any creature shifting (or evolving) from one biological class to another or from one phylum to another. There is no case where we have remains or fossils of an animal that died during the evolutionary process. The reason is clear. The Bible says that God made each animal "after its kind" through a special act of creation for each one of them. think the greatest example of this truth is the mule. The mule is a cross between a donkey and a horse. Mules are born sterile. They are unable to reproduce themselves. In other words, the horse and the donkey were close enough in the biological ladder to interbreed with each other, but their offspring could not continue the breeding process. Even that close link could not reproduce. Certainly nobody has ever bred a bird with a snake or an ape with a man. There is no reproductive evidence to support evolution.
9. Where Do People Go When They Die? Their bodies usually go into the ground, and they go back to the dust from whence they came. The spirit of man, on the other hand goes into an everlasting state, because spirits are immortal and cannot die. As I understand the Bible, at death those who are Christians go to be with the Lord, to a place of bliss called paradise. Those who are not Christians go to a place of suffering and torment called hell. They wait there for a final judgment, while those who are dead in Christ wait for their final rewards.The Bible does not teach soul sleep. For example, Jesus told about a rich man and a beggar named Lazarus (see Luke 16:19-31). When he died, the beggar went to a place called Abraham's bosom, where he was comforted by the patriarch Abraham and other Old Testament saints. When the rich man died he went to hell, or Hades. He asked Lazarus to come over and give him just a few drops of water, saying he was tormented in the flames. In this story we note that both men were conscious. They knew their own identity, and they recognized other people as well. There was also some kind of torment. Since fire does not hurt spirits, it is possible that the fire may be symbolic (see Daniel 3:25-27). It could be the fire of remorse, of thinking what could have been, yet was missed. Hell is also pictured as outer darkness, where there is loneliness and weeping and gnashing of teeth (see Matthew 8:12). There are other references to a lake of fire (see Revelation 20:14-15). Whatever hell is, it consists of eternal and unending anguish apart from God and all that is good. 10. Is Reincarnation Taught In The Bible? Definitely not.Reincarnation is an Eastern concept that speaks of the transmigration of the human soul. In certain cultures it is believed that the souls of those who die come back as dung beetles, or as the rain or the dew. In Nepal they teach that evil men come back as dogs, so they beat the dogs unmercifully. In India cows, rats, and grasshoppers are viewed as people who have been reincarnated. The overarching concept of reincarnation comes from the Hindu belief that life and death make up an eternal wheel. Each individual is attached to the wheel, and attached to each individual is a karma, or fate. People supposedly purge their karmas by successive incarnations. There is no end, only bad incarnations or possibly good incarnations. There is no understanding, no rules, no reason; just mindless fate and hopeless attempts at the cleansing of guilt. The Bible does not teach this at all. The Bible says, "It is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment" (Hebrews 9:27). In the story of the rich man and Lazarus, when the rich man died, he went to Hades. When Lazarus died, he went to paradise, called by the Bible "Abraham's bosom." There was no thought of coming back. When Jesus Christ was on the Mount of Transfiguration, He met with Moses and Elijah and He talked with them (see Matthew 17:1-3). Moses had been dead for years, but he was still Moses. Moses did not come back as King Tut or Marie Antoinette. Moses was Moses. He never lost his identity. The Bible teaches that when you are born you have the identity you will have for all eternity (see Matthew 17:1-8, Mark 9:2-8, Luke 9:28-36). You are never going to lose that identity. You are absolutely accountable for what you do in this life. There is no second chance and no opportunity to come back and purge yourself of the sins and wrongs you have done. Reincarnation vitiates the major teachings of Christianity about responsibility and judgment. There are those who claim that reincarnation is a Christian concept, but it is not. It is a Hindu concept that has been totally discredited. It gives people a false hope, a false expectation, or a false despair--false because thinking about what awaits you in the next life makes it very hard to bring about any kind of moral reformation in this one. When you have this concept of karma (the same thought is found in the Mohammedan concept of kismet), then you say, "Well, these people are the lower classes and that is their karma." You do not have to worry about feeding them, educating them, uplifting them, because they have that karma. They are where they belong. You will never find social justice and social progress in countries where the doctrine of reincarnation has a strong hold. In comparison, the Bible says we are responsible for our brothers. We must be kind and good to the poor and the needy. The Bible teaches that all people are beloved by God and that they all have an equal chance, but the chance lasts only during this lifetime.
11. What Does The Bible Say About How Long
12. What Is God's Purpose For Man? If you go back to Genesis, you find God telling men to "be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion..." (Genesis 1:28). God wants man to be fruitful. That can mean reproduction in terms of having children, but it also means spiritual reproduction. It means bearing fruit for the Lord, producing love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (see Galatians 5:22-23).God wants human beings to increase and grow. Artificial limits on growth are not biblical. The concept of zero growth, for example, is not biblical; and the concept of the socialist-type government, which puts arbitrary controls on a man's ability to make money or create or invent, is not biblical. God wants man to be a fruitful, creative, reproducing individual. God also wants men to have dominion over Satan. He wants us, as His representatives, to subjugate Satan. Jesus Christ gave us that authority. He wants us to do away with the works of Satan--to take away poverty, to lift the yoke of oppression, and to take away ignorance and lack of faith. He wants us to bring a blessing to people and to liberate them from the forces that would destroy them. Then, when we have taken dominion over the things that will hurt our fellow man, He wants us to take dominion over the earth. We are to have dominion over the streams and the air, and the fields and the birds, and the animals in our world. We are not supposed to pollute the streams and befoul the air and rip up the minerals in this earth just for personal gain. We are supposed to be intelligent stewards, under God, of all these things. God wants us to manage the world as His sons and daughters. He wants us to bring about righteousness in this world. Our main purpose for being on earth is to be stewards of God's creation, to grow in God, and to function as God's sons and daughters. In the WESTMINSTER SHORTER CATECHISM, the Presbyterians say that man's chief aim is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. The mandate in Genesis to take dominion has no meaning apart from giving glory to God. We are to be subject to Him, to love Him, to walk with Him, and to have fellowship with Him. The prophet Micah sums it up when he says, "And what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God" (Micah 6:8)? |
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