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THE BIBLICAL VIEW OF MAN
Augustine and much of Roman Catholic theology conceives of the Christian life as a process of earning eternal life by the good works which the Christian is enabled to do by the grace that was infused or imparted at baptism and renewed by the other sacraments. This conception of the Christian life is clearly legalistic. And it was this conception that the Reformers and Reformed theologians denied as unbiblical. But by retaining a basically legalistic understanding of Christ’s work of salvation and justification, it was difficult if not impossible for them to understand the Christian life and sanctification in any other than legalistic terms. The practical matters of the Christian life are definitely affected by the theory of salvation and, behind that, the theory of the need of salvation. Since man’s relationship to God was conceived in legalistic terms, that is, that all men are under the law and that man’s relationship to God is determined by the law, not only is sin understood legalistically as breaking the rules, the transgression of the law as the divine standard of perfection in thought, word, and deed, but righteousness is also understood legalistically to be the keeping of the rules, a conformity to the law in thought, word, and deed; namely, moral perfection. Since according to this legalistic conception man was created under the law and for the law, man’s highest good and final goal is this moral perfection; this legal righteousness. To stand spotless and without blame before the law was thought to be the Christian’s ultimate hope. So the Christian life and sanctification was conceived by most Reformed theologians as growth and progress toward this moral perfection. Of course, it was not to earn eternal life. For all our moral progress, they said, we are still sinners, sinning in thought, word and deed. And at the same time legally righteous with the imputed righteousness of the merits of Christ — simultaneously righteous and unrighteous, saint and sinner.
Chapter 7 of Romans was interpreted by most Reformed theologians as the normal Christian life. They said that because the Christian after conversion still has a sinful nature, he will have an unending struggle with indwelling sin. His sinful nature (which is subject to sin) is in constant warfare with his renewed nature (which is subject to God’s law). Even though he wants to keep God’s law, he finds himself being compelled by his sinful nature to do the very things he hates. Although justified (declared righteous through the imputed merits or righteousness of Christ) and thus assured of salvation, there is still no deliverance from his sinful nature until he dies. He will finally be delivered from his sinful nature when he will be raised from the dead in the last day with an incorruptible body completely free from the presence of the sinful nature. Thus most Reformed theologians interpreted the 7th chapter of Romans as the normal Christian life.
Although some Christian theologians interpret this struggle of Romans chapter 7 as the normal Christian life, other Christian theologians reject this interpretation of the Romans 7 experience and teach either a second work of grace that eradicates the sinful nature from the Christian, delivering him from the Romans 7 experience, or the suppression of the works of the flesh (sinful nature) by the power of the Holy Spirit. But in either case the Christian is still left under the law as a rule and standard of life and the “walk in the Spirit” is interpreted as nothing more than Spirit-empowered law-keeping. That is, the Holy Spirit is given to the Christian to empower him to keep the law and to make him morally perfect, conforming to the divine standard given in the law. This legalistic interpretation of the Christian life is the source of many of the psychological problems that Christians have today.
The moral and ethical result of legalism is the moral dilemma: the contradiction between what man is and what he ought to be. Since man under law falls short of the ideal of moral perfection, the standard of righteousness, the law, he is faced with the disparity between the real and the ideal self, between what he is and what he ought to be. The Christian statement of this dilemma is given classic expression by the Apostle Paul in his famous analysis of the experience of the man under law in Romans chapter 7 — “The good that I would , I do not. And the evil which I would not, that I do.” (Rom. 7:19) This predicament has led the legalistic theologians to conclude that sin is intrinsic to human nature. Rabbinic Judaism, for example, developed the theory of the evil nature or “yetzer hara.” Augustine used the doctrine of original sin (originale peccatum) or inherited inborn sinful or corrupt nature to explain why men always fall short of the divine standard and the failure of Romans 7. But this doctrinal expedient of the sinful nature is unnecessary since the moral dilemma can be explained by the fact that the law cannot make alive and therefore cannot produce righteousness (Gal. 3:21). The purpose of the law is the knowledge of sin (Rom. 3:20b), not salvation. To attempt to live the Christian life by the law is to misuse the law and to place the Christian under the law. The man under law, who practically deifies the law (Rom. 7:22, 25) and looks to it to save him from sin and give him life (Rom. 7:10), finds that the law cannot save him, but on the contrary discovers that the law arouses sin (Rom. 7:5) and becomes the opportunity for sin which results in death (Rom. 7:8-11). Thus legalism produces the opposite from what it intended. This is like other forms of idolatry; a false god always betrays its worshippers into the very opposite of what they expected from the false god (Isa. 44:9, 10; 45:16, 17, 20, 21).
And not only that, but also since death (primarily spiritual death) leads to sin ( Rom. 5:12d ERS), the man under law is practically in spiritual death (the law separates him from God), and sin is the result of that death. This is what the Apostle Paul concludes at the end of his discussion of the legalistic struggle in Romans 7.
“21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil is present with me. 22 For I delight in the law of God according to the inner man, 23 but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and taking me captive to the law of sin which is in my members.” (Rom. 7:21-23 ERS)
There are three laws presented here in this passage.
1. The first law is the law of sin (verse 21). Since sin is not what the man under law wants to do, he concludes that sin must dwell in the members of his body rather than in his real inner self (Rom. 7:17-20).
2. The second law is the law of God (verse 22) which the man under law delights in, which he agrees with his mind is right, good and holy (Rom. 7:12, 16), and is “the law of the mind” in the next verse.
3. The third law is the “another law” in verse 23. The Greek word, heteros, translated “another,” means “another of a different kind;” not allos — “another of the same kind.” This a law different from the first two laws but is warring against the law of the mind — the law of God — and bringing the man under law into captivity to the law of sin. What is this third law? In the next verse we get a clue. “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death” (Rom. 7:24). The law of death is this third law, this other law. And this is confirmed in Romans 8:2 which says,
“For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death.”
The law of death brings the man under law into captivity to the law of sin. Death leads to sin; because of death all sinned.
“Therefore, as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death passed unto all men, because of which [death] all sinned:–” (Rom. 5:12d ERS).
“The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law” (I Cor. 15:55).
No sinful nature is necessary to explain the moral dilemma; the man under law sins because he is practically spiritually dead; the law separates him from God. For the Christian to place himself under the law is the same as placing himself in spiritual death; it has the same results — sin. For the Christian under law, the law has taken the place of the Holy Spirit; the law thus separates the Christian from God. Romans chapter 7 is not the normal Christian life; it is the struggle of the man under law, entrapped in the bondage of legalism. And if the Christian falls into this legalism, there is deliverance. “Thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 7:25a). In Romans 7:25b through 8:4 there may be found three steps for deliverance from legalism:
Step 1 – The recognition that legalism is the problem (Rom. 7:25b):
“So then, on the one hand, I myself with my mind am a slave to the law of God,but on the other hand, with my flesh to the law of sin.” ERS To be delivered from legalism one must recognize that he himself is a slave to the law and a slave to the law of sin, that is, that he is under the law and sin has dominion over him (Rom. 6:14).
Step 2 – Deliverance from condemnation (Rom. 8:1):
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” NAS God delivers from legalism through His word of unconditional love which says that there is no condemnation to those in Christ. This is a word of grace and places the Christian back under grace. Legalism conditions God’s love by our sins. God says that His love is unconditioned by our sins. Therefore God does not condemn us for our failure under the law but delivers us from under law and places us back under grace. For in His love God delivers us from sin and death (Rom. 8:2) and thus from wrath which is condemnation.
Step 3 – Deliverance from sin and death (Rom. 8:2):
“For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.” NAS
Paul here says that “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” has set him and his readers free from “the law of sin and [the law of] death.” Paul, like other New Testament writers, uses the Greek word nomos (usually translated “law”) in several different ways. The following are some of them.
1. The first 5 books of the Old Testament, the Pentateuch (Matt. 12:5; Luke 2:23-24; 16:16; 24:44; Rom. 3:21b).
2. The whole Old Testament (Rom.3:19 referring to the passages quoted in Rom.3:10-18 which are not just from the Pentateuch; John 10:34, quoting Psa. 82:6; I Cor. 14:21, quoting Isa. 28:11)
3. The Mosaic covenant that God made with the children of Israel (Exodus 24:1-12; Rom. 2:12; 3:19; 4:13-14; Gal. 3:17-18).
4. The Ten Commandments, the Decalogue (Exodus 20:1-17; Deut. 5:6-21; Matt. 5:18), sometimes improperly called the moral law.
5. All the commandments of God, ceremonial as well as the Ten Commandments; all statutes and ordinances of the law of Moses (Luke 2:22; John 7:23).
6. Teaching, instruction, guidance (Rom. 2:17, 18, 20, 23, 26); compare this with the meaning of the Hebrew word Torah which has the same meaning. As such it is that content of God’s revelation (the Word of the Lord, Deut. 5:5; Psa. 119:43, 160) which makes clear man’s relationship to God and to his fellow man. It provides guidance for man’s actions in relationship to God and to his fellow man.
7. Any commandment regulating conduct (Rom. 7:7, 8-9).
8. A principle or power of action (Rom. 3:27; 7:21, 23, 25; 8:2).
This last use is the way Paul uses it here in this verse (Rom. 8:2). The Greeks and the Romans believed that the law had the power to force compliance with the law (Cicero, Laws, II, 8-10). In their view the law was a principle or power of action which could by its action bring about what the law prescribed; it was not merely a description of or prescription for some action; the law made the action occur. This is the sense in which Paul speaks of “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” and of “the law of sin” and of “the law of death.” These are not merely descriptions of how the Spirit or death or sin acted; they are powers that act and bring about certain actions. Thus the law of the Spirit of life is the power of the Spirit of God acting to make one alive, and thus freeing from the law or power of action of death and of sin. The law of death is power of death acting to make one dead. The law of sin is the power of sin acting to make one sin. In the next verse (Rom. 8:3) Paul says that the law of God is unable to make righteous; it does not have that power of action. And, as Paul says in Gal. 3:21, righteousness is not by the law because the law cannot make alive; the law does not have that power action either.
The law or power of action of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus frees us from the law or power of action of sin and of death. Since death leads to sin, the Spirit delivers from sin by giving us life in Christ that is deliverance from death. The law is not able to do this; it is through the death of Christ (Rom. 8:3) who put an end to sin’s reign over us (“condemn sin in the flesh”) by his death for us (Rom. 6:6-10). The result is that the righteous acts of the law are fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit (Rom. 8:4). To walk after the flesh is to try to do the righteous acts of the law by human effort (“the flesh”). The believer must not do it that way. By walking after the Spirit he will fulfill the righteous acts of the law. He will love God with his heart, soul, and mind, with his whole being, and he will love his neighbor as he loves himself.
Legalism makes a problem of the Christian life because the law separates us from God and leads us to trust in ourselves and our good works rather than in Him. This is the practical effect of the legalistic theory of Christ’s death — it does not work. Where is the victory of Christ’s resurrection in the struggle of Romans 7? Only as we are delivered from under the law (we died to the law in Christ’s death) and are set free from the law of sin and of death by the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:2), do we experience the resurrection victory of Christ over sin and death. The Christian life is not Spirit-empowered law-keeping, but Spirit-filled law-fulfilling by love (Rom. 13:10); it is a joyful walk filled with the Spirit, trusting Him who loves us and gave Himself for us. And is a law necessary when we love and trust God? The law is for those who do not love and trust God (I Tim. 1:8-10) — though it will not help them, it cannot make them alive and it cannot produce righteousness (Gal. 3:21). For if it could make them alive as the legalist tries to tells us, then Christ died in vain (Gal. 2:21). Salvation is not by works of the law — in any way, shape or form. Salvation is by grace — God’s love in action to make us alive in Christ through faith, through trust in Him who loves us and gave Himself for us.
- God accomplishes this salvation by the Holy Spirit. Having raised Jesus from the dead and exalted him to His right hand to be both Lord and Christ (Acts 2:33, 36; Eph. 1:20-22; Phil. 2:9-11), God has sent the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:33) to bring life to men (John 3:5-8) by revealing Jesus to them (John 15:26) personally as their Savior who died for them and as their resurrected, living Lord. When a man responds to this revelation by turning from his false god (repentance) and turning to the true God, acknowledging Jesus as his Lord (faith), he is saved (Acts 16:31). Baptism is an outward sign of this inward act of God’s grace. For a man will not repent and believe except God in His grace reveals Jesus Christ to him by the Holy Spirit (John 6:44, 65; 16:7-11). And this God does in the preaching of the Gospel. The act of faith in Jesus Christ involves at least three elements.
1. First, acknowledgment of the Lordship of Christ and allegiance to Him as Lord.
“9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. 10 For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” (Rom. 10:9-10 KJV).
In general, faith is not just belief that certain statements are true but is the commitment of oneself and allegiance to something or someone as one’s personal ultimate criterion of all decisions, intellectual and moral. Saving faith in Jesus Christ is the commitment of oneself to Jesus Christ as one’s own personal ultimate criterion (“My Lord and my God” John 20:28). In that decision of faith, the living person, the resurrected Jesus Christ, not just what He taught, becomes our ultimate criterion of the true, the good, and the beautiful (John 14:6). This turning from false gods (idols) to the living and true God (I Thess. 1:10) is salvation. For this Jesus died (Matt. 1:21; I Tim. 1:15). And as our resurrected, living Lord, His will becomes the ultimate criterion of all our decisions, intellectual and moral. By the Holy Spirit, His will is personally communicated to us (John 14:15-17, 26; 15:26; 16:12-15; II Cor. 3:17-18; I John 2:26-27).
2. Second, identification with Jesus Christ in His death and resurrection. In faith we say “His death is my death; His resurrection is my resurrection.”
Baptism is an outward sign and a symbol of this identification and participation with Christ in His death and resurrection (Rom. 6:3, 4; Col. 2:12).
3. Third, the reception of life in Christ. Jesus said,
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my word, and believeth on he that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death into life.” (John 5:24 KJV; see also John 3:36 and Rom. 5:17).
Having in the decision of faith identified ourselves with the death and resurrection of Jesus and having acknowledged the resurrected living Jesus as Lord, we have also received spiritual life. For Jesus Christ is this life, and to have Him is to be spiritually alive to God.
“11 And this is the record that God hath given to us eternal life; and this life is in his Son. 12 He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.” (I John 5:11-12).
This life is fellowship with God. When we received Jesus as our Lord and our Savior, fellowship with God is restored (I John 1:3) and we are reconciled to God (II Cor. 5:18). We are born again (John 3:3; Titus 3:5) and have become new creatures in Christ Jesus (II Cor. 5:17).
But this decision of faith is only the beginning of the Christian life. Fellowship with God has been restored (I John 1:3). We are reconciled to God (II Cor. 5:18). We are born again (John 3:3; Titus 3:5) and have become new creatures in Christ Jesus (II Cor. 5:17). And being made alive in Christ, we become members of His body (I Cor. 12:12-13). Not only is our felllowship with God restored, but also our fellowship with our fellow believers. The barrier is removed and we are no longer separated and alienated from one another (Eph. 2:19). We are no longer spiritually isolated from one another. All those who have acknowledged Christ as Lord and received Him as their life, together form a new community or society, His Body, of which He is the Head (Col. 1:18). In His body we know the reality of God’s love and we are able to love one another because He first loved us (I John 4:11, 19) and has poured His love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which He has given to us (Rom. 5:5). Since the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:2), when we received life in Christ, we also have received the Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:9). There are three tenses of salvation:
(1) the past tense of salvation – “we were saved”
(Rom. 8:24; Eph. 2:5, 8; II Tim. 1:8; Titus 3:5);
(2) the present tense of salvation – “we are being saved”
(I Cor. 1:18; 15:3; II Cor. 2:15);
(3) the future tense of salvation – “we shall be saved” (Matt. 10:22; Rom. 5:9; compare Rom. 13:11; I Thess. 1:10; Heb. 9:28).
We have been saved from death unto life, from sin unto righteousness, and from wrath unto peace. That is the past tense of salvation. The Christian life is the continuation of this salvation that began in the past. We are now being saved and this is the present tense of salvation. The Christian life is the present tense of salvation.
The Christian life is a life of fellowship and communion with God the Father through Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit (I Cor. 1:9; II Cor. 13:14; I John 1:3). Through Jesus Christ we have access in one Spirit to the Father (Eph. 2:18; Rom. 5:2; Heb. 10:19-22). God speaks to us through the written and spoken Word of God and we speak to Him in prayer. The Christian life is also a walk of faith. It not only begins in faith, but it continues in faith (Col. 2:6). The walk in the Spirit is the walk of faith ( Gal. 2:20; 5:25). Faith in the Father who loves me; faith in Jesus Christ with whom I have died and have been raised to new life; faith in the Holy Spirit who dwells within me. The Christian life is also a life of being transformed into and conformed to the image of God (Rom. 8:29; II Cor. 3:18). The resurrected God-man, the Son of man, Jesus Christ, is the image of God (Col. 1:15; II Cor. 4:4). By the last Adam, the man from heaven, man is being restored to the image of God. In faith we have put on the new man which is being renewed according to the image of Him who created him (Col. 3:10; Eph. 4:23-24).
We have been saved from death unto life, from sin unto righteousness, and from wrath unto peace with God. But this salvation is not yet complete. It has begun for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:24), and it is still continuing (I Cor. 15:2; see also I Cor. 1:18 and II Cor. 2:15). But it is not yet finished. With hope we await its completion (Rom. 5:9; 8:25; Gal. 5:5). We are in between the times: the time of His first coming and the time of His second coming. Our spirits are now alive to God and to those in Christ, but our bodies are still dead (Rom. 8:10). Our bodies are still subject to the spiritual and physical death that came from Adam’s sin. Only by the quickening power of the Holy Spirit of God who dwells within us can we now experience physical healing and control of the passions and desires of the flesh (Rom. 8:11-13). This salvation of the body from death is not now total or complete and will not be until Jesus returns. But neither is the salvation from sin to righteousness complete. The faith that we have in God who raised Jesus from the dead, this faith is “about to be reckoned” to us for righteousness, even as Abraham’s faith was reckoned (Rom. 4:23-24). But our righteousness is not complete. Our faith is weak, and not all things we do are done according to trust and faith in the true God. We have many hangovers from our existence in death apart from Christ. This old man must be put off (Eph. 4:22-24; Col. 3:5-10) with its many evil practices. This can be done by the power of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus (Gal. 5:16-17, 24) as we walk in the Spirit by faith. The believer can sin but he does not have to sin. The believer is dead to the slavery of sin with Christ and alive to God in Christ (Rom. 6:1-10). He is to reckon this to be true and to yield his members of his body, not to sin but to God as instruments of righteousness (Rom. 6:11-13). Temptations to sin still exist, but God has provided a way of escape (I Cor. 10:13).
In the act of faith whereby we acknowledge Christ as Lord, identifying ourselves with Him in His death and resurrection, and receiving Him as our life, we are saved or delivered from sin and death. But this is only the beginning. Now we are being conformed to and transformed into the image of God (Rom. 8:29; II Cor. 3:18). The resurrected God-man, the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, is the image of God (Col. 1:15; II Cor. 4:4). By the last Adam, the man of heaven, man is being restored to the image of God. In faith we have put on the new man which is being renewed according to the image of Him who created him (Col. 3:10; Eph. 4:23-24). Finally, when Christ returns we will bear the image of the man of heaven — Christ (I Cor. 15:47-49). For
“when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.” (I John 3:2).
At the second coming of Jesus Christ (Acts 1:9), our bodies will be resurrected, if we die before He comes (I Thess. 4:14-17), or they will be transformed into one like His resurrected body if we are alive at His coming (I Cor. 15:51-52; Phil. 3:20-21; I John 3:2). Thus will physical death be replace with physical life just as spiritual death is replaced by spiritual life when we first repented and believed (conversion). What was begun at conversion will be brought to completion (Phil. 1:6) at Christ’s coming. Spiritual life will become eternal — eternal fellowship with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (in heaven) (Rev. 21:3). We shall reign with Him (II Tim. 2:12; Rev. 20:4) and be with Him (I Thess. 4:17; Rev. 22:4). Thus man will be restored to the image of God. Then the problem of sin (idolatry) and the problem of death (both spiritual and physical) will finally be solved. They will be His people and He shall be their God (Rev. 21:3, 7).
As Christianity spread thoughout the Roman world, the Biblical view of reality came into conflict with the Greek view of reality. The difference between these two views of reality is most clearly seen in their views of man. Attempts were made to resolve this conflict and the difference in their views of man by trying to synthesize these two views of reality.
There were two major attempts at this synthesis:
(a) the Augustinian synthesis made by Aurelius Augustine (A.D. 354-430) in the 5th century and
(b) the Thomistic synthesis made by Thomas Aquinas (A.D. 1225-1274) in the 12th century.
| Hebrew-Christian | Medieval Synthesis | Greek-Roman | |
|---|---|---|---|
| God | Creator | Supernatural – Grace | The rational |
| World | Created | Natural – Nature | The non-rational |
| Man | spirit (person) & body | spirit (moral) & soul (rational) & body (animal) | mind (rational) & body (non-rational) |
Ultimate reality is not Reason, the universal and necessary, and this Reason is not man’s ultimate criterion but the sovereign will of the Creator who made all things and has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ. This basic incompatibility between the Greek and Biblical view of God and man explains the conflict between Greek philosophy and the Christian faith, and the failure of the attempted synthesis of these divergent points of view by Augustine and Aquinas. All attempts to synthesize the classical Greek view of God and man with the Biblical view will fail. Worst of all, the Biblical view of God and man will be obscured and misunderstood.
And this is what happened in the early church as it sought to explain the relationship of the divine and human in the God-man Jesus Christ. They misunderstood the rational soul of man as the third part of man, the spirit and body being the other two parts. But the rational soul of man is not the third part of man, but it is the expression of man’s spirit or person in and through his body.
“Then the Lord God formed man of the dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul (nepesh)” (Gen. 2:7 KJV).
When God breathed into the nostrils of the body of man the breath of life, He created man’s spirit and man became a living soul. The soul of man is the union of this created spirit and the body formed from the dust of the ground. Thus man is a diparite being having two parts, spirit and body; the soul is not a third part of man but is the union of man’s created spirit and his body.
Thus the Biblical view of man is that man is a dipartite being having a body and a spirit (or person) with the soul as the union of a spirit and the body. Hence, man is neither the Greek view of man as a diparite being having two parts of a body and rational soul, nor the Platonic tripartite being having a body, an animal soul, and a rational soul, nor the view of the Christian synthesis that man is a triparite being having three parts of a body, rational soul, and spirit. The Biblical view of man is that his soul is not a third part of man but that his soul, both the rational and animal soul, is the expression of the spirit in and through his body, and thus the union of his spirit and his body.
In the incarnation, the divine Word, the Son of God, took the place, not of the human soul (psuche), but of the human spirit (pneuma) in the man Jesus. His human soul is the union of His divine spirit and His human body. Thus Jesus is one person with two natures; His divine nature is the divine Word, the Son of God, and His human nature is His human soul and His human body where His human soul is the expression of His one divine spirit or person through His human body.
Did Jesus have a human spirit? The answer is “No” and “Yes”. No, the divine Word of God took the place the human created spirit in the God-man Jesus. And yes, the Word of God took upon Himself the limitations of a created human spirit. As Paul indicates in Phil. 2:5-8:
“5 Have this mind among yourselves, which you have in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of man.
8 And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”
That is, in Jesus, the Word of God took the place of the created human spirit, but he took upon Himself the limitations of that human spirit; “he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being in the likeness of man.” Thus Jesus was the Word of God made flesh (John 1:14), that is, a divine person or spirit in a human body with all its limitations. but without sin.
What is a person? A person may be defined as a being (an existent) that is self-determining, not determined, who has freedom, free will, the ability to choose. Now within the self, existence is known in the act of decision. To exist is to decide. This is particularly apparent in those momentous passionate decisions of a crisis. In fact, every act of decision, whether in a great crisis or not, is the place where existence can be found. The act of decision itself is also an act of existence. That is, to be is to choose. This was partially apprehended in Descartes’ phrase: cognito ergo sum; I think, therefore I am. Descartes saw that the act of thinking or even doubting is to exist. For one to think or doubt he had to exist. However, since he sought to fit this into an Greek philosophical scheme of thought, Descartes did not recognize that thinking and doubting are basically acts of decision. Not only to think or doubt but to decide is to exist. Any act of decision is an act of existence: decerno ergo sum, I choose, therefore I am. A person therefore should be defined as a being (an existent) that is self-determining, not determined, who has freedom, free will, the ability to choose. A person is to be distinguished from a non-person, a thing, an “it,” which is a being that is determined, not self-determining, that has no freedom, no free will, no ability to choose. Thus the existence of a person is found in his ability to choose, to make decisions.
“I choose, therefore, I am”, not, “I think, therefore, I am”. To be is to choose, not just to think or to preceive. Man’s reason is a function and an expression of his will. This freedom of decision of man, not his reason, is what distinguishes man from the rest of creation; this is what gives to man his existence as a person or self and to his reason that human and personal character. Now a careful analysis of decision reveals that every act of decision involves three elements:
(a) the agent making the decision,
(b) the alternatives to be decided between, and
(c) a criterion to decide by.
This third element of every decision, the criterion by which the choice is made, means that every human decision involves a reference to a criterion in or beyond the self. In other words, behind every human decision as to what a person should do or think, there must be a reason. That is, the choice between the alternatives is made with reference to some criterion of choice, and choice cannot be made without this reference.
Now the criterion of a choice must be also chosen, and that choice is made with reference to an ultimate criterion, an ultimate reason for the choice of the criterion. That is, the ultimate reason for any decision, practical or theoretical, must be given in terms of some particular criterion, an ultimate reference or orientation point in or beyond the self or person making the decision. This ultimate criterion is that person’s god. In this sense, every man must have a god, that is, an ultimate criterion of decision. Thus in the very exercise of his freedom-of-decision, man shows that he is such a being that must necessarily appeal to an ultimate criterion, a god. In fact, his every uncoerced decision implies this ultimate criterion. Since decisions involve a reference to an ultimate criterion beyond the self, to a god, the Bibical view of man is that he is a religious animal, a being who must have a god.
According to the Greek thinkers, Reason, the universal and necessary, is the divine or God. The divine, according to the Greek conception of reality, is that which is not subject to change, decay or death; the gods in Homer are “immortals.” The divine, therefore, cannot be known through the senses because that which is known through the senses is a world characterized by change, decay or death. But since the objects of reason are always and everywhere the same, the divine can be known through reason. This eternal, unchanging realm of the Ideas, the Universals, the objects of Reason, are the divine. Both Plato and Aristotle held reason to be divine. God is the divine or eternal realm of the Ideas in Plato’s philosophy, or he is a self-thinking thought of Aristotle’s philosophy. But since the concepts of God and man are correlatives, the Greek concept of man reflects the image of this god. Since reason is god, man viewed in the light of this god, is a rational animal. Reason is the divine part of man. This view of man is the underlying assumption in the all of the historical attempts to relate the human to the divine in Christ. This Greek view of man is the cause of the problem of the nature of Christ.
This is not the Bibical view of man or of God. God is not Reason, the universal and necessary. And Ultimate reality is not the universal and the necessary. That is, Reason is not God. God is a person (or more accurately, three persons) whose existence is not in His reason but in His unlimited sovereign free decision and will; it is not the universal ideas in God’s mind that determine how or why God will create man and the world, but His unlimited sovereign will (Rev. 4:11). Since reason is a function of the will, God is rational and His reason is a function of His will. Thus the world that God has chosen to create is rational.
Man is also a person (or more accurately, man is a spirit [person] in a body – see Gen. 2:7) whose existence is also to be found, not in his reason, but in his limited free will and decision. And since decisions involve a reference to an ultimate criterion beyond the self, to a god, the Bibical view of man is that he is a religious animal, a being who must have a god. Reason is not the divine part in man but is a function of the will of the person. To be is to choose, not to think or to know. Knowledge and reason depend upon a prior decision as to what is real. It is upon decision that any knowledge finally depends.
The first man, Adam, and his wife, Eve, used their freedom of choice to disobey God and choose a false god, wisdom and knowledge; that is, Reason. The basic sin is turning from the true God and to faith in a false god of some kind; it is idolatry. Sin is any choice contrary to ultimate allegiance or faith in the true God (Rom. 14:23). The consequence of Adam’s sin was death (Gen. 2:16-17): physical death (the separation of their spirits from their bodies) and spiritual death (the separation of their spirits from God). In other words, they lost their fellowship with God and with each other (Gen. 3:7-8) and their dominion over creation. But even though they have fallen from the image of God, they still are persons and still have the freedom of choice.
The descendants of Adam are born not in the image of God but in the image of Adam, the man of dust, the old man, and as such are subject to death, physical and spiritual. Death has been inherited by all men ( Rom. 5:12). And since they have been born into the world spiritually dead, alienated from God, not knowing personally the true God, and since they must have a god, an ultimate criterion of decision, they choose a false god as their God and thereby sin (Gal. 4:8). The creation, man himself, contains a knowledge about the true God which leaves them without excuse for the sin of idolatry (Rom. 1:19-20). But this knowledge is about the true God and it is not a personal knowledge of the true God which comes from an encounter and fellowship with God.
The purpose of the incarnation of the Son of God is salvation. Since salvation is basically from death to life, Christ on the cross entered into our death, both spiritually and physically, in order that man can be made alive with Christ in His resurrection. By faith we can then say; His death is my death and His resurrection is my resurrection. On the cross, Christ died both spiritually and physically. His body died physically on the cross when He gave up His spirit (Matt. 27:50; John 19:30). Thus physically His spirit was separated from His body. But before He died physically, He died spiritually.
“And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, ‘Eli, Eli, la’ma sabach-tha’-ni?’ that is, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?'” (Matt. 27:46; compare Mark 15:34)
This cry was misunderstood by the bystanders as a calling upon Elijah (Matt. 27:47-49; Mark 15:35-36). But it was not a calling on Elijah; it was His spirit as the Son of God calling upon God His Father. He had entered into our spiritual death that was inherited from Adam and His spirit was separated spiritually from God His Father. This spiritual death was not a non-existence of His spirit, but was a separation between His spirit as the Son of God from God His Father. This is only time in all eternity that He as the Son of God was separated from God His Father. It happened because He had entered on the cross into our spiritual death inherited from Adam ( Rom. 5:12; I Cor. 15:21-22). But this raises the problem of how is this possible. As it was expressed by those who mocked Him, saying
“He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God; let God deliever him now, if he desires him; for he said, ‘I am the Son of God.'” (Matt. 27:42)
Can God die? The obvious answer is “No, God cannot die.” Then how could the Son of God die? And if Jesus dies, then how can he be the Son of God? As Greeks understood the divine, the gods are immortal; they never die. And their understanding of God as immortal was based on their understanding of God as unchanging in His being, therefore He could not change by dying. And they argued that God does not change because He is timeless. But Biblical God does not change because He is timeless, but because He keeps His promises. The prophet Malachi says for God,
“6For I, the Lord, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed. 7From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes, and have not kept them. Return to Me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord of hosts. (Malachi 3:6-7 NAS)
If Israel turns from their sins, then they will not be consumed because the Lord God is unchanging in keeping His promises not to destroy them if they will return to Him. Thus the Biblical God is unchanging, not because He is a timeless unchanging super-It, but because the Biblical God, who keeps His promises, is three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who are without beginning or end. The Biblical God has time, but His time has no beginning nor end. His time is an absolute time, not like our created time which had a beginning.
“In the beginning God created heaven and earth.” (Gen. 1:1) The beginning of the heaven and earth is also the beginning of created time. When God created the heaven and earth, God created our time. But God’s time was not created; it never started nor will it end; it is absolute without beginning or end, eternal time. God created the heavens and earth by an act of His will. As those in heaven sang,
“Worthy art thou, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for thou didst create all things, and by thy will they exist and were created.” (Rev. 4:11)
God is three Persons by whose will all things were created and do exist. Now an act of the will, a choice, involves time: the time before the choice, the now of the choice, and the time after of the choice. Since God as three persons makes choices, and since an act of the will, a choice, involves time, then God must have time in which They exercises His will.
Thus the will of God means that God has time, but it is not a created time with a beginning, but absolute time without beginning or end; it is eternal. So once in all eternity, at the cross, the Son of God died spiritually by being separated spiritually from God the Father, but not by ceasing to exist. And He died physically when His spirit was separated from His body.
“Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, ‘Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit!’ And having said this he breathed his last.”
(Luke 23:46; compare Mark 15:37)
or as the Gospel of John said, “When Jesus had received the vinegar, he said, ‘It is finished’; and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.” (John 19:30)
or as the Gospel of Mathew said, “And Jesus cried again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.” (Matt. 27:50)
His spirit did not cease to exist, but was released from His body when His body died physically; Jesus “yielded up his spirit” to His Father into whose hands He had commited His spirit. As He died physically, His spirit was separated from His body, but His spirit did not cease to exist. But He did not remain in this spiritual or physical death; God the Father raised the Son of God from the dead, not only physically from the dead, but also spiritually from the dead. And thus God provided for us salvation from death to life.
The Biblical view of man has been misunderstood in the past. This misunderstanding arises because the Biblical view of God and man has been confused with a non-Biblical Greek view. This non-Biblical view is usually the rationalistic and/or legalistic view of God and man. This legalistic view does not see man as a being who must have a god but as a rational, moral being. It does not see that man’s sin is basically idolatry, allegiance to a false god, but that sin is basically transgression of the law, breaking the rules. As good and right the law is, especially God’s law, the law is not man’s highest good, and observing the commandments is not man’s righteousness. God Himself is man’s highest good, and trust in and love of God is his righteousness (Rom. 4:3-5). This love fulfils the law (Rom. 13:8-10) which a legalistic living by the law does not do. A man’s basic problem is not “are you keeping the law?” but “which god are you trusting in? Is he the true God or is it a false one?” This is not just the problem of the non-Christian and unbeliever, but is also the problem of the Christian. Many psychological problems that Christians have are the result of a divided loyality. They are trying to hang onto the true God and a false god at the same time. This double-mindedness, this divided faith (James 1:7-8) makes a Christian psychologically and morally unstable and hinders his relationship with the Lord.
And strange as it may seem, this is the situation behind the Romans 7 kind of experience of many Christians. As we observed above, the experience of Romans 7 is the experience of the man under law. And if a Christian is having this kind of experience, it is because he has placed himself under the law which God says he is not under, for he is under grace (Rom. 6:14). He is attempting to serve two masters at the same time: the law and the Holy Spirit. And it cannot be done (Gal. 5:18). It only creates psychological and moral problems: guilt on the inside and sin and failure on the outside. Being indwelt by the Holy Spirit, the Christian does not need to walk by the law but by the Spirit. The Christian’s goal is not moral perfection but the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23). The Apostle Paul’s question in Galatians 3:3 is particularly relevant and right to the point: “Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?”
Paul’s obvious answer to this rhetorical question is “no“. For “as you… have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him” (Col. 2:6). Moral perfection is perfection by the flesh, by the works of the law, and is contrary and opposed to the fruit of the Spirit and the righteousness of faith (Gal. 5:19-21). The weakness, if not the error, of most Christian preaching and teaching is that it is an exhortation of the Christian to perfection by the flesh, by the works of the law. Having begun in the Spirit, the Christian is urged to seek moral perfection. The Holy Spirit is brought into this kind of preaching, if at all, as the source of power to enable the Christian to keep the law. This Spirit-empowered law-keeping is not what Paul means when he speaks of “walking according to the Spirit” (Rom. 8:4; see also Gal. 5:16, 25). To walk by the Spirit is to be led by the Spirit, and if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law (Gal. 5:18). To walk according to the Spirit is to make all one’s decisions with reference to the Holy Spirit as He personally guides, fills and empowers the believer. The walk in the Spirit is the moment by moment walk of faith and personal trust in the God who personally by His Holy Spirit reveals and communicates Himself and His love along each step of that walk. The “normal” Christian life is this walk according to the Spirit and not a legalistic Spirit-empowered law-keeping, but a biblical Spirit-filled law-fulfilling by love (Rom. 13:10). Christian legalism not only ignores the clear statements of the Scriptures that the Christian is not under law (Rom. 6:14), but also the equally clear statements of the Scriptures that the Christian is dead to the law.
“Likewise, my brethren, you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit to God.” (Rom. 7:4; Gal 2:19)
Not only is the Christian dead to sin but dead to the law. Through Christ’s death he has died to sin and to the law, and now in the resurrected Christ he is alive to God.
“But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code
but in the new life of the Spirit.” (Rom. 7:6)
The Christian has passed from under the reign of death and sin unto reigning in life in Christ Jesus (Rom. 5:17). The law was the rule in the dispensation of death (II Cor. 3:6-7); the letter kills and the law condemns. The Holy Spirit is the rule of life in the new dispensation of life (II Cor. 3:17-18). Since the Spirit gives life (II Cor. 3:6), the dispensation of life is the dispensation of the Spirit (II Cor. 3:8), the Era of the Spirit. Since the Christian has passed from death to life, he has passed from the rule of the law to the rule of the Spirit. The law as the rule of Christian life has no place in the Era of the Spirit. And if the law has no place in the Era of the Spirit, legalism as an idolatry and misunderstanding of the law has no place in the Era of the Spirit either.