Theology of Man Archives - Page 2 of 3

The impression we get from much of what passes for Christian teaching is that the closer we get to God, the more like Him we will become, and the less like ourselves.

In this way, God is sort of pictured as a being who sucks the human life out of us and injects us with His own life so that we become less like “me” and more like Him. As part of this exchange, we also get eternal life.

It occurred to me recently that this sort of Christian theology makes God sound like a vampire. He “bites” us, and while we continue to “look” like ourselves, we get injected with His “blood” so that we “die” but remain alive forever. As the years go by, our human nature starts to fade away, and our “divine” nature starts to show through.

And as is the case with many vampires, they stop being too concerned about the humanity to which they used to belong, and use humans only for selfish reasons and personal gain. This is the dark side of being a vampire, and the dark side of being a Christian.

More Like God

It is not uncommon to encounter Christians who act as if their primary goal in life is to become less “human” and more “like God.” They give up their old friends, interests, desires, hobbies, and tastes, and instead hang out just with other Christians while studying an ancient book and speaking an arcane language that nobody else understands. They look down their noses on all the “unenlightened” humans around them who are “not filled with the Holy Spirit.” They sneer and scoff at all the ignorant masses who “live lives of emptiness and insignificance.”

But is this the way it is supposed to be?

No, I do not think so.

I believe that God wants us to be more human; not less.

God wants us to live

Jesus came so that we might have life, and might have it abundantly (John 10:10). He did not come to destroy fun and turn our smiles into frowns and our laughter into mourning, but to show us how to really have fun in life, to give us joy, and to turn our mourning into laughter.

God did not save us so that we might die, but so that we might live.

God made life, and He made this world, and He gave both to us so that we might enjoy it. Food tastes good because God made it taste good and gave us tastebuds by which to taste it. If God didn’t want us to enjoy food, He wouldn’t have given us tastebuds.

The same goes for the beauty of creation, the joy of good music, the physical sensation of touch, and even the pleasure of sex. These things are not bad or evil, but are good things God gave us to enjoy.

We worship God when we saturate ourselves with the good gifts He has given to us.

Near the end of his life, Bonhoeffer taught that God is not God at the price of emptying me of my humanity; humanity does not consist in letting oneself be sucked dry by a divine vampire! (Wink, The Human Being, 37).

The 19th Century philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach criticized Christianity by saying that we have made God in our own image, and in so doing, have become less human. He said that by putting all of our best traits onto God, we decide that these traits are not “human” but divine, and thus, we are dehumanized. Having projected what it means to be human onto God, we have become less human as a result.

The Christian religion has argued the opposite, but with similar conclusions. Seeing from Scripture that we were made in the image of God, we argue that the goal of life is to empty ourselves and become more like God. Life, we say, is found in conforming to the image of God and becoming less human as a result.

It seems that Jesus revealed a different path than either of these. While agreeing that God made us in His image, Jesus disagreed that this means we must empty ourselves of our humanity and become more like God. Jesus came that we might have life and might have it more abundantly. Jesus wants us not to empty ourselves of our humanity, but rise up to what it means to be fully human.

Becoming Fully Human

God is not most glorified when we become more like Him, but when we become more like us.

God did not make us to be God, but to be human, fully human.

We become more “godly” by becoming ourselves; that is, by becoming who God made us to be.

To fully worship God is to fully live as humans. He made us to be humans, and we fulfill our purpose by living as humans.

And this is what sets a relationship with God apart from all other belief systems in the world. Most religions in the world try to get us to be less human so that we can become like God. Atheism rightly reacts to this wrong idea, and says that to fully live, we must be fully human. The problem with atheism, is that they believe we must reject God to become fully human.

God agrees with atheists. God too believes that our purpose is to become fully human. But Jesus teaches that we only become fully human when we live as God intended. The “rules” of God are not provided to destroy life and fun and pleasure, but to maximize them.

Atheism says: “You have made God and by giving him up, you become more human.”
Religion says: “God has made us and by following Him, we become less human.”
Jesus says, “God had made us, and by following Him, you become more human.”

Jesus became human, not to lead us back to God, but to lead us back to humanity.

So start to become more “Godlike” today. How? By learning to live like yourself. This is what God wants.

The Murder of Abel and the Murder of All

By Jeremy Myers

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I have a new eBook coming out soon. The following post hits on one of the themes I write about in this book. To get this new book when it comes out, make sure you have subscribed to receive my blog posts and eBooks by email.

There is a reason why the very first murder in the Bible is a fratricide – a murder between brothers. What is that reason?

Because every murder is a murder between brothers. When Cain murdered his brother, Abel, it represented every murder in history.

When one person murders another person, they are murdering their brother or sister. Every homicide is fratricide.

But the significance and symbolism goes deeper still, especially for those of us who have never murdered anybody.

The Cycle of Murderous Revenge

The blood of Abel cries out from the ground for justice, for revenge. This is the cycle of murder which is behind every murder as well. Most murderers do not think of themselves as murderers, but simply as vigilantes of justice. Their murder of another person was justified. They were righting a wrong, killing a criminal, or invoking vengeance upon some injustice. Every murderer is able to justify his own murder.

This we also see in Genesis. After Cain kills his brother, Lamech get injured by a boy, and retaliates with murder. But he feels his murder was justified, and says that if anyone tries to re-retaliate against him by killing him, vengeance will come upon them seventy times over (Gen 4:24). The cycle of vengeance and retaliation goes from hurt to murder to mass-murder, and eventually, to the place where “the entire earth was filled with violence” (Gen 6:5, 11).

But the cycle of violence did not stop with violence covering the earth. Whereas a rivalry between brothers led to the murder of one (Genesis 4), and the rivalry between all people led to murderous violence among all (Genesis 6-9), humanity eventually turned their rivalry upon God Himself and sought to place themselves upon His throne (Genesis 11:1-9). But the only thing that ever resulted from all this murderous rivalry and violence was death (Genesis 5), death (Genesis 10), and death (Genesis 11:10-32).

This is why the only proper response to murder is forgiveness. Without forgiveness, murder leads to a cycle of violence that ends only in annihilation.

But who can have the courage (and wisdom) to respond to murder with forgiveness? Nobody! At least, I do not think I have the courage to forgive those who murdered one of my loved ones, or to forgive those who attempt to murder me. In this world, the only way, it seems, to keep from being murdered is to be stronger than the one who wants to murder you, and to murder him before he murders you.

And yet, we do have Jesus as our perfect example of how to treat those who murder us. As Jesus was being murdered on the cross by His brethren, He asked God to forgive them.

This is why the author of Hebrews says that Jesus “spoke a better word than the blood of Abel” (Heb 12:24). And what word did Jesus speak as His own blood was being spilled by His brethren? Though the blood of Abel cried out for vengeance from the ground, as the blood of Jesus poured from His veins on the cross, He cried out, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!” (Luke 23:34).

Can we do this? I am not so sure.

A Second Look at the First Murder

Maybe it begins by going back to look once again at the first murder, the founding fratricide. If we look at what happened when Cain murdered his brother, we may be able to get a glimpse of our own hearts also when we have murderous hate for others.

If we go back and look at why Cain murdered his brother, we discover that it was because Cain was trying to please and appease God. His parents had “stolen” God’s fruit, and Cain, as the “promised seed,” was the one who would get his family back into God’s good graces. So He became a farmer and when he received his harvest, he tried to give God back His fruit.

And God’s answer to Cain was, “Sin is crouching at your door, and it will destroy you.” What sin was that? The sin of trying to make amends with God!

In essence, God looked at Cain’s offering of fruit and said, “I don’t want the fruit. You do not understand. I am not angry at you. I do not want sacrifices and offerings. I just want you. I want to live life with you. Go ahead, keep the fruit for yourself. Eat it. Enjoy it. It’s yours.”

But Cain believed that God’s justice had been violated, that His honor had been destroyed, and Cain believed that something must be done to restore God’s honor, and make the world “right” once again. Cain believed that justice must be served, that order must be re-introduced, and that satisfaction must be made.

Most importantly, Cain believed it was his responsibility to make things right, to restore order, and to serve justice. This feeling is the foundational emotion for murder.

For when Cain saw that God had a good relationship with Abel, Cain believed that Abel would become the one who would rescue his family from exile. He didn’t like to have a rival, and so he murdered his brother.

In this way, God’s promise that eating the forbidden fruit would lead to death was fulfilled in the first generation of humans after Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden of Eden. And it was a murder of brother against brother. This murder of brothers began a cycle of contagious violence, murder, and death that spun out of control and enveloped the whole earth.

As such, it is not an exaggeration to say that violence is the most prominent theme in the Old Testament text. No human activity is mentioned as frequently in the Old Testament as the activity of violence. Raymund Schwager states that the Old Testament books “contain over six hundred passages that explicitly talk about nations, kings, or individuals attacking, destroying, and killing others. … No other human activity or experience is mentioned as often” (Must There be Scapegoats? p. 47).

Yet there is something more troubling than this.

Does God retaliate against violence with more violence?

For all the mentions of human violence, references to divine violence appear almost twice as often.

Again, Schwager provides the statistics: “The theme of God’s bloody vengeance occurs in the Old Testament even more frequently than the problem of human violence. Approximately one thousand passages speak of Yahweh’s blazing anger. … No other topic is as often mentioned as God’s bloody works. A theology of the Old Testament revelation that does not specifically deal with this grave and somber fact misses from the very start one of the most central questions …” (Must There be Scapegoats? p. 55).

What are we to make of this?

How can Jesus call us to bless and forgive our enemies when it appears from Scripture that God does the exact opposite? Furthermore, how can Jesus be the exact representation of God, when everything Jesus taught about God seems to contradict what we see about God in the Old Testament?

A straightforward reading of the Old Testament text seems to indicate that as violent as humanity can be, God outdoes us all; God is more bloody and violent than all humanity combined.

And if this is the case, is it any wonder that humans are murderously violent — just like their God in whose image and likeness they are made?

Between the violence of humanity and violence of God, it is obvious that “violence is the most central theme in the Old Testament” (Must There be Scapegoats? 66).

But maybe, just maybe, despite all our scholarship, studies, and sermons, we have missed the main revelation of the Bible. Maybe, just maybe, the Bible we want is not the Bible God gave us. Maybe, just maybe, the Bible is not a book of spiritual devotion or “a morally reassuring manual of religious piety” (Bailie, Violence Unveiled, 135).

Maybe, just maybe, we have completely ignored the main truth of Scripture.

The Most Ignored Truth in Scripture

And what truth is that?

That we are the violent ones, and there is no violence in God at all.

That God appears violent because we have made Him to be the scapegoat for our own violence.

That God appears violent to us only because we do not want to admit our own violence and so blame Him for it. In our scapegoating violence, we have made God the universal scapegoat for all violence.

We have, each one of us, killed our brothers. And the blood of every victim in Scripture and in history cries out from the ground. And when God appears and says, “What have you done?” we reply, along with Cain, that we are the victims, that we are the ones God has wronged, that if He would treat us more fairly, life would turn out better.

In our hearts, we secretly desire to become God. We secretly know in our hearts that if we were running the world, we could do a better job than God. In our hearts, we secretly believe that God has wronged us, not treated us fairly, and shows favoritism to others. And so we grow in our resentment towards God. We secretly wish that we could replace God.

With this secret desire in our hearts, we set out to “be God” to the world by doing the things He doesn’t seem to be doing. We try to make things right. We try to enact justice. We try to retaliate against wrongdoers.

And when God whispers into our hearts, “Be careful! Sin is crouching at your door!” we try to protect ourselves from this sin by “righteously” killing “God’s rivals,” who are really only our rivals.

When we place ourselves up as the bringers of peace, as God’s spokesman in the world, as the ones who will restore humanity to the garden, and then God seems to favor someone else who is “doing it all wrong,” we get jealous and envious, and we set out to kill and destroy them so that we ourselves do not lose our privileged position.

This desire to be God leads to a rivalry against others, which leads to murdering our rivals, as we think God should do.

And thus goes Scripture and history. We behave violently toward others. God says, “What have you done?” and we say, “Don’t punish me. It was you. You drove me away. If you would only treat me fairly, I would not have had to do what I did. I got a bad hand in life. I was not treated rightly. If I had not done what was necessary, I would not have received what was rightfully mine.

So we have always blamed God. We blame Him for not running the world correctly. We blame Him for not killing our rivals, and we blame Him for not setting things straight in the world.

And if God were a human, taking all this blame, He would set out to prove His innocence. He would set out to kill us in retaliation for trying to take His place, for trying to be a rival to God, for questioning how He runs the world, and for killing others in His name when He had nothing to do with such murder.

But this is not what God did when faced with all the blame for our sin and shame. God did not behave like a human would, but He showed us how a human could behave.

And He did this in Jesus. In Jesus, God bore the blame. God took the shame.

Though innocent of any wrongdoing, God, in Jesus, let us blame Him for every wrongdoing.

And then He let us kill Him in God’s name.

Why did we kill Jesus? To set things right. To restore order. To defend God’s righteousness. To bring justice.

We were the ones who had the plan to set things right and bring humanity back into Paradise, but the teachings and example of Jesus messed everything up, and when it appeared that God favored Jesus more than all our religious rules, regulations, and restrictions, we knew that He had to be stopped.

We brought our unwanted and unneeded and unasked-for offerings of fruit in order please and appease a God who was not angry at us in the first place, and when we saw that our brother, Jesus, was accepted by God, we became jealous, and so we killed him.

And yet though the blood of Abel cried out from the ground for vengeance, the blood of Jesus cries out from the cross for forgiveness.

In this way, while the sin of the first man, Adam, brought about the murder of brother against brother and a never-ending cycle of retaliatory vengeance, the offering of the second Man, Jesus, also brought about the murder of brother against brother (and of man against God), but in so doing, Jesus offered a word of forgiveness, which put an end to the need for retaliatory vengeance. Of all the murders in the world, God alone could have righteously retaliated for the unjust murder of His innocent Son, but instead, He forgave, showing that the only way to peace, love, and unity is through forgiveness.

So have you been wronged? Follow the example of Jesus. Stop the cycle of retaliation by offering forgiveness instead of vengeance.

Only in this way can both Cain and Abel come together and bring their human family back to the garden.

What I believe about Free Will

By Jeremy Myers

18 Comments

The term “free will” is highly problematic, for in reality, there is no such thing as a “free will.” All our so-called “free choices” are not only influenced by our mental, emotional, and physical state of being, but also by our genetics, the environment in which we live, the situation in which we find ourselves, the relationships in our lives, and even by things like how much sleep we got last night and what we ate for lunch. “Freedom is not the absence of influences” (Vance, The Other Side of Calvinism, 202).

Even God, I would argue, does not have a completely “free” will, for He too is influenced by the Trinitarian Godhead, by His creation, by His goal to glorify Himself, and by His own character. Though God is the most free being, even His will is not completely free to do anything.

For example, He cannot sin, as this would be contrary to His nature. Nor can He do that which is logically impossible, such as make a round square or create a rock too heavy to lift. Also, God cannot break the rules He has set up for Himself regarding the governance of His creation. For example, if He has given humans the freedom to make choices, He cannot stop them from choosing things He does not like.

So rather than “free will,” it might be best to talk about “true will.”

That is, can a person make genuine decisions, or are all decisions subject to something like fate or divine predetermination? We will talk more about predetermination and foreordination in the future posts about Unconditional Election and the Sovereignty of God, so I don’t want to use a lot of room to discuss these issues here, except to say that Scripture, reason, and experience all seem to point pretty clearly to the fact that God expects us to make wise choices and holds us accountable for the choices and decisions we make.

If our decisions were fated or predetermined by God, then God could no more hold us accountable for the decisions we make than we could hold accountable a wind-up toy car for driving off a table if we are the ones who wound it up, put it on the table, and sent it driving off toward the edge. Or to use a more complex example, though most modern people have had the experience of yelling at our computers in frustration for what they do, we all know that the fault is never with the computer, for it is simply doing what we (or some computer programmer) have told it to do.

Sin is Evidence of Free Will

I would argue further that sin is the greatest proof for the existence of human true will (or free will, if you prefer that term). Why?

To begin with, given the facts that God has a will and that sin exists, we are only left with a few options as the origin of sin and evil: We must say either that God willed sin into existence or He did not.

We will see later in the discussion on the Sovereignty of God that Calvinists are divided on this issue. Most Christians, however, agree that God did not will sin into existence. And if He did not will sin into existence, then it had to have come from some other will—a will outside of God’s will.

Sin cannot have come from God’s will, for sin is contrary to and opposed to God’s will.

Therefore, sin must have its origination in a will that is separate from God, or else God would be divided against Himself. Since all people sin, the will of an individual person must be one such will that is separate from God. Curiously then, the sinfulness of mankind does not disprove the existence of the will of man, but proves it!

Self-caused actions founded in the wills of men are the best explanation for the origin of evil.

If, therefore, self-caused actions help account for the origin of evil, then the origin of evil helps prove the existence and reality of self-caused actions. In other words, if there is no true will, we would have no way to explain the origin of evil unless it were attributed to God.

But since evil cannot have its origin in God, the origin of evil must be explained through the real decisions of God’s creatures. He created beings with true wills, knowing that they might misuse and abuse this amazing gift for the purpose of rebellion, but also knowing that without such a gift, there could be no way for Him to receive the goal and purpose of a true will, namely, true love. God knew that without a true will there could be no true love; and God, desiring to have loving relationships with His creation, decided that the gift of a true will to His creatures was worth the risk.

What Happened to Free Will when Sin Entered the World?

When Adam and Eve misused their wills in the Garden of Eden by eating fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, sin entered into the world, and with it came death, decay, and destruction. Earlier in this chapter, in the discussion on Romans 7:15-20, we saw that when Adam and Eve sinned, they died spiritually and sin corrupted their body, which also began to die.

But what about the soul? Was it corrupted by sin? Did the soul also begin to die?

Scripture seems to indicate that the death which affected the bodies and spirits of people, does not affect the soul in the same way. We cannot speak of soulish death the same way we can speak of physical or spiritual death. The reason is because the soul is the “life” of a person. It is the breath of life, the animating principle of a human being (cf. Gen 2:7). To speak of soul death would be to speak of life death, which makes no sense.

Though the Bible occasionally speaks of the death of the soul (cf. Ezek 18:4; Matt 16:25-26; Jas 1:21; 5:20; 1 Pet 1:9) these texts do not refer to the death of the soul itself, but to the separation of the body from the soul, which results in physical death (see the following articles by Bob Wilkin: “Soul Talk, Soul Food, and Soul Salvation”; “Saving the Soul of a Fellow Christian (James 5:29-20)”; “Saving Your Soul By Doing Good (James 1:21)”; “Gaining by Losing (Matthew 16:24-28)”; “Suffering which results in Abundant Life (1 Peter 1:9)”).

When there is no “life” (soul) in the body, the body is dead. Though the soul can live without the body, the body cannot live without the soul.

All this is to say that the faculties of the soul, which include imagination, memory, reason, and emotions, were not themselves damaged by sin. Certainly, since these faculties of the soul are dependent upon the health of the physical brain, and the brain is dying as a result of being part of the physical body, our imagination, memory, reason, and emotions are not used to their full capabilities.

Nevertheless, the soul is able to utilize its capacity to imagine, create, remember, reason, and feel emotions. The will, being an interplay of all of these soulish capacities, is therefore also able to function. It interesting that those who teach the inability of the human will to function almost never teach the inability to function of the imagination, memory, reason, and emotions. Just as these are able to function, so also is the will.

Scripture Calls People to Exercize their Free Will

Therefore, it is no surprise that Scripture contains frequent calls for people to exercise their wills in the practice of obedience and righteousness.

From the very beginning with Cain, God wanted him to turn from His sin so that He might escape the disastrous consequences of it (Gen 4:7). Through the periods of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the Twelve Patriarchs, and into to the days of Moses and the Judges, and into the times of the Kings and the Prophets, God constantly and unceasingly calls on all people to turn from their wicked ways and follow Him (Deut 30:19-20a; Josh 24:15; 1 Kings 18:21; Isa 1:18-19; etc.). Even Jesus, during His ministry, constantly pled with people to leave their sin and follow Him (John 5:39-40; 7:17, 37-38; Matt 11:2-8; 22:3; 23:37-38). The preaching of Peter, Paul, and the other apostles all contained the same message. Even the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit is to convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:8-11).

Yet note that although the practice of obedience and righteousness is called for in Scripture, this in no way means that such practices result in eternal life.

Even if someone was as good as Mother Theresa or Gandhi, they could not earn their eternal life by their good works any more than could Hitler or Pol Pot by their evil works. I point out the biblical call for people to respond to God, not to say that people can contribute to the reception of eternal life, but only to show that if God expects people to hear His truth and respond, who are we to teach that they cannot do so?

Furthermore, if humans do not have free will and are unable to respond to the call of God, then all the calls of God in Scripture are little more than farcical games in which God taunts humans to do something they cannot actually do.

Here then is where we arrive at the point: Just as God calls people to respond to His Word with obedience and righteousness through the exercise of their choices (non-meritorious though they might be) and fully expects them to be able to do so, in the same way, God calls people to believe in Jesus for eternal life, and fully expects them to be able to do so (cf. John 3:16; 5:24; 6:47).

The Will Can Exercise Faith

The difference between faith and works, of course, is that while the latter are “works” and no one can have enough works to earn or merit eternal life, faith is not a work, is not meritorious, and does not help a person earn or gain eternal life. Faith is the simple reception of a gift freely offered.

Yes, faith is a function of the will, but since the will has the ability to function, it is not unreasonable for God to invite people to believe in Jesus for eternal life. And if it is not unreasonable for God, it is not unreasonable for evangelists and missionaries, as they go about loving others and proclaiming the gospel, to invite people to believe in Jesus for eternal life.

Free Will Does not Threaten God’s Plan

If this is the case about the true will of mankind, then how can God guarantee that anyone will actually believe? Is God up in heaven wringing His hands with worry saying to Himself, “I hope they believe and this all works out”? Is God’s plan of salvation threatened when He gave mankind the freedom to believe?

To ask this question is to answer it. If God’s plan of salvation were threatened by giving mankind the freedom to believe, God never would have done it! God is not so impotent and foolish as to put Himself and His plan of redemption at risk due to the simple and rebellious wills of mankind. No, like the perfect chess player, God knows that no matter what move His creatures make, He has a wide variety of moves which can direct His creation in the direction He wants it to go.

God is so supremely and infinitely wise, He can give genuine freedom to His creatures without any threat or risk whatsoever to His ultimate goals and plans. It is only a foolish god who must control every though, action, word, and deed in order for his plans to not be thwarted. But our God is not foolish. He is wise, loving, kind, merciful, and gracious. He wants everyone to come to a knowledge of the truth, and calls everyone to believe in Jesus for eternal life, which is possible through the will.

Is Eternal Life Dependent Upon Human Free Will

The primary objection to this, of course, is that it seems to make eternal life at least somewhat dependent upon humans. In other words, if people do not receive eternal life unless they believe in Jesus for it, and their belief is a function of their own will, then are not humans in some way responsible for their own eternal life, even if faith itself is not meritorious? The answer, of course, is “Yes!”

God has given us responsibility. As free beings, we are responsible. He holds us responsible. If we were not responsible, God would not be just in giving eternal life only to a few and sending the rest away into eternal separation from Him. The only way God can avoid the charge of being unjust is to give the responsibility of receiving the free gift of eternal life from Him by faith.

But again—and I cannot emphasize this enough!—faith is not a work. Faith is not meritorious. Being responsible to believe in Jesus for eternal life is not at all the same thing as working to gain, prove, or keep eternal life. Faith is not a work, but since God cannot and does not force eternal life upon all people whether they want it or not, He gives to humans the responsibility to believe in Jesus for the free gift of eternal life. This is not eternal life by works; this is eternal life by grace along through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone.

Why then do some believe and others not?

Can those who believe in Jesus for eternal life somehow take credit that they were good enough, wise enough, or smart enough to understand the free offer of eternal life and respond by believing in Jesus for it? Can Christians after all give themselves a pat on the back and congratulate each other for being better and smarter than the rest of the humanity?

Never!

While much of it remains a mystery and I do not know how it will all work out in God’s economy or in eternity, we know from Scripture that each person on earth is given enough revelation from God to respond positively to Him, even if this revelation is only through creation and conscience. This does not mean that what is revealed through creation and conscience is sufficient in itself to grant eternal life to those who believe in what is revealed to them.

No, it means that God calls people to respond by faith to the revelation that they have been given, and when they do, God makes sure that they receive further revelation. Romans 1 and other biblical texts state that God has revealed certain truths about Himself in nature so that men are without excuse. I think that as people respond to the revelation they have received, God obligates Himself to provide more revelation to them, so that they receive enough revelation from God to either accept the offer of eternal life by faith alone, or to reject such an offer (See What About Those Who Have Never Heard the Gospel?).

So why does one person believe and another not?

I do not have an answer to this any more than the Calvinist has an answer (in their theology) for why God chooses to regenerate some and not others.

If I were to look into my own life, I am tempted to say that I believed in Jesus, not because of anything good in me, but due to a variety of circumstances and situations which include a combination of (1) the Holy Spirit convicting me of sin, pointing me toward righteousness, and warning me of coming judgment, just as He does with everybody in the world; (2) common grace which is shown to all; (3) being born in a “Christian” nation; (4) Godly parenting; and (5) natural and divine revelation being impressed upon me by God and others in my life.

Note that I was not responsible for a single one of these. All of them were out of my control. They all “happened” to me. Other than the first two, which God gives to all people, it could be argued that the people who were not “lucky” enough to have the final three circumstances in their lives are at a distinct disadvantage to being able to believe in Jesus. I would agree. But I also believe that God knows where each person is at, and He knows what circumstances each person is in, and God will hold each person accountable for the revelation they have received (Luke 12:48). Also, as stated above, I believe that God obligates Himself to make more revelation available to those who believe and follow the revelation they have been given.

An extended quote from Robert Wilkin provides further insight into why some believe in Jesus and others do not, and also what God is doing to help all people believe in Jesus for eternal life:

Unbelievers are capable of responding to God. However, no unbeliever would seek God on his own initiative (Rom 3:11, “There is none who seeks after God”). God is drawing all people to Himself (John 12:32, “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself”). Because of that, they can respond.

… Unbelievers … are not incapable of seeking God. And, as we have already seen, God’s work in the life of unbelievers does not wait until He opens their hearts. He is continually drawing people everywhere to Himself.

God has determined that anyone who diligently seeks Him will ultimately find Him: “He has made from one blood every nation … so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:27); “He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him” (Heb 11:6); “In every nation whoever fears Him and works righteousness is accepted by Him” (Acts 10:35).

… God has given enough information for us to know both that God is sovereign and that we are capable of responding to Him. No one is saved apart from God’s drawing him and opening his heart. Yet God doesn’t force anyone to be saved and He doesn’t hold anyone responsible for something which he can’t possibly do. All who are born again have freely responded to God’s drawing and have trusted in Christ and Him alone for eternal life (See Bob Wilkin, “The Lord Opened Her Heart”; “What About Those Who Die Without Hearing the Message of Christ?”)

All people have the ability to respond to the light of revelation that they have received, and if people respond, God has obligated Himself to make sure that they receive more light so that they too may believe in Jesus for eternal life.

This function of the will, though it is the responsibility of a person, is not meritorious in any way, for faith is not a work (Rom 4:5), but is simply being persuaded or convinced about what is true, which, in the case of eternal life, is being persuaded that eternal life is the free gift of God to all who believe in Jesus for it.

What do you believe about Free Will? Why do you believe it? What questions do you still have about free will? Weigh in below!

If you want to read more about Calvinism, check out other posts in this blog series: Words of Calvinism and the Word of God.

Can the Unbeliever Understand the Things of God? (1 Corinthians 2:14)

By Jeremy Myers

18 Comments

1 Corinthians 2:14 seems to be the perfect passage to defend the Calvinistic teaching of total inability, for it seems to say that the natural man cannot accept or understand the things of God.

But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned (1 Corinthians 2:14).

How Calvinists Explain 1 Corinthians 2:14

Regarding this verse, Calvinists are not shy in stating their beliefs about what it teaches.

This does not mean that a person cannot have a rational understanding of Christianity or of what the Bible teaches apart from the illumination of his or her mind by the Spirit. In one sense, a scholar can understand and even teach theology as well as any other branch of human knowledge. … [But] if they are asked their personal opinion of what they present, they say that it is all nonsense. It is in this sense that they, not being “spiritual,” are unable to understand Christianity (Boice and Ryken, Doctrines of Grace, 78).

Man cannot see or know the things that relate to the kingdom of God, without being regenerated first by the Holy Spirit. A dead spirit perceives only the things of man and Satan (Spencer, TULIP, 34).

The reason that the brilliant minds do not accept Christianity is that all minds are blind, unless they are regenerated. … Without the Holy Spirit one is not able to understand the things of God (Palmer, Five Points, 16).

As can be seen from these quotes, Calvinists use 1 Corinthians 2:14 to support the idea that unbelievers cannot grasp or understand the things of God. For this, they first need to be regenerated.

Calvinists have also been known to use this verse against other Christians who disagree with the Calvinistic teachings and doctrines. If a brother or sister in Christ takes a stand against Calvinistic theology, there are some Calvinists who will accuse this dissenter of having their minds darkened, of living without the Holy Spirit, and of being unable to spiritually discern the truth of Calvinism. I myself have had this charge leveled against me by Calvinists. The implication, of course, is that only Calvinists are truly Christians.

Sadly, such divisiveness within the Body of Christ is caused by a grave misunderstanding of Paul’s point in 1 Corinthians 2:14.

The Situation in Corinth

In Corinth there was much divisiveness as well, and one of the purposes of Paul’s letter was to correct the issues that led to this divisiveness. Paul knew that sometimes, correcting those who err is what leads to healing and unity. The faction in Corinth which was causing the problems believed in a hyper-spiritual form of Christianity. These “spiritual elites” are referred to throughout Paul’s letters as “the spiritual [ones]” (Gk., pneumatikoi).

They believed they had special knowledge and wisdom from God, special gifts from the Holy Spirit, and special insights into death and resurrection. This sort of hyper-spirituality led them to make a dualistic division between the physical realm and the spiritual realm, so that anything they did in the flesh did not affect their spirit, and vice versa. Such a belief had devastating consequences on the behaviors of the Corinthian believers, so that one of their leaders was even having sexual relations with his mother-in-law, and they were all proud about it (1 Corinthians 5:1-2).

The Context of 1 Corinthians 2:14

It is within this context that 1 Corinthians 2 must be read. Paul is trying to show them where true wisdom comes from, and how people learn about the things of God. Within the immediate context of 1 Corinthians 2:14, Paul talks about three types of people: the natural–soulish (Gk., psuchicos) man (1 Corinthians 2:14), the spiritual (Gk., pneumatikos) man (1 Corinthians 2:15), and the carnal–fleshly (Gk., sarkinois) man (1 Corinthians 3:1).

These three types of people reflect the three part of a person which we looked at in the discussion of Romans 7. But one should not read into these three divisions some sort of classification about whether or not people have eternal life. After all, though many identify the spiritual man with those who have eternal life, and the fleshly man with those who do not, what then are we to do with the soulish man? Instead, it seems best to see that Paul is talking about how all people learn spiritual things, whether they are regenerate or not. And how is that? People learn spiritual things through their spirit. Spiritual truth is spiritually discerned.

This is why, Paul goes on to say, he could not teach the Corinthians very much when he was with them previously. When he was there, they were operating out of their flesh, and so he could only provide them with milk teaching, not solid food for the mature (1 Corinthians 3:1-2). And indeed, though they now believe they are super-spiritual, Paul says they are still carnal, for they exhibit all the signs of operating through the flesh.

Again, all of this goes back to an understanding of how a person functions. The soul is the animating principle of a person, and it can operate through the spirit or the body. Since the soul is the seat of the imagination, memory, reason, and emotions, when a soul functions through the spirit, we can talk of a person being spiritually minded. But when a person operates through their flesh, they are carnally minded. Paul is saying that the Corinthian believers, though they have the Spirit of God, are carnally minded (1 Corinthians 3:1-17).

The Natural Man Cannot Receive the Things of God

This then brings us back to 1 Corinthians 2:14. When Paul says that the “soulish” man cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God, he is simply saying that the soul of a person, by itself, with only imagination, memory, reason, and emotions to guide it, cannot grasp spiritual truth. Spiritual truth is learned through the spirit. Spiritual truth is not learned through the soul, nor through the flesh, but only through the spirit. Of course, as we saw in the discussion of Romans 7, the unregenerate person is spiritually dead, which means their spirit is separated from God and thus, they cannot properly receive spiritual truth from God until they receive a new Spirit, which is the Holy Spirit.

So in 1 Corinthians 2:14, Paul is simply saying that spiritual truth is not a product of reason, imagination, or emotions. Spiritual truth is spiritually discerned. That is all Paul is saying. Speaking to the Corinthian believers as he was, Paul is inviting them to not seek to learn about God by their reason and emotions alone, but through the Spirit of God which was in them. Of course, this does not set aside reason and emotions either, for these can operate through the spirit to discern spiritual truth.

The bottom line is that Paul is giving a warning to believers in 1 Corinthians 2:14 to not depend solely on their imagination, reason, or emotions to learn about God. In this way, though implications for unbelievers could be drawn from 1 Corinthians 2:14, this verse is not primarily about unbelievers at all.

The NIV Translation of 1 Corinthians 2:14 is Tragic

This is partly why the NIV translation of 1 Corinthians 2:14 is so tragic. I indicated earlier that the NIV translation of the Bible leans heavily toward Calvinistic thinking and theology, and 1 Corinthians 2:14 is an example of one such place. Where most Bible translations accurately translate the Greek as saying something along the lines of “The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God,” the NIV reads Calvinistic theology into this verse, and assumes that the natural man does not even have the Spirit, and so translated the verse this way: “The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God.”

But as pointed out earlier, the “natural man” might be better translated as “soulish man” and has nothing whatsoever to do with whether this “man” has the Spirit of God or not. The soulish man is simply contrasted with the spiritual man and the carnal man of the following verses, showing the three realms within which a person can dwell.

Other Evidence for the Meaning of 1 Corinthians 2:14

William Barclay sums up the message of 1 Corinthians 2:14 quite well:

So in verse 14 Paul speaks of the man who is psuchikos. He is the man who lives as if there was nothing beyond physical life and there were no needs other than material needs, whose values are all physical and material. A man like that cannot understand spiritual things. A man who thinks that nothing is more important than the satisfaction of the sex urge cannot understand the meaning of chastity; a man who ranks the amassing of material things as the supreme end of life cannot understand generosity; and a man who has never a thought beyond this world cannot understand the things of God. To him they look mere foolishness (Barclay, Letters to Corinthians, 1975, 28).

The natural man, or soulish man, then, is not the man without the Spirit, or even the carnal man. The natural, soulish, man is simply referring to the person who relates to life solely through his intellect, emotions, and will, without regard to spiritual truth. While this may describe many people who are unregenerate, it by no means describes them all, and in fact, accurately describes quite a few Christians as well. A person who has the Spirit of God can be a soulish man just as much as one who does not have the indwelling Spirit.

Numerous other lines of evidence could also be drawn out from this verse to show that Paul is saying nothing whatsoever about the unregenerate person’s inability to understand or believe the gospel. For example, it could be argued that the “things of the Spirit” that Paul is referring to are about the deeper truths and mysteries of the gospel that Paul has been referring to previously in 1 Corinthians 2:9-15 (See Vance, The Other Side of Calvinism, 231). This would then have nothing to do with whether or not the unregenerate person could understand the offer of eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ, and believe in Him as a result.

Furthermore, it could also be argued that when Paul says the natural man “does not” receive the things of the Spirit of God, “nor can he know them,” he is not referring to an inherent inability to do so, but rather to an antagonistic mindset that refuses to seek the truth and understand these things.

Why would a person refuse to seek the truth and understand the gospel? Because men love darkness rather than light (John 3:19). As Paul writes elsewhere, the mind that is set on the flesh (rather than the Spirit) is hostile and antagonistic toward God (Rom 8:7). People know that seeking the truth, believing in God, and following Jesus will require them to change their lives, and most are unwilling to do so. Paul’s “soulish man” is simply the person who does not obey the truths of the gospel because they are unwilling to learn the truths of the gospel.

Most dangerous of all was a mindset that was prevalent within the Corinthian church, which is also quite prevalent in various forms of the modern church, especially among those sorts of groups (like Calvinists and Charismatics) that require some sort of special knowledge, experience, gifting, or insight into the “deep things” of God in order to truly grasp the gospel and be used by God. This sort of teaching was part of the Gnostic heresy in the early church, but has worked its way through numerous forms of the modern church as well. On this subject, Philip J. Lee writes this:

Americans in the two opposing strains of Protestantism, the evangelical and liberal, along with many adherents of Pentecostal and holiness cults, would agree that religious knowledge is special knowledge that cannot be taught or learned by ordinary means (Philip J. Lee, Against the Protestant Gnostics, 113).

Can unbelievers understand the Scriptures?

Of course they can.

We are not Gnostics, and the Bible is not a book of mysterious magic and arcane knowledge which can only be grasped by initiates who have the sacred decoder ring. No, while understanding the Scriptures certainly takes serious effort and years of study, it can be understood and grasped by anyone who seeks to do so. To say that only the “elect” or only a special class of gifted Christians can understand the Scriptures is to fall into the ancient error of Gnosticism. Paul does not fall into this error, but instead says that if one is to understand spiritual truth, it must be spiritually discerned, which means that it must be studied through the use of the spirit.

So in the end, 1 Corinthians 2:14 is not about an unbeliever’s inability to understand the things of God, but about the incapacity of reason and emotions to understand the things of God on their own. When properly paired with the Spirit, the soul, or mind, of a person can grasp and understand spiritual truth.

If you want to read more about Calvinism, check out other posts in this blog series: Words of Calvinism and the Word of God.

Humans have three parts: Body, Soul, and Spirit

By Jeremy Myers

93 Comments

The Bible seems to present humans as consisting of three parts: body, soul, and spirit (1 Thessalonians 5:23; Hebrews 4:12).

This is called the “tripartite” nature of man. Much like the divine Trinity, the three parts of a human make one being. Though distinct, the three parts of a person work together to live, exist, and interact with God and creation.

The Three Parts: Body, Soul, and Spirit

The body is the physical side of a person. It touches the material world through the five senses of sight, smell, hearing, taste, touch.

The spirit is the spiritual side of man. It interacts with God and the spiritual realm through its own set of “senses,” things like faith, hope, and prayer.

The soul is the life of a person. It is the animating principle of a person, and is responsible for imagination, memory, reason, and emotions. As such, the soul serves as the command center for the person. Neither the body nor the spirit can function on its own; both look to the soul for direction and action.

What Happened to the Three Parts of Humanity in the Fall?

When Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, they died spiritually and sin corrupted their body, so that it too began to die.

Nevertheless, they remained “alive” because their soul remained. Yet the soul, the animating principle of a person, can only function through the spirit or through the body. The spirit, which was dead, could do nothing for the soul.

The body, however, was only dying, and so the soul could function through the body. Yet because of the corruption of sin, the body produced only sin and death. This is what Paul refers to as “the flesh.”

What Happens to the Three Parts of a Human in Regeneration?

In the Hebrew Scriptures, God promised to give a new spirit to His people (Ezek 36:26), which we now know was the “Holy Spirit” that came at Pentecost (Acts 2).

The Bible also says that in the future resurrection, we will be given glorified and incorruptible bodies (1 Cor 15:52). When that happens, each person will once again be as God intended and planned, perfect in body, soul, and spirit so that we can live and function as a whole, united person.

But that time is not yet.

In the present age, unbelievers have a soul which often seeks to do good, and wills to do good, but since they do not have the Holy Spirit, they cannot do anything to please God. And since their body is corrupted with sin, the soul cannot obey God through the flesh either.

Once a person believes in Jesus for eternal life (this is a function of the soul), God sends the Holy Spirit to regenerate, indwell, baptize, and seal the new believer. The old, dead spirit of man is replaced by the Holy Spirit of God.

As a result, the soul of believer can choose to walk in the Spirit or walk in the flesh (Gal 5:16-26). Yet due to the force of habit, addiction, bad choices, or just plain ignorance, we often choose instead to life through the flesh, which results in sin.

Though we may desire to do something else, and now have the ability through the Spirit to actually live differently, the body of sin drags us down into death and destruction with it (Rom 7:24).

We will see tomorrow why this study is important (It helps us understand what Paul is talking about in Romans 7).

Here are a few images which I found online which seem to show what I am saying in a graphic representation of our three parts:

Have you read or studied much about the three parts of man? Some believe we have only two parts: the body and a soul/spirit. What are your thoughts on the three parts of man? Do you have anything to add to what I have written above?

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Can the Unbeliever Understand the Things of God? (1 Corinthians 2:14)

How Calvinists Explain 1 Corinthians 2:14

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The Context of 1 Corinthians 2:14

The Natural Man Cannot Receive the Things of God

The NIV Translation of 1 Corinthians 2:14 is Tragic

Other Evidence for the Meaning of 1 Corinthians 2:14

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Humans have three parts: Body, Soul, and Spirit

The Three Parts: Body, Soul, and Spirit

What Happened to the Three Parts of Humanity in the Fall?

What Happens to the Three Parts of a Human in Regeneration?

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