Tag Archives: Human

An Equitable Solution

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Consider the fact that we’ve been born—not by our own choice—into a world of sin. As we discussed earlier, the only possible outcome of life in such a tainted world is enslavement to sin. Yet, while on the surface this certainly seems like a negative thing, human existence is actually an incredible gift of God. Why? Because it allows us the opportunity to experience a level of intimacy with Him that it could be achieved by no other means—a relationship whose purpose and ultimate outcome is a personal joining with God eternally. 

Still, the weakness of human nature overwhelms us in this environment of sin. And God, being intrinsically just, simply had to do something about it. His answer: God chose to take on a human nature, which ultimately led to crediting us with His own righteousness as He took our sins upon Himself through His suffering and death.(Hebrews 2:14, 17) This radical step is equitable in God’s eyes because it is the only solution that could provide the answer to our human condition.

Crediting us with His righteousness is the very foundation of God’s redemptive plan in bringing “many sons to glory.” Our redemption means that God has purchased us, much like one would buy a slave for the purpose of setting him free. And it all happens through faith.(Romans 3:25-26)

Dead to Sin

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The fact of the matter is that God has provided the remedy for all our sin—past, present and future.(Psalm 103:10&14) But even so, it’s obvious in Scripture that He intends for us to be holy, and thus commands us not to sin. How is it, then, that He could willingly overlook the sin which so easily flows from our nature? The answer, of course, is that by grace He forgives our sins, which is indeed absolutely true.

Fortunately, Jesus revealed the full extent of the gospel to Paul, not only that his curiosity might be satisfied but that both his generation and those to follow might also reach a deeper understanding of Christ’s provision. This is vitally important, because a complete awareness both of our human condition and how we now relate to our Creator is the key to walking in the total freedom God always meant for us to experience.

We know from Scripture that God forgives our sin through Christ Jesus as a free gift. Yet even more important to understand is that this free gift of forgiveness and righteousness is rooted in the fact that He has caused us to die to sin altogether.(1 Peter 2:24) But just exactly what does dying to sin mean? I don’t feel very dead to sin!

The Reality of Freedom

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 Do you suppose God might have known what the consequences of sin’s presence with us here on earth would be? Of course He did. God knew Adam, human as he was, would fall into sin. Standing outside of time, He sees the beginning and end of everything all at the same time. So how could He ever have imagined that things might turn out differently?

The only logical answer is that our confrontation with the power of sin is simply a part of His plan to bring His purpose for our lives to fruition. Yet this doesn’t mean that God has decided to tolerate sin. He detests sin, not only because it’s a personal affront to His goodness and holiness, but also because of its destructive power in people’s lives.

The lesson for all of us here is that tolerating sin in our own lives is simply unacceptable. Let’s forget the excuses, then, that sin is merely an inescapable part of life, and move on to the freedom God designed us for.      

Man’s Heart

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The term self doesn’t appear by itself very often in the Bible. But while the term self is not all that common in Scripture, there is another widely used term that expresses the same idea: the heart. The term heart appears some seven hundred times in the Bible (about a hundred times in the New Testament), where it is always used figuratively meaning the center and seat of human life.

We can look at the heart as being the engine that runs our being. It is who we are: our self. Our heart is the core of our being as well as the umbrella over our entire nature. It all boils down to this: our beliefs, our mind-set, our choices and our behavior are all dictated by what is truly in the heart. Jesus said, “The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.”(Luke 6:45)

Now in trying to understand the state of a person’s heart, the only difference between nonbeliever and believer is the condition of his spirit—dead or alive. The heart of a nonbeliever is precisely the same as what we’ve already identified as the flesh: man’s soul interacting with his physical nature through his mind, all unaided by God because his dead spirit is incapable of sharing in His life-flow. On the other hand, the believer’s heart, while still strongly pulled by the flesh, has the advantage of the influence of God’s life coursing through it by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.

Excerpted from: Free from the Power of Sin: The Keys to Growing in God in Spite of Yourself

The Essence of Our Being

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Created in the image of God? How so? For years I believed that the true essence of man is that he is a spiritual being. This seemed logical since we ultimately will share eternity with God, and the Bible clearly tells us that “God is spirit.”(John 4:24) Only later did I begin to realize that God’s purpose for man demanded that he be fashioned in quite a different way. So God added another aspect to man’s immaterial nature, a soul. And He also gave us a physical element to our being, a body. These three elements of our nature—body, soul and spirit—are clearly laid out in Scripture.(1 Thes. 5:23)

Yet for me the threefold nature of man raises a question. Why would God bother to create a physical universe at all? Since God is spirit, why not merely fulfill His plan strictly within the bounds of some sort of spiritual order? Well, the obvious answer is that God created all that He has in order to fulfill His special purpose for man. And mandkind had to be fashioned in a specific way to achieve that objective. In reality, the more closely we look into our design, the more apparent the brilliance of God’s plan becomes. Here we are; just look at us!

Being human means much more than simply putting up with a physical body for a time before it is cut loose by death to allow our spiritual being to inhabit eternity with God. We need to understand that man is an inextricable mixture of body, soul and spirit, and that anything less simply means being less than human.

Excerpted from: Free from the Power of Sin: The Keys to Growing in God in Spite of Yourself