It has been said most
truly that “theology matters,” but a parallel or supportive saying may be that
“anthropology matters.” That is to say,
one’s view of man may be just as critical as one’s view of God, as they will
inform and shape each other. A view of
God as the almighty Creator and King is all fine and good, but if the view of
man is one of general goodness only occasionally darkened by the blight of bad
behavior, one wonders what good the former view actually does since arguably,
such a person’s view of God renders irrelevant the concept of Jesus’ role as
the atoner and atonement, the mediator, and the great high priest. For what need does a good man have with a
mediator, if he does not believe that God has any particular reason to hold
wrath against him?
No, the understanding of
the doctrine of man, the nature of man as broken, sinful, and separated from
God by the very fact of his birth into a life stained with sin, demands as its
counterpart a view of an almighty God as both holy and merciful. The biblical view of God’s intentions for
mankind is not of God waiting for a man whose very nature is one of mud and
filth to find a way to make himself clean, but instead sends One who is truly
clean to cleanse, to heal, and to grant a new and different existence. Likewise it can be rightly said that a man
who does not accept man’s evil nature but instead sees only his own goodness,
and lives compared to his neighbor rather than to Christ will never understand
the reason that Scripture uses concepts like death and enslavement to describe
a man who is apart from Christ, in his natural state.
We see the effects of the reticence to preach this truth on the church
firstly, and on the world secondly. So
many in churches have a great compassion for people, and rightfully so, for the
world is full of the hurting and wounded.
The harvest, as the Lord says, is ripe and full, and many laborers are
needed to bring it all in.[ii]
But just as often, the trouble comes in
when people encounter the reaction of the natural man to the Gospel: rejection,
mockery, and hatred.[iii] Without the work of the Holy Spirit there is
no room in the heart of the natural man for the Gospel, but because so many
churches fear losing attention and attendance, the result is that the whole
Gospel—man’s sinfulness and guilt before a holy God, God’s mercy in sending His
Son, and the call to repent and turn to God—is often set aside in one way or
another. The result is the creation of
an anthropocentric gospel that does not resemble the real Gospel by any means; and
so the grace of God is neutralized, God’s freedom to save to His own eternal
glory is rejected, and churches stop becoming the body with Christ as the head,
and instead create to one degree or another a treadmill for their congregants
to wile away their days striving on.
I am
astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of
Christ and are turning to a different gospel—not that there is another one, but
there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even
if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one
we preached to you, let him be accursed. As
we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel
contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.[iv]
In my own life I can recall that before I had the true landscape of my
sinfulness and inadequacy opened up to me, I did not fully comprehend what it
meant to love Christ. The Holy Spirit
moved in me during a sermon at a church I was just visiting at the time, on a
cold November Sunday while I was in grad school, and through the faithful
preaching of the Gospel, through the exegesis of the Scriptures, I saw the
truth: that I was not good enough, that I could not be good enough, and that
merely assenting intellectually to Christ was not the same as having Him as
Lord, but also that God was merciful and loving, and that He granted
forgiveness to His children who draw near for it. Through that, the Holy Spirit regenerated me
and gave me new life, and began the renewal of my mind and desires that
continues to this day.
I cannot imagine such a transformation resulting from a message
focused on “here’s what you can get from God,” or “this is how you can please
God.” Both these messages are common to
the human experience, yet both lead to the same unsatisfying, pointless
struggle, and to the same ultimate end: death.
There
is a way that seems right to a man,
but its end is the way to death.
but its end is the way to death.
Even
in laughter the heart may ache,
and the end of joy may be grief.[v]
and the end of joy may be grief.[v]
A solid biblical anthropology goes hand in hand with a biblical
theology. And likewise, a rejection of
God’s Word on the nature of man leads to a very twisted anthropology and
theology. Western civilization in
particular has become host to a diverse collection of outcomes to the
anthropocentric gospel. Terms like
“moralistic therapeutic deism” have come into use to describe the man-centered
gospel of self-help, self-actualization, and self-aggrandizement. But the most extreme examples appear in the
news and involve the ultimate end of sin and separation from God: death. Though this is a difficult subject to broach,
it is one Christians must be willing to face with boldness, in love and truth,
for the sake of calling all God’s people to worship—even those thought far gone
beyond the bounds of reason.
During the writing of this paper, a news story has come out and
created great public furor about a young man who took his own life. This young man identified himself as being
transgender, as rejecting his creation as male and desiring instead to become
female. He posted a public suicide note
that spoke in angry, hateful terms of his Christian parents, because they would
not allow him to “transition,” to have surgery and take hormones to make him
physically resemble a woman. The result
of this has been a great fury rising up amongst those who have made it their
goal to support such desires, to endorse their goodness and destroy all who
would question the wisdom of someone who declares they are not that which they
clearly are. This demands several
responses from Christians, but the beginning of this requires us to be honest
and biblical about the nature of man’s heart.
Be appalled, O
heavens, at this;
be shocked, be utterly desolate,
declares the Lord,
for my people have committed two evils:
they have forsaken me,
the fountain of living waters,
and hewed out cisterns for themselves,
broken cisterns that can hold no water.[vi]
be shocked, be utterly desolate,
declares the Lord,
for my people have committed two evils:
they have forsaken me,
the fountain of living waters,
and hewed out cisterns for themselves,
broken cisterns that can hold no water.[vi]
The heart is deceitful above
all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?[vii]
A Christian, drawing from the testimony of Scripture, knows that man
does not give himself identity but that God has given us our identities. Likewise, he knows that our worldviews are
intrinsically broken apart from the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit and
that the farther we run from God, the more broken they become, the more
inadequate they are to understand the true nature of the world. But perhaps most importantly, he understands
that man is a special creation of God because he was made in the image of
God. We appeal to our fellow man to be
reconciled to God in Christ because we have heard and responded to the great
truth of the Gospel, and recognize in it the true fullness of identity that
cannot be found anywhere else, that fully satisfies and makes us who He
intended us to be. Yet we also recognize
that the lives of men are the work of God, shaped according to His will and
dependent upon him, and we live in a state between Jesus’ atoning work on the
cross and the consummation of that work in the remaking of creation. We recognize that broken, aching feeling,
that desire for something we do not yet have, and the feeling that something is
wrong—yet just as much we recognize that nothing apart from Jesus will ever
satisfy that desire. And because man’s
first tendency is to satisfy that desire in anything other than God, we also recognize that desire to rebel against God,
and condemn it as wickedness, because it is that rebellious desire which drives
us to drink from those broken cisterns.
The great works of Christians down through the centuries are filled
with the same testimony: man is the slave of sin, utterly undone outside of
Christ. Even those whose theology did
not measure up to the biblical standard could not help, in their prayers, to
confess what they knew to be true: the fallen sons of Adam are dead in sin,
incapable of even the first move toward God.
Even more, they are filled with the effect of depravity and alienation
from God: enmity and hatred toward His holy standards.[viii]
When we are faced with the tragedy of a person who is so enslaved to
his sin that he is rejecting the very nature of his creation[ix],
we mourn, but we also hope in the cross and the Spirit who gives life, knowing
that we too once stood in such a place. We
testify joyfully to the truth of God’s creation, man’s fall, and God’s
redemption and healing found in His Son’s life, death, and resurrection. We cannot fear the words and deeds of man,
because our obligation, faith, and love are all focused on the truest Object
they could have. We can endure man’s
anger for pointing to sin, as long as we point man to the cross.
If any shall brand us with epithets, such as “bigot,” “vulgar
dogmatist,” or “mere echo of departed Puritanism,” (and all these have been
used,) we will only reply, “You may apply to us what opprobrious titles you
please, but we know that, if we were to express the truth about you, there is
not adjective of contempt which you do not deserve; and, therefore, because we
know of no language sufficiently strong to set forth our abhorrence of your
false doctrine, we will let you pass in silence.[x]
The natural man despises the doctrine of our sinfulness. But thanks be to God, His Spirit brings open
eyes and regeneration of a broken, dead heart, and the true glory of that truth
reveals our immense dependence on our Father.
Indeed, that appellation of affection demonstrates the transformation of
our relationship with God when we repent and turn to Christ to be our Lord: He
is no longer distant, no longer righteously condemning, but instead is our
Heavenly Father who provides all things and through whom all things work out
for our ultimate good and His glory. We
cannot hope to preach the Gospel and reveal the beauty of God’s work in our
hearts if we refuse to preach about man’s separation and desperate need for a
Savior, but we can preach that truth faithfully and trust in God to fulfill His
promise:
I will sprinkle clean water on you, and
you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from
all your idols I will cleanse you. And
I will give you a new heart, and a
new spirit I will put within you. And
I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And
I will put my Spirit within you, and
cause you to walk in my statutes and be
careful to obey my rules.[xi]
[i]
John 8:34
[ii]
Matthew 9:35-38
[iii]
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
[iv]
Galatians 1:6-9
[v]
Proverbs 14:12-13
[vi]
Jeremiah 2:12-13
[vii]
Jeremiah 17:9
[viii]
White, James R. "Chapter 3: The Inabilities of Man." The Potter's
Freedom: A Defense of the Reformation. Amityville, NY: Calvary, 2000. Loc
1168 of 6807, Kindle edition
[ix]
Romans 1:18-32
[x]
From the sermon “Faith” by Charles H. Spurgeon, preached at the Annual
Conferences of the Pastors’ College, 1872.
Cited from Spurgeon, C. H., and Daniel Partner. The Essential Works
of Charles Spurgeon: Selected Books, Sermons, and Other Writings ...
Uhrichsville, Ohio: Barbour Pub., 2009. Loc 316 of 35993, Kindle edition
[xi]
Ezekiel 36:25-26
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