The Moral Option — Major Ian Thomas

Humanity's Body, Soul, and Moral Capacity

In common with all forms of creative life, vegetable, animal and man, God has given to us a body. In common with all forms of animal life, including man, God has given us a soul. That behavior mechanism which we have described last evening, your mind with which you think, your emotions with which you react and your will with which you decide.

And whoever controls your mind and whoever controls your emotions, ultimately controls your will and whoever directs your will, governs your behavior. This we know to be true, that's why you have commercials on television, spot announcements on radio, that's why you see placards along the roadside, advertisements in your newspaper.

It's a battle for the mind, the emotions and the will. This very time, a general election in the United Kingdom, and on radio and television, by literature, post through the letterbox, people standing, shouting in the open air, political debates and public meetings, there is a battle for the mind, the emotions and the will.

For the politician that captures the mind and captures the emotions knows that he has captured the will and on polling day he knows that he has captured your vote. That's how we function. But unique to man, the human spirit.

Instinctive Animals and the Human Spirit

For as we saw on Saturday evening, God has marvelously protected the animal kingdom in providing a built-in computerized program which we conveniently call instinct. An impersonal instinctive trust with that rigid unbreakable interlock between that fastest thrust and the animal soul.

So that without any consciousness of the principle at work, the bird keeps flying, but is kept marvelously on course, across a tractless ocean, to find a little island to fail to do which would be to perish out of sheer exhaustion.

But having rested, it'll fly on to its ultimate winter destination. Marvelously directed by that inner principle of which it is totally unaware, it just keeps flying, but subconsciously kept on course.

This is how God has protected the animal kingdom, that we saw on Saturday evening. But he didn't make us that way because in the animal kingdom, by virtue of the fact that there is this rigid unbreakable interlock between the instinctive thrust and the animal soul, in their behavior patterns, they're not saying anything to God because they're not God-conscious.

They're amoral, they're impersonal to their Creator. Functionally satisfying, yes, but they cannot be morally satisfying, because they can't adopt an attitude, they can't adopt or demonstrate a disposition towards their Maker.

That's why God made you and made me differently, giving us the human spirit that man uniquely as creature may be inhabited by God, his Creator. That God, by the Holy Spirit indwelling the human spirit, may have access to your soul, teach your mind, control your emotions, direct your will, and by your free consent, govern your behavior.

That is why God is imperative to a man, the Holy Spirit, in co-equality with the Father and the Son, representing the triune Godhead within residence in the human spirit, given access to the human soul, to teach your mind, control your emotions, direct your will, so that all creation looking at you will know that God governs your behavior, and by what you do and say and are, know what God is like.

Jesus Christ as the Fully Functional Man

You're right, Nicodemus, I'm quite exceptional. You're quite right, Nicodemus, there is only one possible explanation for what I do, what I say, and what I am. God. Not Nicodemus because I am God, though God I am, but, Nicodemus, because I am man.

Man functioning, Nicodemus, as I as God created man to function. That's why I'm exceptional. I am the exception, because for the first time since Adam repudiated this proposition that it takes God in the man to be the kind of man that God created man to be, my Father looking down from heaven, sees in my person a real man who is prepared through the Holy Spirit to let my Father as God be God in me as man, tell me what to do, and I do as I'm told.

To everything I do, my Father does. Everything I say, my Father says. Everything I am, my Father is. Look at me, you've seen Him. You're right, Nicodemus, I'm quite exceptional. I'm a real man. These are some of the things that we have been discussing already in the two sessions with which this brief series commenced.

That's why, of course, we understand to the Lord Jesus in His perfect humanity on earth, setting aside the prerogatives that make God God and deliberately submitting Himself to the limitations that make man man, the Holy Spirit was imperative to His humanity.

He whom God hath sent, said the Lord Jesus, speaketh the words of God. It's God speaking. For God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto Him. God the Father hath shared Himself in deity with His Son as man on earth and in His humanity.

But not only, said the Lord Jesus, has my Father given Himself to me without measure through the eternal Spirit, I have given myself without measure to Him by the eternal Spirit. For remember, the Lord Jesus is the truth about God and the truth about man, and the truth about God because He's the truth about man.

Because the truth about man is that He, as God, created man to be the truth about God. Anything that you and I can know about man as He, as God, created man to be, we see in the person of Jesus Christ.

Therefore, anything we understand about our humanity that is not true of Him isn't true. And if man was created to offer himself through the Holy Spirit to God, His Creator, and Jesus Christ came to be on earth the kind of man that He, as God, created man to be, it must be true of Him that He offered Himself to God through the Holy Spirit.

And that is exactly what we're told in Hebrews 9, verse 14, that He, the Lord Jesus Christ, offered Himself without spot to God through the Holy Ghost, the eternal Spirit. That's the office of the Holy Spirit.

He is that member of the triune Godhead through whom a man offers his humanity to God, and through whom God actually shares Himself in deity with a man. That's His person-work and office. If you want to give yourself to the Lord Jesus, you do so through the Holy Spirit, indwelling your human spirit.

By yielding to Him your mind to think with, your emotions to react with, and your will to decide with, He then will exercise the sovereignty of Jesus Christ in every area of your personality, and He will motivate, He will prompt what you do and say and are, so that it won't really be you behaving.

Your humanity will close His behavior. And other people, by what you do and say and are, will know what Jesus Christ is like. That's what it means to be a Christian. And in the same way, if the Lord Jesus wants to give Himself to you as He does, He does so through the Holy Spirit.

When He wants to share with you His life on earth, so that whether awake or asleep, on earth or in heaven, in time or eternity, in the body or out of it, if you are to live together with Jesus Christ, the way He lives together with you on earth is by His Holy Spirit, through whom He credits you with His resurrection life.

So through the eternal spirit you offer yourself to Christ, and through the eternal spirit Christ offers Himself to you. All there is of God, you see, is available to the man who is available to all there is of God.

Mutual Indwelling and Abiding in Christ

He made us that way. How available was the Lord Jesus as man to His Father as God? Totally. How available was the Father as God to His Son, the Lord Jesus as man? Totally. There was total mutual inter-availability.

The Lord Jesus described that relationship as, I am in my Father and my Father is in me. But remember that again and again and again and yet again He offered this relationship as that which must exist between you and Him.

I am in you, you in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He that abided in me and I in him bringeth forth much fruit. That's the only premise, the only prerequisite for fruit bearing, that you are in me and I am in you in the way that I was in my Father and my Father was in me.

The moment you being in me are prepared to allow me to be who I am in you, as once I being in my Father allowed my Father to be what He was in me, you will bear fruit now as I bore fruit then. This is the spiritual union that is to exist if you and I are to perform the function for which as man God created us.

So the Holy Spirit was absolutely indispensable to the humanity of Jesus Christ. And if the Holy Spirit was indispensable to the humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ, quite obviously the Holy Spirit is indispensable to your humanity and mine.

That's why the Lord Jesus said you must be born again. And there's only one basis upon which you can be born again. And don't misunderstand that expression. That doesn't mean your sins are forgiven. That doesn't mean to say that you're going to heaven.

To be born again simply means that God has got back into the man. Spiritual regeneration. Not by any works of righteousness which we have done. According to His mercy He saved us by the washing of regeneration, the renewing of God the Holy Ghost.

And the renewing of God the Holy Spirit, the coming back of God into the man, in the person of the Holy Spirit, takes place on this exclusive premise. Whom the Holy Spirit, He has shed upon us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour.

Redemption and the Promise of the Holy Spirit

The Lord Jesus in the perfection of His humanity came into this world to accomplish that redemptive transaction that will allow a holy God to put God back into the man. Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the Lord.

For being made a curse for us, cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree. That the blessing of Abraham, all that God had in mind when He made this covenant with Abraham, that in him all the families of the earth should be blessed.

That the blessing of Abraham might be fulfilled in us through Jesus Christ. That we might receive the promise of the Holy Spirit. Galatians 3 .14. In other words Christ redeemed us that we might become the recipients of the Holy Spirit so that He might credit us on earth as also forever in eternity with the life of Jesus Christ.

The Moral Option: Love, Dependence, and Obedience

We were made that way. But as there is a rigid unbreakable interlock between the instinctive thrust and the animal soul, we have seen that there is a moral interlock between the Holy Spirit and the human soul.

This is not a rigid unbreakable interlock. This is a moral breakable interlock. Because creating man with the capacity to love God back, God built into man the moral option that allows man to say yes or no.

That's why you can be a rebel if you like. That's why you can die in your sins if you like. That's why professing to be a Christian and saying you're converted, you can live a carnal life if you like.

Because there is a moral option, the responsibility to exercise which God will never relieve you. For in His unchallengeable sovereignty as the timeless creator, God deliberately chose in that sovereignty to limit himself in that sovereignty by the law of love and the law of faith.

That's why it's possible to go for so long as a member of an evangelical church and be a phony, as we talked about this morning. That's why you can enjoy all the religious entertainment that the evangelical constituency offers you without ever meaning business for one moment with Jesus Christ.

But you've learned the language. You'll get by. Everybody will think you're a keen member of the institution. Except God, who reads you like a book. Because you're open and naked before the eyes of Him with whom you have to do.

He looks through you like a piece of glass. Because you can deceive everybody but Him. And most of us are supreme actors. And most of us can get away with most things most of the time. Except with God.

A moral interlock. And that moral interlock is threefold in character. Love for God, dependence on God, and obedience to God. And dependence on God and obedience to God are the twin ingredients of what the Bible calls faith.

Because dependence on and obedience to lets God, out of your love for God, be God, in action, in your experience. Let's just examine that a little closer. In the last book in the Bible, the book of Revelation.

Created to Please God

Revelation and chapter four. And the last verse of that fourth chapter. Revelation chapter four and verse eleven. Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power. For thou has created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.

God created all things, and everything is and was created for His pleasure. In other words, to please Him. And that includes you. Now when do you imagine you'll please God? There's only one way in which you can please God, and that's by being functional.

And that doesn't mean that you're caught up in a rat race of religious activity. It means that you do exactly and precisely that for which He created you. Tell the truth about God. Twenty-four hours a day.

At school, at the office, walking down the street, in the home, doing the washing up, driving a car, using your typewriter, playing football. Twenty-four hours every day, fulfilling the function for which God made you.

Telling the truth about God. Let us make man in our image and in our likeness, and in the likeness of God made in him. Sin is telling lies about God. That's how it's defined in the Bible. Falling short of the glory.

The moment you say that you're a Christian and lose your temper, you're saying to all who look at you as a Christian what God is like. The moment as a Christian you lie, you're telling everybody who looks at you as a Christian that God is a liar.

The moment you're jealous or greedy or selfish or proud or arrogant or dirty and you call yourself a Christian, you're saying to all the world, look at me, now you know what God is like. He's arrogant, stupid, dirty.

That's what he's like. Because I'm telling lies about him. God created man to tell the truth about God. That's when you please him. When by what you do and say and are, other people in your presence become compellingly aware of what Jesus Christ is like.

Christ as the Visible Expression of God

As nearly two thousand years ago everybody in the presence of the Lord Jesus became compellingly aware of what the Father was like. That was normality. He was functional. Because he was man as he is God created man to be.

He created you to please him. And because the Lord Jesus was totally functional, the Father God could look down from heaven and say, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. He pleases me. Do you know what that meant for the Lord Jesus?

It was no hardship to him of course, it was a sheer delight to him. Because there's nothing so fulfilling as being pleasing to God. That is the ultimate. In sheer joy, sheer peace, sheer wonder. But this is what it meant for the Lord Jesus.

And of course this is what it will mean for you and for me. Because as the Father sent him he sends us. Romans 15 .3. Don't turn to it. This is what it says. Even Christ. Christ. The word who was in the beginning with God and was God by whom all things were made.

The creator. The redeemer. The word incarnate. Even Christ could not please himself. Even Christ could not please himself. Why not? Because the office of man is to please God. And you please God when you're functional.

Twenty-four hours a day. Displaying his character. Giving a valid expression of his likeness. So that's the first thing. Created to please God. And you will only please God when by what you do and say and are you give a valid expression of what God is like.

I don't mean that you put on a religious pose. I don't mean that you adopted a posture. Jesus Christ didn't do that. He was the visible expression we're told. Colossians 1 .15. He was the visible expression of the invisible God.

In other words at any time day or night you could look at him and know what God was like. He didn't have office hours. He didn't say if you want to see what God is like in me come around tomorrow at half past two I'll be in position.

The image that he gave of his father was in motion and in color and in sound. There wasn't a time day or night when he didn't give a valid expression of God's character. Whether he was eating his lunch or preaching the Sermon on the Mount.

Whether you looked at him from the left or the right from the front or the back from above from beneath. Whether he was aware that you were looking or whether he wasn't at any given moment by everything he was doing the most menial task.

When he got down and washed his disciples feet. When he raised Lazarus from the dead. When he spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle and anointed the blind man's eye. At every moment of every day look at him see God.

Christian Life Beyond Religious Performance

Don't please imagine that your Christianity is to be confined to certain meetings that you have in a certain building called church. That's the place where more often than not we are least real because we've got a pose we're putting on an act.

Where God is really studying your life is at school in the office at the home amongst your brothers and sisters down the street with your girlfriend. That's where he's watching you to discover whether you're telling lies or telling the truth about him.

That's why of course the spirituality of what you're doing doesn't have a religious connotation. The spirituality of what you're doing has absolutely nothing whatever to do with the nature of the act.

Only its origin. From whom does it flow from whom does it stem who's the author of the act. That's why the most menial task can declare the glory of God. Which of those activities of the Lord Jesus was the most spiritual.

When he preached the sermon on the mount raised Lazarus from the dead washed his disciples feet or spat on the ground which would you say was the most spiritual. Silly question. He said I do only always those things that please him.

That was his testimony John 8 28 because as man I as God created man to please God. So I have no other option as man being man as I God created man but to please God. So I do only always those things that please him.

That's why I can't please myself. And when my father is pleased to preach the sermon on the mount it's my privilege to be pleased to place my humanity at his disposal so that he can put what he wants to say into words and make them articulate through my lips.

And when my father wants to raise a man from the dead it's my privilege with my lips to give the commanding word Lazarus come forth and my father God by me raises that man from the dead. And when my father God wants to get down his hands and knees and wash the disciples feet and do what the other disciples were too pig-headedly proud to do because they didn't want to lose face or station or status.

It's my privilege to offer my humanity to my father so that he can get down his hands and knees, gird himself with a towel, take a basin of water and wash the disciples feet. And when my father God in heaven wants to spit on earth I spit and anoint the blind man with the eye.

So tell me this was he called to preach or called to spit? He was called to neither. He was simply sent to be a man. Available to his father 24 hours a day preach or spit. Nothing ostentatious, nothing pious, nothing priggish about the Lord Jesus.

He was just real man, flesh and bones, real man. 24 hours a day available to his father who by the Holy Spirit indwelt his human spirit gave himself in totality to the son who through the same Holy Spirit gave himself in totality to the father.

And by the way said the Lord Jesus unless you want to be a phony as my father sent me so send I you. That's normality. How does it work? Well here's the next thing. First thing he created us to please him.

Faith as Dependence and Obedience

Second thing you'll find in the epistle to the Hebrews 11. Eleventh chapter of the epistle to the Hebrews. And this is the most obvious passage of course next to turn to. Tells us about a man in the fifth verse of that eleventh chapter who pleased God.

By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death. He was not found because God had translated him for before his translation he had this testimony that he pleased God. But, but if he pleased God please bear this in mind says the apostle.

Without faith it's impossible to please him. Without faith it's impossible to please him. What's faith? The twin ingredients dependence on him and obedience to him. It's your dependence on him and it's your obedience to him.

God doesn't do that for you. God can't obey himself through you. He commands you to obey. God commands all men everywhere to repent and be converted. And if God commands all men everywhere to repent and be converted it's because all men everywhere can repent and be converted.

In other words it's within the moral capacity of every man, woman, child ever born to yield obedience. Dependence on obedience to. And without that it's impossible to please him. Why? Well because God created man to provide a valid expression of his likeness and man can't imitate God.

Man can't ape his maker successfully. All that man can do being made as he was with a body and a soul and a human spirit is to allow God by the Holy Spirit from within the human spirit have access by his own free volition to his soul, teach his mind, control his emotions, direct his will so it is God governing his behavior.

And that's the only way you can be functional. So without faith that lets God as God be God in the man it's impossible to please him. That's what is meant in the Proverbs chapter 3 verses 5 and 6. Do you remember?

Trust in the Lord with all your heart. What's your heart? Your soul, mind, emotion and will. What does it mean to trust God with your heart? Well exactly what it says. Somebody came to you and you had a car and says excuse me but my car's in the garage and I'm desperately in need of transport.

I wonder if you'd trust me with your car. And knowing him to be a competent driver and a reliable individual you trust him with your car. What do you expect him to do with your car that you trust him with?

Drive it. Use it. And when you trust God with your heart what do you expect him to do with it? Use it. You say God thanks for the mind you've given me to think with. Thanks for the emotions you've given me to react with.

Thanks for the will you've given me to decide with. I want you to know that I recognize your presence by the Holy Spirit within my human spirit and I give my mind for you to think with. I give my emotions for you to react with.

I give my will for you to decide with. I trust you with my heart. Please use it. He made you that way. Because the Holy Spirit from within the human spirit having access to the human soul is to play the role within the human soul that instinct plays in that of the animal.

But never ever except by your consent. That is your moral option. That is the moral capacity that lifts you out of the animal kingdom and makes you man. And therefore not only functionally but morally satisfying to God.

Trusting God for Guidance and Daily Life

And when you trust in the Lord with all your heart give him your mind your emotions and your will to use by his Holy Spirit leaning not to your own understanding not considering yourself smart enough to get by without God.

That's what the devil told Adam. But not leaning to your understanding. But in all your ways in the totality of your being acknowledging him saying God as my creator you're my God. And he that cometh to God must first believe that God is and that he the God who is is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

In other words all that God is is genuinely available to the man who is genuinely available to all that God is. So trusting him with all your heart mind emotion and will leaning not to your own understanding but acknowledging him as God to be God in you in all your ways.

What does it say? He'll govern your behavior. He'll govern your behavior. He'll direct your path. Other people looking at you will see God behaving. There'll be no problems about guidance. No problems about which college you go to study in.

No problem about whether or not you say yes or no to this engagement. No problem about whether or not you buy that house. No problem now about whether you enter into this business transaction because you see trusting him with all your heart leaning not to your own understanding in all your ways acknowledging actually practically experientially really letting God be God.

He governs your behavior. And the moment you're prepared for those terms of reference you stop pleading with God for guidance and trying to wring it out like blood from a stone. You thank him. You thank him.

And say Lord Jesus this is the most hilarious life. This is the most fantastic adventure. I never ever in all my days imagined that the Christian life could be so exciting. To live together with you. Not a single business transaction which this business now is engaged of which I am the owner and the founder or the manager.

There's no football game dear Lord as a kid at school that I'm to be engaged in now. There's no little evening to which we've invited friends to our home. There is nothing now in life that we don't live together with you.

And know your total complete and utter adequacy. There's no financial problem that we don't share together. There's no glorious opportunity. There's no open door of possibility. Lord Jesus that we don't now share with you.

Trusting you with our hearts. Leaning not to our own understandings. But acknowledging you in all our ways. You governing our behavior. What a fantastic thing that our humanity our flesh and blood our hands and feet and lips and eyes and ears can actually clothe in reality.

Not in pious evangelical jargon but actually in fact 24 hours a day can clothe your divine activity so that by virtue of my availability all thorns let loose in the world. Man who wants to sit in a stodgy pew and just have meeting after meeting after meeting when you can enjoy that.

But it's dangerous. It's very dangerous. It'll probably destroy all your ambitions. It'll probably disturb all your programs. For all I know it's going to take you out of Australia and put you in the heart of Ecuador.

For all I know it won't be the girl you think that you're going to marry because God's got another one around the corner. It's dangerous to let God be God because do you know the moment you let God be God a strange thing happens.

God is God. And you discover that he's big enough for the job. This is why by and large the average evangelical institution never allows Jesus Christ to run the show because it would be dangerous. There are very few church communities where Jesus Christ ever has a real say in how to run the church.

It changed too many things. And we're not prepared for that. It's been like this for the last 10, 20, 30, 50 years. It'd be a terrible thing to let the Lord Jesus actually run his church. He might do it.

And a good number of us would be out of business without faith. It's impossible to please him. That's why faith isn't optional. That's why faith isn't a luxury. Faith is an imperative. Because without faith in response to your love yields obedience to out of your avowed dependence on the one who is imperative to your being, God.

Simply let God be God in action. So what's the alternative to faith? Revelation 4 .11, created to please him. Hebrews 11 .6, impossible to please him without faith. So what's the only alternative to faith?

Sin as Independence from God

You'll find it in Romans 14 .23, in the last half of that verse. Because the last half of that verse speaks of the principle in particular, which is applied by the apostle in the earlier part of the chapter to a situation in general.

Last sentence of Romans 14 .23, whatsoever is not of faith is sin. Whatsoever is not of faith is sin. What's faith? Depending on God and obedience to God. And I don't care what it is. I don't mind what the activity in which you engage.

It may be pious, it may be within the context of your church. You can get up into a pulpit and preach the most fundamental, Bible-believing, orthodox evangelical sermon. But if it doesn't derive from that attitude, that disposition on your part which prompted by love makes you dependent on God and obedient to God in the very act of preaching at sin.

Because you can get up into a pulpit and give a carnal exhibition of your own scholarship, your own gift of the gab, your own verbosity, your own personality thrust. You can learn all the gimmicks of the trade.

You can go to Hollywood and learn how to get them down the aisle. And whatever activity does not derive from your disposition toward Jesus Christ that makes him the author of the act and the author of the word, is a prostitution of your humanity.

Jesus' Dependence on the Father

The Lord Jesus, though God himself walking this earth, never once claimed the right to say a word that the Father didn't tell him to speak. The Lord Jesus, though created God walking this earth as man, never once, ever once claimed the right to do a thing that his Father didn't motivate.

The Lord Jesus, as man walking this earth, though created God, never once, ever under any circumstances exercised his own initiative or made a single decision that didn't reflect in obedience the decision that his Father had already made.

Because he was man. And he knew that anything but utter dependence on his Father in total obedience to his Father, out of complete love for his Father, would have disqualified him and numbered him as man on earth with the sinful men he came to redeem.

How much then could Jesus Christ do as man without the Father as God? Well I won't tell you because you might not believe me. I'll let him tell you. In John 5 verse 19 and the same chapter and verse 20.

Then answered Jesus and said to them, verse 19 of John 5, verily, verily, I say unto you, the Son can do nothing of himself. How much? Nothing. As God, everything. He created all things. By the word of his power he upholds all things.

As man? Nothing. But what he seeth the Father do, for what things whoever he the Father doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. Because the office of the Son is to clothe the Father's activity with his humanity.

Verse 30, I can of mine own self do nothing. How much? Nothing. The spirit of the world in which you and I live, which is populated by a fallen race of fallen men who are the seed of a fallen Adam, the spirit of that world says I can!

Because you see man, never ever more than man, behaving as though he were never ever less than God, repudiates the sincere necessity, the imperative necessity of God to the creature. Jesus Christ, never ever less than God, coming to this world to behave as though he were never ever more than man, knew the nature of the man that he as God created.

And as man said, I can do nothing. I can of mine own self do nothing. As I hear I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me. If the Father was imperative to the Son, and the Son is now going to send you and me as the Father sent him, how imperative to us will be the Lord Jesus?

Abiding in Christ as the Source of Fruitfulness

If the Lord Jesus as the Son could do nothing without the Father, how much can you and I do without the Lord Jesus? Well he tells us, I am the vine, you are the branches, he that abideth in me and I abide in him bringeth forth much fruit, but without me, I tell you exactly how much you can do.