Apologetics Session 12 - Hamartiology

The Doctrine of Sin and Why It Matters for Systematic Theology

We'll pray in a second, get things started. Doctrine of sin, or the study of the doctrine of sin. And the reason we switched things around, too, was because we've kind of gotten to the point where we have proved what we can about the truth of the Bible from the archaeological point of view, the proofs of science and the resurrection, and the manual of evidence, and what is truth in general, and just some background information, all the arguments, a lot of the arguments that unbelievers will bring.

But now if we think that the Bible is true, what does the Bible actually say? So this is the first lesson that you would go through in a systematic theology class. And we're going to go through several of these.

And the reason I switched theology with this, in particular, is because right after we do this, Matt is going to do soteriology, which is the doctrine of salvation, the study of salvation. So it's like, well, you kind of need to know that you're a sinner before you need to be saved.

So that's a good thing we're doing this tonight. So Bob, I think you can click us on if you want. You're on. Oh, I'm on already? Great. Haven't said anything dumb yet, have I? Getting no action. But Bill, can I ask you to open us up in prayer?

Yes.

Lord God, we just thank you for tonight, Lord we thank you for Drew's preparation. And we just pray that you would open our ears to hear, open our eyes to see, Lord. And God, I would just pray that you would teach us tonight by your Holy Spirit.

And we just thank you for what you have in store for us tonight, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Amen. Amen. So yes, hemortheology, the study of the doctrine of sin. And I have a little sentence here. It says, hemortheology is somewhat of a sub-study of anthropology in general, the study of man.

And we're not actually going to go through studying what it means to be made in the image of God and some of the other things that we would study about man in general. So we're just going to jump right into sin.

And that's going to cover some of the things, obviously, that govern our condition as men right now. But hemortheology also includes the sin of angels, the fall of God's creation in general. And we're not going to say a lot about angels tonight.

We're going to touch on it just a little bit. But really, I'm going to focus tonight on the sins of men, what it means, how it affects us, what it means going forward, how it's changed our nature, all of those sorts of things tonight.

So even though we're covering this tonight, we're leaving some steps out. And I think that's good, though, for the level we want to cover in this class. So right off the bat, let's define what sin is.

So there's a Hebrew word in the Old Testament. We see it in Genesis 4 -7. Could someone read Genesis 4 -7 for us? We have a fairly wide amount of verses to read tonight. So if everyone could get their Bibles ready and read nice and loud.

And we don't have Richie here tonight, I don't see. So the pronunciation of the Hebrew words might not be as good tonight as we would. So chetah, the definition, and that's the strongest concordance, that word right there.

We have it, Rick. Go ahead.

If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.

So that's God's admonition, right? To whom in the Old Testament? To Cain, right? Very early on in Genesis. So this word, chetah, is like a derivation of that, or this is a derivation of that word. And we have Genesis 39 -9.

Let's read the context in that, if someone could read Genesis 39 -9.

Go ahead, Dave. He is not greater in the house than I am, nor has he kept back anything from me except you, because you are his wife. How then can I do this, great wickedness and sin against God?

Sin against God. Now, who are we talking about in that particular passage? Chaldeans. Genesis 39. So we're up to Potiphar's wife, who is the wife of the owner of the slave Joseph at this point. And Potiphar's wife is trying to seduce Joseph.

And he says, how could I do this sin against my God and against his master, Potiphar? Sin, to lead astray, to lead off the right path or the right way. So those are two examples of sin in the Old Testament.

And we'll talk a little bit more about other words as well. This word in the New Testament, hemartia, the meaning in the Strong says it's just sin. We know what sin kind of means. It means we are missing the mark.

And that's what this word, hemartano, that's where we say to miss the mark, to make an error or wander from the path of uprightness. And we get the idea, sin, and we're talking about individual acts here, not necessarily the nature.

And we'll talk about the nature of sin a little bit. But we're talking about an individual act where you have this idea of walking on a straight path and you fell off that path. You deviated from it. Or sometimes you'll see transgression in the scriptures.

And that has the idea of there's a line drawn in front of you. And God says, do not cross that line, or it will be a transgression. And you stick your foot over the line. Transgression. So all of these things together kind of give us the idea of what sin is.

But let's read a little further. We have some other things we can read here. The idea in general is that there is a perfect standard, a mark to hit or to maintain. And in all these cases, there is a falling short or a deprivation of what we are supposed to do or a crossing a boundary that we are not supposed to go over.

Westminster Confession says this. Sin is any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God. And we continue the idea, either falling short or crossing a line. And the idea is that this sin is against the holy order of God.

God is the one who we are sinning against, because he is the one who has made this perfect standard. And if we do not live up to that standard, then we are in sin.

On the rule, then we're all good, right?

I think that was sarcasm, but I'm thinking this dart board right here, right? You're playing darts. You think you're pretty good at darts, and you're like, even if you hit the bullseye here, I don't have it highlighted, but there's one little dot in the middle of that thing, which would be the holy, perfect righteousness of God.

If we get close, it's not like horseshoes and hand grenades. We still miss the mark, even if we get closer than some others. And we need to understand that, because God is holy, and he is perfect. And that is the standard that we are going to be measured against.

So you can be a good dart player, but how close is close enough? Well, if you say, well, I've done it to the best of my ability, is that good enough? I've done the best I could, Lord. I couldn't handle the situation any better.

The answer is, God still has a perfect and holy standard. And if our actions and thoughts don't measure up to that standard, we are still in sin. And we're going to define a little bit more about sin as we go forward, but this is an introduction to what sin is.

So how are we doing so far? I think we're all in the same boat, but we're going to find that out as we keep going. I wanted to answer this question next. Where did sin come from? This is a tremendous stumbling block, and I actually heard it three times this last Sunday.

Two people brought it up in conversations, and Pastor Jeff actually mentioned it in the sermon. He said, this is a tremendous issue. Where did evil come from? Do you remember what Jeff said when he said that?

When he was teaching on Sunday, now, if you were in the first service, you heard it. I don't know if he said it in the second service, but he basically said, we don't have a full understanding of how evil got into the world.

And you know what? That's the honest answer. But let's look at some things that would clarify it a little bit for us, because it's not an easy answer at all. Let's look at first at Genesis 1, 31 through Genesis 2 .2.

So, if somebody could read those verses. It's like three or four verses.

And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And it was evening, and there was morning the sixth day. Thus, the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the coasts of them.

And on the seventh day, God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done.

So, if God created everything as good, how can sin come in? Here's a question, as R .C. Sproul states it, in his book, Why Is There Evil? It says, how can a being who is infinitely righteous, holy, and perfect create a creation or creature with even the possibility of sins being present?

If all things go back to the being of God, would we not have to find evil somewhere within God himself to account for the presence of the evil in this world? Let's see what the unbeliever says about this.

The unbeliever says, oh, that's a very good question, you Christians, and as a matter of fact, you can't easily answer it, and I believe it's your Achilles' heel, because you can't answer that question.

To say God were all powerful and all good, there would be no evil in the world, that's what they say. And it makes sense on a logical level. Either God is not all powerful, and cannot govern his creation, or he is not all good, for he has the power to stop evil, and he chooses not to do it.

This is a difficult question, and to get it right, and to get right to the point, R .C. Sproul says, again, there is no definite answer as to where evil came from. There have been many theodicies, which are justifications of why God does what he does, making arguments to figure things out, but there have been no sufficient real answers.

Now, some of these theodicies revolve around this. Well, it's the free will of God's creatures, but still, that doesn't adequately explain where it came from. Well, when God created things, he created things with limited ability, meaning we don't have sovereignty like God does, we don't have omniscience like God does, so because he's created us with limited abilities, it was only a matter of time before we stepped into transgression and sin, but then, that means he is not able to create a creature that is equal to himself, so eventually, his creatures will sin, which, again, will go back to blaming God for sin in the world, and then, there's some other things.

Some people say, well, sin is necessary because if we didn't have sin, we wouldn't even know what good is. We wouldn't even know what redemption is. We wouldn't know how, you know, there wouldn't be a contrast, so we wouldn't be able to know the things we know.

Now, in the final analysis, if we want to be honest, we do not know where evil came from. There is a theologian named Karl Barth who is not a true believer. He's more like an antagonist philosopher kind of guy.

He called this the impossible possibility, meaning that this is absolutely impossible for this to happen. There was no sin in the world. It was all good. There was no inclination of evil anywhere, but yet, it happened.

So, he calls it the impossible possibility. Well, that doesn't make us necessarily feel any better, but it is an honest answer, but the unbeliever and atheist have a bigger question to answer, and this is our trump card, by the way, because the atheist can't explain where the concept of good and evil comes from, you see, because if we say there is good and evil, that means there has to be good.

There has to be some concept of good. There has to be an ultimate good, which does drive us to God. The existence of evil gives us that contrast, and the argument that they would say is, well, it makes no sense that evil is in the world, but how do you know even what evil is unless there is good?

If this is just a cosmic accident, there is no such thing as good and evil. The fact that we acknowledge that there is good and that there is evil points to holy standard, so it is not Achilles' heel for a launching point into describing to the atheist why there is good and evil.

Has everyone heard that argument before, the fact that if there is good at all, there has to be God?

Well, it comes from a moral compass that if you have a moral standard, where does that come from?

Right, that's exactly right, and that's a classic argument for Christianity because we all have a concept of good and evil, even pagans across the world, and whatever tribal language and tribal civilization they live in, there's still a concept of good and evil.

Where does that come from? Where does that moral compass come from? Or who is their creator?

Yes. We know that we all have a sinful nature, and we assume that Adam and Eve must have been born with that same nature. But we don't all have sinned and come short of the glory of God,.

And that includes Adam and Eve. They didn't, though. They had a perfect moral compass and a perfect union with God. That is not, that's not even in the list of arguments, really, it's pretty much understood by the scriptures and biological arguments, too, that Adam was created good and there was no evil in it.

As a matter of fact, we're gonna read the verses coming up here in a second and talk about how all this comes to be, because we do know there's sin in the world, and we do know it happened. So let's ask a deeper question here again.

Is God the author of sin? Is he the one that's responsible for bringing sin into the world? The Westminster Confession, again, says that God neither is nor can be the author or approver of sin. That's our Westminster Confession.

Those are our Presbyterian friends. We love our Presbyterian friends, Reformed theology guys, right? Louis Sperry Schaeffer, who was the original president and head of Dallas Theological Seminary, said this.

What is good and true is not a law which governs God. Meaning God is not held captive by his attributes. God is who God is, and his attributes come forth from his being. It's not that good defines God.

It's that God encompasses all these wonderful attributes because he is who he is. That's the essence of who he is. He is in no sense the source of evil and untruth. Evil and untruth have no original source.

Now, that's hard to wrap around. We're gonna get into that a little bit more. There was a time when evil could have been contemplated only as a possibility, but good, like all divine attributes, in its most exalted reality, has the same eternal existence which belongs to God himself.

There was a time, if time be, when evil was only an anticipation. There will be yet a time, if time be, when it only will be a memory. Good is immutable from everlasting to everlasting. Meaning, think about the things we know about in this world, the things that exist in this world.

The Godhead existing from eternity past in perfect harmony, Father, Son, Spirit. Good did exist back then. Love did exist back then. Righteousness did. Evil was not a reality in this world. Evil came into this world by two disobedient acts.

One by Satan, but from all eternity past, there was no such thing as evil. Evil is gonna have its time, and we're living in that time right now, but if we think God has not the power to control evil, we're not in a good situation, folks.

You know why? Because it will never be gotten rid of. Death and Hades are gonna be thrown into the lake of fire, and all righteousness will rule, and that is because God does have providence over evil.

He is permitting it now for his own purposes, and we're gonna read more about that in a second, but if God did not have the power over evil, we would be in really bad shape because he couldn't promise us that our sins would be forgiven, and we would be forever sinless before him in eternity to come.

If he didn't have power over sin and death, what kind of future would we have? So that was the argument back then. It's like, well, if God has this world that he created, and he can't govern evil, that's why evil is in the world, what kind of God is this?

But God is going to conquer evil. Evil is going to have its time, but it is going to be eradicated.

Were you gonna say something, Kevin? I was just gonna ask you, because sometimes I have a hard time wrapping my head around the chicken and the egg, or, you know, when Satan was there, and like you said, so he chose, I mean, obviously he must have given all the angels when he created the angels free will, I mean, free choice like we have, and like when Satan chose that he was more beautiful than God, and he should be God, you know, in the fall was, so what evil had to have been in existence at that time, because he chose evil, or no?

He did choose it. I mean, I know you said it, that's when he fell, when he was thrown out, you know, and came here, and then evil got introduced here. He did choose it.

We're gonna see from Ezekiel 28 here in a second, how Satan, but it doesn't define how it happened. It defines when it happened, and the decisions that were made to bring sin into the angelic kingdom.

So sin didn't happen in heaven, it happened here on earth, so. I mean, like when he went against God, that was not sin in heaven, that was when he was thrown out and came. I'm not sure I quite followed you.

And then the snake, you know, which tempted Eve, you know what I mean, was there, that was a creature, creature probably created by God, but Satan inhabited that creature.

The timeline is, the angels were created first, then all of the world, and the six days that we know of, everything was good at that. Satan at some point chose to disobey God. So he now is corrupt. And he had several angels follow him at that time.

At that point, he wanted to destroy man. You know, his then vengeance against God, basically he cast, he still had access to God, he could still accuse the brethren, as we know in the book of Job and the book of Revelation.

But at that point he came down, yes, and he sinned, or he tempted Adam and Eve to sin. And then Adam and Eve made that choice of themselves to disobey God. But at that point in time, Adam, you know, was in perfect union with God, there was no sin in him.

So let's look at a few more things here. Maybe this will help a little bit. So R .C. Sproul says we don't understand where this initial evil came from. But he says God has his purpose for the entrance of evil into this world.

And in a certain sense, as Augustine said centuries ago, Augustine was about 500, I think, A .D., God even ordained that evil came into the world. If he did not ordain it, it would not be here. Because evil had no power to overcome the sovereign providential government of the universe.

Many Christians love Romans 8 .28. And of course we know what 8 .28 is, right? For God causes all things to work together for the good, that those who love him are called according to his purpose. Unless God has sovereign power over all, he could not make that promise in the verse.

Yet he will bring about good even though there is evil in the world. God, in a certain sense, ordained that evil come into this world, not naively so that you may experience the difference between good and evil, but for a redemptive purpose.

His purpose in allowing evil to come into this world is beyond us, except through the purposes of God, we now understand many things we would never have understood. If evil was not present, would we really understand the holiness and the righteousness of God?

Would we understand the tremendous sacrifice of Jesus Christ? Would we understand the redemptive actions of Jesus Christ? And the tremendous love that was displayed by Jesus by laying down his life on the cross?

Now that's obviously going into salvation and sacrifice again. But I think to understand why this was allowed, is a good thing. Because we can understand that God is producing good from it, even though evil has been allowed.

And some of these things, folks, are just beyond us. Because we can wrap ourselves around R .C. Sproul's arguments or John Calvin's arguments, or Thomas Aquinas's arguments, but the fact is, why this was allowed and why it happened is a mystery to us.

And God may reveal it to us at some day when we're in his presence. But we can see the good that has come from evil.

Drew, where did you say that paragraph came from?

That last one was from R .C. Sproul again, that was from, well I have footnotes for all this stuff. That's got it, yeah, sorry. Yeah, I'll send this out later. So what about the angels? Ezekiel 28, 11 through 19.

Let's have someone read some of that. That's kind of a long section. Let's read some of that and we'll cut it off when we kind of feel like we got the gist of it. But I think we have to read, I forget if we have to read 19, we have to read one verse in particular.

So we may have to ask folks to jump to the end. Okay, Bob. The word of the Lord came to me. Son of man, take up a lament concerning the king of Tyre, and say to him, this is what the sovereign Lord says.

You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God. Every precious stone adorned you, carnelian, chrysolite and emerald, topaz, onyx and jasper, lapis lazuli, turquoise and beryl.

Your settings and mountings were made of gold. On the day you were created, they were prepared. You were anointed as a guardian chariot. For so I ordained you. You were on the holy mount of God. You walked among the fiery stones.

You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you. Okay, I think you can stop there. So what kind of a being was Satan? This is Lucifer, this is Satan. How does it describe this being that God has created?

Was he lacking anything? Was he deprived of anything? Was he ugly? Was he evil? Beautiful, God's creatures. Blameless, perfect, created in beauty. And then that one verse that Bob read, until iniquity was found in you, we do not know why Satan chose to rebel against God.

We know his heart was lifted up and he wanted to be like God. We don't know where that evil inclination, that evil intention came from. But at that point in time, that's when God declared him unrighteous because he stepped outside the boundaries to perfect harmony.

So let's read in Jude 6. Now the angels also chose, some of the angels also chose to go with Satan. And this is one of the verses that talks about that. So if somebody read Jude 6, obviously that's not Jude chapter six, just Jude 6.

And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority but left their proper dwelling. He has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day.

So there were other angels that left also and they're going to be under judgment. And they're locked away until that time. Some of them were also loose and creating havoc as demons on this.

There was a third, wasn't there a third of the angels?

Yeah, yeah, a third of the angels were swept. So what about man? Is man responsible for sin? And we see Satan is going to be responsible for the sins that he committed. And the angels will be also. What about man?

What happened to man? Let's read just Romans 5, 12.

It has that. Therefore, as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law.

That's fine, right?

It's going to go on. That's 12 and 13. Yeah, it's going to go on until about 19, I think, and talk about how sin destroyed the nature of man and how sin affected mankind. But we're going to get into that a little bit later on down here.

But the fact is just as through one man, sin entered into the world. This is the human race now. But it also, as we're going to see the results of man's sin is going to have effects on a lot of things, not actually just on mankind.

But through this one man's disobedience, sin entered the world. So God holds Adam accountable for what he had done. He had the opportunity to choose what was right, and he had an inclination towards God.

And why did he choose to disobey? We can't answer that question. That's what a lot of people have tried to answer, but we haven't answered that question. Excuse me.

I think when you go back to the, you know, Satan, Lucifer, believing that he could be better than God, that's, I think, with most men that aren't, for one, aren't believers, that they believe that they can be their own God.

That was the temptation.

So yeah, it was almost, it was really the same sin almost, really. Right. So they chose to disobey the word of God, but they also, the thing that tempted them, it seemed like the Satan said, you shall be like God.

Right. And God's holding us back from it. I think that stops a lot of unbelievers to coming into faith because they believe that they are their own God.

Mm-hmm. And that's exactly what Ivan said a few times in the various lessons that he's done. You can choose either to have God as your God, or you can choose another God, which is always yourself. Right.

Because you're exalting yourself. You know more than God. Your way is right and not His way, so you choose your own way. And that's where we're gonna get into the sin nature here coming up.

So it's also interesting that Adam is the one held accountable, not Eve. Yeah.

You know, it says that she was deceived, and that doesn't give her an out either because God also held her accountable, but was not deceived. And he had, really, authority as to be the one who would protect and God's commands and God's will.

And it was only one. It was very simple. And he knew exactly what he needed to do. Well, I think, you know, based upon what we see in the scriptures where God taught them that an animal sacrifice was a picture of an innocent life to be given for the penalty of sin, it seemed that they got on board with that and understood that now that they have sinned, in order to bring back a right relationship to the Lord, that they did believe that an innocent life had to be sacrificed for their sins.

So it seemed that they did. I'm gonna expect to see them in glory. And I'm not mad at Adam. I got a bad, well, we're gonna talk about the effects of sin here. There's a lot of effects of sin. We could be, you know, upset about this world we live in.

But compared to the glory that's gonna be revealed to us, this life that we're passing through is gonna seem like just a mere blink. And it's not worthy to be compared. But that's more down the line. That's more the, you know, the math soteriology realm.

Let's look at the results of what happened. So as a result of the disobedient choices, however they came to be, what has become? So let's look at Genesis 3, 14 through 19. We'll read that whole thing, if somebody could read that.

The Lord God said to the serpent,.

Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field. On your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring.

He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.

And then he says to the woman, you're gonna have. There's more. Yes.

To the woman he said, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing. In pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you. And to Adam he said, because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it.

Cursed is the ground because of you. In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground.

For out of it you were taken, for you are dust and to dust you shall return.

That's quite a list. And a lot of results of sin, none of which are good except for this promise that one is going to come and bruise the serpent on the head. A great promise came in the midst of all that.

And we know that the serpent is going to be bruised by which he did and defeated Satan. But all these other things we deal with now. There's fallen humanity, we have pain, we have enmity because there's strife between husband and wives, there's a contest of authority, the ground is cursed, we have weeds, we have thorns, and we have hard work.

All of these things are part of the fall and probably the biggest part, and we'll go through this right down here. You know, this wasn't a great trade for a piece of fruit. It looks like a pear. Yeah, no, you know, we say, oh, it's an apple, maybe it was a pear, right?

We're not sure. Maybe it was a mango. I don't know. But you see Adam looking on. He's like, hmm, I wonder if I should say anything. Yeah, you should have said something, okay? You should have stepped in there and taken charge.

But that's the way sin is. Sin is like that. It promises sweet things. Its results are bitter and painful. Always like that. Sin is a temptation. It seems very sweet. Now, what are some other things that happened because of the fall?

Well, let's read what the Lord said in Genesis 2 .16. This was his command to Adam. This was not the devil's interpretation and it was not Eve's interpretation. This was the original commandment.

The Lord God commanded the man saying, you may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat. For in that day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.

The Lord was honest. And the Lord was warning his creation because he didn't want him to do it. Man chose to do that. And God's word did come true because as soon as he did partake of that fruit, he died in his spirit and his fellowship with the Lord.

And he also began to physically deteriorate. This began the process of physical death.

Yeah, he only lived 950 years.

Well, that goes against the whole evolution thing, right? Because supposedly we're getting better and better. Really we're deteriorating, deteriorating, deteriorating. And that's kind of a second law of thermodynamics thing.

We talked about that under the science, but I'm glad we're not gonna live 900 years in these bodies. I'll tell you that right. I feel at 58, I'm kind of not sure if things are holding together.

The government will like, wouldn't that like it? Social Security will like it.

Oh yeah, Social Security, they'll like that. Don't worry, they'll create a disease to get rid of us. So here's another thing that happened from Paul. Genesis 3, 8, and 9. If somebody could read Genesis 3, 8, and 9.

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you?

And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. He said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?

The man said, the woman whom you gave me to be with, she gave me fruit of the tree and I ate. Then the Lord God said to the woman, what is this that you have done? The woman said, the serpent deceived me, and I ate.

Is it just 8 and 9 you got there? Oh, I don't know. You know, I like it so much I hate it.

I think it's good. Yeah, 7, 8, 9, it's good. It couldn't have sounded good. 7, 8, 9, 11, 12. Well, they didn't know anything about shame. They didn't know anything about hiding from God. Immediately when they committed this sin, they realized there was something seriously wrong with them.

And they had an inclination now away from God. They did not have that before. They have an awareness of guilt. They have an awareness of shame. It did not exist before this. Now, does anyone know who Paul Little is?

Paul Little's a theologian, wrote some books a while ago, but there are good books. Know what you believe and know why you believe. There's two of the books he's written. They're very helpful. This is what he says in Know What You Believe.

As a result of the fall, the image of God in man was badly marred in both its moral and natural dimensions. Man lost his original inclination towards God and became a perverted creature, inclined away from his creator.