The Nature of Man — Major Ian Thomas

I'm going to ask you this evening to follow me closely as we examine some basic principles. One of the greatest dangers in a convention such as this is the ease with which we may be convicted. And for that matter, the ease with which the preacher may convict.

In other words, it's comparatively easy in the context of a series of meetings such as these to become thoroughly sorry. And yet to be convicted without really being cleansed. And not really because we don't want to be cleansed.

But sometimes because conviction is unmatched with an understanding of the basic issues that are involved. So that you may be desperately sorry, may humbly confess, may claim and enjoy forgiveness, and yet go out none the wiser as to how not to do and be the same again.

I wonder if that's been your problem. I wonder if you have not just attended conventions just such as these, but meetings again and again in which you have been deeply convicted, you've been genuinely sorry, you've confessed and found forgiveness and yet gone out without still knowing how not to repeat the process.

And the result of course has been a constant up and down experience, which alas is the plague of so many earnest Christians. Now this is what as God enables us, we would seek above everything else to avoid.

Beyond Repeated Conviction to Genuine Cleansing

From the preacher's point of view, where a number of folk who are obviously sympathetic and have open hearts to receive God's word, it is comparatively easy to bring conviction. We can go down the line, we can cover all the sins of the saints and almost every one of us would be hit somewhere.

And with all truth and feel that God's finger had been pointed at us, as indeed well may it have. But that isn't adequate. In fact we may become so acclimatized to this process, that you could be added to the classification about which we spoke for a moment yesterday afternoon of convention visitors.

And become not just a beekeeper but one of the weepers. You know there are some folk who like a good cry. Just about once a year a really good cry about their sins. And having had one good cry, then they go off again to be exactly what they were before.

It sort of does them good to have a cry. Now that's dangerous. Very dangerous. It's very dangerous to be sorry without really being saved in the fullest sense. It's very dangerous to be convicted without really being cleansed.

Because you'll become acclimatized to the process. The children of Israel for 40 years became acclimatized precisely to that process in the wilderness. Moses conducted as it were for 40 years a continuous cursing convention.

And he had them weeping and repenting time after time. Crying out to God for mercy. And yet within a matter of days they'd be back at the old game. He preached Canaan until they knew the story of Canaan inside out and could have preached it back to him.

And yet they never went on and they never went in. They spent all their time alternating between being very bad and very sorry. And they became accustomed to it. And most of them died in that condition in the wilderness.

And you can become as familiar with the language of Canaan as did indeed the children of Israel for 40 years in the wilderness and die in the wilderness. And never know what it is to live in the power of a risen Lord.

Enjoy the good of that lavish provision that God has made for us. And that's why I'm going to ask you to concentrate your thoughts upon basic principles tonight. So that we may discover what it is that's gone wrong.

What it is that needs to be remedied. The mechanics of it if you like to put it in rather a crude sort of way. And the provision that God has so graciously made. Verse 14. The love of Christ constrains us.

Because we thus judge that if one died for all then we're all dead. That if one has died for all then all have died. Now we need to pause upon that. It's so easy to read a verse like that without thinking it through.

Without recognizing the tremendous significance of the word. What's the tense? If one died for all in other words if it is true to say that the Lord Jesus upon the cross died for all men everywhere. Then the only inference that we can draw from that fact is that all were dead.

All were past tense dead. The Lord Jesus Christ did not die because all men were in danger of dying. The Lord Jesus died upon the cross because all men have died. It's amazing really how many Christians imagine that death is the ultimate consequence of sin.

But that's not true. Death is the consequence of sin. In Romans chapter 6 and verse 23 the wages of sin is death. Not will be death. It is something that has already happened. And if the Lord Jesus Christ came into this world to die for all men it is for one reason only.

That all men by nature are already dead. In other words the gospel is God's message to dead men. When the gospel was preached to you and to me first it was preached to us as dead people. Now if we could once grasp that basic fundamental fact it will give us an entirely new concept of the Christian gospel.

It will eliminate from your mind the obsession that Christ's death upon the cross was purely to save you from the punitive consequence of your sin. In other words that you might not go to hell. It's gloriously true that you will be saved from wrath through him.

But in a sense that's incidental. Purely incidental. If the death of the Lord Jesus Christ was an imperative by the fact that all men were dead. Quite obviously his death will be designed in God's eternal economy to raise dead men from the dead.

In other words the ultimate purpose of God in Christ is that there might be restored by God on the grounds of redemption life to those who are lifeless. In other words to be converted, to be redeemed, to be born again involves a spiritual resurrection.

We are of this conviction that if one has died for all then all have died. Let me put it in a sentence for you. If Christ died for all then all that men by nature are and all that men by nature do is worth no more than the sentence of death imposed upon Jesus Christ as man's substitute and savior.

Do you understand that? If Christ died for all then the only inference that we can draw from that fact is that all that men by nature are and all that men by nature do is worth no more than the sentence of death imposed upon Jesus Christ who came to be man's substitute and savior.

In other words apart from what Jesus Christ has accomplished on your behalf and apart from what Jesus Christ on the grounds of what he accomplished can come to be in you your worth nothing but death. Now if that's a categorical statement of fact if I have the right to declare that dogmatic there must be good grounds for what I say.

And there must furthermore be good biblical, scriptural, bible grounds for what I say. And therefore we need to examine what it means when the bible tells us that we are dead by nature in trespasses and sins.

Spiritual Death and Resurrection in Ephesians

One simple declaration of that fact may be found in the fourth chapter of the epistles of the Ephesians. Ephesians chapter 4 and bear in mind that in this epistle as in all the epistles the apostle here is giving instructions to men and women and boys and girls who have been raised from the dead.

We shall be examining that maybe later a little more closely but remember that having described the resurrection of the Lord Jesus in the first chapter and the mighty power of God that was wrought in raising him the son from the dead.

He tells these Ephesians Christians that this is precisely and exactly the nature of the mighty power of God which is at work in us who believe for as God the father raised him the son Jesus from the dead and you he says chapter 2 verse 1 and you happy Christians you too have been raised from the dead who were dead in trespasses and sins.

And what I have to say to you Paul might go on what I have to say to you now in this epistle I have to say to you is those men women and boys and girls who have by God with the same mighty power that he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead raised you from the dead.

What I have to say to you I have to say to you is those who have been resurrected this I say therefore verse 17 of chapter 4 and testify in the Lord that you henceforth walk and that word always means in the epistles behaviour character conduct that you walk henceforth not as other Gentiles walk.

In the vanity of their minds having the understanding darkened through the ignorance that is in them because of the blindness of their heart being alienated from the life of God. In order to understand our fallen condition we need to understand at least in some measure the nature of man and the purpose for which God created man and although we shall not devote a great deal of time to this it is absolutely basic and something once grasped calculated to throw so much light upon so much of the word of God that is otherwise somewhat confusing and bewildering.

Man Created for God's Indwelling

God created man to be inhabited by God for God and it is in point man's capacity to be inhabited by God for God that distinguishes man from animal. If the nature of our birth were that which were to distinguish us there would be no distinction if how we were to feed were to be the basis of the distinction there would be no distinction or how we breathe or bleed or die man biologically is an animal.

This of course is the hypothesis upon which the whole philosophy of God hating Christ rejecting communism is based today. This is dialectic materialism this is humanism in its ultimate that man is no more than an animal but God declares that man was never created to be only and solely an animal.

And that which distinguishes man from animal is that unique capacity that God has given to man when he first made him to become the recipient of the creator God who would indwell him and express his life through him.

The capacity that God has built into man which he did not build into any other form of created life that enables man to receive what God is to practice the presence of God and enjoy the presence of God is called in the Bible the human spirit.

The human spirit is the royal residence for the royal residence himself and only by the presence of God within the human spirit does man partake of spiritual life as by his natural animal birth he already partakes of physical life.

When God created man in his innocency he not only had the physical life with which God clothed him but he was a partaker of the very life of God himself so that God by his spirit could behave in terms of human personality.

When we read in the book of Genesis in chapter 5 that Adam was made in the image of God I don't think it means that God looks exactly like Adam or that if you were to look at Adam he would look exactly like God.

This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man in the likeness of God made he him. It means simply that God created man in such a way that all that God is could be expressed in terms of human behavior.

That God gave to man not only a human spirit that enabled him to receive the presence of God but that his whole human personality which constitutes his soul or his heart, his mind, his emotion and his will would become available to God so that every activity expressed physically in terms of the movement of his body.

Everything the man was in action, everything the man was in behavior, everything the man was in terms of character, everything the man was in terms of his relationship to his fellow man would all be an absolute and unsolid and unsoiled expression of the nature of the God who first made him now inhabits him and expresses himself through him.

So that as you look at man in his perfect innocency you see only God behaving. He, the Son, is the sole expression of the glory of God. He is the light being. He is the out ray of the divine. He is the perfect imprint and very image of God's nature.

When the Lord Jesus Christ came into the world he came in the very image of God displayed in terms of his sinless, perfect, matchless humanity. So that when Philip asked him, show us the Father and it suffices.

The Lord Jesus could say, have I been so long time with you and hast thou not known me Philip? He that has seen me in my humanity has seen the Father. Yet no man has seen God at any time. We may only reconcile those two statements.

Now here's another simple statement. It is only what God is in man that enables man to behave as God intended man to behave. In other words, without God a man can only behave as an animal. Now that may sound pretty startling.

But it's true. Every other form of animal life behaves without God. And a man without God will behave like any other form of animal life without God. And that is why as we were reminded this afternoon the term given for the unregenerate man who is alienated from the life of God means animal.

The natural man, if you happen to have a French Bible in your possession and you were to look up the first epistles of the Corinthians in the second chapter in the fourteenth verse. Instead of the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned.

You would find in the French Bible l 'homme animal, the animal man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God. In exactly the same way when James in the third chapter of his epistle speaks of that wisdom which is sensual, it's the same word.

This superficial wisdom is not such as comes down from above, having its origin in God, but is earthly, unspiritual, animal, even devilish. It is the very life of God himself imparted by the Holy Spirit to the human spirit that adds to man that spiritual quality of life that enables him to behave as God intended man to behave.

Dependence, Obedience, and the Fall

What would that demand then of man if he were to behave as God intended man to behave? Only by what God is in him can he so behave, therefore it will demand of man total dependence upon the God who in him alone by his presence gives him that spiritual and moral capacity to behave as man, as God intended man to behave.

So the first requirement of man in his relationship to the God who made him is dependence. A dependence that will only be expressed in terms of total obedience. Dependence and obedience are one and the same thing in terms of man's relationship to God.

I am only dependent upon God in the measure that I am totally obedient to God. For my obedience to God is an expression of my attitude of dependence on God. Whatever God tells me, I do it because I have adopted the attitude, I do not have what it takes apart from what God is in me.

Therefore I must be totally obedient that I might be totally dependent. But another factor entered into God's creation of man and that was the very nature of God himself and God is love. And when God created man, he didn't want a puppet, he didn't want just an impersonal robot, he didn't want just a colourless non-entity, an amoral cog in a machine.

In his innocency man was in a very real sense alive to God, in the life of God. But something happened and what happened is described for us in the fifth chapter of the epistle to the Romans, Romans chapter 5 and verse 12.

As by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin. So death passed upon all men, for all men sinned. Something happened in the first Adam, sin entered through this man and as a consequence of the entry of what is here called sin, death came in.

Well now death of course is the absence of life. Death can't occur where life doesn't exist. That would be stupid. I couldn't pick up a piece of steel and say to you what a pity it's just died. Or I might say to you I used to have a wheelbarrow but it died.

Well you'd be rather sorry for me wouldn't you? You'd think that I'd been overworking, needed a rest, probably under lock and key. Death cannot occur where life does not exist. And God had told Adam that the Christing place, the symbol of his relationship to God his maker was the tree.

See that tree? So long as you want to continue to enjoy the relationship that now exists between you and me, a faith love relationship that makes you a partaker of what I am, enables you to draw upon the limitless resources of deity.

That means that you are incessantly the human vehicle of my divine life so that all that you are is an expression of all that I am. If you want to remain in this relationship to me then do not touch the fruit of that tree.

For if you have the capacity to choose there must be a point at which choice can be exercised and that is the point. And at that point you will demonstrate your love to me which will be expressed in obedience to me because of your dependence on me.

And God said if ever the moment in your life comes when you want to repudiate this relationship then eat of the fruit of that tree. And in the day that you eat thereof you will die. You will suffer the forfeiture of life.

In the very day that you eat thereof you will die. Did he die physically in the day that he ate thereof? No. When Adam awakened the next morning he was very much alive physically. The birds were singing and the wind whistled through the trees and the sun shone and the skies were blue.

Physically he was still alive. He had not forfeited physical life. And the devil told him that you will not die. The devil said has God said that if you eat the fruit of the tree you will die? Has he forbidden you?

Well you need to take God seriously because it is not true. You will not die. And when Adam awakened the next morning he found that what the devil had said was true. He had not died. In spite of the fact that he had challenged God to his face and repudiated his dependence upon God and had deliberately transgressed a specific command given to him by God.

He had not died physically. How did he die on that day? In that he was alienated from the life of God. He forfeited the divine presence. He became spiritually destitute of that for which man was created.

He was empty of God. And his mind and his emotions and his will the whole of his human personality was no longer available to the one who previously had inhabited that which God had given to man to be inhabited by God for God.

And by this one man sin entered into the world and death a state of lifelessness entered and passed upon all men. Now it is important for us at this point to pause again because we need to get our definitions right.

Sin as Independence from God

As by one man sin entered into the world. What is sin? In a sense we have reduced sin to a shadow of its real self. We think of sin in terms of sins. We think of sin in terms of telling lies or losing your temper or unchastity of stealing, of being slanderous about somebody else or unkind or irritable.

But those are only sins. Sin is something infinitely worse than any of those things. We think of murder. That's sin. That's a terrible sin. It isn't as bad as a wicked tongue. It doesn't do as much damage as the cataness that is on the lips of many Christians.

Murder is infinitely preferred to that. But even so if we think of sin in terms of sins we are missing the mark by a million miles. The Lord Jesus in the 16th chapter of John's Gospel didn't say that the Holy Spirit would come into the world and He would convict the world of sin.

The Lord Jesus Christ said that when He the Spirit of truth has come He will convince the world of sin. Sin entered into the world through one man. It was the adopting by that one man of an attitude which had already been adopted by the devil himself.

Sin in its final essence is an attitude within the heart of man of total independence of God. That's the nature of sin. Sin as a principle is hostile to every suggestion that man is dependent upon God his maker.

That's the nature of sin. Sin is an attitude that repudiates man's need to maintain this relationship of faith and of Eden. Faith, love. That's sin. And it was when man adopted this attitude of independence that he forfeited the presence of God.

And he became empty of God. And died. And ever since Adam adopted this attitude his seed down all human history of which you and I the representatives in the 20th century have been born by natural birth.

Uninhabited by God. They have been passed on to you and to me by nature. This hostile attitude towards God. That's the nature of sin. It was an attitude that had its origin in the devil himself. For in man's forfeiture of the divine content that made him spiritually bankrupt and destitute of the life of God that was not the worst calamity that befell him.

The greater calamity was that in his destitution his life mechanism, his soul, his mind, his emotions and his will, his heart became available with vacant possession to the devil himself. So that instead of man being the human vehicle of the divine life and his behavior, God's behavior clothed with man's humanity.

Man became the human vehicle of the devil himself. And man's behavior was the devil's behavior clothed with man's humanity. That's why John says in his first epistle chapter 3 and verse 8, he that committed sin is of the devil.

In other words, never minimize the nature of sin. If you tell a lie, don't please imagine that you're telling that lie. It simply means that you of your own free volition are allowing the devil to prostitute your humanity so that he can be through you what he is.

A lie. That's the nature of sin. Said the Lord Jesus to the Pharisees, ye are of your father the devil and the lusts of your father you will do. In other words, your humanity is available to the devil to behave in.

Did you know that? Whosoever committed sin is of the devil. He sinneth from the beginning. And the devil is only able to behave in terms of your human personality by virtue of the fact that in Adam man was sold out to the devil in a repudiation of his dependence upon God.

We have been sold under sin. Now, remember this. All righteousness has its origin in God alone. He is righteousness. And all righteousness in man without exception is God behaving in man. There is no such thing as righteousness that does not have its origin in God himself.

So that all righteousness in man is what God is in man. That is why of the regenerate born again Christian we read in the first epistle to the Corinthians, of God is he Christ made unto you righteous.

Made unto you righteousness. You didn't have any before Christ was made unto you righteous. It's only because of what he is in you, it's only because of what he does through you that you have now as a regenerate sinner any capacity whatever for righteousness.

Apart from what he is and apart from what he does through you, all your righteousness are as filthy rags. Because such righteousnesses as they may appear are simply cheap shabby imitations of the real thing produced by the perverted bent within the flesh for simulated righteousness.

Which is always self-righteous. So that all righteousness is God. And righteousness in man is what God is behaving through man. What is unrighteousness? All unrighteousness is what the devil is in man.

All unrighteousness in man is what is produced by Satan behaving through man by the exercise of his satanic agency called the flesh. Nothing to do with your human body. This sin principle of satanic hostility to the law of God.

How then can you ever produce righteousness? Only by an attitude of dependence upon the only one who in you is capable of righteousness. Who's that? God. Now maybe you'll understand what it means when it says in the Hebrew epistle chapter 11 that without faith it is impossible to please God.

Without faith it is impossible to please God. It doesn't say barely possible. Impossible. Hebrews 11 says without faith it is impossible to please God. Why? Because righteousness is God in action. And God in action in and through a man demands of that man that dependence upon God that finds his expression in obedience to God which is fire.

The Bible says if therefore you are not living moment by moment, step by step, breath by breath, incident by incident in an attitude of dependence by faith upon God you cannot please him no matter what you do.

Therefore the righteousness of what you're doing will not be determined by the nature of what you're doing. It will be determined by your attitude to God. And that's why your relationship to God, your relationship personally to Jesus Christ is a thousand million times more important than the program that you display to the world around you.

Because you may be implementing that program other than in dependence upon God. And if you implement that program in other than dependence upon God, Christianized as it may be within the contents of evangelical activity, it will still be of satanic origin.

Does that sound too strong? Then turn with me to the 14th chapter of the epistle to the Romans and you discover the converse. Romans chapter 14 and of course throughout the chapter the apostle has been applying in detail this principle in general.

The latter part of verse 23 of the 14th chapter of the epistle to the Romans. Whatsoever, notice the word, whatsoever, no limitations, no buts, no ifs, no ambiguities, whatsoever is not a faith. Is what?

Sin. The minister who is prepared to go up into his pulpit and preach other than independence upon Christ is committing sin in the very act of preaching. Did you know that? Because whatsoever does not stem from divine activity released by man's obedience in faith.

Can only stem from carnal activity which is of satanic origin. And there's nothing that the devil more delights in than that a man should engage in Christian activity in the energy of the flesh. Because it's death.

To be carnally minded is death. For the flesh prophet is nothing. Without faith it's impossible to please God and whatsoever is not a faith is sin. Now that doesn't leave much margin does it? Bring those two things together and what have we got left?

Without faith it is impossible to please God and whatsoever is not a faith is sin. Now this is giving us an almost terrifying definition of sin. For without faith it's impossible to please God and if I'm not exercising faith I'm committing sin.

In other words in any area of my life in which I am not pleasing God positively by faith I'm committing sin. That goes a long long way beyond telling lies doesn't it? This has something infinitely more to do with your relationship to God than simply things that you do and say.

This goes far deeper than the surface that other people can. This goes deep down into the very center of your heart and soul. Whatsoever is not a faith is sin. All your behavior which is not God's behavior is sin.

The Christian Life as Christ Expressed Through Believers

Now what does this teach us? Well of course it teaches us that there is only one quality of Christian life that God recognizes and that's his own. In other words to talk about a victorious Christian life is a misnomer and a very dangerous misnomer.

Because if we talk about a victorious Christian life we are suggesting that there is a quality of Christian life which is not victorious. In other words that it's optional as to whether you as a Christian should live victoriously or not victorious.

I want you to know this that so far as God is concerned there is no margin. That if you are not living victoriously you are not living the Christian life. You may have the Christian life but you're not living it.

So don't delude yourself and don't deceive yourself. Don't persuade yourself that you have opted to have a quality of Christian life which is less than victorious. The moment you opt, the moment you decide, the moment you reconcile yourself to living a quality of Christian life which is less than victorious you are in so many words repudiating the Christian life and saying I don't want it.

I want to get to heaven, I want to be converted, I want to be numbered amongst the redeemed, I want to know that my name is written in the Lamb's book of life but I only want to be fit for heaven but I do not want to be fit for earth.

Now we've come to understand I trust in some small measure at least what it means to be dead, numbered amongst the dead, lifeless, uninhabited by God, inhabited only by a sin principle of satanic origin that is hostile to God, that repudiates dependence and lives in faithlessness, independence.

What therefore do you imagine will be God's purpose in Christ who died for all because all were dead? Well it seems pretty obvious that God's purpose in Christ will first to make it possible for the guilty sinners to be reconciled to God in such a way that there may be restored to him the life that man through sin, through this attitude of independence has forfeited.

But if man has forfeited this life, God's life through independence, under what circumstances do you imagine God will restore life to man? Only when man's attitude of independence has been reversed to one of dependence.

And by this means of course we are arriving at a new definition maybe for some of you of repentance. Maybe in the past you thought that repentance was being sorry because you lost your temper, maybe you thought that repentance was being sorry because you've been neglecting your Bible, sorry because you've been irritable at home or discourteous to other people.

Maybe you thought that was repentance. Well of course it is in a sense but it's very baby repentance. Because these things being disagreeable and grumpy and dishonest or lying or neglectful of your Bible or your prayer, these are simply symptoms only of a deeper disease.

Sin is independence basically and from this attitude of independence came all the sins of commission and omission. For it is only man's independence of God that licenses him to commit acts of aggression against God's will.

And if sin is man's independence what will repentance demand? Repentance will mean repudiation on the part of man for his attitude of independence. In other words repentance demands repentance. And if you want to know to what degree you have repented then you need only to examine your own heart and discover to what degree you are repentant.

And as you look back over your life even over the past 24 hours and think of all the activities in which you have engaged, all the decisions that you may have made, all the letters that you may have written, all the plans that you may have conceived.

Just think back only over the past 24 hours and decide in how many areas you have acted in other than a conscious attitude of dependence upon Christ whereby you relentlessly reckoned with him and with him alone.

And in every one of those areas you will know that those are the areas in your life as a Christian in which you have not repented. If you can bring up your family, you parents, without an attitude, an unrelenting attitude of dependence upon the Lord Jesus then in the process of rearing a family you are an unrepentant Christian.

If you are a businessman and you think that you can run your business other than in a constant unrelenting attitude of dependence upon the Lord Jesus it is precisely in the area of your business as a successful businessman that you are unrepentant.

If you are a Christian minister, if you lead a Bible class, if you are an evangelist, if you are a preacher or a missionary and you imagine that you can embark upon projects for God other than in dependence upon God through Jesus Christ then these Christian activities in which you are engaged are the very areas of your life as a Christian in which as yet you have not repented.

For repentance demands that I step back into my faith love relationship to God through Jesus Christ. The love of Christ controls and urges and impels us because we are of the opinion and conviction that if one has died for all then all have died.

Everything that I am and everything that I do by nature is worth no more than God's sentence of death passed upon Jesus Christ my substitute. But verse 15 goes on to say this. And he died for all. To what end?

So that all those who live might live no longer to and for themselves but to and for him who died and was raised again for their sake. In other words when the Lord Jesus Christ died it was to pay the curse, the consequence of man's sin.

He was made sin for man. God in heaven in all his righteousness dealt with the Lord Jesus as though he himself had abducted this satanic attitude of total independence. Isn't that terrible? God's judgment upon the Lord Jesus upon the cross was such as all man's accumulative guilt demands and deserves.

And this was executed in the person of another. For though a man repents, though a man repudiate his independence and wish to step back into an attitude of dependence the guilt of the past must be acquitted.

And so on the basis of redemption by his vicarious substitutionary and atoning death the Lord Jesus Christ by his death has reconciled those who repent toward God to the end that they might become the recipients of his resurrection life.