26 - The Constitution of Man, Part 1

Well, welcome to the Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Systematic Theology. We are glad that you have joined us for another lesson into systematic theology and welcome all of our new students who are with us and the tens and tens, okay, both of you that are watching, fine.

But if you are paying attention, if you are a student of the Academy, you can grab your syllabus and follow along. We are going through the syllabus, which you can order by going down there and going to the website.

The Doctrine of Man and the Constitution of Man

We are currently in book number two, which we're studying right now, the doctrine of man. And we are actually in lesson number two. We are going to deal with the constitution of man. We are going to answer some questions of what does it mean to be made in the image of God.

Lots of people think that they know what that means. Many people think that by definition being made in the image of God means being a child of God. Are they the same? No. So, now that we answered that.

But we're going to look into this lesson specifically, which is going to focus on the constitution or the makeup of man. Now this is in the study of the doctrine of man or anthropology, which is the study of man.

And we are looking into what the scriptures say, specifically describing how man was designed. See man actually was designed by a designer. And what we end up with is the reality that some people just really don't like that fact.

We understand. Get over it. You were designed by a creator and you will be accountable to that creator. Is man merely just a physical body, as many of those professing to be atheists claim? Or is there something more to man's constitution?

How did God design man? And that's your blank there, design. That's what we're going to look into in this lesson. We're going to look into the fact that we have a body that is more than just a physical body.

And so that becomes very important when we end up answering with the scriptures. When people say that there is no God, they have a big dilemma. And that big dilemma is that they want to say that we are just the product of chemical reactions.

There's nothing more to man's constitution than the chemical reactions that are occurring. So we are just purely material things. And what we think is logic and knowledge and that immaterial part of us is just, you know, neurons in our brain firing off and giving us a sense that there's something more happening.

Not sure that they're really thinking through that quite well because there's things that are immaterial. The reason that when you speak to someone that's a professing atheist that they will try to argue that we are just the products of chemical reactions is basically because of the fact if there is an immaterial part of man, they know that could not have been produced by material things.

In other words, something material cannot produce something immaterial. So you need something immaterial to create that. And that's the dilemma that the professing atheist has. Because he needs to prove that everything is from a material base, a purely material world.

But the scriptures say something different. The scriptures say that man was created in the image of God. That man was created in the image of God. If we're created in the image of God, that means that we have part of us that is created, designed, after God's fashion.

Now, there's three areas that we're going to see that we were created in the image of God. The first of those three is in personhood, that man's likeness to God as a person. That's your next blank in your syllabus there.

That we were made in God's likeness as a person. Now, if you go all the way back to the first three, four lessons of the School of Systematic Theology, and actually if you do go all the way back, you'll remember that I said all of this builds upon one another.

And this is why we must start our systematic theology, not in salvation, arguing Calvinism or Minianism or End Times or you Post Mill, Pre Mill, and all that stuff, and we'll get into those things. But we must start with the nature and attributes of God because everything that we've looked at so far has really been based off of the attributes and nature of God.

That's what theology is based on. So when we look at that, we have to keep in mind that those first few lessons we looked at, we described God as having certain attributes, and there were three categories that we looked at.

Now, if you remember those categories, they were categories of deity. In other words, those attributes that were true of God and God alone. In other words, God has all of those attributes, and anyone that has any of those attributes would be God.

And so those were attributes of deity. We looked at attributes of morality. Those attributes which are right and wrong, we're going to look at those in a few moments, but then the next one that we looked at, actually it was the second, it was the one in the middle there, was the attributes of personality.

And we talked about what it means to be a person. We talked about the fact that God is a person, actually three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We talked about when we looked at angels, that angels have personality.

So we see that God has personality, angels have personality, and we as human beings have personality. Now, if you look in your syllabus, I give you some areas that we have that where man, like God, possesses certain attributes of personality, such as a self-consciousness.

A self-consciousness means that we are self-aware. Self-aware means that we're aware of our own being. There's no other animal that's aware of his own being. I mean, have you ever seen, you know, an animal that's building up a 401k?

Oh, you're going to argue, someone will argue, oh, but look at the ants. The ants store up food for the winter. Yes, they do, because God designed them to do that, but it doesn't mean they're aware of themselves.

It doesn't mean they're aware of how they relate to other beings in the universe, or other things in the universe. They're not worrying about, you know, their 401k. You've never seen the whales carrying a save the humans sign, and I got news for you, humans need saving.

But why is that? The reason is because animals are not self-aware. They don't have a self-consciousness. We do, as people. Another is that we have a God consciousness. This is the reason why, no matter where you go in the world, anywhere in the world that you go, you're going to see that every culture worships God in some form.

They will either worship the true God or create something that they will call God, even if it's themselves, as professing atheists do. They worship themselves and say they're God, basically. They say they're the most superior thing in the universe, but the reality is they have a God consciousness.

And you say, prove that, I mean, they're going to argue, how do you know I'm conscious of God? Well, to my atheist friends, the reason that we know that you know God exists is the amount of time you spend thinking about Him.

You know, actually, it's kind of funny that those that profess to be atheists think about God more than many Christians. Those that claim to be atheists, to know that God does not exist, spend an awful lot of time writing blogs, reading blogs, making videos, doing documentaries, writing books, reading books to try to prove that God does not exist.

I've never seen any of those kind of books for Santa Claus. I've never seen a book trying to prove Santa Claus doesn't exist. Why do you think that is? Because everyone knows that Santa Claus does not exist.

Why do they spend so much time trying to prove that God doesn't exist? Well, it's a very simple reason. It is hard to suppress the truth. When you know something is true and you don't want to believe it, you have to keep arguing with yourself and convincing yourself that it's not true.

And so you look to try to prove it any way you can and everywhere you can. That's the reason people will cross out, in God we trust, in the money. That's why they don't want prayer in school. That's why they have all these things, because they can't handle the reminder about God.

Because every reminder about God's existence that they're trying to suppress just reminds them of what they're suppressing. That's the reason that we know that those that claim that they know God doesn't exist and they're not conscious of Him, yes they are, because they wouldn't be spending the time otherwise.

Another attribute of personality that we see that human beings have, well most human beings, some of you may be questioning this with me, I understand, but intellect. We have an intellect. We have an ability to understand things in relation to one another.

It's not just a pure understanding of facts, but we can actually reason how those facts relate to other things. That's something that is an attribute of personality. Another would be emotion. Now, I understand some of you are a little bit too much emotional.

I understand, we can't all be engineers, sorry. But, those of us who show less emotion, but the reality is that what we see is that we have emotions. Now, this is an interesting one, because some people argue that animals have emotions too.

Now, some try to say that emotions can be something that is, it's just preconditioned. In other words, animals don't really have emotions. It is just that they seem to express themselves in ways that are emotion, that seem to be emotion.

In other words, a dog may whimper and sound sad. I would argue that they could be sad. I'm not opposed to the argument that animals would have emotions, but just because they have one of the attributes doesn't mean they have all of them.

They're not aware of God. They show no signs of being self-aware. They do have an intellect, and they may have emotions. Now, they may have intellect to an extent. They can understand their environment around them.

That doesn't mean that they put connection to those things. In other words, the lions have never worried about the extinction of the lambs or the gazelles. They just go for it. The pack of wolves don't worry if they're going to finish eating all of the food that is in the area.

No, when they're hungry, they hunt down whatever they can get, and they don't worry if that's the last of the food supply. Okay? And so, what we have when we look at that is we end up seeing the fact that we have certain emotions.

We have a will. We have a volition. Now, we'll see in later lessons that that volition or will is influenced and corrupted. It's influenced by sin. We're going to see that in a moment, that it's been affected by sin, but we do have a will.

I would argue it's just not a free will. Now, what's the difference? We're going to get to this in a moment, but I'll mention it now. We have a will. We can make decisions between right and wrong, but our will is before salvation controlled or enslaved to sin, so it's not free.

Free meaning you don't have any outside influences. You're not influenced by anything. After we're saved, we have a free will because now the Holy Spirit indwells us, and we have a truly free will. So the last one that we have there is creativity.

Man as a Person, Spirit, and Moral Being

So we have the fact that we are made in the image of God, and the first thing we looked at was that man's likeness as a person. Your next blank there is that man's likeness to God as a spirit, as a spirit.

This enables him to know God. That's your blank there. We have a God consciousness, but the ability to know God is because we, like God, are made as a spirit. We're a spiritual being. We are made in the image of God, not only in the fact that we have personality, but that we are spiritual.

Now we mentioned angels. Angels have personhood. Angels are a spirit, but there's one more that angels don't have at least anymore. They had one time, and this is what would make us a little bit different.

It is that we were made man's likeness to God as a moral being. That's your blank there, as a moral being. You and I have morality. You and I basically can know right and wrong. Man's moral nature includes his abilities to know right from wrong.

That's your blank there, to know right from wrong, and to act according to these standards. To act, that's your blank, to act according to these standards. So what we have when we look at that is that man as a moral being not only can know right from wrong, but act accordingly.

Now that doesn't mean we always act right, and we do have a conscience that can be seared. We're going to get into this, but that where we can convince ourselves that wrong is right and right is wrong.

That's what the professing atheists do when they try to argue there is no God. They're trying to convince themselves that wrong is right and right is wrong. This is why in a culture that is trying to promote atheism as their religion, they have to start with first arguing for a relative morality.

Because if they can say that reality is relative, now they can change right from wrong, and then it is easier for them to say, well, hey, anything that you believe is right is right, and therefore there is no God.

That's the way they'd argue. But let's take a look at a passage. In Romans 2 and verse 14, it says, for when Gentiles who do not have the law by nature do what the law requires, now law here referring to the Torah, the Jewish law, they are a law unto themselves, though they do not have the law.

So what you have there is you have this notion where they have a law that's written in their hearts. They know the law, and so what we have in a case like that is we have a case where we can know the law and we know right from wrong, but we got to do what's right.

We as moral beings can do that. Animals, I don't think, really have a morality. Now, let me go to the example that I always give to argue against those that say animals have absolutely no signs of morality.

Well, you know, if you look at the vampire bat, I know it seems disgusting. I mean, they fly around, they grab onto some animal, cow or something, and they just, you know, bite into them and suck his blood.

But it's no different than a mosquito. It's just a lot bigger. But, you know, vampire bats, what they do is they gather at night in their cave and they hang upside down, and they usually need to stay very close together to stay warm.

It's the same as the emperor penguins. They got to huddle together for the warmth. And so one of the things that vampire bats do, though, is that when they return to their cave, they all huddle together, and when they're huddled together, what they do is those that got food, got blood, will share with those that did not.

And so the reality of this is they will, if they have one bat that gets food but does not share, what all of the other bats in the area do is basically they bring their backs to that one bat and push him out of the inside of the group.

And just like the emperor penguins, where they need to kind of keep rotating to get warm, I mean, not everyone can always be on the inside for the warmth, so they have to keep rotating so that some on the outside eventually make their way in.

But if there's a bat that's identified as one that didn't share food, he's pushed to the outside and never allowed back in to the pack, basically pushing him off to himself where he dies of the cold. And some will argue that that is a form of morality and a form of justice.

Well, we're using morality kind of in a different sense because they are not saying that we see no signs that they're recognizing that this is right and wrong versus just instinct. They don't have a court system that decides, but this is something that they do.

Now, another point is that this aspect involves the existence of a consciousness, a conscience in man. That's your blank there, conscience, conscience, with science, with knowledge, basically. So what you have there is the idea, let's look at, actually, let's look at the Romans 2 in a further, from 2 down to 14.

I read 14, or 14 to 16, I mean. I read 14, so let's read 15 and 16 now. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts while their conscience also bearing witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or excuse them.

On the day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secret, the secrets of men by Jesus Christ. So, notice in this passage we see that this law, this consciousness, this knowledge of right and wrong is written in the hearts of men.

That's what makes men different. We know right and wrong. Angels did have a time where they could choose right from wrong, once. Once they made a decision to rebel against God, decision was irrevocable.

And now, we don't know how much they know right from wrong, but the thing we know is that they can't choose between right and wrong. In other words, an angel cannot choose to do right or wrong. So, a holy angel can't choose wrong, and a good, an evil angel, an unholy angel can't choose right.

Okay? So, they're permanently in whatever state they chose once, and this is where we are different. Being made in the image of God, not only are we a person, we're spirit, but we're moral, and that morality, that consciousness, that conscience of man at the fall was damaged or marred.

That's your blank there, damaged, or you could say marred, but not destroyed. It wasn't completely destroyed. Let's look at some verses here. In Galatians 9, 6, it says, "...whoever sheds blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.

For God made man in his own image.". And then, let's look at James 3, verse 9. It says here, "...with it we bless...". This is speaking of the tongue. "...with it we bless our God, our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God.".

So, what this is saying here is that we have a consciousness. With that consciousness, we can choose between blessing God or cursing God. We can choose to shed blood or not shed blood. Okay? These are things that we can choose.

And so, what we have here is the fact that our consciousness is damaged or destroyed. Now, this is important when it comes to, when we look at later lessons on salvation. And this is what I mean when I say we don't have a free will.

We have a will, but it's not free. It is damaged. It's controlled by that sin nature. Okay? And so, we have to be aware of that. Okay? So, we have to know that, and we need to be specific in these things.

When people say that the man has a will, we need to be aware that man does have a will, but that will is not apart from the sin. So, the question that's coming in is, angels losing their ability to choose.

Is that right? Choose right from wrong. Well, where we see that is an angel cannot be saved. An angel can't be redeemed. An angel is forever in the state that they're in. Now, holy angels, by the very nature that they're holy and in God's presence, would not be able to choose to violate God's law.

They can't sin. Okay? And those that have already sinned can't do right in God's eyes. So, where is that presented? Well, if you look back at the lessons we have on the study on angeology, the study of angels, you'll see we talked about the fact that they are, were permanently put in the state that they are.

We see that one of the verses will say that angels look upon man in wonder because of the fact that they can't, they don't understand salvation. They look at it because it's something they can't do. And so, can they choose between, make a choice between two different things?

Well, they are intellectual beings, so yes, they can. Okay? So, we just have to be aware of that. They are intellectual beings. So, we see that in the meaning of being made in the likeness of God is that man's likeness to God is a person, man's likeness to God is a spirit, and man's likeness to God is a moral being.

The Significance of the Image of God

Letter B in your syllabus is the significance of being made in the image of God. The significance is this, this means that each person is a special individual, that is your blank there, special individual who is precious to God and worthy of protection.

Having been made in the image of God, though marred, makes redemption possible. So, this is why, as we saw in James, it says we shouldn't use our tongue to curse people because we are made in the image of God.

Those people that we are cursing are made in the image of God. We shouldn't shed blood. Why? Because the person whose life we're taking is made in the image of God. Why is it that for Christians abortion is such a because it's murder.

It is taking of a human life and that human life is special to God. This is why Christians care about people, not their intellectual abilities and what they may be able to offer to society, but all people.

Because all people are important to God. They're made in the image of God. That's what makes it important. We are a special creation, a pinnacle of creation, in that we were made with an ability to be redeemed.

That is what sets us apart from angels. Angels cannot be redeemed. They're amazed that we can be. And this is what makes us different. What makes you and I different is that we are made in the image of God as spiritual beings who are special individuals that can know who God is and be redeemed.

That should encourage you. I hope it does encourage you. And this is the thing that we want to make sure that we're aware of. The fact that we are made in God's image. The fact that we are different from animals.

This is where evolution completely breaks down. Because they have to argue that we are nothing but animals. And then they get surprised when people act like animals. You've been telling them for years that they're just an animal.

They're just a process of chemical reactions. So they're going to act that way and they're going to justify it by saying, I'm just an animal. What does it matter? Might makes right and survival of the fittest and all of that.

But if you are a moral being, if you're a spiritual being, if you're made as a person in God's image, then you're a special being who is more than just a physical body. And you're not just an animal. You haven't evolved from an animal.

You're something different. And this is also something where people say, are we all God's children because we're made in the image of God? Well, look at the passage that talks that we're children of God.

John 1 12. And it says that there's a way we have the right to be called a child of God. He says to those who believe in Christ have the right to be called the child of God. So not everyone has the right to be called the child of God.

Only those that believe. So all of us are made in the image of God, but not all of us have the right to be called a child of God. The difference there is redemption. Okay, so we see here that we are created in the image of God.

The Physical Body and Its Stewardship

Number two in your syllabus there is that we were created a physical being. Man was created a physical being. In other words, we do have a physical nature. That's different than the angels. Angels don't have a physical being.

Okay, so let's define some terms here, and I don't know if we're going to get through all of these terms in this lesson. We're going to continue the lesson next week, but first let's define the term body.

What does a body mean? The body is the physical vessel in which the soul or spirit resides. So that's your blank there, the soul or spirit. You could say the immaterial part of us as well, but that's soul or spirit.

Now, I'm saying soul or spirit, and some people are going to get into this debate that I think we should really debate, which is dichotomy versus trichotomy. In other words, are we made up of a body and soul, or body, soul, spirit?

Well, I would argue that it really doesn't matter much, but that we are made of a physical or material and immaterial part, and that immaterial part is called the soul or spirit. So I guess I'd be a dichotomist.

If you want to argue with me about it, I won't care. So we are made, so the body is that which houses that soul or spirit, and we're going to look at those in a moment. It is the vehicle of our senses.

It's the vehicle of our senses. That's your blank there. It's the vehicle of our senses. Now, the description of our body, our physical being, was an essential part of the creation of man and considered very good by God at creation.

Very good is your blank there. Let's look at Genesis 1 and 2. Verse 131, it says, and God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was, look at that, very good. And at that point, he had created man.

And there was evening and morning, the sixth day. So when man was created, he was considered very good. His physical body was very good. Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils breath of life, and man became a living creature.

And God says that was very good. It was very good. So what we have to see is that God, as a creator, created man with a physical body, and that body was described as being very good before the fall. Now, why am I making an emphasis there?

Why? What importance of that? Well, Gnostic thought, which is a thought that was in the first century, but it's been around. I mean, Plato, Socrates, these guys had some variations of this as well. And so we see it even prevalent today in some areas.

But it's this idea that anything physical is evil. In other words, the immaterial part of us is good, but the physical part of us, well, that's what's evil. Therefore, I can kind of separate those and compartmentalize those and say, well, hey, as some of the Gnostics were doing, they would go be with prostitutes and say, well, my flesh was doing it, not my spirit.

So I really wasn't sinning. And so they justify their sin by saying that it was only in their flesh. And so what we end up seeing there is that it's important to show that the physical body, when it was created by God, was considered very good.

The Body as Stewardship and the Coming Resurrection Body

All right. Second, in your syllabus there under the description is that the earthly body of man should be considered part of his present stewardship and not to be held in contempt. Now, let's take a couple of looks at some verses here.

First, at 1 Corinthians 9, 1 Corinthians 6, 19 and 20. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you have been bought with a price, so glorify God in your body.

In 3 John 2, it says, that all may go well with you, that you may be of good health as it is well with your soul. And I know that there's a passage in Timothy where it says that, you know, Paul says to Timothy, you know, a little exercise is good, but spiritual exercise is better.

And people go, see, just a little bit of exercise. You know, and this might hurt some of us. It might be painful. We might not like this. But, you know, we have to be aware of what Scripture says, like it or not.

This is one of those things that I think sometimes we wish wasn't in Scripture. But you and I are stewards of the body that God has given us. God has given us the body as we just read. Our body is something that was given to us by God.

And we are stewards. That's their blank, by the way. That we're stewards. It's a stewardship. And so we must take care of our bodies as stewards. In other words, you may not be able to have that extra piece of pie.

Maybe you need to actually get out and start exercising and doing something other than sitting on the couch and watching Mythbusters with your boys or something like that. You got to do a little bit of exercise maybe and stop getting so fat.

Right? We can't be couch potatoes. As Christians, we actually have a moral obligation to the Creator who gave us these bodies to take care of them. Ouch! That hurts, doesn't it? Yeah, we have to. All right?

You and I, as believers, we need to be taking care of the bodies that God has given us. We shouldn't be gluttons. We shouldn't be overeating. Our bodies are a testimony to the Lord. I remember a friend of mine who was kind of overweight.

And he worked at an abortion, sorry, an addiction center. And it was kind of interesting because a lot of the folks there were kind of over, were hefty. And yet here they're working with people about addiction.

And one of the addictions is food. And some people kind of realized, you know, hey, you guys are counseling us, but you've kind of put on a little bit. And one of the guys that runs it realized, you know what?

He was a bad testimony to the Lord because of the fact he wasn't in good shape. He wasn't taking care of the body that God had given him. And so he decided he would start taking care of his body. And he started losing the weight.

And I'm not saying you've got to exercise an hour, two hours, three hours a day. But you want to do some portion of exercise, get off of the couch. And so, you know, you want to eat a balanced diet. That's hard in America because everything that we have is processed food, which is horrible for you.

Tons of sugars and tons of processed food with MSG that just feeds into making you fat and lazy. Stay away from that stuff. It might be hard, but if you want to be a responsible Christian, got to take care of your body.

Sorry. That's one of the importance of this description of having a physical body. Third thing in your syllabus is that a physical body will be part of the eternal state, the eternal state. Let's take a look.

In 1 Corinthians 15, 54, it says, when the perishable puts on the imperishable and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory.

So the perishable put on the imperishable. In other words, what we have here is the idea that our physical bodies will be part of eternal state. In other words, this is some wacky stuff to think about.

I'm going to wrap your head around this. But Jesus Christ is fully God. In other words, he's everywhere present. He's omnipresent, but he was also fully man, meaning that he is at one place at one time in a physical being.

Now you get into an interesting thing. Where is Jesus Christ right now? He's at the right hand of the Father in a physical body. Think about that. Jesus Christ has a physical body. That was the importance of the fact that when he rose from the dead, he rose bodily, not just his spirit, but his body rose from the dead.

When he came to his disciples, he said, let's eat some fish. Let's eat some things so you can see. I have a physical body. Touch my hands, touch my sides, Thomas, and see this body of mine. Even to this day, I think that Jesus Christ has holes in his hands and in his side, a hole in his side and in his feet so that we will see that.

That's part of his physical body, and I think will always be because our body is the physical state. Now, I know there's some of these guys that say that when we get our body in heaven, we're going to go back to the body of a 25-year-old and we're still going to be able to recognize each other.

I don't think so. I think that we're going to have the body that we have when we die. But you know what? You and I won't have sin anymore, and we're not going to be so vain to care. About the body that we have, whether it shows up as, you know, whether we have a body that looks good or not, whether, you know, we have a fat body or a thin body, whether we have our hair or don't have our hair, we're not going to care.

That's the thing. Okay, but we will have a physical body for all of eternity. Okay, so that becomes important to think about. We will have a physical body. Now, we looked at the fact that we were made in the image of God.

That's part of the constitution of man. We looked at some different aspects of being made in the image of God, that we are a person, that we are spirit, and that we're moral. We also looked at not only that we're made in the image of God, but that we are created a physical being.

And next week, we're not going to have time to look at this, but next week we're going to look at the fact that we were created a spiritual being. We are created a spiritual being. Okay, that will be what we're going to pick up in the next class, is that man was created a spiritual being.

If you have any questions about anything that we've said, and we haven't gotten to the answers, you feel free to email us at academy at striving for eternity dot org. Academy at striving for eternity dot org.

You can email us and we will get back to you as soon as we can. And we will look into answering those to the best of our ability. Now, one of the things that we always do at the end of each class is we want to encourage you to encourage someone else.

Because quite frankly, we don't do enough encouraging, do we? We say the most encouraging things about people when they're dead. That's sad. So, let's get about the business of encouraging people. The brother of encouragement that we want to encourage this week is, I'm probably going to butcher his last name, but it is Chris Holmholz.