The Biblical Doctrine of Salvation

The Image of God and the Sanctity of Human Life

As we finished talking last week, we were working on the subject of man. We briefly discussed the fact that man is a created being, that he is finite, he's dependent, that he must receive revelation from God to have true knowledge.

We discussed a little bit how important this is for a proper system of apologetics in a Christian worldview. And as we finished, I mentioned that we would be moving on to, very briefly, the subject of man and the image of God.

What is the image of God? We will mention this fairly quickly and move on from here because we have some very large and difficult topics to address over the next two weeks. What does it mean when we say that man is created in the image of God?

Well, first of all, without going into a very lengthy discussion, because there is certainly a great deal of literature that has been written on the subject of the image of God and what it means, I see the image of God primarily referring to two or three things.

First of all, I think the image of God refers to the personality of man, to the personhood of man. I believe that man, unlike the brute beast or the animal in the field, is created in the image of God in such a way that we can have communion with God, that we can recognize God's being, that we can worship God.

Now, you may recall that in Genesis, when the image of God is presented to us, the writer of Genesis gives it to us in such a way that man is distinguished from all other creation as having the image of God.

So, whatever the image of God is, animals don't have it. Now, some would say, well, the image of God is some sort of physical thing. For example, Mormons would tell us that the image of God means that since we have hands and feet and legs and eyes and hair and things like that, that means God does too, that God has a body of flesh and bones just as we do.

But obviously, the image of God is not simply having a physical form. For there are many apes who have physical form and hands and fingers and toes and things like this, but certainly that ape is not created in the image of God.

And so the image, whatever it is, differs from animals. It includes personality, it includes intellect, the ability to perceive thoughts, to think of oneself in a specific way. This is somewhat similar to what we referred to when we talked about what it is to be a person.

And we contrasted that with a cat or a dog that cannot work for the good of cat kind or dog kind, because they're not created in the image of God. Man is created in the image of God. Man as a created being, therefore, is precious in the sight of God and has meaning.

Life is special. Human life is even more special than animal life because of the fact that man is created in the image of God. That's just one of the reasons. Obviously, the coming of Jesus Christ to be the sacrifice of sins clearly shows us that man is very special in the sight of God, that man's life, therefore, is very special as well.

And I say this just in passing to point out the fact that I think in our nation we have gotten away very much from the concept of the sanctity of life based upon the fact that we view ourselves as created beings in the image of God.

When man begins to look at himself as simply an animal, as simply the chance result of the impersonal plus great periods of time, when man looks at himself in that way, the value of human life begins to slide.

And we can see this in our world today. We can see this in the attitudes toward the elderly or toward the unborn. We can see this in the attitudes toward people themselves, that there is no longer in many people's thinking an intrinsic worth to human life because you are not in many people's thinking any longer, the special creation of God.

But the Christian says, no, man is created by God, man is created in the image of God, and therefore man is very special. Now, when man was created in the image of God, we know that that situation, that original creation, has been altered.

And we know how. We know that the scripture speaks to us of the fall. It speaks to us of the entrance into the existence of man of sin. Now, some obviously then ask the question, well, can we still speak of man being created in the image of God?

Some have gone so far as to say, well, when Adam sinned, when man falls into sin, then the image of God is wiped out. But I don't believe so. The image of God is distorted. Surely we would not say that man as he exists now, man in his depravity and his evilness, is a very good representation of the image of God.

But at the same time, I think we go too far if we say that the image of God is wiped out. It is blurred, it is distorted, but it is not wiped out. Now, there certainly is not a less popular topic of discussion, unfortunately, even amongst believers, than the subject of sin itself.

In our culture, when a sitcom is dying, all you have to do is mention something about sin, and you're sure to get lots of giggles and laughs because, oh, the idea of sin, that's old-fashioned. And, of course, if you are ever silly enough to get into the public venue and actually come out and say something like, that is sin, you're looked at like a person who just arrived from the Oakeys or from another planet or something like that.

The idea that you can actually say that is sin is very foreign to our culture that no longer has standards of right and wrong and certainly looks at you as being rather self-righteous if you would dare to say that someone else has done sin.

But when we as Christians avoid talking about sin, there's obviously something wrong. Now, there are personal reasons. We all know sin very well, don't we? It's not something we can think of about somebody else without, first of all, thinking about ourselves.

We are all very personally acquainted with the subject of sin. And yet, there is something in man called pride that I think very, very much affects how far we are willing to go in recognizing the awesome and terrible power and effect of sin in our lives.

So we must have a revelation from God in His Word to truly see us as we are. For we will never truly admit the extent of our own depravity and sinfulness unless the pure Word of God as a mirror is held up to us and we can truly see ourselves as we are.

And so I ask you to listen to what the Word of God says in regards to what sin has done to man. For if there is anything that I can say with great confidence this evening in regards to the Church in America, it is this.

We have allowed the humanistic emphasis of our culture to so infiltrate the Church and infiltrate our doctrine and infiltrate our thinking that we are rarely, even in good solid churches, willing to truly proclaim what the Word of God says about man as a sinner.

That's not saying that we are not willing to say that is sin and that is sin, but when it comes to saying man has become enslaved to sin as the Word of God teaches, that is where there is much falling short.

The Fall, Sin, and the Death It Brings

Let us look at it. Let us look, for example, at Ezekiel 18 .4. In Ezekiel 18 .4 we have that classic passage from the Old Testament that teaches to us some of the consequence of sin. In Ezekiel 18 .4, behold, God says, all souls are mine, the soul of the Father is well, the soul of the Son is mine, the soul who sins will die.

We all know Paul's statement that the wages, the payment of sin is death. And we know that in the Garden, God said to our forefather Adam and to our mother Eve, He said, if you partake of the tree, surely in that day you shall die.

And some would look at the text and say, but they didn't die the day they partook of the tree. Oh yes, they did. They did in a very special way. They were separated from God. They entered into rebellion from Him.

And since God is the source of life, then there was, in effect, death when man rebelled against God. Spiritual death, spiritual separation from God. Sin brings death. God is the one who has laid down what is and what is not sin.

And since He is the one who has created us, He is the one who sustains us every second, He has the perfect right to do that. Many in our world are so arrogant as to actually question God's right to say what is and what is not sin.

But such individuals certainly do not recognize that they, themselves, are created by God or everything they are to God and are utterly dependent upon Him. In James chapter 2, you recall the passage in speaking of the law.

The writer tells us something about the nature of sin. When he says, let's go back to verse 9, If you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.

What is the writer saying? Though we recognize that there is certain degrees of seriousness to sin in the sense that murder, of course, we consider to be a grave, grave sin, from God's perspective, it is all a rebellion against Him.

If you break any one of the commandments, we say, well, coveting is not as bad as committing adultery or murder, and so I'm a little better off if I've only coveted. No, the scriptures say, you don't understand.

From our perspective, we can reason in that way, but we're dealing with the thrice-holy God. We're dealing with the God in whom there is no variableness or shadow of turning, in whom we have complete and total holiness.

And so it's easy for us to rank sins, and of course our sins normally rank down near the bottom, right? Even though when we see the same sin in someone else, well, it's terrible in them, but in me, well, it's not quite so bad because they're mitigating circumstances in my life.

It's easy for us to do that. We all know the process, don't we? And yet, the reason that we must look to God to truly understand sin is because only then can we see it in the full light of His revelation.

Only then can we see the pitch blackness of all sin when we see the light of His holiness. And that's what Scripture does for us. One of the reasons that the unregenerate man hates Scripture so much. But the greatest passage of Scripture on the subject of sin, if you were to go to one place, where would you go if you were thinking about...

Sorry? Romans chapter 1. Indeed. Let us turn there. We're going to spend a little time on this. Romans chapter 1. When Paul begins this incredible book where he's going to lay out how it is that man in sin who is not right with God can be placed into a situation where he is right with God.

And he's going to argue this point by point. He starts with sin. He starts with the condition of man. He must. Any gospel presentation does not tell man where he is, what he needs to be saved from, is missing something.

And certainly here, in the most thought out, prepared presentation of the gospel that we have in Scripture, this is where the inspired apostle begins. He begins in verse 16. For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, but the righteous man shall live by faith. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth and unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them.

For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. Therefore God gave them over in the lust of their hearts to impurity, that their bodies might be dishonored among them, and for they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever.

Amen. Now what does Paul tell us here? First of all, he tells us that man, though he has fallen, still lives within the realm of revelation. That is, God has still revealed himself. He says that they know.

That which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

So he says, even though man has fallen, fallen man finds himself in a situation where he lives within the revelation of God. Whenever fallen man looks around him, when he looks at his own hand, when he looks at someone else, when he looks at a building or a mountain or the sky itself, he lives in the revelation that God exists.

No man will be able to stand before God someday and say, well, I didn't know. God's going to say, no, you did, but you closed your eyes. You stuffed your ears. I shouldn't say this, but my mother tells me that when I was about the age of my son, about three years old, I decided that I was going to run down the middle of County Road 15 outside of Minneapolis, Minnesota, which is a highway.

And I started running down the road. My wife, my mother starts yelling at me, come back here. So you know what I did? I stuck my fingers in my ears and kept running, figuring that's a good excuse. Now she can't say that I heard her yelling at me.

You know, that's what man in the lost state that he's in does. He closes his eyes. He stops up his ears. But he lives within God's revelation. And God says, you're without excuse. You're without excuse.

Now notice he does not say that one could come to know everything there is to know about God by looking around. He says his eternal power, his divine nature, his invisible attributes. But he doesn't talk about the gospel.

He doesn't talk about who Jesus Christ is, being able to be seen from what's around us. There is a limit to what the revelation around us can tell us. But man lives within the revelation of God. That's the first thing.

But secondly, notice what he says. For even though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks. But they became futile in their speculations and their foolish heart was darkened. Whatever happened in the fall affects all of man, including man's mind, including man's will and decisions.

Their futile heart became darkened. The seat of the intellect itself becomes darkened and man begins to enter into futile speculations. He's turned away from God and so when you turn away from God, everything else you're going to speculate on is going to end up being futile.

Down in verse 25 he says, they exchanged the truth of God for a lie. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie. These men who are described in verse 18 as suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. You can't suppress something you don't have.

These men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, they involve themselves in a twisting. And so they're going to take the truth of God and they're going to twist it and instead they're going to accept a lie.

And what is the result of this? Fallen man worships the creation or the creature rather than the creator. Here is a key to what sin is. Here is a key to what sin does to the natural man, to all of us.

Man does not want to have to deal with a holy God. If fallen man recognizes and admits that there is a holy God to whom he is in debt, then he obviously recognizes that he's going to have to do something about that situation and he owes something to that God.

And so to hold on to this rebellion that's his, he twists things. He puts himself in the seat of the creator. I'm going to worship the creation. Now, in pagan cultures, we go, well, you know, I mean, they made, they worshiped trees and rocks and idols and silly things like that.

We're far beyond that. I'd say that there are probably, what, how many? 250, 300 million idols sitting in people's front rooms these days that have a little on-off button and color screen and little rabbit ears on top, you know.

There's a whole lot of idols running around in white coats in science labs and universities that people just bow before. Oh, professor, whatever you say is true. We worship ourselves. We worship our minds.

We worship all sorts of things. We do worship the creation rather than the creator. But it's this twisting, this taking God off the throne, and he's no longer the creator, we are, and now we can judge God.

This rebellion, this twisting, you will find it at the heart of every sin. When you kill, you're denying God is creator. Why? Because he gave that other person that life and you have no right to take it away.

When you commit adultery, you're denying that God is the creator because God has designed you to function in certain ways and that's not the way he designed you to work. But you're saying you have the right to change that.

When you covet, you're denying God is creator. God has placed you in the position that you are in, and if you are willing to covet someone else's possessions in such a way or someone else's wife, you're questioning the very wisdom of God in placing you where you are.

This twisting of the creator-creation relationship you will find to be extremely important to Paul's doctrine and therefore the Scripture's doctrine of what sin is. So man in sin becomes self-oriented.

Instead of last week when we drew up on the board God being in the center and everything else radiating out from around him, we change that and we put us there. And we think that God has to bow before us and we can judge him and we can judge God's word and we can judge God's law and we can...

We're in the center. I have all these rights myself because I'm not dependent upon anyone. This is what he tells us. So we have the twisting of the creator-creation relationship. What else do we have?

Total Depravity and the Bondage of the Will

Turn to Romans chapter 3. In Romans chapter 3, Paul wraps together a number of passages from the Old Testament to give us just a short, and if you listen closely and think about how much of this applies to each one of us, a far too long description of what sin is like in human experience.

Beginning in verse 9. What then? Are we better than they? Not at all. We have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin, as it is written. There is none righteous. Not even one. There is none who understands.

There is none who seeks for God. Not one. All have turned aside. Together they have become useless. There is none who does good. There is not even one. Their throat is an open grave. With their tongues they keep deceiving.

The poison of asps is under their lips. Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their paths. And the path of peace they have not known.

There is no fear of God before their eyes. Do you hear what he says? A modern humanist just screeches at such things. Oh, you have such a horrible view of man. Man is such a noble creature. Yes, as created in the image of God he is, but man is in sin.

And there are certain effects to sin. I will point out to you that in verse 11 we are told there is none who understands. There is none who understands. And then the next phrase, if you take off the first word in the Greek language, what you have is there is one who seeks God.

If you take off the first word. There is a God seeker. But in the Greek language you put this strong negative particle right at the front. There is no God seeker. Man who is enslaved to sin does not seek after God.

You say, no, wait a minute, wait a minute. I have known people. I have known people and they were seeking after God and they came to me and I shared with them and they are Christians. They were seeking after God.

One of two things. Either A, God was already working in that person's life and had given to them that desire to seek after Him because that is the only place it can come from because the scripture says there is none who seeks after God.

Or B, if you have encountered a person who you think is seeking after truth, I would submit to you that there are many people that are seeking after the benefits of God without dealing with God. There is a lot of benefits to a God figure.

Oh, I can pray to God. I can ask God to protect my things. It gives me nice warm feelings inside. But does that person truly wish to deal with their sin? Does that person truly wish to repent? We will think more about this this evening.

But I press upon you this point. First of all, on the basis of just the passages we looked at already, we see that man is affected by sin not just simply in being alienated from God and then just left in his original condition.

But here we are told that man's behavior, man's thinking, man's mind, man's heart, all is affected by sin. That's what the doctrine of total depravity is about. It does not say that man is as evil as he could be because he isn't.

I think the only reason that man isn't as evil as he could be is because God is actively intervening in the world to curb evil. God rarely gets thanked for that because we never see it. He could be curbing 99 of evil in this world and what does he get blamed for?

He gets blamed for the 1%. He gets blamed for the little 4-year-old boy that's murdered in our valley. He gets blamed for that but he doesn't ever get thanked for the 999 little children that are alive today because God withheld evil from occurring to them.

I must emphasize there is not one who seeks God. Those are not my words. Those are not my words. You can search. You can dig. You can look at the text. There's no textual variation there. You can do anything you want.

You can't get rid of it. It's there. We must deal with it. You know, someone who really had, from God, an incredible insight into the human heart was Jeremiah. Turn with me to Jeremiah chapter 13. Jeremiah 13, verse 23.

Jeremiah asked the rhetorical question, Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? The answer? No. Then you also can do good who are accustomed to doing evil. In other words, if they can, the day that that happens, then you who are accustomed to doing evil, fine, you'll be able to do good all of yourself.

But till the day that happens, my friend, you who are accustomed to doing evil will not all of a sudden change in the morning and start doing good. The ability to do that, my friends, comes from God and God alone.

The very grace of God, as we will see as we continue working. Turn over to chapter 17 in the same book. Jeremiah 17, 9. Is the heart affected by sin? Listen to this prophet. The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick.

Who can understand? The heart is desperately deceitful. It's sick. It's wicked. And that's where we live. That's where the center of our being is. You wonder why people have warped views of who they are?

It's like looking through a warped glass. You're going to see the world in strange ways if you do it. Now, one of the favorite passages, one of the favorite descriptions of scripture of the effect of sin upon man is introduced to us, for example, in Ephesians chapter 2.

I hope you've got your fingers warmed up because we're going to be moving through a lot of these pages tonight. Ephesians chapter 2. Beginning in verse 1. And you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the Prince, the power of the air, of the Spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.

Among them we too all formed to live in the lust of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. You were dead. You were dead.

Now, how we are eventually going to understand many important aspects of the doctrine of salvation will be dependent upon one of two things. Actually, two things together. First of all, what we spoke about earlier in regards to the nature of God.

Is God changeable? Or is God eternally the same? Does God experience a progression of time? Or does He not? That'll be the first thing. God's sovereignty. The second thing will be the sin of man. What is the effect of the sin of man?

Do we seriously accept? And do we take to the length that Scripture takes it, the statement that man is dead in sin? What does it mean when we say man is dead in sin? Stay in the epistles of Apostle Paul and turn to Colossians, chapter 2, verses 13 through 14.

And when you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us and which was hostile to us.

And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. But first He says, when you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh. First of all, saying that we are dead in sin means that we no longer have the image of God.

Well, I've already said that I don't think that's what it means. What it does mean is that the entire being of mind, the entire being of man, including the mind and knowledge, is affected. It also means, as we will see from Scripture, that man is in bondage to sin.

Man is in bondage to sin. The will of man is a part of man. And if man is in bondage to sin, then the will becomes enslaved to sin. Now, what is the will? What do we mean when we talk about the will of man?

Well, large volumes have been written on this one too. Most of those who loudly tout the subject of free will have not, in my experience, done a whole lot of serious thinking as to exactly what it is they're speaking of.

At least that's been my experience. Oh yes, man has a free will. Well, what do you mean by free will? Do you mean an autonomous will? That is, that man's will is totally separate from the will of God, is totally free of the will of God?

Well, certainly we know that's ridiculous. I may will to fly home this evening, but I won't. I will drive home this evening, Lord willing that the car gets that far, right? So my will, as far as that goes, is obviously, first of all, limited by what I am.

My will is limited by the fact that I'm created by God to be man. And God has placed certain limitations on what it is to be man. I can't fly. I can't stay underwater without artificial sources of oxygen for a lengthy period of time before doing great damage to my body.

There's lots of things that I cannot will to do. I might want to live with the fish, but I'm not going to live down there very long. So my will is obviously not simply free in the sense of being unlimited and unfettered.

But what is the will? Well, you say it's the ability to make decisions. Hmm. Well, I'm not sure about that. I'm not sure about that. I will simply present to you briefly the concept as it has been developed by the great theologian from New England, Jonathan Edwards, in his book on the will of man, on the free will of man, in fact.

He goes along these lines. The will can only make decisions and act upon desires that are presented to it. So that means that, really, the set of desires that are placed before us will determine the outcome of the will.

If, for example, R .C. Sproul uses it as an example in his book, Chosen by God, which is an excellent work if you have ever read it. R .C. Sproul uses the example of his love of ice cream. None of you, I'm sure, share his weakness in that area.

Right, Henry? No, not at all. And he indicates that about, oh, about 30 or 20 or 30, I wouldn't want him to hear this and exaggerate the figure, but about 20 or 30 pounds of his body weight he directly attributes to a certain kind of ice cream.

That's how it got there. Now, he would like to have a fit and trim body. He'd like to look like Calvin or Rick up here, but he doesn't look that way. So, after enough jibes from your wife, which is normally how I end up going on some exercising binge, oh, dear, you look like you're expecting, something like that, I go on some exercise program and I start resisting the donuts in the other room or the ice cream or the Hershey bars or something like that.

But then, as you walk through one of the malls around here, you encounter 31 Flavors or Baskin Robbins or something like that. And right up front, they have your favorite ice cream. Now, your will is now faced with two conflicting desires.

And what you do is going to be dependent upon which of those two desires is stronger. Now, if your wife, as you went out that morning, had made another comment about your bulging waistline, your desire for a thin, trim body may be stronger than your desire for that ice cream, in which case, you will bravely continue on patting yourself on the back but still wishing you could have that ice cream.

If you feel like you've accomplished a little something and you're starting to feel like you're looking pretty good, then that desire for the thin, trim body isn't quite as strong because, well, I've sort of accomplished something.

And so, if the desire for that ice cream is stronger than your desire for that thin, trim body, then you'll look like Melvin. You'll eat the ice cream, won't you? But your will chooses on the basis of the desires that are presented to it.

You say, now, wait a minute. I can think of some situations where that's not true. What if a guy walks into my office and he's got a gun and he holds my head and he says, give me your money or I'm going to blow your brains out.

You say, now, what does that do to your whole thing? Well, you're still faced with two sets of desires. Now, your first set of desires is, I don't want to have my brains blown out. I'd like to live a little while longer.

But there is a second set of desires. You do not voluntarily wish to contribute to this man's financial future. And if your desire not to do so is strong enough, you're going to say, go ahead. Most of us aren't going to do that, but you still have two sets of desires from which you're choosing.

Now, what is the point of all this? The point is this. Do we not, as Christians, I have never met a person, even one who just denies the whole concept of the depravity of man or the necessity of the regenerating grace of God.

Even a person who says, no, it is man's decision, it's man's work. All the way. I have never yet met a person who is unwilling to pray, Lord, place a desire in my heart to serve you. But think about what you just prayed.

If you pray such a prayer, you are recognizing the fact that God not only can, but needs, by His grace, to place into your heart the desire to serve Him. You are tacitly recognizing the fact that desires such as that, holy, righteous desires, only come by the grace of God, by the work of the Holy Spirit.

And you're really saying, God, change my will. Control my will. Now, if man is spiritually dead, as we have seen from the scriptures already, from what source then would come any godly or good desire?

Oh, well, the natural man can do that. That's not what Jeremiah said, did it? What did he say about the heart? What did Paul say in Romans 3 .11 about man? There is none who understands, there is none who seeks after God.

Why? Why can Paul make that statement? Why can the scripture, without exception, without explanation, say there is no such of this kind of person? Because of the fact that man is dead in sin. And therefore, as Edwards would explain in regards to the nature of the will, there is no way for those proper, holy, and just, and righteous desires to even be presented to the will.

So therefore, the will becomes enslaved to what? To the only thing it has available to it. Its own nature. Evil. Evil. What this results in then, is it makes man morally unable to choose the right. You say, no, wait a minute, no, wait a minute, no, wait a minute, wait a minute.

I know people who are in no way Christians, and yet they do good things and they do right things and they do honest things. So what are you talking about? Well, so do I. So do I. I know people like that too.

But why do they do those things? In the ultimate final analysis, why do they do those things? What purpose? Are they truly glorifying God in what they're doing? Is that the purpose of their actions? And when we get down to the real discussion that we're moving toward this evening in regards to salvation itself, do not the scriptures teach us these very things?

Turn with me to John chapter 6. John chapter 6. Tremendous passage. Well worth a few weeks in and of itself. Let us begin at verse 43. Jesus answered and said to them. Let's get a little context. Jesus has said some tremendous things about himself already.