ANTHROPOLOGY
The Study of
the Doctrine of Man
(Four Sessions)
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Session Sixteen: JESUS, THE IMAGE OF MAN
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PURPOSE
OF SESSION
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To
come to know Jesus as the image of the constitutional nature of man.
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EMPHASIS
OF SESSION
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The
constitutional nature of man, with Jesus as its revelation, is a single
entity, although man subsists as body and Spirit, more specifically, as
body, Spirit, and soul.
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Introduction
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Theological
anthropology recognizes only the revelation of God as its source of true
knowledge.
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The observations of
man in the quest to know himself are the deterrents of his own
understanding.
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Much like the
distortion of seeing things in water, man’s observations by
his physical senses distort the real nature of his spiritual
being.
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Man cannot be
separated from his experiences, but it is not his experiences
that bring the final meaning to life.
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Ultimately, the nature
of man can only be understood in the definitive revelation of
God to man--Jesus Christ.
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In
the mystery of the incarnation of the Son of God manifested in the human
flesh of Jesus of Nazareth lies the knowledge of the constitutional
nature of man.
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Jesus is totally God
and totally man.
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He has a
divine nature in all aspects of what it means to be God.
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He has a
human nature in all aspects of what it means to be
man.
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Yet, Jesus is
not a person of dual personalities--He is one person.
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His divine nature and
His human nature are set together in perfect
oneness of soul.
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When
the life of Jesus is seen from the vantage point of His actual existence
as recorded in the gospel, both His divinity and His humanity are
apparent.
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He wept, experienced
sorrow, and suffered as a human being.
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Being God, He also
demonstrated omniscience, omnipotence, and omni-presence.
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Jesus was a
dichotomous being subsisting of two parts--divine and human.
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But,
being a dichotomous misses the ultimate truth of the God-man
Jesus.
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There was never a
moment of time in his life that His divinity and His humanity
were ever independent entities.
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Jesus
experienced the frailties of His human flesh.
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Although
being God, He never overrode His humanity with His
divinity.
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Every action
of the God-man Jesus was always manifested out of the
perfect oneness of His soul.
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It could be said that
Jesus was a trichotomous being subsisting of three
parts--divine, human, and the soul.
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Being
a trichotomy being, also, misses the ultimate truth of the God-man
Jesus.
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There was never a
moment of time in his life that any action of Jesus ever
occurred that did not come out of the perfect harmony of His
divinity and His humanity.
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Totally God and
totally man, yet Jesus was one personality of being.
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It is His oneness, His
simple unity, that overshadows the dichotomy and trichotomy
being of His existence on earth.
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When
man was created, he was a flesh and blood body in-breathed by the Spirit
of God.
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He was a creature of
two worlds--the flesh and the Spirit.
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It could be said also
that man is a dichotomous being.
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The Scriptures often
speak of man in terms of spiritual versus temporal, immaterial
versus material, and heavenly versus earthly.
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When the Bible speaks
in generalities, often contrasting the flesh and the spirit, the
dichotomous view of man is emphasized.
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But,
like Jesus, a dichotomous view of man falls far short of the true
nature of man.
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When God formed man
out of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the
breath of life, he became a living soul.
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Man is more than a
body experiencing the Spirit of God.
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It could be said also
that he is a trichotomous being.
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Often when the Bible
addresses the specifics of the nature of man, it does so from a
trichotomous view--a body, experiencing the Spirit of God, which
produces a soul.
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Although
body, Spirit, and soul make up the nature of man, he cannot be divided
into parts.
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The Scriptures always
represent man as a single entity.
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He is presented as a
complex being, but never existing in parallel parts.
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Every act of man is an
act of the whole man.
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When the body
experiences sin, the soul sins.
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When the Spirit is
vexed, the whole man is troubled.
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When the soul is sick,
the whole body experiences sickness.
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The constitutional
nature of man, with Jesus as its revelation, is a single entity,
although man subsists as body and Spirit, more specifically, as
body, Spirit, and soul.
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Listen
to CD 16
(Approximately Forty-Five Minutes of Exposition
on the Words of Jesus Found in Matthew 13:1-13;12:22-37)
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Order
Basic Bible Beliefs Part Two
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| Return
to Basic Bible Beliefs |
Session Seventeen: JESUS, THE IMAGE OF THE SOUL
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PURPOSE
OF SESSION
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To
come to know Jesus as the image of the soul.
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EMPHASIS
OF SESSION
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Like
the meeting place between God and man, which is Jesus Christ, the soul
of man is the meeting place of the flesh and the Spirit.
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Introduction
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In
the counsel of God before the creation of the world, it was decreed that
man would have the opportunity to experience the life of God by
experiencing the Son of God.
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Jesus said, ". .
. as the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the
Son to have life in himself; And hath given him authority to
execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man" (John
5:26-27).
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The
Father has not only "given to the Son to have life within
himself," He has also given the Son to be the One that would enable
man to experience that life ("authority to execute
judgment").
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By the Son of God
becoming the Son of Man, the creature could experience the life
of the Creator.
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With God being the
only One that has "life within himself," it would be
necessary for the Son of God to become the One mediator
(the Person of the Godhead which would be the
"go-between" God of the heavenly realm and man of the
earthly realm).
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By being the One which
bridged the gap between Creator and creation, the Son of God
became the meeting place between God and man.
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The heavenly realm
(the spiritual) and the earthly realm (the physical) could set
together in the Son of God, who was manifested in the God-man
Jesus Christ.
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Man
is a creature of two different worlds.
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He has a flesh and
blood body.
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With his physical body
being in-breathed by the Spirit of God, he is also a spiritual
being.
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He is of the heavenly
world.
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Man lives the days of
his life in both domains--the earthly and the heavenly.
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The creature has a
flesh and blood body with a sensing network of seeing, hearing,
tasting, smelling, and touching.
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Man encounters his
existence in the earthly world through physical and material
experiences.
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The created being
lives in the created world.
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The creature also
experiences the breath of life.
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The physical body is
animated by the quickening Spirit of life from heaven.
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Man has his existence
by the essence of life itself, the Spirit of the Living God.
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Man
is more than just body and Spirit.
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For when God
"formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into
his nostrils the breath of life . . . man became a living
soul" (Gen. 2:7).
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The breathing creature
could exist because the soul became the place where the flesh of
man and the Spirit of God could set together in life.
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The Father, through
the Son of God, and by the Spirit of God, brought into being an
entity with personal identity.
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He who was not a
person became a person--a living soul.
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Man’s
soul, his psyche, is the wonder of all created existence.
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It subsists because
the physical body and the Spirit of God, which are diametrically
opposed to each other in the essence of their being, needed a
common ground where they could interact.
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Like the meeting place
between God and man, which is in Jesus Christ, the soul of man
is the meeting place of the flesh and the Spirit.
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The soul exists
because man, as a flesh and blood body, experiences the Spirit
of God. In the original creation of man, he was body and soul
experiencing the Spirit of God--there was no spirit of man.
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The
soul, which does not exist without that which brought it into being--the
body and the Spirit, is all that the mind of man is experiencing in the
current moment of his life.
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It is where the
memories of the past and the anticipations of the future come
together in the present moment of its existence.
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At any given moment of
time, the soul of man is the current thought of his mind--a
thought that can be overwhelmed by the earthly sensations and
become fleshly, or be baptized by the heavenly Spirit and become
spiritual.
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The soul of the
created being is where all of life comes together to be
experienced.
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Listen
to CD 17
(Approximately Forty-Five Minutes of Exposition
on the Words of Jesus Found in Matthew 16:13-28)
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Order
Basic Bible Beliefs Part Two
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| Return
to Basic Bible Beliefs |
Session Eighteen: JESUS, THE IMAGE OF PERFECTION
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PURPOSE
OF SESSION
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To come to know Jesus as the
model for the understanding of the nature of man in its completeness.
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EMPHASIS
OF SESSION
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The cycle of life for all
creation is illustrated by the life of Jesus: He was born, grew to
manhood, interacted with people, was killed by people, raised from the
dead, and brought life to those very people.
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Introduction
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Jesus,
again, serves as the model for the understanding of the nature of man in
its completeness.
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Although Jesus,
totally God and totally man, lived His life in simple unity of
the soul "who did no sin, neither was guile found in his
mouth" (1 Pet. 2:22), it is recorded of Him that He became
"perfect through suffering" (Heb. 2:10).
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He knew no sin and yet
He needed to be made perfect.
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As the writer of
Hebrews stated, "though he were a Son, yet learned he
obedience by the things which he suffered; and being made
perfect, he became the author of salvation unto all them that
obey him" (Heb. 5:9).
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Jesus without sin or
any shadow of deception found Himself in need of perfection--in
need of completeness.
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God
came into the world of man through Jesus of Nazareth to show man the
secret to life.
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Jesus not only
revealed the way to experience life He would also become the way
of life.
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Simply put, Jesus was
born, grew to manhood, interacted with people, was killed by
people, raised from that death, and brought life to those very
people.
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It is the cycle of
life for all creation.
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Every living thing
experiences the completion of its life in the same manner.
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As Jesus said
approaching his death, "Except a corn of wheat fall into
the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth
forth much fruit" (John 12:24).
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Unless man experiences
the process of being made complete he will always experience
life as though something is lacking.
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The
first man, Adam, found himself in a similar situation.
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Before sin had entered
into a creation declared to be good by God, he was placed in an
enchanting garden to work and to watch over it.
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It was a place of
plentiful supply of gold, precious jewels, food, water, purpose
for living, and fellowship with God that was experienced by man.
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It was paradise on
earth.
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Yet, something was
missing.
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Although living in a
perfect environment with every one of his physical needs amply
provided, and without sin, man must have felt an inner longing
for something more, a sense of fulfillment that he was
lacking.
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For God passed
judgment on this flawless work of creation and said, "It is
not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help
meet for him" (Gen. 2:18). And the Lord God, ". . .
made he a woman, and brought her unto the man" (Gen. 2:22).
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With the word alone
meaning, "separation or solitary," the man seemed to
be incomplete (in part, not whole) without a second person to
perfect him.
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It is
significant to understand that God does not say to the
individual man that he was created in the image and
likeness of God.
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It is only
after the second person is created and presented to the
first person that God blesses his creation and calls it
good.
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The first person, the
second person, and the relationship between them are now said to
be created in the image and the likeness of God.
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The
perfecting process always involves the person, another person,
and the interaction between them.
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Everything else in
life (all the complexities that make up the spectrum of one’s
life) comes out of this basic encounter of life.
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Manage this
fundamental experience correctly and life becomes not only under
control but is perfected--fulfilled in completeness.
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The
essentials of how to manage this moment of life, which is the
foundational block on which all of life exists, is given in the original
formation of man.
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The first man
existed.
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He had been created
but he was incomplete, unfulfilled.
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The second person had
to be created.
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However, the second
person created like the first person, an autonomous,
free-standing person would mean nothing towards the fulfillment
of the completed life.
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It would simply be two
alone people occupying approximately the same space trying to
experience something that is impossible to experience without
the path of life--the process of Christian perfection.
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Before
the second person could be brought into the life of the first person,
the first person had to be taken down, put to sleep, die as an
autonomous, free-standing person.
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Once asleep, God took
out of the first person the ground of being for the second
person.
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Once the second person
was created by God, she was then brought back to the first
person and presented to him as the aid, the helper, or the
ground of being for the completion or fulfillment of the first
person.
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Likewise, through the
creative power of God, the second person was made all that she
could be through the first person.
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In the giving and
receiving of the two, each of the participants were made all
they could be.
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It is the process of
Christian perfection which mirrors the life, death, and
resurrection of Jesus--Jesus is the image of perfection.
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Listen
to CD 18
(Approximately Forty-Five Minutes of Exposition
on the Words of Jesus Found in Matthew 22:34-40;5:21-26;18:1-20)
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Order
Basic Bible Beliefs Part Two
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| Return
to Basic Bible Beliefs |
Session Nineteen: JESUS, THE IMAGE OF LIFE
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PURPOSE OF SESSION
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To come to know Jesus as the image of
life--living in the power and glory of the kingdom of God.
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EMPHASIS OF SESSION
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The real five-fold ministry of Christianity:
to preach the gospel to the poor; to deliver the captives; to give sight
to the blind; to set free the bruised; and to preach the acceptable year
of the Lord.
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Introduction
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In
the beginning of the ministry of Jesus, not many days after He had been
baptized by John in the river of Jordan, Jesus returned to Nazareth
where He had been raised as a child.
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He entered the local
synagogue on the Sabbath which was His custom.
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When it came time for
the reading of the Scriptures, He stood to his feet, and the
writings of Isaiah, the prophet, was handed to him.
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He opened the scroll
and found the desired passage.
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He read, "The
Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to
preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the
brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and
recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that
are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord"
(Luke 4:16-9).
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The message Jesus preached.
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According to the
gospel of Mark which many believe to be the first gospel
written, the first recorded words of Jesus were "The time
is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand . . ."
(Mark 1:14).
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Luke, the historian of
the early church, recorded that Jesus told a group of people who
wanted Him to stay with them, "I must preach the kingdom of
God to other cities also: for therefore am I sent" (Luke
4:43).
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Luke further added,
"And it came to pass afterward, that he went throughout
every city and village, preaching and shewing the glad tidings
of the kingdom of God . . ." (Luke 8:1).
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In Matthew’s account
of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus gave the fundamental
principles of the Kingdom of God, he recorded the essence of
Jesus’ message with "Therefore take no thought, saying,
What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal
shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles
seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all
these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his
righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto
you" (Matt. 6:31-33).
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The
message of the early followers of Jesus.
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The earliest history
of the church began with Jesus showing "himself alive after
his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty
days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of
God" (Acts 1:3).
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The history of the
church continued with the followers of Jesus traveling
throughout the land "preaching the things concerning the
kingdom of God" (Acts 8:12).
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Finally, the record of
the early history closed with "And Paul dwelt two whole
years in his own hired house, and received all that came in unto
him, preaching the kingdom of God . . ." (Acts
28:30-31).
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The
promise of Jesus before His death, "Verily I say unto you, That
there be some of [you] that stand here, which shall not taste of death,
till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power" (Mark 9:1),
had come true.
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The early followers of
Jesus were living and experiencing the Kingdom of God in all of
its glory.
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Jesus,
again, gives us the image of life--living in the reality of the kingdom
of God.
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The Spirit of the
Lord, the same Spirit that dwells within every believer, was
upon Him to announce good news to those that had become beggarly
in life.
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He now had a powerful
message for those who were lacking the bare necessities of
life.
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He had been sent to
herald the truth that would deliver those who had become in
bondage to their own mind.
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Now, those who had
become blind to the ways of life could recover their
sight.
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Those who had been
crushed by life, now, they could be set free to enjoy life.
Jesus had come to proclaim that the kingdom of God is at
hand.
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After
reading in the prophet Isaiah, He closed the scroll and gave it back to
the leader of the synagogue.
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As He sat down, the
eyes of everyone were focused upon Him.
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They were confounded
that out of His mouth they had heard such gracious words.
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He calmly said,
"This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears."
(Luke 4:21).
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This
is the real five-fold ministry of Christianity:
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To preach the gospel
to the poor; to deliver the captives; to give sight to the
blind; to set free the bruised; and to preach the acceptable
year of the Lord.
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In summary, Jesus came
to heal the brokenhearted.
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There is no greater
joy in life than to experience Jesus through the needs of
others.
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Listen to CD 19
Approximately Forty-Five Minutes of Exposition
on the Words of Jesus Found in Matthew 28:16-20; Luke 10:1-11)
|
Order
Basic Bible Beliefs Part Two
|
| Return
to Basic Bible Beliefs |
|
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