The
Study of the Doctrine of Man
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Session Sixteen: JESUS, THE IMAGE OF MAN
Introduction
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Theological anthropology recognizes only the
revelation of God as its source of true knowledge. The observations of
man in the quest to know himself is, in fact, the deterrent of his own
understanding. Much like the distortion of seeing things in water, man’s
observations by his physical senses distorts the real nature of his
spiritual being. Man cannot be separated from his experiences, but it is
not his experiences that brings the final meaning to life. Ultimately,
the nature of man can only be understood in the definitive revelation of
God to man--Jesus Christ.
In the mystery of the incarnation of the Son of God into the human flesh
of Jesus of Nazareth lies the knowledge of the constitutional nature of
man. Jesus is totally God and totally man. He has a divine nature in all
aspects of what it means to be God. He has a human nature in all aspects
of what it means to be man. Yet, Jesus is not a person of duel
personalities. He is one person. His divine nature and His human nature
set together in perfect oneness of soul.
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
is apparent. He wept, experienced sorrow, and suffered as a human being.
He also demonstrated as God omniscience, omnipotence, and omni-presence.
It could be said that Jesus was a dichotomus being subsisting of two
parts--divine and human.
To do so, however, misses the ultimate truth of the God-man Jesus. There
was never a moment of time in his life that His divinity and His
humanity were ever independent entities. Although Jesus could experience
the frailties of His human flesh, He never overrode His humanity with
His divinity. Every action of the God-man Jesus was always manifested
out of the perfect oneness of His soul. It could be said that Jesus was
a trichotomous being subsisting of three parts--divine, human, and the
soul.
To do so, however, misses the ultimate truth of the God-man Jesus. 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. Totally God and totally man, yet Jesus was one
personality of being. It is His oneness, His simple unity, that over
shadows the dichotomy and trichotomy of His existence on earth.
When man was created, he was a flesh and blood body in-breathed by the
Spirit of God. He was a creature of two worlds--the flesh and the
Spirit. It could be said also that man is a dichotomous being. The
Scriptures often speak of man in terms of spiritual versus temporal,
immaterial versus material, and heavenly versus earthly. When the Bible
speaks in generalities, often contrasting the flesh and the spirit, the
dichotomous view of man is emphasized.
As with Jesus, a dichotomous view of man falls far short of the true
nature of man. When God formed man out of the dust of the ground and
breathed into his nostril the breath of life, he became a living soul.
Man is more than a body experiencing the Spirit of God. It could be said
also he is a trichotomous being. 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.
Although body, Spirit, and soul make up the nature of man, he cannot be
divided into so many parts. The Scriptures always represent man as a
single entity. He is presented as a complex being but never existing in
parallel parts. Every act of man is an act of the whole man. When the
body experiences sin, the soul sins. When the Spirit is vexed, the whole
man is troubled. When the soul is sick, the whole body experiences that
sickness. 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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CD 16 Is
Approximately Forty-Five Minutes of Exposition
on the Words of Jesus Found in the Gospels
|
REQUEST
BOOK FOUR AND CD'S NOW
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TOP
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Session Seventeen: JESUS, THE IMAGE OF THE
SOUL
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. 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). In
other words, 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"). By the Son of God becoming the Son of Man, the creature
could experience the life of the Creator.
With God being the only One that has "life within himself," it
would be necessary for the Son of God to becomes the mediator (the
Person of the Godhead which would be the "go-between") of God
of the heavenly realm and of man of the earthly realm. By being the One
which bridged the gap between Creator and creation, the Son of God
became the meeting place of God and man. The heavenly realm (the
spiritual) and the earthly realm (the physical) could now sets together
in the Son of God as made manifest in the God-man Jesus Christ.
Man is a creature of two different worlds. He has a flesh and blood
body. He is of the earth. With his physical body being in-breathed by
the Spirit of God, he is also a spiritual being. He is of the heavenly
world. Man lives the days of his life in both domains--the earthly and
the heavenly.
The creature has a flesh and blood body with a sensing network of
seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching. Man encounters his
existence in the earthly world of material experiences. The created
being lives in the created world.
The creature also experiences the breath of life. The physical body is
animated by the quickening Spirit of life from heaven. Man has his
existence by the essence of life itself, the Spirit of the Living God.
Man is more than just body and Spirit. 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). 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. The Father,
through the Son of God and by the Spirit of God, brought into being an
entity with personal identity. He who was not a person became a
person--a living soul.
Man’s soul, his psyche, is the wonder of all created existence. 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. Like the meeting place
of God and of man in Jesus Christ, the soul of man is the meeting place
of the flesh and the Spirit. 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.
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. It is where the memories
of the past and the anticipations of the future come together in the
present moment of its existence. At any given moment of time, the soul
of man is the current thought of his mind--a though that can be
overwhelmed by the earthly sensations (becomes fleshly) or be baptized
by the heavenly Spirit (become spiritual). The soul of the created being
is where all of life comes together to be experienced.
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CD 17 Is
Approximately Forty-Five Minutes of Exposition
on the Words of Jesus Found in the Gospels
|
REQUEST
BOOK FOUR AND CD'S NOW
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TOP
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Session Eighteen: JESUS, THE PERFECTION OF
MAN
Introduction
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Jesus, again, serves as the model for the
understanding of the nature of man in its completeness. 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). He knew no sin and yet He needed to be made
perfect. 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" (5:9). Jesus without sin or any shadow of deception found
Himself in need of perfection--in need of completeness.
God came into the world of man through Jesus of Nazareth to show man the
secret to life. Jesus not only revealed the way to experience life He
would also become the way of life. 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. It is the cycle of life
for all creation. Every living thing experiences the completion of its
life in the same manner. 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).
Unless man experiences the process of being made complete he will always
experience life as though something is lacking.
The first man, Adam, found himself in a similar situation. 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. It was a place of
plentiful supply for gold, precious jewels, food, water, purpose for
living, and fellowship with God was experienced by man. It was paradise
on earth.
Yet, something was missing. Although living in a perfect environment
with everyone 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. 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).
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. 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. It is only after the second person is created and presented to
the first person that God blesses his creation and calls it good. 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.
The perfecting process for every person always involves the
person, another person, and the interaction between them. Everything
else in life (all the complexities that make up the total spectrum of
one’s life) comes out of this basic encounter of life. Manage this
fundamental experience correctly and life becomes not only under control
but is perfected--fulfilled in completeness..
The essentials of how to manage this moment of life, which is the
foundational block on which all of life exist, is given in the original
formation of man. The first man existed. He had been created but he was
incomplete, unfulfilled. The second person had to be created. However,
the second person created like the first person, an autonomous,
free-standing person would mean nothing towards the fulfillment of the
completed life. 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.
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. Once asleep, God took out of the first
person the ground of being for the second person. Once the second person
is created by God, she is 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. Likewise, through the
creative power of God, the second person is made all that she can be
through the first person. In the giving and receiving of the two, each
of the participants are made all they can be. It is the process of
Christian perfection which mirrors exactly the life, death, and
resurrection of Jesus
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CD 18 Is
Approximately Forty-Five Minutes of Exposition
on the Words of Jesus Found in the Gospels
|
REQUEST
BOOK FOUR AND CD'S NOW
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TOP
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Session Nineteen: JESUS, THE IMAGE OF LIFE
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. He
entered the local synagogue on the Sabbath, which was His custom. 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. He opened the
scroll and found the desired passage. 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).
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).
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). 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). 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).
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). 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). 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). 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. The early followers of Jesus were
living and experiencing the Kingdom of God in all of its glory.
Jesus, again, gives us the image of life--living in the reality of the
kingdom of God. The Spirit of the Lord, the same Spirit that dwells
within every man, was upon Him to announce good news to those that had
become beggarly in life. He now had a powerful message for those who
were lacking the bare necessities of life. He had been sent to herald
the truth that would deliver those who had become in bondage to their
own mind. Now, those who had become blind to the ways of life could
recover their sight. To those who had been crushed by life now could be
set free to enjoy life. Jesus had come to proclaim the kingdom of God is
at hand.
After reading in the prophet Isaiah, He closed the scroll and gave it
back to the leader of the synagogue. As He sat down, the eyes of
everyone was focused upon Him. They were confounded that out of His
mouth they had heard such gracious words. He calmly said, "This day
is this scripture fulfilled in your ears." (Luke 4:21).
This is 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.
In summary, Jesus came to heal the brokenhearted. There is go greater
joy in life than to experience Jesus in the needs of others.
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CD 19 Is
Approximately Forty-Five Minutes of Exposition
on the Words of Jesus Found in the Gospels
|
REQUEST
BOOK FOUR AND CD'S NOW
|
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Schedule