Article 3: The Human Condition

We believe that God created Adam and Eve in his image, but they sinned when they were tempted by Satan. The result is that all human beings are sinners by nature and by choice, alienated from God, and under his wrath. Through God’s saving work in Jesus Christ we can be rescued, reconciled, and renewed.

God’s gospel alone addresses our deepest human need.
 

Statement of Faith - Commentary

(This commentary is based on a book, entitled Evangelical Convictions: A Theological Exposition of the Statement of Faith of the Evangelical Free Church of America. The exposition I have adapted from that book is shorter and re-drafted to fit the Statement of Faith we are proposing at LAC. I am thankful to my theologian friends—Mike Andrus, Bill Jones, Bill Kynes, David Martin, Ruben Martinez, and Greg Strand—both for the work together and for the opportunity to post this material. Though many contributed to the commentary, the writing was done mainly by Dr. Greg Strand and Dr. Bill Kynes. Your pastor accepts responsibility both for the abridging and for the re-focusing of the commentary now being made available to us.)

What does it mean to be human? This is the question that every bioethical issue seemed to boil down to at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School’s Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity. When does human life begin and end? Is human life different qualitatively from other life on the planet? How much are we willing to pay to sustain a human life? What is the reason for so much human dysfunction? The questions go on and on. It seems that though our knowledge of the world around us has exploded since the dawn of the scientific age, we remain a mystery to ourselves. The human person continues to perplex and confound. We are a part of the natural world as animals among animals, yet instinctively we feel that we are more than that —we are spiritual creatures, conceiving of eternity, longing for immortality.

We long for significance, but as mere specks in space and time in the immensity of the cosmos, we wonder how we can find it. The ancient Hebrew psalmist wrestled with the question: “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is a human being that you are mindful of him, a son of man that you care for him?” (Ps. 8:3–4). So does physicist Stephen Hawking, who said, “We are such insignificant creatures on a minor planet of a very average star in the outer suburbs of one of a hundred thousand million galaxies. So it is difficult to believe in a God that would care about us or even notice our existence.”[1]

But the puzzle of humanity also has a moral dimension. We are capable of acts of great compassion and even heroic virtue. Some even sacrifice their lives to rescue others in peril. Yet some deep stain of corruption still plagues human life. The evidences of the darkness of the human heart are pervasive in human history, yet such darkness still surprises us. Something seems to have gone dreadfully wrong.

Daniel Migliore sums it up well: “We human beings are a mystery to ourselves. We are rational and irrational, civilized and savage, capable of deep friendship and murderous hostility, free and in bondage, the pinnacle of creation and its greatest danger. We are Rembrandt and Hitler, Mozart and Stalin, Antigone and Lady Macbeth, Ruth and Jezebel.”[2]

Where can we go for help as we wrestle with this riddle? We must go to God if we are to find the answer to this most baffling riddle. For God our creator has spoken to us through his Word and has revealed his answer to the human dilemma. He spoke both of our dignity and our depravity. And, as importantly, he also revealed the one way that human depravity can be destroyed and human dignity established through divine redemption.

I. The Source of Human Dignity: Our Creation in God's Image

The biblical story of creation finds its climax in these words from Genesis 1:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. . . . God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. (Gen. 1:26–27, 31)

Here is the source of all human dignity and significance and the place where the sanctity of human life is rooted. Of all the creatures on the earth, only human beings are created in the image of God. Human beings are creatures of great worth, but it is a derived dignity, a God-given greatness. According to the Bible, human beings must be defined in terms of their relation to God — as beings created in the image of God.

The more detailed story of the creation of the first man in Genesis 2 makes it clear that human beings are a part of the created order. Adam, the first human, was made from the dust of the earth, just like all the animals (Gen. 2:19). Yet in this one respect he was unique: Though created from the dust of the earth, he was made in the image of God. He was a part of the natural world, yet in some sense above it, transcending it. Part of the riddle of our existence is found in this precarious position; we are suspended between two worlds.

A. Human Beings as God’s Image

What does it mean to be created in God’s image? The Bible does not define the phrase, so we must draw inferences from elsewhere in Scripture.[3] The language suggests that in some sense human beings were created to “mirror”God, to reflect something of who he is in the world.

But what is the nature of this divine reflection? In what ways either do or should human beings mirror God? Human beings are rational beings, able to think and seek truth; we are moral beings, able to make judgments about good and evil; we are social beings who thrive in community, able to communicate and love; we are artistic beings, able to create and appreciate beauty; and we are spiritual beings, able to worship and pray. All of these qualities point to the uniqueness of human beings in creation as persons who think, feel, speak, and make free decisions and moral judgments. In all of these ways, we somehow transcend our material existence and assume moral responsibility and spiritual apprehension— thus reflecting the personal nature of God.[4]

As persons, we are engaged in relationships. Most obviously, our creation in God’s image entails a relationship with God himself. To be a human being is to be directed toward God. We are created by God; we are dependent on God; we are responsible to God. All other relationships are to be dominated and regulated by this one overarching reality—we are made for relationship with God.

In Genesis 1–2, human beings were the only creatures with whom God engaged in personal interaction. The first word from God to them was a blessing. “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, and over every living creature that moves on the ground’” (1:28).

The next word was a command:  “The Lord God commanded the man, ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die’” (2:16–17). We are the only earthly creatures that stand under God’s moral command.

God speaks to us in words of blessing and command. Like a father, God loves us and has authority over us at the same time. We are created by God to receive his love, and we are created by God to submit to his authority. And our response will result in either life or death. This vertical dimension must be the starting point for our understanding of ourselves. We are created to live in a relationship with God our Creator.

Another dimension of this concept emerges when we see that the biblical expression of man’s unique created condition could also be translated “as God’s image” (cf. 1 Cor. 11:7). This suggests that human beings not only reflect God in the world, they also represent him. Ancient rulers often erected images of themselves in distant parts of their realms. Whoever possessed that image of the king exercised his royal authority. So, man, too, is meant to represent God in ways similar to an ambassador’s representing the king in a foreign country.

This aspect of the image of God comes out in the command for man to rule over creation (Gen. 1:26) and is illustrated in the task given to Adam of naming the animals in Genesis 2. Human beings are to “subdue” God’s creation in the sense of “having dominion” over it (1:28), and God put Adam in the garden to “work” in it and “to take care of it” (2:15). Nature is not man’s slave to be exploited, but man is a steward of the natural world, ruling it under God’s authority and in keeping with God’s character. “Nature” can be taken in its broadest context to include all of God’s creation, encompassing the human endeavors of science, technology, entertainment, athletics, art, and music.

Because human beings are made in the image of God, they ought also to be honored appropriately. One honors God by honoring his image. For this reason, Jesus linked the command to love God with the command to love one’s neighbor, who is created in the image of God. Love for one’s neighbor demonstrates love for God. The fact that murder is considered a capital crime is also grounded in this connection. In Gen. 9:6 we read, “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man.” We cannot do harm to the image and say that we love the one (God) it represents.

The Bible affirms that every human being is created in the image of God, not just the king, as was believed in many ancient cultures. According to Proverbs 14:31, even the lowly peasant represents God. “He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God.” This is the basis of what we call natural law and universal human rights.

All human life— at whatever stage of development, from conception to death; at whatever socio-economic status; and at whatever level of physical or intellectual capability— is sacred, because all human beings are created in God’s image. Even when this image has been corrupted by our sin, every human being is still worthy of honor and respect. There is nothing more valuable in all of creation than a human life.

B. The Significance of Adam and Eve

The Apostle Paul declared in his address to the Athenians that “from one man [God] made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth” (Acts 17:26). The Genesis story identifies that one man as Adam. As an expression of the incompleteness of creation, God declared that it was not good for Adam to be alone (Gen. 2:18). The first man was joined by the first woman, Eve, and the design of God to create “man” in his own image as male and female was complete (Gen. 1:27).

This “gendered” creation is significant in several ways. First, it points to the essentially relational nature of human existence. As God exists eternally in a Trinitarian union of love of three divine persons, so human beings created in his image are to share in personal relationships. Adam’s solitary life called for a partner—“a helper suitable for him” (Gen. 2:18). To be fully human, we have a need for social interaction with other human beings. Human beings are meant to live in right relationship with others in community.

Second, the Genesis account assumes the equal value of men and women. Each is created in God'’s image.

Third, while affirming the equal significance of man and woman as creatures uniquely created in the image of God, the Bible also affirms their differences.

Finally, the creation of human beings as male and female also reinforces the notion of a created order, particularly as it points us to the marriage relationship. The culmination of the story of Genesis 2 is the explanatory declaration in v. 24: “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” Jesus himself pointed to this passage as the design of the creator for marriage from the beginning (Matt. 19:3–9). God created us as male and female, and this difference is significant and ought to be recognized and valued.

What is essential to the biblical story line is that the problem with the world is moral. The first human beings from the very beginning, in a distinct act of rebellion, chose to turn away from God, and this act not only affected all humanity (cf. Rom. 5:12–21) but creation itself (cf. Rom. 8:18–25). This leads us from considering the dignity of humanity to acknowledging our depravity.

II. The Source of Human Depravity: Our Fall into Sin

Mark Twain once said that man is the only creature in all of creation that can blush, and he is the only creature that needs to. We are the only creatures who realize that we are not what we should be, and that discrepancy is the cause of great distress. That points us to the answer for our moral dilemma, found in the Bible. There, we who are human are depicted as creatures made with great dignity who retain a moral memory of our former greatness, a memory that makes us long to regain what is now lost.

Our SOF follows the biblical story, moving from the glory of Genesis 2 to the guilt of Genesis 3. The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame as they enjoyed the blessing of God in the garden he had created. But quite suddenly, a new character emerged into this idyllic world— a tempter. Though his existence is real, his origin is unknown; he is depicted simply as a serpent, a snake— a mere creature.

A. Tempted by Satan

But what is the source of this first evil in the cosmos? We are left with a mystery, which reflects the mystery of evil itself. This snake, which in the story is the embodiment of Satan himself (cf. Rev. 12:9; 20:2), was not created evil, for all that God made was good (Gen. 1:31). Scripture provides hints that may point to a primordial rebellion among the angelic beings that resulted in this evil.[5] But even that does not tell us why evil entered into God’s creation in the first place. It just pushes its entrance, and the mystery, still further back. However they originated, the Bible affirms the reality of evil spiritual beings, led by Satan, the tempter and accuser, and a liar and murderer from the beginning (John 8:44).

The tempter simply appeared in the garden, and his role in the story emphasizes that there was nothing in man himself to prompt him to rebel against God’s rule. There was no natural cause of evil within the human race before Genesis 3. There was simply freedom, a freedom reflecting God’s own freedom. And it was toward this freedom that the tempter directed his efforts.

The temptation had its intended effect. “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it” (v. 6).

B. The Nature of Sin

To disobey God and to eat of that tree was a rejection of God’s rule and authority. It was nothing less than an act of cosmic treason against the king of the universe. Ever since that first decision to rebel against God’s rule, human beings have been in a battle for control of our lives and our world.

The New Testament uses a variety of words to express human sin in its various facets. The most common, hamartia, suggests that sin is the missing of a target or a failure to reach a goal. Two others, adikia (“unrighteousness”) and ponêria (“wickedness, evil”), depict sin as an inner corruption of character. Two more active words, parabasis and paraptôma, speak of sin as a deliberate trespass, a stepping over a known boundary, while still another, anomia, is more explicitly the violation of a known law.

But the notion of sin ultimately has a God-ward focus—we sin against God. We reject his rightful rule. Thus the essence of sin is rebellion, whether it involves murder or envy, a malicious act or a selfish intention. In the Bible, sin involves putting oneself at the center of the universe, usurping the place of God.

III. The Continuing Effects of Sin: Our Union with Adam

Through human rebellion and disobedience, sin entered the world, and the effects were immediate. For the first time, Adam and Eve experienced shame so that they clothed themselves. In fear they hid from God. When confronted with their sin, they each sought to evade responsibility. But they were responsible, and the Lord expressed his judgment upon them for their act, which brought about the disruption of all the good relationships that had existed in his good creation: the relationship between God and humanity; the relationship between man and woman; and the relationship between humanity and creation. They were banished from the garden (cf. Gen. 3:24). Life in Eden was no more. God’s good creation was perverted by sin.

More important still were the continuing effects of sin. The biblical narrative emphasizes this. In humanity’s second generation, Cain murdered his brother Abel (Gen. 4), and the moral slide continued. The account of Adam’s line (Gen. 5) is punctuated by the recurring words, “and then he died,” tolling like a funeral bell. Death had entered the world, and this genealogy charted its methodical progress.

This is the legacy of the sin of Adam,[6] a legacy theologians call “the fall.” The sin of Adam corrupted God’s good creation and unleashed the power of sin and death in the world, and this has affected us all. Creation itself has been “subjected to frustration” and is now in “bondage to decay” (Rom. 8:20–21). We all now share Adam’s image (cf. 1 Cor. 15:49).

The Apostle Paul most clearly formulated this connection to the first man in his letter to the Romans. In chapter 5, he said that “sin entered the world through one man (Adam), and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned” (v. 12); “by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man” (v. 17); and “through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners” (v. 19).

A. Sinful by Nature and by Choice

This corruption of human nature is called “original sin.” It is original in that it is with us before we are born, and it is the soil out of which all our conscious sins arise. As David lamented, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me” (Ps. 51:5; cf. Ps. 58:3). We do not enter this world with a moral blank slate. Sin’s corruption is impressed upon us inescapably, and it will inevitably reveal itself through our own willful acts of sin.[7] We are sinners by the nature we inherit and by the choices we make. Put simply, we sin because we are sinners.

1. The Breadth of Sin

The Bible affirms that human culpability in sin is universal, with the one exception of Jesus Christ. As Paul wrote, “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, . . . there is no one who does good, not even one” (Rom. 3:10–12).

But the universality of sin is not just found as a doctrine in the Bible (though that would be enough).

There is also the universal voice of conscience speaking to our own hearts. Something inside us testifies against us, and we feel that we must do something to make things right. We are all guilty. Sin is universal.

2. The Depth of Sin

The effect of sin upon us is not only broad; it is also deep. It affects our whole person; nothing escapes sin’s defilement. In the Old Testament, Ezekiel and Jeremiah in particular depicted sin as a spiritual sickness afflicting the heart at the deepest level. Jeremiah spoke of it this way: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt; who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9). In fact, Ezekiel said, our hearts of stone must be replaced with a heart of flesh (Ezek. 11:19; cf. Jer. 31:33). In the New Testament, Jesus said that our evil deeds flow from an evil heart as surely as rotten fruit grows on a diseased tree (Matt. 12:33–35).

Every part of us, every human faculty—our mind, will, emotions, and conscience—is infected with and affected by this dreadful malady. None of them can be trusted as an objective guide of truth, because all of them are in collusion against God, caught up in this tangled web of sin. Everything about us that was created to love God, worship him, and bring him glory has now turned against him in sinful rebellion. Sin has affected even our social and political structures, creating injustices and oppression.

This deep pervasiveness of sin that results from the corruption of human nature is what theologians call “total depravity.” This doctrine does not mean that every person is as wicked as he or she can possibly be and engages in every possible form of sin. Nor does it mean that the unbeliever is totally insensitive in matters of conscience or never does anything that is good and right before other people or that sinful human beings cannot be fine citizens with high moral standards. Total depravity simply means that everything we are and everything we do is somehow affected by our sin. As J. I. Packer wrote, “No one is as bad as he or she might be,” though, on the other hand, “no action of ours is as good as it should be.”[8] None of our motives is entirely pure, and none of our intentions is entirely praiseworthy.

Consequently, total depravity implies the total inability on the part of the fallen creatures to rescue ourselves from this sinful condition. Sin is too much a part of who we are. Paul says that in our natural state we were “dead in our transgressions and sins” (Eph. 2:1). No one can do anything that merits the moral favor of God (Rom. 3:20; cf. John 15:4–5). Evangelical theology, in all of its various formulations, has affirmed both our total depravity in sin and our total inability to save ourselves. Without the gracious work of the Holy Spirit enabling a sinful human being to understand and believe the gospel, we are without hope.  

This doctrine of original sin, this congenital condition of sinful corruption, is a great mystery, and it remains an offense to the sensibilities of many. But this singular mystery, once accepted, sheds great light on human experience. This Christian doctrine of sin has been described as the only doctrine empirically proven by 5,000 years of recorded human history. How else do we account for this mystifying thing called “human nature”? Why is it that every person ever born, except one, has exhibited this apparently innate human propensity to disobey God? Blaise Pascal put it this way: “Certainly nothing jolts us more rudely than this doctrine [of original sin], and yet, but for this mystery, the most incomprehensible of all, we remain incomprehensible to ourselves.”[9]

B. Alienated from God

Our Article 3 on humanity not only describes who we are in ourselves but also who we are in relationship with God. From the time of Adam’s exclusion from the garden, human beings have existed in a state of alienation from their creator. Cut off from the real source of life and blessedness, human beings experience a state of spiritual death (Eph. 2:1, 5; 4:18). Our sin separates us from a holy God.

C. Under God’s Wrath

God’s holiness also issues in a righteous rejection of evil, which the Bible calls his “wrath.” “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness,” Paul wrote as he began his exposition of the universal sinfulness of humanity (Rom. 1:18; cf. 1:18–3:20). Apart from Christ, we stand under God’s wrath (Rom. 5:9; 1 Thess. 5:9), facing the prospect of eternal condemnation.

To combat this deadly disease of human depravity and the judgment of God, which it rightly deserves, we need more than positive thinking. New rules or religious rituals will not suffice; moral maxims are impotent; nor will a self-help manual do us any good. In this tragic condition we need a divine rescuer—someone who can save us from God’s wrath and renew us in God’s image. Nothing less will do.

IV. Our Only Hope: God’s Saving Work in Jesus Christ— Rescued, Reconciled, and Renewed

For the Christian, the human condition cannot be considered apart from Jesus Christ. Though we will look more extensively at his person and work in Articles 4 and 5, we must focus our attention here on Jesus as the perfect embodiment of the image of God in humanity.

“He is the image of the invisible God,” Paul boldly declared of Jesus (Col. 1:15; cf. also 2 Cor. 4:4). Jesus is what Adam and Eve were created to be. He revealed God in his incarnation; he lived in relationships of love with his heavenly Father and with his earthly neighbor; and he exercised his rule over the natural world. In Hebrews we read, “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” (Heb. 1:3). Jesus alone lived the life we were meant to live.

As the image of God, Jesus reveals God to us; and as the image of God, he shows us what all human beings were meant to be. Jesus is the full expression of the perfection God intended when he created man in his image. In answer to the question “What is man?,” the Bible directs us to Jesus.

Further, as the image of God, Jesus came to undo the sin of Adam. Paul pointed us to this glorious truth: “For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous” (Rom. 5:19).

Adam, being made in God’s image, longed for equality with God and saw it as something to be snatched. Jesus Christ was equal with God, but he did not see it as something to use for his own advantage (see Phil. 2:5–11). While Adam desired to be great and refused to be God’s servant, grasping instead for the likeness of God, Jesus Christ made himself nothing and took on the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men. Whereas Adam exalted himself and became disobedient unto death, Jesus Christ humbled himself and became obedient unto death. And whereas Adam was condemned and disgraced to the dishonor of God the Father, Jesus Christ was highly exalted and was given the name of “Lord,” to the glory of God the Father. “Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men” (Rom. 5:18).

Jesus Christ, “the last Adam” (1 Cor. 15:45), came as God to be what we were meant to be. He came to undo the sin of Adam by his own obedience and to create a new humanity, a people redeemed by his death, who would follow him in their lives. “And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven” (1 Cor. 15:49). This is our hope!

And this is our only hope. We are either enslaved in the sinfulness of Adam by our natural birth or we are liberated in the righteousness of Christ by our new birth. Jesus Christ alone can rescue us from the wrath of God that rightly stands over all who are in union with Adam. Jesus Christ alone can reconcile us from the alienation that came when God justly cast Adam from the garden. And Jesus Christ alone can renew that divine image that has been corrupted by Adam’s sin.

The good news of the gospel is that this is precisely what he has done! Jesus “rescues us from the coming wrath” (1 Thess. 1:10; 5:9). “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). We have been delivered from the condemnation our sins deserve and the moral captivity our sin creates (cf., e.g., Rom. 6:18). Through our Lord Jesus Christ, “we have now received reconciliation” (Rom. 5:11), for “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them” (2 Cor. 5:19). We now enjoy peace with God as our Father (Rom. 5:1; 8:16). And in Christ that corrupted image is being renewed into a new humanity, “created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10; 2 Cor. 4:16). Our great hope is that when he appears we shall be like him (1 John 3:2).

We are rescued from our sin and reconciled to God through faith in Jesus. All who receive this rescue and reconciliation are promised that God will begin a process of renewal in us that will end in each one of us conformed to the image of Christ (Rom. 8:28–30). Again and again, the Apostle Paul reminded us of this great and certain hope that each one whose faith is in Jesus will someday be complete in him (Col. 1:28–29; Eph. 4:11–13).

The seriousness of our sinful condition demanded nothing less than God'’s saving work in Jesus Christ. “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). “For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men” (1 Tim. 2:5–6).

Conclusion

Our creation in the image of God and then our fall into sin together provide the key to the riddle of the human condition. They explain our origin, illuminate our present tragedy, and point us to our glorious destiny when we as Christians, rescued from God’s wrath and reconciled from our alienation with him, shall be fully renewed in the image of Jesus Christ.

To God’s glory alone,

Dr. Greg Waybright
Senior Pastor