THE FALL OF MAN
"Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." (I Thessalonians 5:23).
We need to have a clear scriptural picture of man in his innocency so that, in the next chapters, the work of the Lord Jesus in the hearts of redeemed souls can be more fully appreciated. God said in Genesis 1:31: "And indeed it was very good."
How wonderful, in every respect, must the first creation have been. With regard to the stories in Genesis, stories so often ridiculed, understand very clearly the point that when writing the Book of Genesis, the Holy Spirit wasn't writing a scientific treatise on anthropology. Basically, the scientific references that can be deduced are correct, e.g. the order of creation. This order, which is so different from the fanciful fables of early human civilizations, is correct by all modern standards.
The main purpose of the Book of Genesis is to show man in relationship to God, and to show it in such a way that men of every social and educational standard throughout all the years of human civilization could see and understand.
The book is a triumph of divine ingenuity and skill. For thousands of years men and women have read it and understood its message, and have come into a right relationship with God. It speaks to the human heart in all its need.
Don't apologize for the Book of Genesis; don't defend the Bible. As one preacher said: "You don't defend a cage full of lions, just let them loose!" In simple faith believe God's Word, and you will find that there are many hungry hearts waiting to receive. To those who scoff and pour scorn — leave it with God. The Bible is the "sword of the Spirit." The Holy Spirit will use the Word of God as He wills.
If the ordinary man in the street is asked of what man is composed — apart from the wisecracks about bones, flesh, hair, etc. — the usual answer will be something like this: "I believe man is composed of body, soul and spirit." That seems to be the usual way of describing man — body, soul and spirit. This would be quite correct from the world's point of view because it gives the accepted order of importance in the world generally.
The body is, undoubtedly, the priority in the world's economy. All our activities are geared for a body-conscious generation — feeding it, clothing it, amusing it, transporting it, keeping it strong, and, finally, burying it.
The other two, soul and spirit, are relatively unimportant in the eyes of mankind. "After all," they say, "you can't even see them."
In I Thessalonians 5:23, the world's order is reversed. Man's spirit is first, then the soul and body. This part, the spirit of man, is that part whereby man can be God-conscious. Proverbs 20:27 says: "The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord." This is a very apt description of the human spirit — the candle, or the lamp, of God, because we see immediately that the spirit of man has no power in itself.
A lamp has a capacity to receive power and to turn it into light. If the power is there, the lamp can shine; if the power is turned off, it cannot light up. It is essential to grasp this truth — a lamp has no power in itself. In reality, it is not the lamp that burns but whatever is used as fuel or power.
We read in Genesis 2:7 that God breathed into man the breath of life, and turned on his lamp. As long as the breath of life was there, man would, and could, live and shine for God. Man is the only one in God's creation into whom God breathed the breath of life, because he was the only one who had a spirit, and who could be spiritually alive.
The word "soul" is one about which many wrong conceptions exist. One common mistake is to confuse the spirit with the soul, to use the names interchangeably. Hebrews 4:12 corrects this misconception: "For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit." The human spirit and the human soul can be divided. Therefore, they cannot be the same. It might help us if we realized that sometimes the Bible uses the heart to mean the same thing as the soul. When the heart is used, it obviously doesn't mean the pump within us which sends the blood circulating within our bodies, for in Psalm 14:1 we read: "The fool has said in his heart, There is no God." And in Mark 7:21 the Lord declares that "out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts." In Luke 12:19 the rich fool says: "And I will say to my soul, 'Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years.'" The best way to understand the meaning of the soul, or the heart, is to look upon it as the "life mechanism," the human personality of the individual.
The soul consists of three parts — the mind, the emotions, and the will.
The mind contains all the powers of reasoning, and thinking, and understanding, and remembering. The emotions, which play such an important part in our relations to our fellow men, are our visible reactions to facts, situations and circumstances. The will is the executive of the soul, the finger on the trigger of the soul's response. The soul is that part of us which is self-conscious.
It comes as a surprise to some people to learn that an animal has a soul. Man has spirit, soul and body. Animals have soul and body. The members of the vegetable kingdom have only a body. All three groups are alive, but in three different degrees.
Consider the case of your dog, or your neighbor's dog. That dog has a soul, just as much as you and I have. It has a mind, it has emotions and a will.
Just think how clever some animals are. Think how they can be taught tricks and also how many of them possess distinctive powers of reasoning. Certainly a dog has a mind, and it is an emotional animal. His tail is the visible indication of the feelings within. If you meet a strange dog who comes to you stiff-legged and with his tail pointing straight up, you know immediately that there may be trouble at any moment. He is showing suspicion, doubt, and possibly annoyance. If, suddenly, the other end starts growling, you are facing a dog who is angry. When he is friendly, his tail wags. If you speak severely to him, his tail droops and when he is thoroughly scared, he tucks his tail between his legs. The full range of the dog's emotions are visibly displayed.
A dog also has a will of his own. I sometimes see a small boy taking a big dog on a leash for a walk. The boy wants to go up the road and so he pulls the dog along by the leash, but the dog wants to go down the road and he pulls the boy. The whole thing ends with the dog taking the boy for a walk.
The trees and flowers in your garden are alive, but they only have a body. They have no mind with which to think or reason, no emotions to display and no will to exercise. Flowers never decide to move to another part of the garden, nor do trees fall in love — but they are alive.
The body is the house in which we live. Job 4:19 says that men "dwell in houses of clay." 1 Corinthians 15:38-39 says, "But God gives it a body as He pleases, and to every seed its own body. All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of animals, another of fish, and another of birds." The body is the least important part of man, but not unimportant. 2 Corinthians 4:7 says of the Gospel of the grace of God, "But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us." We are only earthen vessels, but we are holding God's rich treasure. 2 Corinthians 4:16 says: "Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day." This emphasizes the transient nature of the body, perishing day by day. We really start dying the moment we are born.
The body with its appetites and desires is not sinful in itself. God put them there, they are part of His original plan. The trouble begins when we misuse or abuse the body. Romans 6:16 says: "Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one's slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness?"
The same hands that can bring healing through a doctor's skill can bring suffering through selfishness and bitterness.
The human body as we know it today is a fallen creation. Genesis 1:27, 31 says: "So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good." Man as God created him was perfect, unstained by sin, living in complete harmony with his Creator.
Genesis 1:26 says: "Then God said, 'Let Us make man in our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion. . . .'" From this we see that the Holy Trinity was engaged in the creation of man — Let us. Man was made as a trinity himself — in our image — and man was made to have dominion over the rest of creation.
The Holy Spirit dwelt in man's human spirit as sovereign over all. Being in man's spirit He was in control of man's soul or heart. Thus the mind, and the emotions, and the will, came under the sovereignty of God. The Holy Spirit could teach man's mind, occupy his affections and control his will, thus divine righteousness was expressed in man's body. The dominion that man then exercised was in full accordance with the will of God.
God is love; this truth we know full well. But there is only one thing that love really desires, and that is a free response from the object of the affections.
It is true on our human level that human love can only be satisfied when the love is returned. We can compel obedience, but we cannot compel love. All the hard, weary work put in by a tired mother is amply rewarded when the little child looks into the mother's eyes, holds up its arms and whispers "I love you." Love can only be satisfied by love in return.
Thus it was with God. If man had been created as a robot, he would have functioned perfectly in every way, always, but no robot can love.
Today men have designed and built huge machines that can "think" and "deduce"; their response is perfect, but there is no bond of affection between the machine and the man — the machine is truly soulless.
For man to be able to love he had also to be able "not to love." He had to have the power of choice, to be free to choose to love God or, if he so chose, not to love God. And so it was that God established the first tree of choice in the Garden (Genesis 2:16-17). The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was the tree of choice. Everything else was for man, nothing was withheld, but at the tree of choice man had to show his love to God.
If he really loved God and wanted to serve and obey Him then, of his own free will, man would leave the tree alone. He would visibly demonstrate his love to God by his reaction to the tree of choice.
But this tree of choice also carried a penalty, for God said: ". . . for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die" (Genesis 2:17). So it was that the first man, placed in the most beautiful garden there ever was, was presented with this choice.
Chapter 3 of Genesis details the way in which the devil in his antagonism against God came in, and by his evil suggestions was able so to influence the choice of man that the "fall of man" took place.
It is vitally important for us to concentrate on the fact of the choice that man made, because this same crisis comes often into our own lives.
We, too, are faced with a choice to be made, and the same tempter is ever at hand to present his side of the picture.
God had said in Genesis 2:17: ". . . for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." The devil stated in Genesis 3:4: "You will not surely die."
This was indeed a tree of choice, for Adam had to choose between the words of God or the words of the devil. Without this power to choose he could not visibly demonstrate his love to God, and yet because of this choice he could run the risk of incurring God's promise — you will surely die. The story of the fall is, of course, the story that man believed the lie of the devil. In Genesis 3:4-5 the devil said, "You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
What a temptation that was — to be godlike without being God-conscious! The Communists tempt the same way. They say to the peoples of the nations, "Rebel, you have nothing to lose but your chains!"
The devil suggested that God was denying them what could and should be theirs. "You will be like God!" Such was the devil's offer. It is good to pause here and see how true that has become in our day and generation. The cleverness of modern men is beyond description. They are indeed as gods in some of their fields of scientific discovery. They are indeed godlike, but they are not God-conscious. "There is no fear of God before their eyes" (Romans 3:18) and because "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Psalm 111:10), they have no real wisdom whatsoever, just a race of clever devils.
Adam believed the devil, he chose to be godlike, he openly threw off his allegiance to his Creator believing, in doing so, that he had established his own freedom. What was the result? Did he die? God had said he would, the devil had said he wouldn't.
Adam woke up next morning, he could stand and move and think and talk. It seemed as though the devil was right! But although he was physically alive and soulishly active, he was dead, for God had switched off his lamp.
Remember, originally, the Holy Spirit dwelt in man's human spirit, thus controlling his heart. But when Adam disobeyed God, God withdrew His Holy Spirit from his spirit. Man died spiritually. ". . . as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned" (Romans 5:12).
Man devoid of God's Holy Spirit was dead, spiritually dead. Adam was now physically alive, soulishly active, but spiritually dead.
We read in Genesis 5:3: "And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and begot a son in his own likeness, after his image." Genesis 1:26 says: "Then God said, 'Let Us make man in our image, according to Our likeness.' "
Adam was the first man made in the image and likeness of God, but because of the fall, all the descendants of fallen Adam are in his likeness — physically alive, soulishly active, but spiritually dead. This state is called in the Bible "the natural man." Another translation calls it "the animal man," the man who functions as an animal.
I Corinthians 2:14 says: "But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned."
How true that is; God's things are foolishness unto him or her. The very fact that the unconverted person says, "But it doesn't make sense to me, it's all nonsense!" is living proof that they are spiritually dead.
See now how John 10:10 links up with this. The Lord Jesus, speaking of His own mission said: "I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly."
God's salvation is not the forgiveness of sins, but the restoration of life on the basis of the forgiveness of sins.
The human body is not sinful of itself. Some people confuse it with the theological word "the flesh." The body needs to be cared for sensibly, not despised and ill-treated. After all, God created the human body, and although sin and disease have weakened and damaged the body in some cases, it is still the work of the hands of God.
Remember, too, that the Lord Jesus took a human body, and lived, and died in it, and that He has taken the human body to heaven. The important point is — for what purpose is this body to be used?
When the Holy Spirit in man's human spirit controlled the mind, emotions and will, original man was perfect. Only the Lord Jesus has maintained that perfection of relationship even when tempted in the barren desert.
"The first tree of choice" was in the Garden of Eden, but Calvary's cross is "the second tree of choice."
We confirm or deny our relationship to God by our attitude to the cross of Christ. Everything in our case depends upon the choice we make. Adam was converted from life to death by his choice. We, in our day, can be converted from death back to life by our choice.
The beginning of Genesis is where the enemy has fought his greatest battles. The story of Adam and Eve and the fruit is ridiculed and laughed at. The enemy says: "Everyone knows this isn't true, it's only a fable!"
The great thing to realize is not the detail but the doctrine. This so-called fable is repeated time and time again in our lives. The great question taught is "Who are you going to believe, God or the devil?" The great doctrine tested is: "Whatever a man sows, that he will also reap" (Galatians 6:7).
Notice also the lie of Eve at the end of Genesis 3:3: "God has said, 'You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.'" When compared with Genesis 2:17, we find that Eve added the words "nor shall you touch it." Adding our own words to a given statement is a common human failing, and if we put words into the mouth of God which He never uttered, we may do great harm to His cause.
The obvious truth of this story is seen in the spiritual condition of man in our Atomic Age. The almost godlike power in the hands of men today is fantastic. One after another man is unlocking the secrets of the creation of God. His scientific wisdom is phenomenal. Yet, when it comes to the simplest things of God, he is as ignorant as the wildest savage is of nuclear fission.
Only a new creature, taught by the Holy Spirit, can understand even in a faint measure the mystery and the greatness of God.
