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But Calvin made the observation that man is a fabricum idolorum—an idol factory—so committed to religion that, even if he removes himself from the living God, he will replace his concept of God with a god
made of his own hands.
First, to call man the bearer of the imago Dei differentiates man from God. First and foremost, we are creatures, meaning that we—finite, dependent, derived, accountable—are not God. We may bear the image of God, but the image of God is not God, but subordinate to Him. No mere human being is divine.
One of the things for which humans will have to stand trial before the heavenly tribunal is their ecological transgressions. Instead of dressing the garden, tilling and keeping it, we have polluted, exploited, and violated the garden.
We’ll also have to answer for the fact that fish eggs are more protected than human embryos, and that there are people who worship cattle while others are dying of starvation.
In Greek antiphysical philosophy, redemption ultimately is redemption from the body. Plato called the body the prison house of the soul, and the highest hope for man would be the disintegration and destruction of the body, so that the soul could be released to live in pure contemplation, unencumbered by any physical influences. Christianity teaches redemption of the body, that in the new heavens and the new earth we will have glorified bodies and still be creatures who are body and soul.
We are so accustomed to our fallenness and corruption that, while our moral sensibilities may be offended when we see someone involved in gross and heinous criminal activity such as mass murder, normal, everyday disobedience to God doesn’t bother us. We don’t think it’s that important, because “to err is human, and to forgive is divine.”
“None is righteous” and “no one understands.” Part of the reason why no one ever achieves the standard of righteousness that God requires is because no one understands what the standard is. We’re blinded as to what is right and what is wrong.
All the while, they’re running as fast as they can from God. God is not hiding; it’s not that He can’t be found. It’s not our nature to seek God—it is our fallen nature to flee from Him.
Someone may say, “I sacrifice. I give my money to the poor. I do all the right things.” But for a deed to be good in the sight of God, not only must it conform externally to the law of God, but it also must flow out of a heart that loves God completely. If any deed I do has the slightest admixture of selfishness, pride, arrogance, or anything else that mars that work, it’s not good in the sight of God.
things. But we’ve all been so disobedient for so long that after a while we’re not even afraid of God.
When we talk about original sin, we don’t mean the sin that Adam and Eve committed, but the result of that first sin. Original sin refers to our sinful condition. In other words, we sin because we are sinners; it is not that we are sinners because we sin.
“Lord, command what You will and grant what You command.”
God commands belief in Christ. God doesn’t invite people to come to Christ—He commands it.
Some people argue that though the words may not be there, we can certainly find the concept. And we do—in the sense that the Bible says much concerning the responsibility that we have to make choices. But the emphasis in Scripture, in light of original sin, is on human bondage—of man enslaved to his own wicked desires. It’s not that man is a servant to the tyranny of God; man is in bondage to himself and his own sinful predispositions.
Augustine made a distinction in this controversy, saying that man has free will, or liberum arbitrium, but since he is fallen, he does not have libertas, or liberty—moral freedom from addiction to sin. He said that those who are fallen are addicted to sin.
If someone had a terrible temptation to do something he desperately wanted to do but which was against God’s law, but at the last minute he had the moral courage to say no, it would be because in the end his desire to obey God was greater than the draw of the temptation.
We always act according to the strongest inclination that we have at a given moment; that’s the essence of making choices. That’s what freedom is: the ability to choose according to what you want.
in his fallenness still has the ability to choose what he wants, but in his heart there is no desire for God or the things of God. If he is left to himself, the desires of man’s heart are only wicked continuously.
I still have freedom to choose what I desire—but if I don’t have any desire for Christ, will I ever choose Him?
Augustine would say man is dead in his sins. He has no desire for Christ, and the only way he will ever choose Christ is if God softens his stone-cold, recalcitrant heart and puts in him a desire for Christ.
Augustine answered, “By works of the law no human being will be justified.” No one can possibly be saved through human merit or works.
But Jonathan Edwards speculated, in his essay on original sin, that even if the Bible never said a word about original sin, it is such a distinct characteristic of human beings that reason itself would have to conclude that it exists, in order to account for the universality of sin.
The whole message of the Christian faith is that humankind, in the fullness of our humanity, needs redemption. We need a Savior. We need someone who can deal with the very core of our humanity, who can enter into the human condition and acquire what we desperately need for ourselves—righteousness. That’s why Jesus’ perfect humanity is absolutely essential for us.
There’s one thing that Christianity has that no other religion has: an atonement. The fundamental issue that Christianity addresses is not morality or liturgy; what Christianity addresses is the problem of guilt.
In His mercy, God has made a way to be reconciled to Him and to have the obscured image of God restored in those who trust in Christ alone for salvation—so that we may bring Him glory and show forth His holiness to creation once more.
