There is only one estimate of man that is worth anything at all—because it cannot be other than true, and authoritative —That is the estimate assessed by God Himself. We have it in His Word, the Bible. So it is to that Word and to that Word alone that we must turn for guidance in determining man’s true status before God and the nature of His creation.
First, though, let us be clear what we mean in this instance by the term “nature”. We could let it mean what we understand in everyday speech by the expression “human nature”, and it is interesting and perhaps startling to note the description of human nature in the Word of God. In the Bible, man is everywhere regarded as a being devoid of natural goodness, prone to do evil rather than good, incapable in his own strength of perfect righteousness, and consequently in desperate need of the forgiveness and reconciliation which God in His infinite love effected through His Son upon the Cross. It is becoming somewhat old-fashioned today to hold such an uncomplimentary view of human nature. “Responsibility”, “guilt”, and kindred terms have almost dropped out of the vocabulary of many of our contemporaries. But the fact remains that “sin is still ‘sin’ “, and for that reason too, we stand by the Bible dictum that the “wages of sin is death”. Our purpose therefore is to examine the question of the nature of man in the light of that fundamental fact — the fact that the wages of Sin is—not estrangement from God (though it of course involves that); not condemnation to eternal separation from God (though that is a correct but nevertheless incomplete way of putting it); nor yet the suffering of conscious torment in hell (a notion which the Bible, properly understood, nowhere countenances); no, not any of these things, but, as the Apostle Paul so clearly put it — death. The wages of sin is death. No conception of the nature of man can possibly be true which does not square absolutely with that statement.
Man not a dual being
The notion of man as a kind of dual being—a compound of body and what is known traditionally as an immortal soul —most certainly is not so. Death and immortality are direct opposites the one of the other, and if there is to be any question in discussing the nature of man, regarding a soul at all, it must, if Paul’s inspired words are to be our guide, be something in man as capable of death as his body. Paul’s dictum is not selective; it does not say that the wages of sin is death to the body only; and it most certainly does not suggest that it might be something different for the soul. It just states bluntly, and unreservedly that it is death, and death alone.
This accords perfectly with the teaching of God’s Word concerning the formation, the fall and the punishment of our first parent, Adam. In the Creation record man is regarded as the last and the highest of the animals formed by God—akin to them, though with capabilities and with obligations and privileges which sharply distinguished him from them. The story reads thus—familiar, but often improperly understood:
“And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”
The Divine Program
Here, as it were, we have the divine program as far as it affects man — and to it we must return if we are to understand the nature of man properly. But first note what is said about the very first step in the realization of this purpose—the actual formation of man. We read in words of utmost simplicity:
“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”
“Became a living soul” . . . the words suggest that if the process were reversed man would have become a dead soul—would have ceased to be an animate creature and become an inanimate one. In fact the record of the Flood specifically states that this is what happened to all forms of animal life—man included —that perished in the waters. The record states:
“And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth and every man: all in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died”.
The way in which man and all the other creatures formed before him are here grouped together, is remarkable; so far as living and dying are concerned they are regarded as being on a par.
And so, in fact, they are always regarded in the Bible. Solomon said, “That which befalleth the sons of men,” he declared, “befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them; as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity.” Now although this is a true appraisal of man’s nature there nevertheless exists (thanks to the mercy of God) a profound difference between a man and an animal. He, unlike the mere animal, is capable of worship, has a moral accountability to God who made him. But that in no way excuses him from the physical fate of other forms of life, as Ezekiel emphatically insisted when he asserted, on behalf of God:
“Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth it shall die.”
That is, if man belies his moral nature—which alone distinguishes him from the animals—then die like them he must. The wages of sin is death. And with that fundamental fact the notion of a natural or automatic immortality pertaining to man is utterly incompatible. As we have just seen, when God breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life, man became a living soul. So conversely, as Elihu states in the book of Job, “If God set his heart upon man, if he gather unto himself his spirit and his breath; all flesh shall perish together, and man shall turn again unto dust”. There, on the one hand, we have the positive process; and, on the other, the negative. Creation in the one case, death in the other. Which explains why the Psalmist says of God in His dealings with men:
“That thou givest them they gather: thou openest thy hand, they are filled with good. Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled: thou taketh away their breath, they die, and return to their dust”.
Which explains too why the Psalmist insists:
“Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.”
Yes. in the Bible death is death—the end of life, the complete cessation of being. In Solomon’s sobering words.
“there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest”.
So there is no doubt about it—because man is by nature a being devoid of natural goodness, and since for that reason all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, man is also by nature a mortal being, doomed without God’s saving help to live out his brief life and then to pass into endless oblivion.
The truth is glorious
A gloomy tale, you night say, but not really. But at least it has the virtue of facing the facts, and not of substituting for them a false and groundless belief that man has an inbuilt means of escape —some immortal essence within him which is released from the encumbrance of the body at death. The Bible knows nothing of such a notion, and far from regarding the body as an encumbrance, specifically declares it to be indispensable to human existence not only for the living of this mortal life, but also for the living of that immortality which Jesus brought to light in the gospel and made available to us by his own redeeming death. As death is an experience affecting the whole man, so its opposite—resurrection.
Paul made this abundantly clear to the Corinthians, as the Lord himself did to the Jews when he declared:
And this is the will of him that sent me, that everyone which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.
Everything, clearly, hinged for the Lord, on the raising up at the last day: until then, everlasting life could not be a fact, but only a prospect. That is how Paul saw it too—hence his alarm and indignation when certain believers at Corinth were so foolish as to affirm that there is no resurrection of the dead. For death being to Paul precisely what it is everywhere in the Old Testament—the extinction of life, the total cessation of all conscious being—to affirm that resurrection is impossible, is to affirm the impossibility also of salvation, of redemption from sin and its disastrous effect on the sinner in the wages of death which it pays. As Paul himself put it:
If the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.
“Perished . . . ” What a dreadful finality there is about that word. How categorically it repudiates the notion of automatic immortality for anyone—even the Christian believer himself.
A New Body
No, in true Christian teaching, salvation from death is a matter not of survival, but of revival—of the re-creation by God of the whole man, body and personality alike, it being impossible for the latter to exist apart from the former. As Paul put it, “As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly”. And, as though pointing with his finger and prodding his body, he added, “for this corruptible must put on in-corruption, and this mortal must put on immortality—for only when that transformation of the body has been effected will it be possible to cry triumphantly, “Death is swallowed up in victory.”
Such is the honour reserved for men and women of faith — sinners though they may be. In the light of it, God’s utterance at the beginning takes on suddenly a new and wonderful meaning—and even more effectively than before marks man off from the animals. For that utterance embraces more than the mental endowments of man, more than his capacity for worship denied to the beast. It also endows him with a destiny peculiar to him as the highest and noblest form of animal life—that of becoming equal to the angels, if he but accepts God’s gracious offer to make him such. His therefore is a unique privilege—that of possessing a physical nature common with that of the animals yet also, unlike theirs, capable in God’s goodness of being transmuted into the very nature of God Himself. In the Apostle Peter’s memorable words, God has given to us in the Gospel, “exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust”.
With such a prospect before us, which of us can refuse the gospel call to faith and obedience, the call to trust in God’s gracious promises and to repudiate those sinful human impulses which lead us away from Him? To spurn God’s offer spells death—death total, final, absolute. But to make the resurrected Saviour at once the object of our hopes and the model of our lives means life—full, joyous and eternal.
Need we ask, therefore, which of the two should be our choice. There is no middle ground. Our choice must be for life or for death! Choose life—learn of The Lord Jesus and embrace The Gospel of salvation that he taught so that when he comes back to this earth again, he may fashion our bodies after the power of an endless life.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One