From "The Augsburg Confession," Article 2
1 Our churches also teach that since the fall of Adam all men who are propagated according to nature are born in sin. That is to say, they are without fear of God, are without trust in God, and are concupiscent. 2 And this disease or vice of origin is truly sin, which even now damns and brings eternal death on those who are not born again through Baptism and the Holy Spirit.
3 Our churches condemn the Pelagians and others who deny that the vice of origin is sin and who obscure the glory of Christ’s merit and benefits by contending that man can be justified before God by his own strength and reason.
Tappert, T. G. (1959). The Augsburg Confession: Translated from the Latin (29). Philadelphia: Fortress Press.
Biblical Anthropology - Man and Sin
Mankind was made in perfection after the image and likeness of God to be the reflection of God to the good and perfect creation. This is the content of Genesis 1 and 2 and is the future hope of the last chapters of Revelation. In between, however, the Bible tells the story of mankind's fall into sin and the curse brought from heaven upon both man and all creation. Thus we know that, until Jesus comes again, the world we see around us is fallen and corrupt, as Paul says in Romans 8, subjected to futility. Only in this way can we properly understand what's going on around us in the world and truly make sense of it all.
Mankind and all of creation is corrupted by sin. Thus there is death and chaos. Thus, even after so many centuries and millennia of experiencing it, death and loss still seem so unnatural. Thus the promise of God is an eternity restored to the way it was before the Fall of Genesis 3. The plan for accomplishing such a task was for the eternally Triune God to send the second person of the Trinity into the flesh of man, to bear it in a sinful world yet remain without sin in order to take that spotless flesh to the altar of sacrifice – the cross of Golgatha – and to make atonement in our flesh for all flesh. And now he gives to sinful humanity his very flesh and blood for us to eat and drink for the forgiveness of our sins.
This is the story of the Bible. Yet many refuse to believe this basic story of Creation in favor of another narrative which places man above sin and accountability with condemnation. Without a Creator, man is his own God and all religion is created by man – frequently, we are told, as a means of controlling or subduing others. Ethics are not universal because there is no universal Creator to determine what the absolute right and wrong are. And only the smartest and fittest and strongest survive so there's no need for those who are weak or incapable or otherwise not perfect according to the standards of those in power. Without a Creator death is a natural and intended part of life as we progress closer and closer towards a higher form of existence. Without a Creator we need not a Savior from our sins but rather an example of true virtue to be our example to emulate so that we hold ourselves to a higher standard – that is, so we fight every natural urge inside of us.
However, mankind knows that everyone has an inner voice, the Law of God written upon your heart to condemn universal and absolute sin – sin according to God's Commandments. (Some simply chose to ignore it). We can see in the irreducible complexity of life that there must've been an intelligent designer – at bare minimum. There is too much complexity in creation for this to have been accidental and there is solid evidence – often suppressed by the mainstream, atheistic, scientific community – of this. Science, itself, proves that we were created if we truly follow the evidence.
Other religions believe, for example, that man is a spirit trapped inside a physical body and that the whole point of this existence is to escape the physical. This is true of both Gnosticism and many Oriental religions, such as Buddhism and Hinduism. This type of belief about man leads to one of two extremes: either the absolute subjugation of the flesh through extreme denial (an attempt to purge the flesh so that only the spiritual remains, such as Buddhism, etc…), or the absolute freedom of the flesh through debauchery (an attempt to overcome the bounds of the flesh by engaging in every indulgence so that only the spiritual remains, such as Hedonism, etc…). Yet God made man as a being of both body and soul, both physical and spiritual. Angels were made as beings of pure spirit. Man is not like the angels nor is he supposed to be. That's one of the reasons why death is so unnerving, because it separates man's body from his spirit. And that's why the eternal promise is the reuniting of body and spirit in the resurrection.
Thus we see two factors at work. 1) Is there a God or isn't there? 2) Is mankind as body and soul intended for perfection and fallen or has he always existed as fallen? Science can attempt to prove the first but it cannot ever prove or disprove the second. The second premise is one that requires faith that believes God's Word as written down by God's prophets and confirmed by God's only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ in the Gospels that we were made to be perfect and yet have fallen and are in need of a Savior from our sins to take us to eternity with God in the new heavens and the new earth.
I hope that this little taste shows the importance of understanding what "man" is in a world of competing viewpoints.
Man and Woman
Have you ever heard someone take offense when the Church refers to those created after the image of God as "mankind"? We live in a post-feminist era where the quest for equality has come to dominate even the Church, and it plays itself out in such arguments as that above, to the point that even Zondervan, a well-known Bible publishing house, is printing a new edition of their New International Version that seeks as its goal gender-neutrality. We saw in a previous article on God why maintaining God's masculine identity is important, but is it important to maintain such statements as "mankind" in referring to us? Is it a big deal, or is it just progress? And why should we care?
In the general, grand picture of the creation account, Genesis 1:27 says, "God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them." This is the general way in which God presents the creation of man. And note that man was created and then man is differentiated between male and female as gender identities. The original Hebrew reads like "God created the Adam in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them." The translators choose to interpret the Hebrew name Adam in this case as man because, with the article in front of it, here it indicates that he is representative of human life as God created it. Thus he is and represents of himself all of mankind before the differentiation, "male and female he created them." We see in the expanded, specific account of the creation of man in Genesis 2 how this differentiation took place as Genesis 2:18, 21-22 "The LORD God said, 'It is not good that the man (again, the Adam) should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him'… So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man (the Adam), and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man (the Adam) he made into a woman and brought her to the man (the Adam)." Here we see God identifying her as woman, which, as Adam will declare, is not a gender identity but rather a relational identity, "for she was taken out of man (not the Adam, but the Hebrew for man as a relational identity to woman)." Note that man does not have a relational identity apart from his differentiation from woman.
In these passages we have seen three different ways of identifying gender: 1) Adam, and the Adam, as referring to Adam's representative place in creation, 2) male and female, referring specifically to gender identity; a biological reality of creation, 3) man and woman, referring specifically to a relational identity between man and woman as interconnected. If we lose sight of the relational identity of woman as she who was taken out of the side of man, we completely change who a woman is according to God and in the process change who a man is. If we lose the gender identity of male and female, we distort the created order of God and chase after our own order and desires. If we seek to supplant the Adam, man, as the general way of speaking of those created after the image of God, and exchange it either for a neuter or a feminine, we are denying God's witness to creation and replacing it with our own preferences. In such a way we see that the struggles of morality and gender identity in our times are due to not understanding or believing Scripture.
Now, that being said, we must note that this is not a call for male chauvinism and the debasing of women. Completely on the contrary. Recognizing male and female as complementary differentiations means recognizing a man's responsibility to complement a woman, as two cogs complement, or complete, each other in a machine by matching up their differences. It calls for us to recognize the relational identity that accompanies that biological differentiation, noting that the biological parts are not just functional but exist as part of a relationship of equals. Thus the Church identifies these distinctions in order to promote true equality through differentiation and complementation. Without this recognition, relationships quickly devolve into functional partnerships determined by what each party can gain from the other – which is the truest form of conflict and manipulation. This can include sex, codependence, self-esteem, power, and even the emotional experience of love, rather than the true relational reality of complementary differentiation, working to fill in and support those parts that the other lacks: "a helper fit for him."
Thus it is important to maintain the generic way of speaking as mankind and man; not for sake of berating or belittling women or elevating men, but to hold true to God's Word and to be called to a higher purpose and deeper sense of understanding God's creation rather than our own.
The Incarnation of Christ
During this Christmas season I'd like to encourage you and your family to consider the fullness of the meaning and implications in what it means that God sent his Son into the flesh of man. What does it mean that Jesus was conceived in the womb of the virgin Mary? What does it mean that the God of the universe assumed unto himself flesh and blood? This is the miracle of Christmas. So let's dig a little deeper into that.
Martin Luther sang of that manger, "There you will find the infant laid by whom the heav'ns and earth were made." One of the greatest paradoxes of all is that the eternal God who made all things humbled himself to be one of the most lowly and defenseless of all. The baby in the manger, as God Almighty, was the Word by which all things were created (Genesis 1, John 1) and still had all of that power even in the cradle. When Mary fed her new baby, she was feeding the God who provides all food for all people, even the ravens when they call (Psalm 147:9). Understanding this, we see just how much our Lord humbled himself in his incarnation.
And this humility goes even farther as we realize that this same baby fed by his mother was a baby in his mother's womb. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit as he spoke into the ear of the virgin Mary. From fertilization of Mary's egg by the immaculate power of the Holy Spirit, to the tiniest embryo growing in her womb, our Lord was formed just like you and me. 14 days after the Holy Spirit spoke this conception into being the individuality of LIFE was present in Mary's womb. Jesus' heart developed and beat its first heartbeat after only 24 days, 3 weeks. About 4 days after this Jesus' tiny head and body were clearly distinguishable with today's technology. After 42-54 days his brain has developed to the point where our technology today could have detected his brain activity. And 55-60 days, that's 2 months after the being conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the virgin Mary, Jesus would've been able to respond to touch and sound and to move around in the womb.
Consider how 24 days changed the world: after only 24 days the God who never had a heart before, for he is pure spirit, suddenly felt his very own heart beat for the first time. This is miraculous and life-changing. And with this heartbeat, the immortal God who had life eternal in and of himself could have his heart stopped and know death. Thus it was that in order to die on behalf of his people that the eternal God came into our flesh. What a great miracle God has done, what a great paradox God has overcome, that the Godhead which was pure spirit from eternity would, by the Father's will, send the Son into our flesh through the virgin's womb by the power of the Holy Spirit, assume flesh, to suffer and die and rise again; and then ascend into heaven in that flesh to again be present in the full fellowship of the Godhead in heaven. All of this for you.
That which Christ assumed, namely our life, flesh, and death, that he also redeemed. Hebrews says "He is like us in every way, but without sin." Therefore he has redeemed all of you – he has brought you out of this darkness and bondage under Satan and into his kingdom – except sin, so that your sin remains behind you, washed away through your Baptism into him, that you may be raised like him, without sin, on that last day. He has redeemed your conception, your gestation, your birth, your life, and even your death; your very flesh and blood. He assumed your flesh in order to redeem your flesh, from conception to death and into the resurrection where you will be raised to be like him in the flesh into eternity. That which he assumed he redeemed.
And that which he assumed and redeemed he now gives back to you. On the cross of Calvary Jesus Christ shed his blood for the sins of the whole world. He rose again that Easter Sunday in perfection and ascended into heaven in the flesh. From there, sitting at the right hand of God in the flesh as perfect God and perfect man, he distributes his assumed flesh to his children for the forgiveness of our sins. From heaven the GodMan gives us his holy flesh and blood for Christians to eat and drink for the forgiveness of our sins in with and under the bread and wine at Communion. What a miracle. And all of this because the eternal God, Father in heaven, sent his eternal Son, the second person of the Trinity, into our flesh by the power of the Holy Spirit 9 months before that Christmas morning. Praise the LORD for his great works.
Mankind was made in perfection after the image and likeness of God to be the reflection of God to the good and perfect creation. This is the content of Genesis 1 and 2 and is the future hope of the last chapters of Revelation. In between, however, the Bible tells the story of mankind's fall into sin and the curse brought from heaven upon both man and all creation. Thus we know that, until Jesus comes again, the world we see around us is fallen and corrupt, as Paul says in Romans 8, subjected to futility. Only in this way can we properly understand what's going on around us in the world and truly make sense of it all.
Mankind and all of creation is corrupted by sin. Thus there is death and chaos. Thus, even after so many centuries and millennia of experiencing it, death and loss still seem so unnatural. Thus the promise of God is an eternity restored to the way it was before the Fall of Genesis 3. The plan for accomplishing such a task was for the eternally Triune God to send the second person of the Trinity into the flesh of man, to bear it in a sinful world yet remain without sin in order to take that spotless flesh to the altar of sacrifice – the cross of Golgatha – and to make atonement in our flesh for all flesh. And now he gives to sinful humanity his very flesh and blood for us to eat and drink for the forgiveness of our sins.
This is the story of the Bible. Yet many refuse to believe this basic story of Creation in favor of another narrative which places man above sin and accountability with condemnation. Without a Creator, man is his own God and all religion is created by man – frequently, we are told, as a means of controlling or subduing others. Ethics are not universal because there is no universal Creator to determine what the absolute right and wrong are. And only the smartest and fittest and strongest survive so there's no need for those who are weak or incapable or otherwise not perfect according to the standards of those in power. Without a Creator death is a natural and intended part of life as we progress closer and closer towards a higher form of existence. Without a Creator we need not a Savior from our sins but rather an example of true virtue to be our example to emulate so that we hold ourselves to a higher standard – that is, so we fight every natural urge inside of us.
However, mankind knows that everyone has an inner voice, the Law of God written upon your heart to condemn universal and absolute sin – sin according to God's Commandments. (Some simply chose to ignore it). We can see in the irreducible complexity of life that there must've been an intelligent designer – at bare minimum. There is too much complexity in creation for this to have been accidental and there is solid evidence – often suppressed by the mainstream, atheistic, scientific community – of this. Science, itself, proves that we were created if we truly follow the evidence.
Other religions believe, for example, that man is a spirit trapped inside a physical body and that the whole point of this existence is to escape the physical. This is true of both Gnosticism and many Oriental religions, such as Buddhism and Hinduism. This type of belief about man leads to one of two extremes: either the absolute subjugation of the flesh through extreme denial (an attempt to purge the flesh so that only the spiritual remains, such as Buddhism, etc…), or the absolute freedom of the flesh through debauchery (an attempt to overcome the bounds of the flesh by engaging in every indulgence so that only the spiritual remains, such as Hedonism, etc…). Yet God made man as a being of both body and soul, both physical and spiritual. Angels were made as beings of pure spirit. Man is not like the angels nor is he supposed to be. That's one of the reasons why death is so unnerving, because it separates man's body from his spirit. And that's why the eternal promise is the reuniting of body and spirit in the resurrection.
Thus we see two factors at work. 1) Is there a God or isn't there? 2) Is mankind as body and soul intended for perfection and fallen or has he always existed as fallen? Science can attempt to prove the first but it cannot ever prove or disprove the second. The second premise is one that requires faith that believes God's Word as written down by God's prophets and confirmed by God's only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ in the Gospels that we were made to be perfect and yet have fallen and are in need of a Savior from our sins to take us to eternity with God in the new heavens and the new earth.
I hope that this little taste shows the importance of understanding what "man" is in a world of competing viewpoints.
Man and Woman
Have you ever heard someone take offense when the Church refers to those created after the image of God as "mankind"? We live in a post-feminist era where the quest for equality has come to dominate even the Church, and it plays itself out in such arguments as that above, to the point that even Zondervan, a well-known Bible publishing house, is printing a new edition of their New International Version that seeks as its goal gender-neutrality. We saw in a previous article on God why maintaining God's masculine identity is important, but is it important to maintain such statements as "mankind" in referring to us? Is it a big deal, or is it just progress? And why should we care?
In the general, grand picture of the creation account, Genesis 1:27 says, "God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them." This is the general way in which God presents the creation of man. And note that man was created and then man is differentiated between male and female as gender identities. The original Hebrew reads like "God created the Adam in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them." The translators choose to interpret the Hebrew name Adam in this case as man because, with the article in front of it, here it indicates that he is representative of human life as God created it. Thus he is and represents of himself all of mankind before the differentiation, "male and female he created them." We see in the expanded, specific account of the creation of man in Genesis 2 how this differentiation took place as Genesis 2:18, 21-22 "The LORD God said, 'It is not good that the man (again, the Adam) should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him'… So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man (the Adam), and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man (the Adam) he made into a woman and brought her to the man (the Adam)." Here we see God identifying her as woman, which, as Adam will declare, is not a gender identity but rather a relational identity, "for she was taken out of man (not the Adam, but the Hebrew for man as a relational identity to woman)." Note that man does not have a relational identity apart from his differentiation from woman.
In these passages we have seen three different ways of identifying gender: 1) Adam, and the Adam, as referring to Adam's representative place in creation, 2) male and female, referring specifically to gender identity; a biological reality of creation, 3) man and woman, referring specifically to a relational identity between man and woman as interconnected. If we lose sight of the relational identity of woman as she who was taken out of the side of man, we completely change who a woman is according to God and in the process change who a man is. If we lose the gender identity of male and female, we distort the created order of God and chase after our own order and desires. If we seek to supplant the Adam, man, as the general way of speaking of those created after the image of God, and exchange it either for a neuter or a feminine, we are denying God's witness to creation and replacing it with our own preferences. In such a way we see that the struggles of morality and gender identity in our times are due to not understanding or believing Scripture.
Now, that being said, we must note that this is not a call for male chauvinism and the debasing of women. Completely on the contrary. Recognizing male and female as complementary differentiations means recognizing a man's responsibility to complement a woman, as two cogs complement, or complete, each other in a machine by matching up their differences. It calls for us to recognize the relational identity that accompanies that biological differentiation, noting that the biological parts are not just functional but exist as part of a relationship of equals. Thus the Church identifies these distinctions in order to promote true equality through differentiation and complementation. Without this recognition, relationships quickly devolve into functional partnerships determined by what each party can gain from the other – which is the truest form of conflict and manipulation. This can include sex, codependence, self-esteem, power, and even the emotional experience of love, rather than the true relational reality of complementary differentiation, working to fill in and support those parts that the other lacks: "a helper fit for him."
Thus it is important to maintain the generic way of speaking as mankind and man; not for sake of berating or belittling women or elevating men, but to hold true to God's Word and to be called to a higher purpose and deeper sense of understanding God's creation rather than our own.
The Incarnation of Christ
During this Christmas season I'd like to encourage you and your family to consider the fullness of the meaning and implications in what it means that God sent his Son into the flesh of man. What does it mean that Jesus was conceived in the womb of the virgin Mary? What does it mean that the God of the universe assumed unto himself flesh and blood? This is the miracle of Christmas. So let's dig a little deeper into that.
Martin Luther sang of that manger, "There you will find the infant laid by whom the heav'ns and earth were made." One of the greatest paradoxes of all is that the eternal God who made all things humbled himself to be one of the most lowly and defenseless of all. The baby in the manger, as God Almighty, was the Word by which all things were created (Genesis 1, John 1) and still had all of that power even in the cradle. When Mary fed her new baby, she was feeding the God who provides all food for all people, even the ravens when they call (Psalm 147:9). Understanding this, we see just how much our Lord humbled himself in his incarnation.
And this humility goes even farther as we realize that this same baby fed by his mother was a baby in his mother's womb. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit as he spoke into the ear of the virgin Mary. From fertilization of Mary's egg by the immaculate power of the Holy Spirit, to the tiniest embryo growing in her womb, our Lord was formed just like you and me. 14 days after the Holy Spirit spoke this conception into being the individuality of LIFE was present in Mary's womb. Jesus' heart developed and beat its first heartbeat after only 24 days, 3 weeks. About 4 days after this Jesus' tiny head and body were clearly distinguishable with today's technology. After 42-54 days his brain has developed to the point where our technology today could have detected his brain activity. And 55-60 days, that's 2 months after the being conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the virgin Mary, Jesus would've been able to respond to touch and sound and to move around in the womb.
Consider how 24 days changed the world: after only 24 days the God who never had a heart before, for he is pure spirit, suddenly felt his very own heart beat for the first time. This is miraculous and life-changing. And with this heartbeat, the immortal God who had life eternal in and of himself could have his heart stopped and know death. Thus it was that in order to die on behalf of his people that the eternal God came into our flesh. What a great miracle God has done, what a great paradox God has overcome, that the Godhead which was pure spirit from eternity would, by the Father's will, send the Son into our flesh through the virgin's womb by the power of the Holy Spirit, assume flesh, to suffer and die and rise again; and then ascend into heaven in that flesh to again be present in the full fellowship of the Godhead in heaven. All of this for you.
That which Christ assumed, namely our life, flesh, and death, that he also redeemed. Hebrews says "He is like us in every way, but without sin." Therefore he has redeemed all of you – he has brought you out of this darkness and bondage under Satan and into his kingdom – except sin, so that your sin remains behind you, washed away through your Baptism into him, that you may be raised like him, without sin, on that last day. He has redeemed your conception, your gestation, your birth, your life, and even your death; your very flesh and blood. He assumed your flesh in order to redeem your flesh, from conception to death and into the resurrection where you will be raised to be like him in the flesh into eternity. That which he assumed he redeemed.
And that which he assumed and redeemed he now gives back to you. On the cross of Calvary Jesus Christ shed his blood for the sins of the whole world. He rose again that Easter Sunday in perfection and ascended into heaven in the flesh. From there, sitting at the right hand of God in the flesh as perfect God and perfect man, he distributes his assumed flesh to his children for the forgiveness of our sins. From heaven the GodMan gives us his holy flesh and blood for Christians to eat and drink for the forgiveness of our sins in with and under the bread and wine at Communion. What a miracle. And all of this because the eternal God, Father in heaven, sent his eternal Son, the second person of the Trinity, into our flesh by the power of the Holy Spirit 9 months before that Christmas morning. Praise the LORD for his great works.
