Abstract

Table of Contents

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

Part VI

Part VII

Part VIII
   

Volume 3: The Doorway Papers Series

MAN IN ADAM AND IN CHRIST

Abstract: This book is both an anthropological and a biblical study of man as a child of Adam and as a child of God. It is a study of human nature and how it can and cannot be changed. Man suffers from a fatal disease, inflicted by Adam's fall in the Garden of Eden. To pretend that human nature has improved or is capable of improvement by natual means is the worst form of deception. But man has possibilities because he was once stamped with something the Scriptures call "the image of God".
     Once this image is restored by an act of re-creation on God's part, there begins a new work: the formation of a personality pleasing to God. The result is that a man can be an entirely new creation in Jesus Christ, yet be recognizable as the same individual.

     Century after century man's achievements are marred by his constant warring and destructiveness. How can we account for this record of wickedness" What has gone wrong with man?
     If, as evolutionists say, man is an-angel-in-the-making, changing steadily for the better as he moves further from his animal ancestry, then his propensity for wickedness is unfortunate, a relapse, a temporary set-back. . . .
     If, as the Bible says, man is a divinely created being who has fallen from grace and can only change for the worse, then his propensity for wickedness is demonstration that something has gone wrong, from which there now seems no possibility of recovery.
     Human nature, evolutionists say optimistically, is basically good just needing more time, proper environment, more knowledge. . . .
     Human nature, as both the Bible and history declare, has a positive bent towards wickedness. Sin is active, effective, THERE! Sin entered.
    The issue is critical: for upon the answer must depend society's way of dealing with this downward fall.

   We admire the interdependence and harmony in Nature. It laws, showing evidence of deliberate and careful design, instinctively obeyed by its 'citizens', demonstrate that it is part of the Kingdom of God. Here is God within Nature.
    Tennyson's picture of Nature as 'red in tooth and claw' really describes man's behaviour within nature. He is the alien, the mis-fit, the disturber, the arch-destroyer. . . .
     Can he bcome a member of this Kingdom? Only God can restore him to harmony and peace with Nature in His Kingdom. How He does this is Good News: it is God within man.

     Now it is assumed that God is the Father of all mankind because He created us in His image. It is also assumed that the words 'image' and 'likeness' are synonymous, used for emphasis. But it sometimes turns out that what is ovciously true is, in reality, false. For Scripture says that we, Adam's descendants, are not in God's image!
     That image and likeness are not synonymous can be discovered by carefully observing not only the use of words but even the omission of words. As a case in point, take Genesis 1:26 and 27. First we are told of the plan: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. . . ." Then we are told what was done: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him. . . ." By observing the omission of the one word and the use of two different verbs, it is seen that the image is created (given) but the likeness is only appointed.
     Upon the precise meaning of these two words hinges much that makes Christianity a unique system of beliefs. It demonstrates the unique way in which redemption is achieved, and it demonstrates the unique way in which Christian character is achieved.

     Once this image is restored by an act of re-creation on God's part, a new work then begins: the formation of a personality pleasing to God "If any man be in Christ he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold all things are become new" (2 Corinthians 5:17).
     Christian conversion is unique. While he does become a new creation in Christ, yet he is still recognizably the same person. Scripture states quite precisely (using specific terms consistently) what part of the personality is untouched and what part is completely displaced, and is illumined by research in psychology, genetics, and anthropology.

     If only! If only this or that handicap were removed, some hindrance for which we are not responsible, te denied opportunity, the lack of means all these "hedges" prevent us from doing great things for mankind, even for God. Job complained of his hedge, and so did Paul. Yet the Lord knows how much we can acieve without being spoiled by that very achievement.
     God's goal is the making of saints, not highly successful people. It helps to take stock , every little while, of the meaning and purpose of these hindrances which God seems to allow, and sometimes to appoint, as part of our lot in life.

Introduction

Chapter 1. Where Hindrance is Help

Chapter 2. Thy Rod Comforts Me?

Chapter 3.  A Thorn in the Flesh

     God not only forgives ALL our sins (even the ones we can't remember) but He also FORGETS them! What the Bible tells us about the persistence of memory is being confirmed by research. What Freud discovered about the subconscious as a cesspool is what the Lord had already declared: evil thoughts and actions come from within (Mark 7:21-23).
     Herein lies the weight of sin: this burden of unforgiven sin poisoning both the unconscious and the conscious memory. Since our society has no sense of sin (all is relative), it is unable to cope with the effects of sin a sense of guilt. Man needs, if peace and health is to be restored to his soul, not merely the forgiveness of the sins he can recall and confess but a washing away, a cleansing, of his subconscious.
     It is here that God performs his great work of cleansing, of blotting out the record, of forgiving and forgetting. And Scripture gives us clues as to how He accomplishes this.

     It might be thought that "sins" is merely the plural of "sin". And this is true. But Scripture uses the word SIN for Original Sin that diseased condition that we all inherit from Adam, and the word SINS for the symptoms of that disease as they work themselves out in our daily lives.
    The fact is that while all have inherited the disease, its symptoms vary in each individual. And the fact is that while we are not responsible for the nature we inherit, we are responsible for the expression of that nature.
     What is said about the nature of SIN is not to be confused with what is said about the nature of SINS. How God has dealt with SIN and SINS in the Lord's sacrifice is clearly stated and entirely just and fair. Thus the Plan of Salvation is truly comprehensive and, to those who believe, is compelling in its logic and completely realistic in experience.

     This Paper is an entirely new approach to the meaning of the term The Body of Christ. It is an old and wonderful truth arrived at by a different route.
     It involves research which is tending increasingly towards the view that the basic reality behind the physical world is a spiritual one as Scripture states. Consciousness is not, as the mechanists would have us believe, an epiphenomenon of matter, but matter may very well be an epiphenomenon of consciousness. Similarly the basis of speciation, which must appear to the geneticist to be physical, just as the basis of mind may appear to the neurophysiologist to be brain, is in reality -- and more bindingly -- psychical and spiritual. Indeed, it seems likely that the psychic unity is the basic reality by which animals in nature recognize their own kind.
     Thus it is possible that the experience of new birth actually has, for the child of God, the real effect of re-constituting the individual as a member of an entirely new species what Scripture terms the 'Body of Christ'.

Introduction

Chapter 1. The Spiritual Nature of the Physical World

Chapter 2. The Ubiquity of Mindedness

Chapter 3. The Two Species of Homo sapiens

 

1975 published by Zondervan Publishing Co.
1997 published online
2001 2nd Online Edition – corrected, edited and re-formatted