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φύσις (Physis): Inborn Disposition, Not Acquired Habit · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  Welcome to Reform Thinking. I'm your host and I'm glad
• 0:02
  you're here with us. Sitting across from me, looking
• 0:05
  very prepared with a rather large stack of books, is our
• 0:09
  resident expert and Theological Analyst.
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  It's good to be here, I always enjoy these sessions, though I
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  will admit the stack of books is a bit taller than usual today.
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  I noticed that usually when we sit down, we're tackling a big
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  historical event, or maybe a biography of a reformer or a
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  broad doctrine like justification.
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  Right, the big picture stuff. But today we're doing something
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  a little different. We are zooming in.
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  We are taking that stack of source material, lexicons,
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  commentaries, ancient Greek philosophical texts, and we're
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  going to focus entirely on a single word.
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  It sounds small. I know when people hear lexical
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  analysis they might instinctively, you know, reach
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  for the skip button on their player.
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  Yeah, their eyes might glaze over.
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  But in the world of theology, words are the containers.
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  They hold the concepts. If you get the definition of the
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  container wrong, the theology inside spills out and makes a
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  mess. That is a great visual, and the
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  word we are putting under the microscope today is the Greek
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  word thesis. For those taking notes or who
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  just want to visualize it, that's spelled PHYSIIS.
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  Now the standard translation in almost every Bible you pick up
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  is nature. That is the standard
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  translation, yes, but nature in English is a bit of a a junk
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  drawer word. It's too broad.
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  How so? We use it for everything.
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  We talk about taking a hike in nature, meaning the woods.
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  We talk about the nature of the problem, meaning the essence of
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  it. We talk about human nature.
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  The Greek word thesis has a similar range, but its history
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  is specific. It has a trajectory.
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  And that's our mission for this deep dive.
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  We want to track that trajectory.
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  We want to see how this word started out describing how
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  plants grow, moved into Greek philosophy to describe the
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  universe. And then this is the best part,
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  how the New Testament authors, specifically Paul, grabbed this
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  word and used it to explain the gospel.
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  It really is a fascinating takeover.
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  Paul and the other apostles took a word that was loaded with
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  Pagan philosophy, Stoic baggage, and, you know, secular
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  assumptions, and they redeemed it.
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  They repurposed it. Completely.
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  They used it to draw a hard line between the creator and the
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  creature. And since we're Reformed
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  thinking, we are going to look at this through our specific
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  theological lens. We hold to the Westminster
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  Confession. We believe in the sovereignty of
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  God and the radical corruption of the human heart.
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  We do. And it turns out this little
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  Word physicist is actually a key witness in establishing those
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  doctrines. It helps us define what we are
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  when we enter this world and what God has to do to us to make
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  us fit for His Kingdom. So let's start at the roots,
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  literally when we look at the etymology provided in the source
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  material. Where does physics come from?
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  It goes back to a an ancient Indo European root.
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  That root eventually morphs into the Greek verb fu fuo OK and the
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  ver fuo means to grow, to produce or to become.
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  It's the agricultural term. It is biological.
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  So before it was a philosophical concept about the cosmos, it was
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  just about stuff growing in the. Dirt.
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  That's it. It describes the process of a
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  thing unfolding from its own internal principle.
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  Think of a seed. When a seed is in the ground, it
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  pushes up a chute, then leaves, then a flower.
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  That process of becoming what it was meant to be.
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  That's FIS. It's dynamic.
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  It's not a static picture. It's a motion picture of growth.
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  The sources cite the very first time this word appears in Greek
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  literature, and I have to say the context is not what I
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  expected. It isn't a lecture on
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  metaphysics, not at all. It's a story about a witch and a
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  pig. It is one of the most famous
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  scenes in Homer's Odyssey. Odysseus is on the island of
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  Cersei. Cersei is a sorceress and she
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  has this this nasty habit of turning men into swine.
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  Odysseus needs to confront her, but he doesn't want to end up in
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  the pigpen, so Hermes, the messenger of the gods and
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  intercepts him. And Hermes gives him a plant.
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  He gives him a magical herb called Molly.
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  It's supposed to protect him from Cersei's magic.
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  But here's the key moment Homer writes that Hermes showed at
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  Odysseus the physics of the plant.
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  He showed him the nature of the plant.
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  What did that mean practically in the story?
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  I mean, was it a spiritual essence?
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  No, not at all. It meant he showed him what it
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  looked like and how it grew. Homer describes it immediately
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  after using the word. He says it had a black root and
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  a milk white flower. He says it was difficult for
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  mortal men to dig up. Ah, OK.
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  So in its first recorded use, physics meant the physical form
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  and constitution of a living thing.
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  It's about it's observable properties.
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  It was an identifier. Here is how you spot this plant
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  and here is how it's built. It's about its appearance and
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  its growth pattern. Precisely.
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  It was about the tangible, observable characteristics that
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  make the plant what it is. It's what you see.
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  From there, the word seems to jump species.
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  It moves from plants to people. It does pretty quickly,
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  actually. By the time you get to Pindar,
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  who was a lyric poet, he's using physics to describe a person's
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  physical stature. So like if someone was tall and
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  strong, that was their physics. Those are physicists.
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  Their makeup, their build, and over time this splits into two
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  main rivers of meaning in the Greek language starts to get a
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  little more abstract. Let's break those down.
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  What is the first river? The first meaning is origin or
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  birth. This ties back to that root word
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  meaning to grow or to generate. So if you say someone is an
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  Athenian by nature, you mean by descent, by birth.
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  It's about your lineage. It's about where you came from.
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  So that's the ancestry angle. What is the second river?
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  The second meaning is constitution, or character.
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  Yeah, this is the inner quality of a thing.
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  It's not just where you were born, but what you are.
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  So the sum of its parts. The sum of its parts, it's
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  inherent qualities. It's the specific set of
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  qualities that makes a dog a dog or a human or a a hyena.
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  A hyena. I found a bizarre example in the
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  research notes that illustrates this constitution meaning it
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  comes from the Epistle of Barnabas.
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  Right now, just to be clear for you listening, this is an early
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  Christian text, but it is not in the Bible.
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  Correct. It's one of the Apostolic
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  Fathers. It's fascinating historical
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  reading, but we do not consider it inspired scripture.
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  And honestly, when you read his biology, you can see why.
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  He talks about the hyena and he has a very specific idea about
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  the physis of a hyena. Barnabas, reflecting some of the
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  popular, you know, folklore of his day, believe that the hyena
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  changed its sex every year. He thought it alternated between
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  being male and female. Which, just for the record, is
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  not how hyenas work. No, it is not, but
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  linguistically it's helpful for us.
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  Barnabas uses the word physics to describe that biological
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  constitution. He believed the animals nature
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  was mutable, that its physical sexual identity shifted
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  annually. So he wasn't talking about its
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  personality or its habits. No, he was talking about it's
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  hardwiring its fundamental biological makeup.
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  He was saying its physicist was to change.
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  So up to this point physicist pretty grounded.
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  It's about plants, bodies, animals, birth.
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  But then the philosopher show up the pre Socratics get involved.
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  And this is where the word gets heavy.
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  The pre Socratics guys like Heraclitus stopped looking at
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  individual plants and started looking at the whole cosmos.
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  They asked what is the physics of reality?
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  They wanted to know what was under the hood of the universe,
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  what makes everything tick. That's it.
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  They used physicists to talk about the true reality of things
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  as opposed to just how they appear on the surface.
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  Heraclitus has this famous line that you see quoted in all the
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  textbooks. Tree nature loves to hide
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  itself. Physic criptesti filet.
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  That's the one. Nature loves to hide.
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  That sounds very mysterious. What's he getting at?
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  He means that the way things truly are is not obvious.
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  You have to investigate. You look at a table and it looks
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  solid and still. But a physicist, notice the word
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  physicist from physics will tell you it's mostly empty space and
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  vibrating atoms. OK, the appearance is solid, but
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  the physics is this buzzing cloud of particles.
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  Right. The nature is hidden beneath the
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  surface appearance, so the word starts to mean the underlying
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  organizing principle of something.
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  So the word has evolved. It's gone from look at this
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  flower to what is the invisible glue holding reality together.
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  That is the shift, and that shift paves the way for the
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  biggest debate in Greek ethics, the showdown between physics and
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  nomos. Nature versus law.
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  Or nature versus custom. This was the battleground for
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  the sophists. The sophists were the the
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  traveling intellectuals of the day.
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  They were skeptics. The public intellectuals, The
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  consultants. Exactly.
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  They traveled around the Mediterranean and they noticed
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  something. They saw that the Persians had
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  one set of laws, the Egyptians had another, and the Greeks had
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  another. Customs were different
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  everywhere. They saw that law nomos changed
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  depending on which side of the border you were on, right?
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  So they concluded that Nomos is fake.
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  It's arbitrary. It's just something humans
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  made-up. But physics, Nature, that's
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  real, that's universal. It's the constant.
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  It's the constant fire burns in Greece just like it burns in
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  Persia. Hunger feels the same in Appens
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  as it does in Sparta. That's the real stuff.
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  I can see the logic there, but I can also see the trap.
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  If you decide that law is fake and nature is the only real
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  standard, what does that do to your behavior?
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  It takes the guardrails off. The source of material brings up
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  a character named Calacles from Plato's dialogues.
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  Calacles is the ultimate sophist in this regard.
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  He argues that since nature is the only reality, the only real
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  law is the law of the jungle. The survival of the fittest
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  might makes right. That's his whole argument.
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  Calacles argues that the strong dominating the weak is the law
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  of nature. He says that civil laws, things
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  like fairness, justice, mercy are just inventions by weak
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  people to protect themselves from the strong.
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  So our laws are just a conspiracy of the weak.
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  That's what he says. He says that if a man has enough
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  power, he should take what he wants.
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  That is living according to nature.
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  That is terrifying. It's basically the justification
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  for every tyrant in history. I do it because I can and my
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  power proves I am right. It is the philosophy of the
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  predator, and Plato and Aristotle spent their careers
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  trying to fight this. Plato tried to argue that the
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  soul is the true physis, so you should take care of your soul,
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  not just your appetites. He tried to move the definition
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  inward. Inward and upward.
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  And Aristotle tried to argue that nature isn't just your raw
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  instinct, it is your potential. It's about what you're designed
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  to become. Aristotle talked about the telos
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  right? The end goal?
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  Yes, Aristotle would say sure, and acorns it a nut.
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  But it's physics. It's nature is to be an oak
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  tree. Its nature is its fulfillment.
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  So for a human, our nature isn't just our animal urges.
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  No, our nature is what we look like when we are fully grown,
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  rational, virtuous adults. He tried to rescue the word
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  nature from the gutter that the sophists had kicked it into.
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  But then we get to the Stoics, and this is really the context
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  we need for the New Testament. The Stoics took this word
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  physics and they basically turned it into a religion.
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  They did for the Stoics physicist everything.
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  They were pantheists. They believed that the universe
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  itself was divine. So they.
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  Didn't believe in a God who stood outside the world and
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  created it. No, not at all.
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  They believed God was the mind of the world.
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  The universe is a giant living animal and God is its soul is
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  animating principle. They called it the Logos.
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  So for a stoic, nature and God are the same thing.
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  Interchangeable terms be was of nature, God or nature.
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  Because of this, their ethics were all about living according
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  to nature. Kata fism.
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  But they didn't mean be a predator like the Sophists did.
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  They had a very different take on what according to nature
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  meant. A completely different take
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  Because they believed nature was rational.
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  Since nature is God, nature is orderly, it follows logic.
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  So for a stoic living cada, fizzen meant accepting your
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  fate. It meant suppressing your
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  irrational emotions and aligning your will with the logic of the
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  universe. OK, give me an example.
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  If it rains on your wedding day, don't get mad.
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  It is nature, it is God. Accept it with calm detachment.
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  If you get sick, don't reel against it.
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  It's part of the rational order of things.
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  It sounds very noble, very stiff upper.
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  Lip It is noble in a human sense, but from a reform
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  perspective, it's a disaster. Why is it a disaster?
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  It sounds like a path to virtue. Because it erases the creator
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  creature distinction. That's the fundamental line that
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  was never be blurred. If the universe is God, then you
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  are worshipping the thing made rather than the maker.
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  It turns the cosmos into an idol.
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  And it leaves no room for a personal God who intervenes.
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  None. The system just runs, and this
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  is exactly the worldview Paul's going to walk into and collide
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  with when he gets to the marketplace in Athens.
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  Before we get to Paul, though, we have to look at how the
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  Jewish people handled this. They were monotheists.
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  They didn't believe the universe was God.
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  So what did they do with this Greek word physis?
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  This is the Jewish Bridge. In the Old Testament Hebrew
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  mindset, there really isn't a word for nature in the way the
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  Greeks used it. That's interesting.
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  Why not? Because they didn't see the
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  world as a self running machine, they saw God doing everything
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  directly. God makes the grass grow.
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  God feeds the lions. There is no Mother Nature, there
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  is just the Father. So they didn't really need the
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  word, the category didn't exist for them.
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  Not initially, but as Jews moved out into the Greek world, what
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  we call the Diaspora, they had to start using Greek terms to
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  communicate. We see it in the Septuvian, the
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  Greek translation of the Old Testament.
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  The word is rare, but it pops up.
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  Like in the Wisdom of Solomon. Right where it says men are
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  foolish by nature for not knowing God from his creation.
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  But the big layer here is Philo of Alexandria.
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  Philo is the guy who tried to mash up the Bible with Greek
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  philosophy. He's the great synthesizer.
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  He lived in Egypt and he loved Moses, but he also loved Plato
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  and the Stoics. He tried to argue that the Law
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  of Moses is the law of nature. So he's responding to that
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  sophist idea that law is fake and nature is real.
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  That's it, He says. No, no, the law given at Sinai
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  isn't arbitrary. It aligns perfectly with the
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  design of the universe. He argues that because God
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  created the world, his law fits the world like a glove.
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  So keeping the law is like going with the grain of the universe.
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  That's his argument. If you honor your parents or
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  keep the Sabbath, you were actually flowing with the
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  current of the cosmos. And he uses Abraham as the proof
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  of this. It's a clever argument.
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  How does he use Abraham? He asks how was Abraham
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  righteous? Abraham lived centuries before
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  Moses gave the 10 commandments. He didn't have the written law,
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  so Philo says, Abraham kept the law by nature.
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  He was so holy, so in tune with the Creator, that he intuitively
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  followed the physics of God's will.
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  That's just the table perfectly for the New Testament.
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  You have the Stoic saying nature is God, you have the Jews saying
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  God created nature, and then you have the Apostle Paul.
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  Paul walks into this room and flips the table over.
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  He uses the word physics, but he uses it to dismantle human
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  pride. Let's look at Romans 11.
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  This is the famous olive tree analogy.
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  I love this passage. Paul is trying to explain how
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  the Gentiles, the non Jewish nations, fit into God's plan.
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  He compares Israel to a cultivated olive tree and the
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  Gentiles to a wild olive tree. And he leans heavily on the
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  agricultural roots of the word. He says the Jews are the natural
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  branches, cada fism. They grew there.
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  That is their native soil. They belong to the tree.
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  Right. The Gentiles are the wild
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  branches. They're growing out in the
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  scrubland. They're uncultivated.
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  But then God does the grafting. And here's the This is where he
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  shocks everyone. Paul says God grafts the wild
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  branches in contrary to nature Parafism.
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  Contrary to nature. Now pause there.
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  In the ancient world and even today, how does grafting usually
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  work? If you're a gardener, you take a
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  branch from a really good fruit producing tree and you graft it
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  onto a strong wild root stock. You want the strength of the
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  root to support the good fruit of the branch.
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  So you improve the wild root stock.
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  Right. You do not take a scraggly wild
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  branch and stick it onto a prize winning tree.
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  That would ruin the tree. It makes no horticultural sense.
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  It is unnatural. But that's exactly what Paul
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  says God does. That is the point.
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  Grace is not natural. Grace is supernatural, the Stoic
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  said. Follow nature to be saved.
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  Paul says no, Your nature is wild.
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  Your nature is scrub brush. If you follow your nature, you
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  end up as firewood. You need God to intervene
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  against the natural order. So salvation is a disruption of
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  nature. It is a glorious interruption.
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  God does what nature cannot do. He takes the bad branch and
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  makes it part of the good tree. It's a miracle precisely because
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  it violates the expected outcome.
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  That's Romans 11. But we also have to talk about
• 16:40
  Romans one. This is the chapter that makes
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  modern people very uncomfortable.
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  Paul is discussing human rebellion and specifically
• 16:46
  sexual behavior. He is, and he uses that same
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  Stoic phrase para fism contrary to nature.
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  He describes same sex behavior as exchanging the natural
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  function for that which is contrary to nature.
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  Now I can hear a skeptic asking a question here.
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  Wait a minute, you just said in Romans 11 that God acting
• 17:07
  contrary to nature is a good thing.
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  It's grace. So why is humans acting contrary
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  to nature in Romans 1A bad thing?
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  That is the critical distinction we have to make.
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  Who is the actor in Romans 11? The actor is God, the gardener.
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  The gardener. God is the creator.
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  He is the author of the story. He has the right to edit the
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  script. He has the authority to override
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  the natural order to bring about redemption.
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  He is above nature. But in Romans 1.
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  In Romans one, the actor is the human being.
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  We are the creatures. When a creature acts contrary to
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  nature, they are not bringing redemption, They are engaging in
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  rebellion. They are fighting against the
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  design stamped on them by the Maker.
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  So when God goes against nature, it's miracle.
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  When man goes against nature, it's sin.
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  Precisely. And notice what Paul is doing
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  with the Stoic language. The Stoic said certain behaviors
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  were wrong because they violated the logic of the universe.
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  The cosmic reason? Right.
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  Paul says it's wrong because it violates the Creator's design.
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  He shifts the authority. The standards isn't just biology
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  or some impersonal cosmic reason.
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  The standard is the God who designed the biology.
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  Let's move to Romans 2. This is a text that gets cited a
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  lot and debates about natural law, Paul writes.
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  When Gentiles who do not have the law do by nature things
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  required by the law, they are a law for themselves.
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  Do by nature, this sounds a lot like Philo, doesn't it?
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  It sounds like Abraham keeping the law by intuition.
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  It does. So is Paul saying that these
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  gentiles can be saved by their nature?
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  If they're really nice people who pay their taxes and don't
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  murder anyone, are they good to go?
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  If you stop reading at verse 14 you might think that, but if you
• 18:40
  read the rest of Romans, especially chapter 3, the answer
• 18:44
  is the screaming no. So what's he doing here then?
• 18:47
  Paul isn't complimenting their nature here.
• 18:49
  He's building a case against them.
• 18:51
  He's cornering them. How does doing the law condemn
• 18:53
  you? That seems backwards.
• 18:54
  Because the law written on the heart, the conscience, strips
• 18:58
  away your excuse. A Gentile cannot stand before
• 19:01
  God on Judgement Day and say, well, I didn't have a Bible so I
• 19:04
  didn't know stealing was wrong. Paul says, yes, you did.
• 19:07
  Your own nature, your own Constitution, told you it was
• 19:10
  wrong and you did it anyway. So the function of nature here
• 19:14
  isn't to save us, it is to convict us.
• 19:16
  It's evidence for the prosecution.
• 19:18
  It is the prosecutor's evidence, yeah.
• 19:20
  It proves that God is fair when he judges the nation's They knew
• 19:24
  enough to be responsible, but they didn't know enough to be
• 19:27
  saved. There is one more spot in Paul's
• 19:29
  letters that I think is crucial for our reformed understanding
• 19:32
  of the world Galatians 4.8 Paul is writing very strongly to the
• 19:37
  Galatians because they want to go back to their old religious
• 19:40
  rituals. He says formally, when you did
• 19:42
  not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not
• 19:45
  gods. By nature or not, gods.
• 19:47
  This is a direct shot at the entire Pagan worldview.
• 19:51
  Remember, the world was full of gods.
• 19:53
  The sun was a God, the river was a God.
• 19:55
  The emperor was a God. The Stoics thought the fire and
• 19:58
  the stars was divine. He's a very crowded spiritual
• 20:00
  landscape. Very.
• 20:02
  And Paul uses the word physicist to draw a hard line in the sand.
• 20:05
  He's saying there were two fundamental categories of being.
• 20:08
  What are they? There is the uncreated, and
• 20:10
  there's the created. There is the divine nature, and
• 20:13
  there is everything else. The sun might be powerful, but
• 20:15
  by nature it's a ball of gas. It's a created thing to worship.
• 20:19
  It is a category error. It is the ultimate insult to the
• 20:23
  true God. It clears the field.
• 20:25
  There is one God and everything else is just nature.
• 20:28
  Exactly. Nature is demoted.
• 20:30
  It isn't divine, it is just creation.
• 20:33
  Beautiful, good creation. The creation nonetheless.
• 20:35
  Now we have to turn the corner to the doctrine that defines us
• 20:38
  as Reformed believers. We've talked about the nature of
• 20:40
  plants and the nature of the cosmos, but what about human
• 20:43
  nature? What is our default setting?
• 20:46
  We have to look at Ephesians 2.3.
• 20:48
  This is the cornerstone text for the doctrine of original sin,
• 20:51
  Paul writes. We were by nature children of
• 20:54
  wrath, like the rest of mankind. Technophize Orgias children by
• 20:59
  nature of wrath. I want to ask you about the
• 21:01
  grammar here, because the source material made a point about the
• 21:05
  word order. It is significant in the Greek.
• 21:07
  The word Fe, say by nature is sandwiched right between
• 21:11
  children and wrath. It locks them together.
• 21:13
  It modifies both in a way. It connects them inextricably.
• 21:17
  Paul is saying that our status as objects of God's wrath isn't
• 21:20
  just because of a few bad choices we made in high school.
• 21:23
  It is connected to our very being.
• 21:25
  It's our birth condition. The ancient monk Pelagius hated
• 21:28
  this idea, didn't he? Pelagius argued that we were
• 21:30
  born more neutral. He thought a baby is like a
• 21:33
  blank sheet of paper. We only become sinners when we
• 21:35
  see other people sinning and we copy them.
• 21:37
  It's a bad habit. Theory of sin.
• 21:39
  Paul says it's deeper than had it.
• 21:41
  It's not just what we do, it's what we are.
• 21:44
  Paul says it's physicists, it's origin, it's our Constitution.
• 21:47
  We are born in Adam because we come from that stock.
• 21:51
  We arrive spiritually dead. We are not born neutral.
• 21:54
  We are born facing away from God.
• 21:56
  That is a hard pill to swallow for modern people.
• 21:59
  We like to think we're basically good.
• 22:01
  It was hard for the Stoics to swallow to The Stoics believed
• 22:04
  every human had a divine spark inside them.
• 22:07
  They thought human nature was fundamentally good and rational.
• 22:10
  Just, you know, clouded by emotions.
• 22:12
  Paul looks at human nature and says no.
• 22:14
  Left to itself, this nature produces death.
• 22:17
  The source material mentions Ignatius of Antioch, a church
• 22:20
  father who wrote a few decades after the apostles.
• 22:23
  He used the word differently, didn't.
• 22:25
  He he did. He wrote to the Christians and
• 22:27
  travels and complimented them for having a good disposition,
• 22:29
  not by habit but by nature. But you have to see the context.
• 22:33
  He was talking about the redeemed nature in Christ.
• 22:35
  He was saying their goodness wasn't just a learned behavior,
• 22:38
  it was the result of a new God-given constitution.
• 22:42
  When Paul speaks of our starting point in Ephesians, he is
• 22:45
  diagnosing the disease. The disease is genetic.
• 22:48
  It is in the spiritual DNA. So if our nature is broken, if
• 22:52
  we are a wild olive tree, children of wrath, how do we get
• 22:56
  out of this? We can't fix our own nature.
• 22:59
  A leopard can't change its spots.
• 23:01
  That brings us to Seven Peter 1.4, and honestly, this verse is
• 23:05
  startling. If you didn't know it was in the
• 23:07
  Bible, you might think it was from a Hindu text or a Greek
• 23:10
  mystery cult. Peter writes that God has given
• 23:12
  us great promises so that we might become partakers of the
• 23:16
  divine nature. Paeos quinoa physios, sharers in
• 23:19
  the nature of God. That sounds dangerous.
• 23:21
  Sounds like heresy. Are we becoming little gods?
• 23:24
  Are we going to start creating universes?
• 23:26
  This is where we have to be very precise theologians.
• 23:29
  The Eastern Orthodox Church has a whole doctrine called theosis
• 23:31
  based on this, but from a Reformed perspective we need to
• 23:35
  look at the context. Peter says this happens so we
• 23:37
  can escape the corruption that is in the world because of
• 23:40
  sinful desire. So the goal isn't power, the
• 23:43
  goal is purity. It's an escape from something
• 23:46
  bad, not an absorption into godhood.
• 23:48
  That's it. We distinguish between God's
• 23:50
  incommunicable attributes and his communicable attributes.
• 23:54
  Break that down for us. In communicable attributes are
• 23:57
  the things that make God God. He is omnipotent, omnipresent,
• 24:01
  and omniscient. He is uncreated.
• 24:02
  He is self have existed. We will never share in those.
• 24:05
  We will never be the creator. We will always be creatures.
• 24:07
  So I am not going to be omnipresent.
• 24:09
  That's good. I have enough trouble being in
• 24:11
  one place on time. You are safe there.
• 24:13
  But then there are the communicable attributes.
• 24:15
  Yeah. Holiness, love, truth, justice,
• 24:19
  goodness. Things were commanded to
• 24:21
  imitate, right? Be holy, for I am holy.
• 24:24
  These are things God is, but they're also things he wants us
• 24:26
  to be. When Peter says we partake of
• 24:29
  the divine nature, he means we are being filled with God's
• 24:31
  moral character through the work of the Holy Spirit.
• 24:34
  It's the reversal of Ephesians too.
• 24:36
  Yes, in Ephesians we are by nature children of wrath and
• 24:40
  Second Peter. By grace we become partakers of
• 24:42
  the divine nature. We are escaping the Thora, the
• 24:45
  rot and decay and corruption of this world, and entering into
• 24:49
  the life of God. It connects back to the pre
• 24:51
  Socratics too in a way. They thought nature was just a
• 24:53
  cycle of things being born and then dying.
• 24:56
  Peter says we are stepping out of that cycle of death and into
• 24:59
  eternal life. We are being grafted into the
• 25:01
  eternal. We have time for one more text,
• 25:04
  and this one is practical. It comes from the book of James.
• 25:07
  James is always the guy who brings us back down to earth.
• 25:09
  James 3.7 He's talking about the tongue and he uses physics to
• 25:13
  talk about the zoo. He says for every kind of beast
• 25:16
  and bird of reptile and sea creature can be tamed and has
• 25:19
  been tamed by mankind. The word kind.
• 25:22
  There is physics, Every nature of beast.
• 25:26
  Think about it. We train lions to jump through
• 25:28
  hoops. We teach dolphins to dance.
• 25:31
  We house break wolves and turn them into golden retrievers.
• 25:34
  Humanity has a dominion over the nature of the animal Kingdom.
• 25:38
  But then he drops the hammer. But no human being can tame the
• 25:41
  tongue. It is a stunning piece of irony.
• 25:43
  We can control the physics of a killer whale, but we cannot
• 25:46
  control the physics of the muscle inside our own mouth.
• 25:49
  Why? Because the tongue is connected
• 25:51
  to the heart. It is.
• 25:52
  It's a restless evil full of deadly poison.
• 25:56
  James is saying that human skill, our technology, our
• 26:00
  training methods can conquer the external world.
• 26:03
  We can build cities, we can fly to the moon, we can tame tigers.
• 26:07
  But human skill cannot fix the human heart.
• 26:10
  That part of our nature is untamable by human effort.
• 26:13
  It requires something more. It requires the wisdom from
• 26:16
  above that he talks about later in the chapter.
• 26:18
  It requires a new nature, a divine intervention.
• 26:21
  We have covered a massive amount of ground today.
• 26:23
  We started with a black root in the Odyssey.
• 26:25
  We watched the surface try to use nature to justify tyranny.
• 26:29
  We saw the Stoics try to turn nature into God, we saw Philo
• 26:32
  try to harmonize it, and then we watched the apostles take the
• 26:35
  Word and use it to diagnose our sin and describe our salvation.
• 26:39
  It is a remarkable journey for one little word.
• 26:41
  If you had to summarize the Bible's view of physics, how
• 26:44
  would you boil it down? I would say the Bible uses
• 26:46
  physics as a diagnostic tool. It strips away the romanticism.
• 26:51
  We live in a culture that loves to think natural means good.
• 26:55
  The Bible says no natural means fallen.
• 26:58
  Your natural state is a state of wrath.
• 27:01
  Your natural conscience condemns you.
• 27:03
  Your natural tongue is a fire. That's the bad news.
• 27:06
  That is the bad news. But the good news is that God
• 27:08
  refuses to leave us in our natural state.
• 27:11
  He acts paraphysm contrary to nature.
• 27:14
  He intervenes, He graphs us in, He gives us a new birth so that
• 27:18
  we can partake of His nature. Salvation is God saving us from
• 27:22
  our own nature. So for the listener driving to
• 27:24
  work right now or folding laundry, why does this matter?
• 27:27
  What is the take away? It matters because the world is
• 27:29
  constantly shouting at you to trust your gut or follow your
• 27:32
  heart or be true to yourself. We're told that if something is
• 27:35
  natural, it must be right. You see it in marketing and
• 27:38
  ethics and relationships. I was Born This Way so must be
• 27:41
  good. And scripture says be careful.
• 27:44
  That's a dangerous path. If you follow your fallen
• 27:47
  nature, it will lead you away from God.
• 27:49
  Don't trust your nature, trust the God who is above nature.
• 27:52
  Realize that you need something from the outside extra nose
• 27:56
  outside of us to fix what is broken on the inside.
• 27:59
  That is incredibly freeing. It means I don't have to look
• 28:01
  deep inside myself to find salvation.
• 28:04
  I have to look up. That's it.
• 28:06
  The answer isn't in the mirror, it is in the Messiah.
• 28:08
  I want to leave everyone with a final thought to chew on.
• 28:10
  We mentioned Heraclitus at the beginning.
• 28:12
  Nature loves to hide. The true reality is hidden.
• 28:15
  The New Testament tells us that our life is now hidden with
• 28:18
  Christ and God, and it tells us that Christ is the true image of
• 28:21
  God. So if sin is actually a
• 28:23
  parasite, if sin is what makes us unnatural, does that mean
• 28:27
  Jesus was actually the only truly natural human being
• 28:31
  whoever lived? That is a heavy thought.
• 28:33
  If humanity was designed to be in perfect communion with God,
• 28:36
  and we all broke that design, then we are the anomalies.
• 28:40
  We are the broken versions. Jesus walking in perfect
• 28:43
  obedience, living in perfect communion with the Father.
• 28:46
  He is what a human is supposed to be.
• 28:48
  He's the prototype. He is the only one living,
• 28:50
  according to the true physicist of humanity.
• 28:53
  He's the blueprint. And if he is the standard, it
• 28:56
  shows us how far we have fallen and how much we need Him to
• 28:59
  restore us. Amen to that.
• 29:01
  Thank you so much for joining us for this deep dive.
• 29:04
  We hope that the next time you see the word nature in your
• 29:06
  Bible, you will pause and remember the black root, the
• 29:09
  wild olive tree, and the God who loves us enough to act contrary
• 29:13
  to nature to save us. Thanks for listening to Reformed
• 29:17
  Thinking.