Latest / Harvest After Sunday / Human Nature - Being Human Pt. 2: Theology Q&A
Transcript
- Harvest Media: to the Harvest After Sunday podcast. I'm Natalie and I'm your host and I'm here with Stefan Wilson, pastor preaching and teaching. And today we're going to be continuing our conversation from a couple of weeks ago about what it means to be human. We had a great conversation about being made in the image of God and what that means, that it means that we are made to reflect God in our thoughts and our actions and in our relationships and really discussed a lot about what a person is made for. And so today we're gonna talk about more what a person is made of what are the elements of being of a human being ⁓ There's various views of human nature. Some people believe that we are just a physical body and there's nothing else to us ⁓ Then there are some that believe we're body and soul body and spirit Then you have body soul spirit even you know believers looking at different places in scripture. We see references to kind of all of these elements, mind, body, soul, strength. So help us understand which one is right. How do we understand the elements that make up our human nature? Yeah. So we talked in the last episode a couple of weeks ago about how ⁓ this was a subject that I'm finishing up my dissertation on. There's actually an entire chapter of my dissertation. It's about 100 pages where I survey all the different views. And there there is a dizzying amount but what I would what I would probably start by cautioning against is being too quick to Simply take the terminology that scripture uses and saying therefore those are our parts Okay, so if we say well scripture talks about Body soul and spirit in first Thessalonians 523 Paul says body, soul, and spirit. ⁓ And in Hebrews chapter 4, we're told that the word of God pierces between soul and spirit. therefore you have a body, a soul, and a spirit. ⁓ Or somebody else would say, well, in this passage, Jesus says body and spirit, therefore your body and spirit, or he says body and soul, therefore your body and soul. That is called the word concept fallacy to say, because there are different words, they automatically mean different things. And therefore we are composed of those different parts because of the different words that scripture If we were to do that you would have over 40 different parts Really that make you human. Yeah, so if you were to if you were to just survey Genesis to Revelation every Unique word that is used to describe you as a person. There are over 40 words Heart body mind soul spirit guts Kidneys like we can keep going I won't flesh like there's lots of different words. What we want to do is we want to say What is that author conveying with the words that he's using in a broader understanding of what a person is so in Deuteronomy chapter 6 Moses says you shall have God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your might in Matthew 22 Jesus says you shall love the Lord your God with all your mind with all your strength and with all your soul and he talks about He uses four different words in Mark for the exact same engagement that mark represents So what I'm really what I'm getting at is what we want to do is rather than say in a given New Testament passage these words are used therefore those are all your parts we want to say well what is how does God make the first humans we're going back to Genesis how does God make the first humans and then how are the biblical authors using the various words that they use to refer to that I also think that it's helpful to just understand the history of ideas. ⁓ Ideas don't exist in a vacuum They didn't just come to us today without progression and the what's called the the mind body problem the the idea that there are mental immaterial Unmeasurable spiritual things that go on in a person Yet you're in a physical body that is a physical brain That's something that philosophers have struggled with for years. How do we make sense out of those? And the reason they've struggled with it is because they rejected scripture and so now they're trying to make sense out of People created in the image of God we talked about this last time a lot of problems when we turn our eyes away from scripture And so now you create a problem that you have to solve where if you would just submit to scripture. There's no problem Well you had Going all the way back to about 400 years before Jesus. So you had Plato Plato argued for the idea that immaterial things are the truly real and that material things are lower forms of those truly real things. ⁓ And so he argued that your spirit is the true, truly real part of you and your body is a lower form of that. So that your body is essentially less important than your spiritual because the spiritual you is the real you. Then you had a philosopher named Plotinus who took that and said that all of reality is composed of higher and lower realities and so your body fits in the lower reality of life and your spirit fits in the higher and the more that you prioritize your spiritual self the more that you are becoming truly human. Then you had the Gnostics who took from that and said this was was ⁓ its most extreme version. And then we in a lot of discussion picked up that same dualistic language. And if we're really honest, I think that a lot of Christians kind of have talked in similar ways. My body doesn't matter. You know, what does it matter what I do with my body? Because the real me is going to go be with Jesus when I die and this body is just going to turn into dust. Can I just I'll just say at the beginning of this episode, that's a very unbiblical statement. And so what we want to do is say we don't want to let the history of ideas influence the way that we talk about what we are as people, if it's going to get us off track from scripture. We also don't want to. Divorce biblical authors from their Genesis foundation that all of them agree on We want to say how did God create us? what did he make us of and Now how do we understand the way that the scripture talks about that with a diverse array of? Words and concepts to help us understand it better jump in. Can we jump in? What does it say? I'm on the edge of my seat now and I'm does it say explicitly and he gave us a soul and a body. Oh well it doesn't say it in those terms. Let's see what it says. So we were in Genesis one last time. We're told in Genesis one that God made us in his own image after his likeness. Genesis two is not a different, it's not like another day. Genesis two is saying, and here's how God did that. And so it's going in on day six in much more detail. So we will just pick up in verse ⁓ seven. says, then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a creature. There is physical language there. There is spiritual language there. There is holistic language there, meaning they're not like separate parts. It's a whole person. He wasn't man until it all came together. Right. He was a dirt clod until God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. But there's something really fascinating that we should notice. So then the Lord God formed the man of the dust of the ground. Physical. He is made from the physical matter of the physical world. Therefore he is physical he is He is in part from the earth that he is to have dominion over so there's solidarity between mankind and the earth because Mankind is formed from physical matter So he can then rightly have dominion because he's physically embodied in a physical world. But God breathed into his nostrils the breath of So this is what many theologians refer to as mankind's animation. So he was just a form, but then he is animated with life because of the life-giving breath of God. Hopefully we'll have time to come back to that because there's a whole fascinating conversation about the breath of God in relation to the image of God and what we talked about last time. But then it says, and the man became a living creature. That word creature is ⁓ the Hebrew word nephesh, which we often see translated as soul. It's the same word in Deuteronomy chapter six, where Moses says, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might. So I think the best way to translate that Hebrew word is self. The man became a living self. The reason that I think that that's the most helpful way to translate that is Nefesh is more than just a creature. It's more than just ⁓ this thing that God made. ⁓ There is a life aspect to it, an identity to it. that refers to your whole being. Like everything about you is your soul, your self, your nephesh in Hebrew. What's really interesting though is people will a lot of times read this verse and say, okay, dust plus breath plus soul. Especially if you've got an older translation that says he became a living soul. I think the King James translates it that way and the man became a living soul. And so you have in like the Schofield reference Bible, a footnote on this verse that says ⁓ man is Trinity like God is Trinity where God is father, son and spirit. Man is body, soul and spirit from dust, breath and living soul or living creature. They get those three. but it's not one plus one plus one in the verse. It's dust plus breath equals living creature. The dust plus the breath equals something new. The two together equals the thing that God was making. And so what we I think should take away from how God made the man there is that there is a physical constitution to the man, but there is more to his physical constitution that makes him human. If he were only physical, he would not be a living creature. He has to have dust plus breath in order to be what is called a living creature or a living self. And that's why I argue that we should see ourselves as whole people. I shouldn't be looking at another person, breaking them down into parts, because then I'm gonna have a tendency to prioritize one part over another and minimize the other part and treat it as not important. But the way that God created the man in verse seven is that he makes him as a whole person from the earth, but with the breath of God. doesn't stop there. I think in our individualistic age we would think that it would stop there. I don't need anybody. I can do this on my own. But then we just jumped down to verse 18. Then the Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone. So when God makes the man in verse seven from the dust of the ground and the breath of life and the man becomes a living creature, he is not complete. It's not good for him to stay like that because he needs someone else. It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make a helper. fit for him. Then we have the creation of the woman and she is taken from the side of the man. So whereas the man was formed from the dust to have solidarity with the earth, the woman is taken from the side of the man to have solidarity with the man. So she is made from him, for him. They are to complement one another. They, if we remember back in Genesis chapter one, they're both the image of God. So in the image of God, created a male and female, he created them. So they're both the image of God, but they're distinct male and female. yet God still uses physical matter to create the woman. So just like the man is physical and spiritual, so also the woman is too. So they're made of the same stuff so that they can be one with each other because they were made to be not just physical and spiritual, but also relational to relate to one another. lot of times in the body soul body soul spirit discussions we don't talk about the fact that being relational with one another is an essential part of being human I am NOT a body and a soul I am a person who maybe has a body and a soul but I also need others for me to be fully human I can't be fully human by myself is really significant. mean, I can't you can't be fully human by yourself. I so first of all, if we are to reflect God, ⁓ God is one God in three persons in his very nature. He lives in perfect communion within the persons of the Godhead. If that is the case, then I cannot live as a reflection of a god like that in isolation. Because who am I relating to? Am made we see in the very beginning that God made a community It was not until he made the man and the woman that he declares at the end of day six. It's very good We're told on day six. There was something that was not good Which means it's not the way it's supposed to be I'm gonna make a helper fit for him And when the man has the woman as the helper now, it's good. So that means The way that it's meant to be is with others You can't be fully human in isolation. That's so significant There's no way to rightly understand our human nature ourself if we try to separate our body and our spirit And if we try to live in isolation, which as you said comes directly from our last conversation about understanding Being created in his likeness which involves relationships And then when we move through the rest of scripture and see all of the one another language and commands for our flourishing for our good they are dependent on One another so many of them and I think we'll jump into that even deeper in our next conversation But that is truly something I've never thought about that we can't even rightly understand ourself ⁓ with others. And if you think about the language the Bible uses to refer to the church, it uses anthropological language, human language. We're the body of Christ. made up of what? Many members. And one member can't say to the other, I don't need you, but we all need one another to grow up into maturity in the body of Christ. So if relational growth is an essential element of growing up as the body of Christ, It would make sense that we would see our own individual bodies much the same way for me to grow into maturity in this body as a whole person I need others For me to grow That is it's god's design from the beginning. It's god's design for the church And how arrogant of me to ever think that I could do it apart from god's design And say that it's good Because what we saw is that when it doesn't yet mean God's design, it isn't good. Now I do think it's important to circle back on that word helper, just for the sake of everybody listening. A lot of times that has been understood and interpreted to mean that the woman was somehow less than the man, that she existed for him to do his bidding, or she was supposed to ⁓ Supposed to basically just fill the roles that he needed It's it's been used in many ways to make the woman subservient to the man Interestingly enough that word helper in Hebrew is used for two people in the Hebrew language the woman in Genesis 2 and God Now we can take that too far and we can say that the woman is greater than the man Or we can look at just what the word means and, you know, do linguistics and understand what's being communicated. God, as the helper of his people throughout scripture, specifically the Old Testament, is communicating that he provides what they need for them to flourish as his people. And without him, they could not be what he made them to be. So in Genesis 2, the way that I think we need to understand that word helper in the creation of the woman is precisely because God says it's not good that he be alone. That means that mankind cannot be what they are meant to be without her. Adam could not be what he was made to be without Eve and the two of them as the image of God need one another. if they are to truly live as the image of God. And how is it that they, the two of them will work together as the image of God, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. That in being together and in having dominion together, they will then multiply through children who will then fill the earth with those who reflect God. The same language is used in the New Testament that together when we as the church are living with one another, reflecting Christ, we will be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth. That that will be the means by which the the new creation is multiplied through faith in Jesus. So we have I do think we have to see the male and female piece in that relational element of Genesis one and two. not as a ⁓ as a hierarchy but as a necessary relational reality in which they could not do it alone. That's I think that's really what's being driven there. They could not do it alone. They needed one another in the unique ways that they were each created by God to then become one and complement one another together. God did not make mankind all men. He didn't make mankind all women. Because men and women are different biblically. The biblical vision for gender is that it be that way because in that relational dynamic we can... This is important because we're not just talking about a marriage relationship. Of course, this has implications for rightly understanding the marriage relationship between one man and one woman, which is what we believe. But there is something that applies to us globally here when talking about human nature, which is what you're speaking to. ⁓ It's the one another imperative that leads to our flourishing and that includes men and women, all humankind. We of course know that men and women make up the church. So there are so many important applications to that beyond just understanding a marriage relationship. Totally. And the destruction of that gender distinction in our current culture totally confuses the way in which God made us male and female for the sake of the flourishing of humanity as the image of God. When I treat gender as just a construct that is fluid and can change from person to person, what I'm really saying is that there isn't a meaningful difference that contributes to our flourishing. I'm saying there's a superficial difference that we can flatten and that by flattening it, I can flourish. And that is not the biblical vision. The biblical vision is no, there is a meaningful distinction that God intended that's good for us and in the one and others of the church we need it. I know hope the person that is listening that is tempted to stay in loneliness and isolation or deceiving themselves into thinking that they can do parts of their life or the whole of their life alone apart from others ⁓ is challenged and their mind is renewed with the truth as they're listening that it was God's good decision design for our flourishing and to glorify him that we would do it in relationship to one another. There's so much truth being mined out of this short passage about our human nature and the implications for our life. And I think we're seeing that if we misunderstand or over or under emphasize certain things, then we will get very off course. And I want to talk a little bit about what is at stake if we over or under emphasize these elements, the physical and the spiritual elements that make us who we are as humans. speak a little bit to that? I mean, I think that we have... because of some of those ideas about the body soul being separate and kind of a hierarchy of viewing them, we are at risk of neglecting the role of our physical bodies in holiness, in spiritual maturity. ⁓ I think of the person who is, not mindful of their physical health at all because they think that their body doesn't matter. Well, what we've what we've learned is that that so much of what we what we feel and how we interact and react to things have physical elements to it. That's why hangry is a word. Right. Like I get hungry and so I get angry or butterflies in my stomach. I'm nervous. Right. The future. Yeah, we see so many. And that's that's why I really try to talk about the language of us being whole people. We are embodied whole people. I have a physical body in which I live as a reflection of God. Well, that means that my physical body is a part of me living as a reflection of God. I mean, if we go back a couple of weeks ago, when we talked about the image of God discussion, we talked about that one of the roles of mankind as the image of God is to represent God. to the rest of creation. That's a physical world and I'm physically embodied as God's representative in this physical world. That means what I do with my body really does matter. Otherwise you get into this really confusing and murky conversation about the fact that sin is just a spiritual thing and it's separate from my physical body. Well that's what the Corinthians argued. that it didn't matter what they did with their bodies because because sin was wasn't something physical and Paul says no it matters. You see some really strong warnings about sexual sin because of it being related to our physical body. That's right. And he says therefore honor God in your bodies. There is a physical component to human life that we must be mindful of which means I should care about what I'm eating. and exercise and the kinds of things that I participate in physically and I should avoid other things that that are physically harmful to me or to my psyche or Right, like I should be mindful of those things. I should I should care about my nutrition I should care about the way that I relate to other physically embodied people Right and we start to see how it all kind of starts to come together that if I'm if I am spiritual physical and relational Well, I'm physically embodied and so are you and so the way that we're relating to one another is a physical reality, but it's based in spiritual truth that should guide the way that we relate to one another. And if we relate to one another in these physical bodies in ways that are out of step with the truth, we get hurt. It's all wrapped together. But we can go too far the other way. And we can say, well, there's no difference then between my physical body and my spiritual self. And so I'm going to become so consumed with my physical health and forget about the fact that because of the effects of sin, this world is broken and our bodies are broken and they will decay. But one day we will have a glorified body that won't decay. So I don't need to try and become immortal in this body to the point that it causes me to neglect my spiritual health. How many different ways do we fixate so much on our physical being that we neglect our spiritual health that actually becomes spiritually unhealthy in how we turn our physical bodies into idols? What we need is we need to have a view that God matters what's going on in my mind, my soul, my spirit, whatever word you want to use for that. God cares about what's going on in my body, so I should care about both. And when I care about both, I will be able to relate to other people better. I'll be able to relate to my wife and to other people in the church better when I'm caring for my spiritual health and my physical health. If I neglect one of those, I will be deficient in how I relate to other people and to God. And I hope people are hearing that it is about surrendering those elements of what make us human to God for his glory and his purposes, not about attaining a certain spiritual health or physical health, ⁓ that it is important to tend to those things so that we can serve God and glorify him. And when we start out with that framework, it will become more clear how we should care for our bodies care for our spiritual health ⁓ Because the purpose is clear it's to glorify God So what do need to do to glorify God not glorify myself and not make it an idol by putting all of my hope in it or in a certain outcome being devastated when things don't turn out the way I want or Looking and comparing none of that. It's about submitting it for God's glory and then it clarifies how I should treat those things Helpful I think we could dig in and talk about that for a long long time because I think there are so many practical applications But I'm glad that we're at least touching on it briefly here and highlighting it so that people can Reflect on it this week and see what areas they might need to bring more into submission To God's will for them, which is to glorify them with their human nature, which is a whole thing It is both physical and spiritual and then I'm excited for our future your conversations where we'll dig in a little bit deeper to what it means to grow in those areas and some more practical application. ⁓ Anything else you want to say before we wrap up and resources that we want to point people to? I know these conversations always always get people's wheels turning and sometimes people are sad that we wrap them up because there's so many more things that we could ⁓ discover and discuss together. But we always try to point people at least towards some resources. Yeah, I what I would like to say before we're done is I said earlier hopefully we'll have time to get to connection of breath of God So ⁓ maybe maybe there's just a real quick ⁓ comment I can make about that so in the Old Testament there is a link between the breath of God and the Word of God that gives life So the and and the spirit of God where the the spirit of God is referred to as the breath of God where the spirit of God is the word of God is where the the word goes forward. God's breath blows upon things and gives its life. The best image of that is in Ezekiel with the Valley of Dry Bones. ⁓ to these bones declare the word of the Lord to these bones and the breath of God comes and brings life into the dead bones and makes them whole bodies again. We don't have time to get into the whole theology of that, but suffice it to say that by the time these words in Genesis were written down, the people who read them understood that the breath of God and the word of God are synonymous with one another and the word of God gives life. to live according to the word of God is to have life. Moses who wrote Genesis said to the people of Israel short just before he died, I put before you life and death choose life that you may live and what is choosing life but living according to the word of God. So if we are to resemble God, like we talked about a couple weeks ago, which means to think according to the way that God thinks, to think according to his word. me to be a living being in the words of Genesis 2 verse 7 that God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into him the breath of life and the man became a living being I cannot be truly human without the life-giving breath of the word of God We ended the last episode we talked about about the image of God we we ended that by talking about The only way to truly reflect God is to have your mind renewed by his word The only way for us to truly be human according to way God made us is for the life-giving Word of God to breathe life into our lives, to conform our thinking so that we will think according to his truth spiritually. We will then live in these bodies according to that truth physically, and we will then relate to one another as embodied beings according to that truth that gives us spiritual life. So what we're seeing is that this conversation about being human keeps coming back to the Word of God as central for being human. And if I try to be human apart from God's Word and everything that God's Word prescribes for my human life, it will be deficiently human. made time to touch back on that. That was important. And did you have any resources? I think you had one book to point people towards. So Laney Greer, ⁓ she wrote a book called Embodied Holiness. She actually she got her PhD from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and she started her PhD journey because she had she shares this publicly. she writes about in her book. this isn't, private information. She, she had a eating disorder when she was younger because she had a broken view of the physical body. And that, that experience caused her to really seek out what does God have for our bodies? What does it mean for me to live in this body, to see myself in this body and to use it in a way that, that is for holiness and the glory of God. And she wrote a book on it called I think it's just good for us to really try to Have a better view of our bodies. Our bodies aren't everything but god made them And and this is part of his design for us And yes sin has affected it, but we're being renewed after the image of christ who took on flesh So I think the more that we can just appreciate our physical being as a part of god's design the more that we'll be able to live In these bodies for god's glory. I agree Thanks for joining us for the harvest after sunday podcast where we help you grow into the image of Christ by applying the truths in His Word for His mission. We'll see you Sunday.