What Kind of Being is Man? Part 2 By Paris Reidhead*
You know it’s amazing people asked you to cross the country years ago especially go in for a Saturday night youth rally, and they’d take you all the way from New York to California. And you would sit there through two hours of services and then when you’d get up to speak the speaker would say now the important thing is when you finish you’ve got 8 minutes, you know. And you’d spent 3 days, one day coming, one day going, one day there, and 8 minutes. Well I’m glad this is not like that.
Psalm 8. I’m going to read it again. We’re talking about man. What is man? What kind of a being is he?
“Oh Lord, our Lord how excellent is Thy name in all the earth! who has set Thy glory above the heavens. 2Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast Thou ordained strength because of Thine enemies, that Thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger. 3When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained; 4what is man that Thou art mindful of him? And the son of man, that Thou visitest him. 5For Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. 6Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands; Thou hast put all things under his feet. 7All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beast of the field; 8the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the sea. 9Oh
Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth!”
Now I shall not take time to review in any detail that which we discussed last Lord’s day, though I know many of you were not
here. I will remind those of you who were and share with those who were not, that our concern in these two studies and
perhaps others in the months to come that are here or elsewhere, will have to do with answering this question, what kind of a
being is man.
I pointed out in the introduction last week that most of the divisions in Christendom, most of the sects that have grown up
have not grown up on the matter of the doctrine of God, theology, but the doctrine of man, anthropology. What kind of a
being is man? What is he capable of doing or incapable of doing?
And so we started by asking the basic question, why did God make man in the first place? And the answer was that He made
man to meet or serve as the object of His love; one with whom He as the God to His love could share all that He is, all that He
has and all that He is doing. And He is as Father, having man as His children. And Bridegroom, man serves as His Bride. Both of
these are love relationships and the basic idea that I wanted you to grasp then was that God made man to be the object of His
love.
And He made him in His image and likeness because we can only love that which is like us. The only being God has made that
He said He loved is man. We do not know wherein angels differ from God as to His image and likeness, but they’re not said to
be made in His image and likeness. Nor is it said that God loves angels. Man is said to be made in His image and likeness and is
declared that God loves man.
Now we also saw that there was a conflict, that when God wanted to have manmade He came right into the very area for all
we can discern from the scriptures, He had made the prison of Lucifer, the son of the morning, this angel that revolted against
God. And Christ said He saw Lucifer cast out of heaven and apparently to earth and with him were all the angels that revolted
under his leadership. And in a sense I saw personally that that’s what you have between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2: “In the
beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” And then at some time a cataclysm. “And the earth became.” It didn’t say
it was created. “The earth became without form and void.” It is my feeling that is when the God of this world was cast out. We
saw that he had taken four weapons. That these weapons that Satan used were actually the very antithesis to the character of
God. God is love, God is light, God is life, and God is truth. And Satan took as the very opposite thus as his character and thus
as his weapons, he is the god of this world, is hatred, and darkness and death and the lie. And thus it was that these, these two
as it were, were in combat. God could not say “I hate this rebel.” And use hate to destroy him. For had He so done, He would
have destroyed Himself, His own character, so He had to be totally consistent with Himself and love had to overcome hate at
least in a preliminary way to the point where it was consistent and right for God to cast Satan out of heaven. In all that had
become his character. And so it was that “darkness covered the face of the deep.”
Then when God made man, He came right to this penal colony, if you please. Remade it and placed this one who had, for
whom He had from eternity past yearned, this being called man. And he permitted this enemy, this arch enemy, this declared
foe to come and to approach Eve with all this subtlety, with all his fallacy, ye hath God said ... you think God loves you, God
doesn’t love you, He’s trying to cheat you and keep from you that which is going to make you happy. He knows that if you do
what I am suggesting, you’d be like Him.
Of course, she was like Him in every sense she could be. And so the argument was in itself fallacious. And there was that she
sinned and then Adam deliberately sinned that he might chose to be with her rather than with God and they come under the
control of the god of this world.
Now we begin today at that point. What happened to man when he sinned? First just a word about the nature of sin. What is
it? We hear much about sin. And generally when we have put together the suggestions that have been made in an attempt to
define sin, it sounds as though that sin is essentially doing something, that it’s an action. But I think a more careful study may
suggest to us that sin in its essence is not so much doing something as purposing to do something. The essence of sin
therefore, I would say, is the committal of the will to the principle and the purpose of pleasing oneself outside of the will of
God.
Now that suggests something else - the definition of temptation. What is temptation? Many people become confused at this
point and they feel that temptation is synonymous with sin. And they thus bring themselves into enormous bondage because
finding that their tempted they would then feel that because they are tempted they have sinned.
Well, let’s distinguish in definition. Temptation is the proposition presented to the mind to satisfy a good appetite in a bad
way. That brings us back again to something we saw last Sunday, what about man were the appetites that he had. We saw that
when God had made man He said, “It is good.” But that man that he made had an appetite for food because God had
determined that he should live by repeated daily intake of nourishment. He had an appetite for knowledge, for as God knows
everything in the now at once, man learns in sequence. So God gave to man an appetite for food so that he would be stirred to
take the necessary nourishment. And then He gave to him an appetite for knowledge so he would be stirred to learn because
he leans in sequence. Then God gave to man an appetite for pleasure because He had made so many marvelous things as the
expression of His love and He gave to man that appetite or urge or drive to enjoy. Then God gave to him an appetite for
authority because it was God’s intention that he should rule over his creation. And so He put into us this drive or urge to rule
and to change and to control. He gave to us an appetite for security, a drive or urge for security, because He, as a thoughtful
Father had provided for us. And therefore that we might understand, then enjoy and appreciate what He’d provided, he gave
to us the urge or the hunger or the capacity for it. He gave to man the appetite for sex because he made the first pair, but His
method of completing this beloved was by means of procreation and so there was a drive and an urge. And he looked at this
person that had an appetite for food and for knowledge and for pleasure and security and for sex, and He said, “It is good.”
Then God made every appropriate and proper way and relationship for satisfying each of these urges. But Lucifer, Satan came
to her and suggested to her mind that she satisfy these urges in a manner that God had forbidden. Now this was temptation.
But when within her, she determined to do it, and then the temptation had changed from something which was an intellectual
activity to something which had moral involvement. She now made the decision to do it. And when she decided, when she
made the decision to eat, she had sinned, born out by the fact that the Lord Jesus said of, in the Sermon on the Mount, “He
that looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery. He that hath hate or has purposed to injure has committed
murder.” (Matt. 5:28) That the criminal aspect is in the decision to do it not finally in the action to do it. One may have decided
and have to wait for an opportunity, they are criminal from the moment the decision was made, from the moment the
temptation passed from an intellectual function to a moral purpose, that is the time when it becomes sin. And so sin, we
define therefore in its relation to the individual in terms of his life, the criminal aspect of it, at the age of accountability, when
you committed your will to the policy or the supreme choice of your life became that of pleasing yourself without regard to the
will of God or the likes of others. Then it would be that you had sinned and come short of the glory of God. That became the
ruling purpose.
Now I speak not in detail of other aspects that with which you’re familiar about the inherited aspects because of the congenital
aspects of the crime of sin, I’m talking about moral responsibility. I’m talking about that time when we reach the age of
accountability and we said like mother Eve and father Adam “this is how I’m going to live.” Now we may not have hit your
hand. You may not have grit your teeth. You may not have done anything of that sort, you just did it. And the scripture says
that this is the case because “all have sinned.” (Rom. 3:23) Not just the act that they unconsciously committed because of an
opportunity or a suggestion or an inherited propensity, but rather because it became a policy of life to which we all these
things contributed. But it required at the moral essence as a crime when you said this is how I’m going to govern my life.
Now what happened when man sinned? What were the effects? God said “The days thou eateth, thou shalt surely die.” (Gen.
2:17) “Thou shalt surely die.” Now this is an enormously important point and one that I think we should take quite seriously
and perhaps quite closely and carefully. Now does death mean annihilation? Let me illustrate it. You come in to your television
set and you want to watch something on it and you turn it one and nothing goes. The little white dot doesn’t show, no sound
comes. What do you say about it? Well, I’m sorry I can’t get it, the set is dead. Now what does that mean? That all of the inside
has sort of rusted down and inside this machine is just a pile of rust, that it has disintegrated. That somehow its substance has
changed. That there has been some great change in its physical characteristics. That it has been annihilated so to speak. What
does it mean? Well all it may mean is that one little wire came loose and it separated. The wires are all there. The tubes are all
there. Everything is there. But because that one little wire has separated then there is no communication with all of this
electronic impulse and power that surrounds the set.
So in a sense I think that gives us the basis of looking at the word death. What does it mean? Well, it means separation. It
means that the filament has come loose, if you please. Separation. “The day thou eateth thou shalt die.” What does that
mean? That some how you’re going to become a subhuman, a new species, that the purpose of God and the investment of
God in you is going to have all been withdrawn and you now become some other kind of a species? Is that what it talks about?
I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s what it talks about at all. It talks about the very thing that death is everywhere in the
Scripture, namely separation.
Well, let’s look at some aspect of it. The first way in which man died as a result of sin, the first think that was introduced
because of it or the first aspect of this penalty, and I’ll see at least four with you in the next few moments, was physical death.
It’s amazing to learn that the body is so made, so say those who know something about it and I make no place for being a
scientist. I get all of my science out of the Reader’s Digest and that of course makes me a happier authority than the ones that
know something about it, because they know so much about it they can’t be sure of anything. But when you’ve read the
Reader’s Digest like I have, you can be sure, because you don’t know enough not to be. But I recall reading some time ago,
either there or in one other of my equally scientific treatise that every cell in the human body is replaced periodically. And I
heard that it was every 7 years and that had to do with the enamel on the teeth and other hard structures. But someone else
comes along and says 90% of the human body is replaced every 7 days.
Well, be that as it may, the process is going on because I know this morning I rubbed some callous off my hand and I just know
that some place is being replaced because I’ve been doing that for a half a century and my hands are still there, they aren’t
worn out yet. And so somebody is taking place, its coming and going all at the same time you know. And therefore when God
made us apparently He built into us a principal that makes old age and death a kind of an insult to the creator.
He put into us a principal by which there should be and can be and must be a reproduction of cells, a replacement of the
equipment that we brought with us when we came. An enlargement of it, growth of it and then afterwards replacement. So, if
that’s the case then there’s this matter of why do we get old. We’re told about some who lived 900 years. Then God saw that
they could do an awful lot of mischief in 900 years. So after the flood He said, hey let’s cut that down a little. How about 120?
That gives them time enough to really make a mess of things. Then after that it’s still, that was too much, so finally He got
around to Moses and He said look 70 or 80 is about all I can stand any of you fellows. You can learn enough mischief in that
time to keep a flock of angels busy and so I’m just not going to let you live too much longer than that. But that was an arbitrary
decision like He said to the sea “thus far and no farther.” He said to man, “Thus long and no longer.” And some that have
reached that point will just about agree with Jacob. And, but I would have you see that death, physical death is one of the first
consequences of sin. Death passed upon all men for they all have sinned and all die. That’s the first thing. God has reduced into
the human race this principle of death.
Now the second thing, man not only began to die physically though from the first heart beat the pulse is saying near death,
near death, near death, near death, that’s just one less pulse beat we’ll have in the certain number, and each one that goes is
gone. But there’s another aspect in which we die and that’s legally. Legal separation. Physical death is a separation from the
spirit from the body. We see that, we know that. I’ve gone in at the request of family and been there when that last gasp and
sign, and had to look around the bed at the hospital and take the arm of the wife or husband and say well she’s gone. She’s
gone to be with Him. But look, everything is there. Body is still warm, eyes still opened. A few moments ago, a few minutes ago
conscience perhaps or aware, and now gone. What’s gone? That person, the part that thinks, that feels and wills, that part
that’s made in the image and likeness of God. That which remains is the tenement we’ve occupied, the suit we’ve worn, the
physical suite we’ve used. But the person is separated from the body. And that separation we call death.
Now the other aspect of death I said is a legal separation. Men, God has made man and God has assumed responsibility from
man, but when man sinned he abrogated the covenant, if you please, and therefore he was on his own. So the second aspect
of death is legal separation from responsibility. You’ve seen the ads in the paper, so and so having left my bed and board I do
hereby declare that I’m no longer responsible for any debts incurred by and the name. What a tragedy it is when that happens.
And it’s happening every day.
And thus we’re seeing legal separation of those who have had a legal commitment to each other and a legal responsibility for
each other. And one of the aspects of sin was legal separation where in God who had made man said since man has committed
himself to the god of this world, let him look to that one for his sustenance, I no longer have legal obligation.
Now the only thing that a sinner can legally expect of God is justice and judgment. If he asks for any more, he’s asking beyond
all rights. But there’s no great consolation in that is there? That God will be just when He judges, and that of course He will by
reference to His character and not to the sinner’s petition. But that’s the only thing a sinner can ask of God, yet you recall,
those of you who like myself were fairly adult during the Second World War, of men saying as their plane was shot down over
the South Pacific or the guidance system shot out and they were miles from their carrier and it was dark and they couldn’t find
their way and they cried “Oh God of my mother lead me back to my ship.” And they’d see a plane out there and follow the
plane until they could see the ship and come in.
And God answered prayer but they didn’t have any claim upon Him. They had no basis of expecting it. God answers many
prayers of sinners that He might show Himself merciful. There’s no relationship upon which that prayer is based. Maybe on the
basis of a faithful mother or someone else, but the sinner has no claim on God. He has by his revolt, by committing himself to
pleasing himself, it’s the end of his being, he’s relinquished all right to expect care, sustenance, protection, or any other kind of
help from God. That’s legal separation.
And then there is a third kind of death and that is spiritual separation. Spiritual death. Now what are we talking about? Let’s go
back to our analogy of the television set. All around is the electronic impulse and here’s the set that was made to receive it, but
because of some break inside, there is no longer the function of the set in relation to the environment.
Now the Bible tells us that “in God we live, and move, and have our being.” (Acts 17:28) God is just as close to us, close to you
as the sound of my voice. He’s just as near as the light upon your face. He’s just as close as the gentle breeze that may cool you
brow. God is here. “In Him we live and move and have our being.” We live actually in three environments. The first of them is
the one to which I’ve referred just now, that is the environment of atmosphere or air. We understand it’s how far, 17 miles
above us. That it exerts a pressure of 15 lbs. per square inch upon our bodies. It’s a pressure that is such that if you exhaust the
air from say a can, just an ordinary can, you take the air out by vacuum pump and the can will collapse from the pressure of the
air. The reason we don’t collapse is because it’s equalized within, without. But when you walk on an elevator and your ears feel
or in an airplane your ears hurt. What is it? The pressures not equalized and then you begin to feel the weight of that down
upon the ear drum. So we blow our nose or we swallow or something else trying to equalize the pressure. We’re living at the
bottom of a sea of air. We’re walking on the bottom of that sea.
Now the only part of you that gets good out of it or the essential good out of it, the life sustenance out of, it is your lungs. That
simple little action for five minutes or more and you would be a statistic. And yet you have air all around you. But it wasn’t
getting where it had to go in order to sustain your life. You were separated from it. Alright that’s the first atmosphere.
Now the second atmosphere is electronic impulse. If we wanted to prove that to the degree to which it’s true and you know
it’s true. It wasn’t so when I was in Africa years ago as a missionary in the Sudan. I had gone out in 1945 in one of these Army
surplus type radios that connected to a battery. I never did figure out what all the dials and gadgets were but I had it working a
couple of times.
One night I was out at the Yabus River Bridge right on the Sudan-Ethiopian border and I had visitors come. Suliya was my
informant and he came that evening with his wife and sister in law and they wanted to see this fellow that he was coming to
work with each day, making them do the planting and so on. And I, they were sitting there. I had a little grass thatched rest
house, government rest house that I was occupying and it was sand floor. When I arrived my boy went in and very carefully
said, “Wait at the car a minute.” And I wondered what he was doing and he was brushing the lion tracks out. He thought that
might disturb me and he was right. After he told me, it disturbed me too. I never got over being disturbed about that. But we
were sitting on that sand floor not knowing what was outside. I had a pressure lantern there, Suliya was there and I reached
over behind me and put the switch on. The car was pulled up next and had the cables out to the battery and I did want to hear
the news from Cairo, BBC out of Cairo. And so all of a sudden voices came. You could have brushed their eyes off with a stick,
you know.
And I said, “Oh, it’s just the radio.”
And I said, “What did she say?”
“No, no, nothing.”
I said, “Yea, yea, something, what was it?” He said, “Well she’s also doing the talking in there.” I said, “Who’s doing the talking?”
And I said, “No, no those aren’t little people inside there doing the talking.”
She said, “They are, I saw them.”
I said, “I’m sorry they’re not, they’re not little people.” I said, “It’s coming from the air.” And he said, “See, it’s coming from the air.”
And he turned and said, “It’s just the radio.” He didn’t know what radio meant you know. I saw his sister in law get up out of
the corner of my eye. She went out and then I wondered where she went and then I saw just a flicker of reflection on black
skin outside. And she came and she got down behind that and she looked up into the inside of that radio and she came and set
down and then she said something to her sister. And then she said something to her husband.
She said, “There’s little houses in there and she can see little people and those were the people that were doing the talking
inside those houses.” Well it was an old tube set you know, long before the day of the transistor and she had seen the
filaments in there and so those were the people inside the lighted huts and she could see them through the little holes in the
back.
And she said, “Listen, I’ve got the best ears in our village. I can hear a lion when nobody else can. I can hear a gazelle when
nobody else can hear it. And you’re trying to tell me that there are sounds in the air I can’t hear. I don’t know what this man is,
what he thinks he’s going to say, but he can’t tell me that. I looked inside and he’s got little houses there and he’s got little
people and I’m going home because I don’t want anything put in a house like that. I don’t know how he does it.”
And he says, “I think I better go home too.”
So they all left there very shortly. Utterly unconvinced that around them was a world of sound that they couldn’t hear. You
know it. I know it. If we wanted to take all the sound that you’re not listening to and bring it in at say 100 decibels, we’d have
to get shelves put in here with radios, long distance radios, television sets and probably the whole room would be filled next
Sunday. Each one at 100 decibels, this whole wing of the church would just shatter down to dust. Couldn’t take it. All the
electronic sound that you’ve taken for granted that’s just as close as the air you breath, that it’s interlaced with the air, it’s not
the air, it’s distinct from the air, it moves not through the air but through the spaces between the air.
And now I’ve exhausted all I know about radio. In fact, I’ve gone too far, I can see that. And some of you say, “Boy, that guy
doesn’t know enough. I hope he’s better on his theology than he is on his electronics.” But I blame it on the Reader’s Digest.
Now there could be little people inside that box. But we have a receiving set. We have to have a receiving set to get it, don’t
we. Now when God made you, He built into you a receiving set to know God. That’s the point I’m making. The receiving set for
your air or your lungs. The receiving set for the electronic sound is the radio receiver, or the television receiver. And the
receiving set for this third environment is the human spirit. “In Him we live and we move and we have our being.” And God is
as near as the air we’ve been talking about, as near as the electronic sound we’ve been talking about. But He’s not in the air or
the air and He’s not the electronic sound. God is God.
Now how can you be in three atmospheres at once. I don’t know, how can you be in two atmospheres at once? I don’t know.
But this is what the Bible tells us. And you have a receiving set to know God. And that receiving set is the human spirit. God is
spirit and you are spirit living in a body. And God has given to the human spirit the ability to feel Him, to hear Him, to taste
Him, to see Him, to know Him, to commune with Him. But when man sinned that set went bad, out of commission. He died
spiritually.
Now he didn’t shatter or disintegrate or turn to dust any more than your television that doesn’t operate has done that. It’s just
not working. And when man sinned God just sort of let the set go out of, just out of kilter, he fixed it in such a way, when man
has committed his will to please himself, his set doesn’t receive God.
So what do we find in India, the people that know there’s a God. They’re aware of His presence and must know Him. And so
they say if I can just abdicate the flesh and punish the body. And so we’ll see someone lying down and taking his fingers and
scratching a mark and getting up and putting his toes where the finger mark was. Laying down the whole subcontinent of India.
We’ll see them laying their babies for the crocodiles to eat along the Ganges. We see them sitting between fires until the skin
and flesh turns to parchment and leather. Yearning after God. But that’s not how you find God. It’s not how you meet Him.
That’s not how He’s known. But you see they know He’s there. God didn’t allow that knowledge to be destroyed. They know
that He is and they know that He made the world. They know that He’s going to judge them when they die. God didn’t allow
that knowledge to go. He just doesn’t allow communication with Him. Man died. Man died spiritually. He broke the contact. He
broke the contact.
And then there’s a fourth aspect to this death and that is man came under the sentence of eternal separation from God. That
this crime of turning to our own way of committing our will to please ourselves have the effect of bringing unto us under the
sentence of living eternally separated from God. Not knowing Him. And that sentence is passed upon all. That death is passed
upon all, because “all have sinned.” Physical death indeed. Legal death certainly. Spiritual death obviously, but the sentence of
eternal separation. At no time does it mean annihilation or cessation of being or change of form, but rather a distance
- Bible
- Read the Bible
- Bible Versions
- Verse of the Day
- Reading Plans
- Verses by Topic
- Books of the Bible
- Bible Images
- Study
- Commentaries
- Concordances
- Dictionaries
- Encyclopedias
- Sermons
- Bible Atlas & Maps
- BP Wiki
- Devotionals
- Today's Devotionals
- Light of the World
- All Devotionals
- Inspirational Quotes
- More
- Picture Quotes
- Videos
- Inspirational
- Bible Study
- What The Bible Says
- Bible Q&As
- Daily Bread
- Bible by Genre
- Bible Stories
- Random Bible Verse
- Community
- Store