The Implications of the Doctrines of Man & Sin

We are about ready to wrap up this particular study on what the Bible teaches about man and sin and in wrapping it up we're going to do some kind of some application of what the Bible teaches about those two doctrines to a couple of very important issues of our day and then we'll mention a couple of other things as well. We're going to talk about how an understanding of what the Bible teaches about man and sin affects our views regarding psychology, regarding sociology and please don't get scared. This is not a college class introductory 101 on sociology or psychology. We're going to give some biblical information that will help us kind of weed through some of those issues. We'll also talk probably next week, surely next week, on how our understanding of what the Bible teaches about man and sin affects our view of evangelism and then we're going to wrap up this whole study with a couple of topics that are related to this study. The unpardonable sin will spend some time on that describing what that is and then what the Bible teaches about the sin unto death. We'll talk about that as well. Those are a couple of issues and questions that a lot of people have about, especially about sin so we'll discuss those as well. But tonight I want us to talk about how our view of the biblical teaching on man and the biblical teaching on sin helps us to weed through some of what we have in our culture today that comes at us from the field of psychology and if we have time we'll also get in the field of sociology because every every area of our lives and our culture is affected by what we believe from the word of God. You know Bible doctrine is not just some far out study of things that you will never use in life or will never affect you in life. If you really understand what the Bible teaches about certain issues there are really deep implications about how we view our world and about how we view what's going on around us about what we're hearing from the media, from the news, from people who are cultural leaders in our day, entertainment people and so forth. A lot of people just accept modern thought whatever is being taught out there in the marketplace or whatever comes across the airwaves. A lot of people just accept that uncritically without analyzing it biblically and one of the key implications of Bible doctrine is Bible doctrine should give us a framework of thinking that is purely biblical so that when we hear stuff that comes at us from the news sources or the commentators or the Dr. Phil's or Oprah's of our day that we can analyze that critically biblically and weed out the error from whatever may be true. It's easy and a lot of Christians do this it's easy to accept error without even realizing you're doing it because it's what everybody believes or pretty much everybody believes. We've already seen the implications of the biblical doctrines of man and sin as regards the scientific theories of origins. We dealt with that a good bit early on in this study when we talked about how man began and so we dealt with some of the the cultural views, the evolutionary views of origins and and some of the biblical information that helps us to see through that. But a couple of other areas that are very important for us to understand are psychology and sociology. So let's let's jump in to the implications regarding psychology. I want to begin first by setting a little bit of groundwork and a little bit of framework for our study before we open it up for questions. The groundwork and framework is this the relationship between biblical principles and psychology. There has been tension between biblical Christianity and psychology ever since the beginning of psychology as a science. Now there are a couple of reasons for that. Some of that tension is because of foundational assumptions of many psychologists that are clearly anti-biblical. Now please listen carefully what I'm saying. I'm saying saying some of the foundational principles or assumptions of many psychologists. Not all psychologists and not all of the assumptions are bad. But many are. Many foundational assumptions of many psychologists are anti-biblical. And so we're going to try to weave through some of that. But there's another reason for some of the tension between biblical Christianity and psychology. And that is due to the the overreaction of some Christians who throw every insight from psychology out the good with the bad. Remember that psychology is simply a study of the psyche, the Greek word for soul, the inner person. And there are some insights, simply about how we operate, how we work on the inside, how our minds function, how we interact with the world around us. There are some insights from psychology that are valuable. We just have to make sure that everything we hear from psychology, we pass through the grid of scripture. So that the scriptural grid kind of cleanses out the impurities that may be in the foundational teachings of psychology. There's in in the last 30, 40 years, 50 years maybe there's been a great move in Christianity to integrate psychology and biblical teaching. But there's a lot of difference in opinion as to how much they should be integrated, how compatible they are, what insights we can and cannot use from psychology. Let me just say this, that much of secular psychology is based on the foundation of humanism. Not all, but much of it is based on the foundation of humanism. Now let me that term gets thrown around a lot. So let me give you a formal definition of humanism. All right, so we really know what we're talking about here. Humanism is this, it's the philosophy that asserts the dignity and worth of man and his capacity for self-realization through reason, often rejecting any supernatural input. Now let me just break that definition down in two sections, the first section of it, we would agree with. And that is that man has dignity and worth. The fact that the dignity and worth of man is asserted is a biblical truth. But psychology based on humanism and biblical teaching differ wildly on what that worth is found in, what that dignity is found in and where it comes from. Because humanistic psychology basically believes that man's self-worth and dignity comes from within. And so he has his own capacity on his own to realize all that he is supposed to be through his own reason, willpower and reasoning power. Does not need any divine intervention or anything to do with God. Man is capable on creating his own destiny and choosing his own self-realization. Now that part of the definition we would soundly deny and would say that does not fit with biblical truth. So as I said much of secular psychology is built on that foundation that man is capable of solving all of his own problems. He is capable of charting his own destiny and we'll see some of the teachings as to how that comes out in just a minute. So what I want to do next is to look at some proof, some truths in a biblical view of humanity. Man and sin that conflict with humanistic psychology. All right. And some of the stuff we hear a lot in our culture. Before we jump into three particular biblical truths that relate to psychology, questions or comments about what I've said or where we're headed. Okay. Three important truths about a biblical view of humanity that are in direct conflict with humanistic psychology. The first one is this. We believe the Bible teaches clearly teaches humanity is created in the image of God. So if you have your Bible with this is a Bible study. So let's open our Bible Genesis 1. We're going to look at this again. This is old stuff. We looked at this for a long time when we looked at what it meant to be in the image and likeness of God. But just to restate the clear biblical teaching that humanity mankind is created in the image of God. Genesis 1 verse 27, foundational truth. So God created mankind in his own image. In the image of God, he created them male and female. He created them. Now, I don't want to go back into all of the meanings of what it means to be in the image of God. We took a long time in this study on that. If if you're just catching up with us and you're interested in what that means, call the office and darling will be glad to hook you up with the CD where we covered that. Okay. I'm not going to go back into that. But let me let me say this as it relates to psychology. Psychology, again, secular humanistic psychology sees man as unique only in the capacity of reason. Only that he is able to reason. That is the only way that secular psychology sees mankind as different from animals. He is able to reason things out. And that that view is really rooted in evolution. A biblical view of man is very, very different. There are several implications of man being created in the image of God that fly in the face of that secularist view that man is only different than animals higher than the animals in the evolutionary scale because of his ability to reason. There are three things about being in the image of God that are important for us. Number one, man is indeed a creature. He is not God. Okay. If we are created in the image of God, that means we are not God. We are a creature made by God. You say, well, that's self explanatory. But think for a minute about how that affects what most of you hear from psychology, humanism makes mankind the master of his own destiny. You have the power within yourself to create your own destiny. And that makes you your own God. Well, that's not what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches that we are a creature. We are not God. And the only way our destiny can find any kind of fulfillment, meaning and certainly eternal longevity life is if our destiny is handed over to the Lord, if we find our meaning, fulfillment, purpose, and eternal life in him. It's not in us. It is in him. So huge difference. The second truth about the image of God that is important to us is this. Since man has created an image of God, first of all, it means he's not God. But secondly, it means he is totally unique above the animal creation. He's not God up here, but he's also not animal down here. Man has his own unique niche in the plan and purpose of God in creation. So man has a dignity above the animals that is not tied to evolution. Key distinction between humanistic psychology and biblical teaching about being made in the image of God. Third implication of being made in the image of God is this. Man has an estimable worth. Man has an estimable worth. You cannot put a price tag on the worth and dignity of mankind. Again, psychology, secular humanistic psychology, sees mankind merely as a more developed animal and thus through the process of further development able to create his own destiny. But it is really the image of God that gives value to human life. Being created in God's image gives mankind a value high above any animal. And that impacts a lot of what we believe, including our view of abortion. Because in the evolutionary scheme of things, in the humanistic scheme of things, that developing fetus in the womb of a mother is simply a part of her tissue or it is in the womb as many teach mirroring kind of the evolutionary cycle and growth until the point it becomes human. Being created in the image of God, especially as we saw how our soul is passed down to us through conception, means that at the moment of conception that fetus in the womb of a mother is a human being, it is a person. It is not a blob of tissue. It is not just a part of the mother. It is a separate human being. Obviously, up until a certain point, not able to live outside the womb, but still a separate individual. And being created in the image of God impacts how we believe about those things. And what we believe is true. About those issues. So, humanity is created in the image of God. That makes our view of dignity and self-worth much different from humanistic psychology. Humanistic psychology basically comes from your evolutionary development and your self-fulfillment that you can find deeper than yourself through the help of others who will help you locate that and find it. And in a biblical viewpoint, our worth and dignity comes because we are made in the image of God. And we have some parts of us that mirror what and who he is. Okay, questions or comments there about man being created in the image of God, how that affects our view of psychology. All right, number two, three on your outline, but the second truth about the biblical view of humanity that relates to psychology is this. Humanity is fundamentally corrupted by sin. Now, we've seen that already. We've seen it very clearly in the Bible. Right now, we're just taking what we've learned and we're applying it to this field of psychology. Want you to look at Romans 5 again, passage we've spent a good bit of time in, just to remind us of what Romans 5 says, Romans 5, verse 12, therefore just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin. And in this way, death came to all people because all sinned, and he goes on to say several things about that. But remember, the thesis of this whole section is that sin came into the world through Adam, and it is affected every human being. And death has passed down to us because of Adam's sin. Now, look at it verse 16, nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man's sin. The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation. But the gift, the gift of righteousness through Christ, followed many trespasses and brought justification for if by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man. How much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ? Now, we'll come back to what this passage is teaching in a moment. But first of all, let me remind you that psychology does recognize the fact that man can be selfish and that man has unacceptable behavior. I mean, all of psychologists will come to that conclusion pretty much that man can act in a selfish way and does have unacceptable behavior. But that is explained as originating from kind of the lower brute character of the evolving nature, the evolving animal, if you will. And you can overcome that in time with proper education and proper behavior modification. Again, on your own, without any external divine help, you can overcome your bad behavior through behavior modification, learning new skills, through education, you can overcome all of that. That's a part of that evolutionary development. Sigmund Freud, who was, is pretty much recognized as the father, one of the fathers, along with Carl Young and B. F. Skinner of modern psychology, taught that guilt and conscience originated not from any concept of God or his law, but guilt and conscience originated from violating the taboo's of society. In other words, whatever man decided should not be done against, purely humanistic, whatever man decided should not be done. If you violate that, then you feel this guilt and this shame and will help you work through that. Well, the reason I read Romans 5 is because Romans 5 tells us that guilt results from breaking God's law. Sin came into the world through Adam. And condemnation, the Bible says, came because of sin. And then because of that came death. So guilt and shame result from breaking God's law. It all started with Adam. And since then we have been inclined by our nature to break God's law. Now, the remedy for that guilt and shame that comes from breaking God's law is not self-actualization, not self-realization, not trying to modify your behavior and educate yourself into a better way of life. The remedy is a radical inward transformation within your person through regeneration, through salvation. That is the way to overcome guilt and shame that is brought about because of violating God's law. The only way to change inner desires and motivations is through the power of God, through the power of the spirit of God. Now, counseling as to how to do that, training and educating ourselves as to how to come into a right relationship with God, all of that, yes, is very helpful. But it must be from a biblical perspective, otherwise lasting change will not be achieved. Now people can modify their behavior and seem to do okay for a while. But if the heart is still inwardly corrupt and has never been changed by the grace of God, they will eventually revert to that old behavior again. The only way to make lasting change is through the power of God, through first of all redemption, and then through coming into fellowship with Him through obedience. That's the only way to really deal with what the Bible teaches about guilt and shame, which is inner condemnation and God's condemnation because of sin. See, it's a totally different way of looking at man's problem. Man's problem biblically is we have sinned, thus we are condemned. Yes, we feel guilt and shame, and that can be overcome through the power of God. Psychology's view of guilt, shame, and how to overcome it is very, very different. At least, humanistic psychology would be. Comments, questions there. Steve? Yeah, huge difference. Again, do we have an unchanging, unfixed standard, which is God's word, or are the norms and taboos of society flexible, depending on what we think is okay? Again, your presupposition of where you're coming from is the whole issue, and that's what you've brought up with your examples. The Biblical psychology, which is a good thing, remember, the soul is a biblical issue, so the study of the soul is not bad. Psychology is not bad, but you have to come at it from a biblical perspective, which does have inflexible, authoritative standards of right and wrong. If standards of right and wrong are changeable with societies changes, then you've got to flawed foundation to begin with. So, yeah, that's very true. That's a major difference between the two. Let me move on quickly to the last implication regarding psychology. It's this, humanity is ultimately responsible for its decisions. This is a key Biblical difference between biblical truth and humanistic psychology. And again, I'm saying humanistic psychology because I'm not ready to throw out all of psychology. Some of its insights are great, just need to be filtered through the Bible. But humanistic psychology basically teaches, and this was B.F. Skinner. B.F. Skinner, very influential behaviorist psychology, said this. He tells it, all of our behavior is conditioned either by genetic or environmental influences. So people are not ultimately responsible for their acts, heredity or environment are what calls us to act the way we do. Now, no question that both of those can have a great impact, but that's not the origin of our problem. The origin of our problem is the deceitful, sinful wicked human heart. That's clearly what the Bible says. Basically, Skinner said, change the influences, change it through education or environment, overcome the genetic dispositions through education, and you will be able to change the person. That philosophy, that psychology has had tremendous impact upon our education system and our judicial system. But what is the Bible teach about responsibility for actions? Do we have any responsibility ourselves? Well, look at Psalm 51, Psalm 51. Just as one example, lots of places you could go to find this, but one example is David's own admission of his sin. And it's clear, he takes full responsibility for his actions. Does not try to blame it on his parents or his environment. He takes full responsibility. Good example of a biblical view of human responsibility. Psalm 51, verse 1, this is his confession of his sin after his sin with Bathsheba. Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love, according to your great compassion, blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. Now notice, he uses three different words, the three major Hebrew words for sin. Transgression, iniquity, and sin, we looked at all three of those words, the Hebrew words, when we were back in our study a little ways ago. But notice, he does not call them mistakes or inherited predispositions. He says, I sinned. I transgressed God's moral law. I am guilty of inward impurity. And notice, in all three cases, he calls it mine, my transgression, my iniquity, my sin. Now look at verse three. For I know my transgressions and my sin is always before me against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. So you are right in your verdict and justified when you judge. What didn't sound like the modern courtroom today? That's it. In many cases, at least, now this is troubled a lot of people where he says against you, you only have I sinned. Wait a second, he's sinned against Bathsheba and her family against his family. He's sinned against a lot of people, right? Yes. And that's not what Dave is talking about. David is talking about a biblical view of sin sees the violation as primarily, chiefly, a violation of God's moral law. And more than anything else, so much so that it almost blocks out other things. We have sinned against God. And David is dealing with God because God is the only one that can forgive him of his sin. So that's why he pleads with God, brought out my transgression, washed away a man that could have cleansed me from my sin. I know my sin, my transgressions, always before me, you are right in your verdict just when you judge. There's no excuse here. David is taking full responsibility for his sin. So the Bible teaches that we are responsible for our actions. Now there may be influences from our heredity, influences from our environment that may have contributed to that, but that does not take away our responsibility for our sin. And the answer to guilt over sin is to admit sin for what it is and accept responsibility. Call it my guilt, my transgression, my sin, my iniquity and ask God's forgiveness. Now that is a biblical view of responsibility for our decisions, particularly as it relates to the mess we're in, very different from humanistic psychology and how they view where our problems come from. So there are very serious implications regarding psychology that come from a biblical mindset of what the Bible teaches about who we are as people and what the Bible teaches about sin. All right, questions or comments about the implications regarding psychology of our study over the last 25 weeks. Yeah, there are, there's a spectrum. Yeah, there are some good counselors who counsel from a biblical perspective. And again, I will say there's a there's a there's a huge debate about the level to which you should include psychology on the on the far conservative end of the spectrum are what's called, Newthetic counselors. Jay Adams was one of those. The Newthetic Counseling Center at Faith Baptist Church in in Purdue is located Lafayette, Lafayette, Indiana. They do what they call, Nank National Association of Newthetic Counselors and they counsel basically from the Bible. So that is the the most conservative end. There are others a little who will tend to use a little bit more psychology than what Newthetic Counselors would, but they would they would primarily basically come at counseling through a biblical perspective. And I would include among them, although some would disagree with me on this, I'm sure. I would include among them the men whose course in counseling I had in seminary at Grayson has Larry Krab and other counselors like him who are in the American Association of Christian Counselors. Two different groups, both Christian counselors, a little bit, a little bit different shade of perspective, but both would primarily come from a biblical perspective. The Newthetic Counselors would say you don't use any psychology. Other counselors American Association of Christian Counselors would say, no, there's some good insights you can use. But yeah, there are lots of people who write that from a Christian perspective that I think are doing good work, Christian psychologists. Okay, we're those too much in that answer, but any other question. Okay, we don't have time to get into sociology tonight, but there is a huge issue here that is is resolved with a biblical perspective on man and sin, and that is the sociological issue of racism and prejudice. And that's what we're going to talk about next week. Okay, let's pray. Father, thank you for your grace and kindness to us through Christ. Thank you that what we believe from your word does have a significant impact on how we view the issues of the day, how we view what we're hearing in our culture about what man's problem is and how to overcome it. So I pray that we will use your word as the filter for our minds that we pass through that filter through that grid, everything that we hear and judge it by your word. Help us to be faithful to you and your word in Jesus name. Amen.