Human nature is made of flesh and blood, not of spirit, as angels with angel nature were. The crowning act of creation, having been made in the image and likeness of the Creator, man in human nature was endowed with a rational mind, an intelligent will, “the governing power in the nature of man.” It is the power to intellectually and spiritually perceive/discern between right from wrong, good from evil and then to act upon that determination as a matter of conviction, voluntarily, willingly, and then through constant practice, spontaneously.
IV. Is There Room for Pluralism? (The Incarnation)
Pluralism asserts that Christ adopted both the unfallen (sinless, prelapsarian) and unfallen (sinless, postlapsarian) human natures. First, I found that both sides of the controversy have very compelling Scriptural reasons or interpretations thereof, for adopting their opposing views. Therefore, as a sort of a neutral approach, I initially started out mentally figuring out whether enough of each side’s position on this dichotomy could produce an acceptable “amalgamation” in my mind that would help relieve the tension between the two and maybe even contribute a bit to helping diffuse the controversy. But what this initial attempt turned out to be was a more detailed consideration of both sides, plus some.
The Humanity of Christ: What was It? (Continued from last week)
No. 6: The Indispensable Role of the Holy Spirit
“The Holy Spirit, which proceeds from the only-begotten Son of God, binds the human agent, body, soul, and spirit, to the perfect, divine-human nature of Christ.”
How many church creeds specifically declare that it is the Holy Spirit that binds the true believer, i.e., body, mind, soul and spirit to the perfect divine-human nature of Christ? How many of those still debating this issue will give this saving truth the attention it fully deserves and bring it into their discussions? Into their set of beliefs? Into their moral character-building?
Fourfold Lie/Deception Embedded in the First Temptation Alone
Main Source: Confrontation, originally published under the title of Redemption; or The Temptation of Christ in the Wilderness by E.G. White, pp. 37-40:
“When Christ bore the test of temptation upon the point of appetite He did not stand in the beautiful Eden, as did Adam, with the light and love of God seen in everything his eye his eyes rested upon; but Christ was in a barren, desolate wilderness, surrounded with wild beasts. Everything around Him was repulsive. With these surroundings, He fasted forty days and forty nights, ‘and those days he did eat nothing.’ He was emaciated through long fasting and felt the keenest sense of hunger. His visage was indeed marred than the sons of man [Isa. 52: 14].
"Jesus Praying" Photo Credit by Samson Daniel/Flickr
FRIDAY MORNING MANNA
Biblical Numerology: NUMBER FOUR & FORTY– Part X
Christ’s Forty Days in the Wilderness of Temptation
See Matt. 4: 1-11. Satan knew that everything concerning his prosperity depended on his success or failure in overcoming Christ in the wilderness of temptation. Disguised as an angel of light, apparently in answer to Christ’s prayer, he appears when Christ is at His weakest, most vulnerable condition in His forty-day fast. Satan submitted Christ to his “very best,”—the subtlest of artifices and force of his powerful temptations to allure Christ from His allegiance to the Father and adherence to the moral law He himself established as the foundation of His eternal throne. He came “to magnify the law and make honorable” (Isa. 42: 21), not abrogate it.
Photo Credit by Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoi/Google Cultural Center
FRIDAY MORNING MANNA
Biblical Numerology: NUMBER FOUR – Part IX
Christ’s Forty-day Fast and Temptation
A.D. 27: John the Baptist, Christ’s prophesied forerunner, yielding to Christ’s gentle yet firm request, buried Him beneath the waters of the Jordan. “And straightway coming up out of the water,” Jesus “saw the heavens opened, and the Holy Spirit like a dove descending upon Him.” (Gabriel told Zacharias the priest, John’s father that the child would be filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb, and would go forth in the spirit and power of Elijah “to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” Luke 1: 8-17).
A WILDERNESS OF TEMPTATION AND A GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE
Thank God! There is growing class of people upon earth who consider each day a day of Thanksgiving and spiritual growth—not merely a holiday that precedes “Black Friday that kicks off the start the wild Christmas shopping season”—that’s by their own words, not mine. Gratefully and joyfully, every true Christian—the spiritual Jew “whose circumcision is not of the flesh but of the heart” (Rom. 2: 28, 29), daily petitions God’s throne of grace for fresh provisions for the battle and the promised deliverance and victories over sin and temptation in and through Christ for that day and that day alone (1 Cor. 15: 57). The immediately thank God for answering their prayers. Do we belong to this class? As in the type, their numbers have and always will be in the minority.
Or are we part of the vastly numerically superior class—the constant murmurers, sighers, and complainers who seem to have lost all reason and ability to thank and praise God for His unnumbered unmerited favors and blessings. They are the antitypical hard-hearted, ungrateful Israelites, so wonderfully delivered by God’s miraculous acts from their centuries-long Egyptian [sin] bondage and were in the process of being de-programmed of their acquired slavish and idolatrous habits and tastes; were being tested, trained, and fitted by God in their Wilderness passage and experience, not merely to inherit the “land flowing with milk and honey” but more specially to be God’s representatives to the heathen Canaanites of the earthly Promised land—what today is the whole country west of the Jordan known as Palestine.
On the sixth and last day of creation week, the Creator personally hand-crafted from the dust of the ground the father and representative of the human race–a different order of created beings. As the Creator’s crowning act and masterpiece, Adam alone was made in the image and likeness of God, endowed with free moral agency for a high and noble purpose—to honor the Creator as His human counterpart.
As a free moral agent, he was given a will that is the governing power in the nature of man to intellectually, spiritually, and willingly choose to obey his Creator out of love that is greater than hope and faith.
