An Overview of Christology - God the Son

The following is a handout that I prepared several years ago for training our deacon-candidates and Women Servants. I absolutely love thinking about the nature of Jesus Christ and glorying in His offices as Prophet, Priest, and King. I hope you enjoy learning about Jesus as much as I love talking about Him!

Christology – God the Son

A. Names – the names listed below are those with specific reference to Christ’s divinity.

Jesus has divine titles (the N.T. applies O. T. Yahweh passages to Jesus) :

Yahweh – John 8:24, 28, 58, (“I AM” – Ego eimi statements in the Greek text of the NT/LXX refer to Yahweh)

Isaiah 44:6 / Revelation 1:8, 22:13

Psalm 102:21-26 / Hebrews 1:10-12

Isaiah 8:13, 14 / I Peter 2:8

Joel 2:32 / Romans 10:13

“Jesus is Lord” (1 Cor. 12:3) – This is the central confession of the NT of Christ’s divine nature.

B. Preexistence/Divinity – A biblical case for the deity of Jesus.

Old Testament: the promise of a divine Messiah

Psalm 110:1 – “The Lord says to my Lord . . .”

Malachi 3:1 – “The Lord will suddenly come to His temple . . .”

Isaiah 9:6 - A son born who is called the mighty God.

Micah 5:2 – One born in the city of Bethlehem will be from eternity.

Isaiah 40:3 – “Prepare the way for Yahweh Who is coming . . .”

Jeremiah 23:5-6 – The Messiah will be called Yahweh our righteousness.

New Testament: Clear statements of his deity

John 4:26 – I Am He.

Titus 2:13 – Our great God and Savior.

Jesus has divine prerogatives

Luke 5:20-21 – Jesus forgives sins.

Matthew 14:33 – Jesus receives worship.

John 10:30 – He and the Father are one.

John 14:9 – He who has seen Him as seen the Father.

John 1:1-3 – all things came into being by Him.

Colossians 1:15-19 – He is the firstborn of all creation.

Philippians 2:6 – Jesus was existing in the form of God before the incarnation.

John 1:14 – one of a kind (monogenous).

Explicit statements from the New Testament showing the deity of Jesus

John 1:1-3; Romans 9:5; Philippians 2:6; Titus 2:13; Hebrews 1:3; 1:8 (quoting Psalm 45:6)

The Incarnation Shown Forth in Christ’s Divinity

John 1:1-3; 3:13, 17; 6:38, 57; 8:58; 13:3; 16:28; 17:5; Galatians 4:4-5; Colossians 1:16-18; Philippians 2:5-7; Hebrews 1:2, 8:10; Revelation 22:13, 16.

B. Incarnation

Cultural Barriers to believing in the incarnation (1 Corinthians 1:23)

Jews: (stumbling block) - Fiercely monotheistic; they considered incarnation blasphemy.

Greeks: (foolishness) – Dualistic philosophy aimed at escape from the physical body; the concept of the incarnation is the opposite philosophical direction they wanted to go in.

(1) The Necessity of the Incarnation (i.e., necessary meaning non-optional)

1. To redeem fallen man as God’s free and gracious choice – Romans 9:18, 24.

2. God’s choice to redeem man required representation through the sinless mediator, Christ Jesus instead of Adam (Acts 4:12; Romans 3:26; 1 Tim. 2:5)

Romans 5:12-21 – Jesus is the second Adam.

1 Corinthians 15:45 – Jesus is the last Adam.

1 Timothy 2:5 – Jesus is the one mediator between God and man.

(2) The Purpose of the Incarnation

The purpose of the incarnation was to make provision for the perfect blood atoning sacrifice needed to secure the redemption of God’s elect. Christ’s incarnation fulfilled the righteous demands of the Law and culminated in His sin-bearing, death, which death was required to satisfy God’s justice.

1. God cannot die, but God incarnated could die - Hebrews 9:23-26.

2. Hebrews 10:1-14 – Jesus took on a body in order to die as a substitutionary, propitiatory sacrifice.

3. Doctrine of subsequent necessity (Right view) - God chose to save fallen man, therefore He sent Jesus.

4. Doctrine of antecedent necessity (Wrong view) - God had to save fallen man, therefore He sent Jesus.

5. Subsequent – God chose to save in eternity and subsequently sent His son to ratify that election in time.

6. Consequent – Because God the Father chose, the incarnation was required to redeem those chosen.

7. Absolute necessity of the incarnation – the cross was the only way to save those elected from the foundation of the world (John 6:37-44).

So, the incarnation was a subsequent, consequent, absolute necessity for saving God’s eternally chosen elect.

(3) The Virgin Birth

The virgin conception is the miracle, not the birth itself.

Matthew 1:18-25

Isaiah 7:14 – Heb. Word almah means either “young maiden” or “virgin”, but the LXX use of the Greek term parthenos always means virgin and this is the Greek term used in Matthew 1:23.

Why was the virgin conception necessary?

1. It demonstrates the uniqueness of Jesus.

2. It demonstrates the divine initiative in His birth (John 1:14; 3:2; 13:3).

3. It demonstrates the Sonship of Jesus (Gal. 4:4; Heb. 1:8).

D. The Kenosis

The kenosis theory is different from the biblical doctrine of the kenosis. The kenosis theory says that Jesus divested (i.e., gave up) some or all of His divine attributes (Phil. 2:7).

Obvious Problems with the kenosis theory:

1. God cannot divest Himself of any essential attribute (i.e., glory, divinity, sovereignty)

2. The incarnation did add human flesh to the divine nature (fully God/fully man)

The glory of God the Son was in a certain sense veiled by human flesh.

Matthew 17:2; Hebrews 10:20; John 1:14; John 17:5

Jesus chose not to exercise or assert all of His divine prerogatives in the Incarnation.

Hebrews 5:8 – the son suffered: He never laid aside His Sonship.

Isaiah 53:12

Four reasons why the kenosis theory is not tenable:

1. The immutability (unchangeableness) of God does not allow it.

2. The unity of the Trinity would cease to exist.

3. Genuine incarnation (God made flesh) requires it.

4. Exaltation of Jesus would then require giving up human nature.

The Biblical kenosis is found in Philippians 2:7 – “He emptied Himself . . .” This refers to His voluntary choice to temporarily refuse to assert His powers and rights as God the Son in the incarnation and instead become a humble, willing servant, by being obedient to God to the point of death on the cross.

Perpetuity of Jesus’ human nature.

Hebrews 13:8 – yesterday, today and forever.

1 Timothy 2:5/Hebrews 7:25 – Jesus is the eternal mediator.

Colossians 2:9 – All the fullness of deity dwells in Christ in bodily form in a present, ongoing fashion.

Philippians 3:21 – Continuity but transformation.

Relationship of the two Natures in Christ (Human/Divine):

Reformed/Biblical view: both divine and human natures are communicated to His person.

Whatever is true of either nature is true of the person

Does Jesus know everything?

Human nature – no

Divine nature – yes

Christological Heresies

Where does heresy come from?

1. Unteachable and obstinate disposition of sinful and/or unregenerate religious people.

2. A desire to reduce mysteries of God’s word to manageable formulations.

Nine major Christological heresies of church history:

1. Ebionitism: natural son of Joseph and Mary, Christ at baptism until the cross.

2. Adoptionism: man Jesus became divine by conferral of divine qualities.

3. Doceticism: Jesus was divine being who only appeared human (1 John 4:2-3).

4. Sabellianism: God appeared as the Son for only a time (Modalism).

5. Arianism: Jesus divine in secondary sense, 1st & greatest created being (Council of Nicea convened in 325 A.D. to correct this heresy).

6. Apollinarianism: fully divine/partial human nature (no human mind or soul).

7. Nestorianism: Jesus was two persons (unity of wills, not natures).

8. Eutychianism: Jesus had one mingled human & divine nature (Monophysitism).

9. Kenosis theory: Jesus emptied Himself of deity at incarnation (later 19th century liberal

thought).

Four categories of the nine major heresies

1. Jesus was essentially man and not divine (#1 & #2)

2. Jesus was an appearance only (#3 & #4)

3. Jesus’ full human nature denied (#5 & #6)

4. Jesus’ two natures separated or mingled (#7 & #8)

Orthodox, Scriptural, and Creedal Christology

The Definition of Chalcedon (451 A.D.) – formulated so as to be a confessional statement against the above errors (English text from Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, vol. 2, p. 62).

We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach men to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a reasonable soul and body; consubstantial with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the Manhood; in all things like unto us, without sin; begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, according to the Manhood; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, as the prophets from the beginning have declared concerning him, and the Lord Jesus Christ himself has taught us, and the Creed of the holy Fathers has handed down to us.

Summary:

· Jesus is 1 person with 2 full natures without confusion, division, mixture or separation.

· You have a plurality of natures in Jesus, not persons.

· Two whole, complete natures.

1646 London Baptist Confession states regarding Jesus:

XVI. THAT He might be a prophet every way complete, it was necessary He should be God, and also that He should be man: For unless He had been God, He could never have perfectly understood the will of God; and unless He had been man, He could not suitably have unfolded it in His own person to men.

John 1:18; Acts 3:22; Deut.18:15; Heb.1:1.

Note: That Jesus Christ is God is wonderfully and clearly expressed in the Scriptures. He is called the mighty God. lsa.9:6. That Word was God, John 1:1. Christ, who is God over all, Rom.9:5. God manifested in the flesh, 1 Tim.3:16. The same is very God, 1 John 5:20. He is the first, Rev.1:8. He gives being to all things, and without Him was nothing made, John 1:2. He forgiveth sins, Matt.9:6. He is before Abraham, John 8:58. He was and is, and ever will be the same, Heb.13:8. He is always with His to the end of the world, Matt.28:20. Which could not be said of Jesus Christ, if He were not God. And to the Son He saith, Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever, Heb.1:8. John 1:18. Also, Christ is not only perfectly God, but perfect man, made of a woman, Ga1.4:4. Made of the seed of David, Rom.1:3. Coming out of the loins of David, Acts 2:30. Of Jesse and Judah, Acts 13:23. In that the children were partakers of flesh and blood He Himself likewise took part with them, Heb.2:14. He took not on Him the nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham, verse 16. So that we are bone of His bone, and flesh of His flesh. Eph.5:30. So that He that sanctifieth, and they that are sanctified are all of one. Heb.2:11. See Acts 3:22; Deut.18:15 Heb.1:1.[1]

1689 London Baptist Confession, chapter 8 (statements based upon confession):

“The only mediator . . .” – 1 Timothy 2:5

“ . . .is the Lord” – Romans 10:9

“Jesus Christ” – Matthew 16:16

“Who being the eternal” – John 1:1

“Son of God” – 1 John 5:20

“ . . of one substance” – John 20:28

“and equal with the Father” – Philippians 2:6

“in the fullness of time” – Matthew 1:21-28, Galatians 4:4

“became a man” – 1 Timothy 2:5

“and so was and continues to be God and man” – John 1:14

“in two entire, distinct natures in one person” – Colossians 2:9

“forever” – Romans 9:5

E. Hypostatic Union – The joining together of the divine and human natures of Jesus into one person.

Fully God and Fully Man

Jesus Christ, the Son of God and second person of the Trinity, is God. He is of the same essence as the Father and equal to him. At just the right time, according to the predestined plan of God, the eternal Son became a man. He was made like us in every way, except for his sinlessness. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the virgin Mary. This union of the divine and human made Jesus forever both God and man in one person. He is fully God and fully man. His divine and human natures are neither altered, blended, nor confused. Jesus Christ, the only mediator between God and man, was, and is, fully God and fully man. John 1:1-14, Romans 1:1-4, John 3:16, Matthew 28:18-20, John 14:5-14, John 10:22-39, Galatians 4:1-7, Hebrews 4:14-16, Luke 1:26-38, Matthew 1:18-24, 1 Timothy 2:1-7, Hebrews 2:5-18[2]

F. Humanity

The Nature of the Humanity of Jesus

Fully man: Jesus was and is completely human (Jesus had everything that makes man human).

Weakened human nature: closest to sinful humanity without sinning (Jesus had mortal humanity; not pre-fall humanity). Romans 8:3; Hebrews 5:2; 2 Corinthians 13:4; 1 Corinthians 15:3

G. Temptation and Impeccability

Luke 1:35 – the Holy one to be born

John 8:46 – “can you prove Me guilty of sin?”

Acts 3:14 – “. . . the Holy and Righteous one”

Hebrews 4:15 – “tempted . . . yet without sin”

Hebrews 9:14 – “unblemished . . .”

1 Peter 1:18-19; 2:22-23; 1 John 3:4; 2 Corinthians 5:21.

Hebrews 5:7, 12:2-4 – Jesus was truly tempted.

*Paradox: Jesus was impeccable in regard to His divine nature; but was peccable in regard to His human nature.

Charles Hodge – Christ was able to sin as to His human nature.

W. G. T. Shedd – Christ was unable to sin because of His deity.

The incarnation of Christ occurred by addition of human nature, not by way of the subtraction of Christ’s deity.

John 1:14; Philippians 2:6-7; 1 Timothy 3:16 (NKJV); 1 Timothy 1:17; Colossians 2:9.

Again, the incarnation did not subtract deity from Jesus.

H. Teachings, Miracles

Mark 2:7, 12 – Amazed by His works.

Matthew 7:28-29 – Astonished at His teaching.

Matthew 8:27 – Marveled at His authority.

Matthew 16:13-17 – Puzzled about His identity.

I. Humiliation

His Humiliation and Exaltation

The Lord Jesus willingly accepted his appointment as mediator and perfectly fulfilled that office. He endured the most severe tortures of soul and body, was crucified, buried, and remained under the power of death for three days, without seeing corruption. . . .[3]

J. Exaltation [(1) Resurrection; (2) Ascension; (3) Session]

. . . . .He rose from the dead on the third day. He ascended into heaven, where he sat down at the Father's right hand and intercedes for his people. From the Father's right hand he shall physically return at the end of the world to judge all men and angels. John 10:14-18, Galatians 3:10-14, Isaiah 53, 1 Corinthians 15:1-8, Acts 1:1-11, Acts 13:34-37, Romans 8:31-34, 2 Timothy 4:1-5[4]

K. Second Coming

What Happens When Christ Comes

Believers who are alive at the second coming of Jesus Christ will not die, but they will be instantly changed into a resurrected state. At that time, the bodies of the believing dead will also be raised incorruptible with a resurrected body and all believers will be with the Lord Jesus Christ in the new heavens and the new earth. The unbeliever will experience the full fury of God’s wrath forever in the Lake of Fire. 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, Matthew 24, 1 Corinthians 15:12-58, Revelation 20-22[5]

God has appointed a day when he will judge the world with perfect justice through Jesus Christ, to whom he has given all power and authority. On that day the fallen angels will be judged as well as everyone who has ever lived on the earth. All must appear before the judgment seat of Christ to give account for everything they have done (their thoughts, words, and actions) while they lived on the earth. The Lord Jesus will give his unchangeable verdict on that day, forever sealing the destinies of everyone. The wicked will be sent into the Lake of Fire to experience eternal torment, while the righteous, those whom Jesus purchased on the cross, will be rewarded and will enter into eternal life. John 5:16-30, Jude 5-7, 2 Corinthians 5:6-10, 1 Corinthians 4:1-5, Matthew 25:31-46, Revelation 20:11-15[6]

L. Mediator – “JESUS Christ is made the mediator of the new and everlasting covenant of grace between God and man, ever to be perfectly and fully the prophet, priest, and king of the Church of God for evermore.”[7]

Article 10, Section 1 of the New Covenant Confession of Faith states:

The Eternal Mediator

It pleased God, in his eternal purpose, to choose the Lord Jesus, his one and only Son, to be the mediator between God and man. He was to be the Prophet, Priest, and King, the head and Savior of his church, the heir of all things and judge of the world. To the Lord Jesus the Father gave, from all eternity, a people to redeem, call, justify, sanctify, and glorify. 1 Peter 1:17-21, 1 Timothy 2:1-7, Hebrews 1:1-4, Hebrews 5:1-10, Luke 1:26-33, Ephesians 1:15-23, Romans 8:28-30, John 5:16-30[8]

M. Three Offices of Christ

(1) Prophet – He proclaims to us what God would have us receive because of our sinful ignorance. (2) Priest – He intercedes for us by His shed blood thereby making us acceptable to God. (3) King – He reigns over the world in His sovereignty and thereby convicts, draws, and convinces us of his majesty and preserves us unto His heavenly kingdom.

Jesus Christ, as our Prophet, Priest, and King

The three offices of Jesus Christ, our Messiah, are necessary for us. Because of our ignorance we need him to be our Prophet. Because of our separation from God we need him to be our Priest so that we can be made to be acceptable to him. Because we have rebelled against him and have become God-haters there is absolutely no way for us to return to him, therefore we need him to be our King to convince, draw, deliver, and preserve us for his heavenly kingdom. 1 Timothy 2:1-7, John 1:15-18, Colossians 1:21-22, Romans 5:9-11, Ephesians 2:1-10, John 6:44[9]

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[1] http://www.sfofgso.org/about.asp?href=sof

[2] Article 10, section 2 of the New Covenant Confession of Faith (http://www.ncbf.net/PDF/confession.pdf).

[3] Article 10, section 3a, ibid.

[4] Article 10, section 3b, ibid.

[5] Article 28, section 2, ibid.

[6] Article 29, ibid.

[7] Section X of the 1646 London Baptist Confession of Faith (http://www.sfofgso.org/about.asp?href=sof).

[8] http://www.ncbf.net/PDF/confession.pdf See also the 1646 London Baptist Confession of Faith, sections X through XIII.

[9] http://www.ncbf.net/PDF/confession.pdf (Section 6 of Article 10). See also the 1646 London Baptist Confession of Faith, sections XII through XX.

Atheists: Another Atheist is calling you out!

One of my favorite blog articles was "Presuppositionalism: Atheists, I'm calling you out".  [NOTE:  That article link and blog is now defunct, but you can go here for similar ideas from this author:  Why Postmodernism?  3-5-2011 - DSS]  In the following extended quote from that now defunct blog article, our atheist friend "Azrienoch" tells the "truth" regarding the debates between atheists and those who use a presuppositional method of apologetics to defend the Christian faith:

Atheists, scientists, philosophers, and other thinking persons that spawn from the second kind of post-modern tradition: I am calling you out. This is your fault. It is this lack of rigor, effort, and sincerity of atheists, scientists, philosophers, and other thinking persons today that has created the monster of Christian presuppositionalism in non-academic philosophy. But mind you, it won’t be non-academic for long.

I’ve seen you fight presuppositionalism with every reasonable bone in your body. But as long as you continue to claim that there is truth, they will win. They have the upper hand against you in using the deconstructive techniques of the first kind of post-modernism. And as long as you insist that there is truth, they can just take you at your own word. Watching you collide with the presuppositionalists is like watching a mother fight with her own child; you want to beat them as hard as you can, but at the same time, you want pieces of them to survive the fight because their truth is your own.

I’ve read paper upon paper on how to defeat a presuppositionalist in debate, and each time I see one of those methods used, I’ve also seen them fail. So listen closely, because I’m about to tell you how to beat them: cut their feet off. Of course, you will only be able to do this by admitting and remembering that you also have no feet. Show them there is no logos and no truth, and they too will have nothing to stand on. This mutated child you’ve given us will die.

But this is a self-sacrificial mission. Your own flawed philosophy, based off of your hopes and desires instead of your honesty and rigor, will die too. That is the tradeoff. If you decide not to, and go about fighting them your way, you only lend them the time and practice to get stronger.

Why don’t I do this? I do. But every time I speak, I find myself either dismissed as ridiculous and ignored, or not heard at all. This is your problem. You created it. You clean it up."

Our atheist blogger is being very consistent, and it is because of this, I truly appreciate what he has said. To sum it up, he is saying this:

If you want to defeat Christian presuppositional apologists, stop saying that any truth exists whatsoever to argue for in the first place! However, when you admit this, be aware that you will also refute yourself because you won't be able to argue that it is true that there is no such thing as truth! Oh and by the way, you can't even really know if that is true either.

Here’s what he’s saying: If you want to get rid of Christianity, stop saying that any truth exists whatsoever to argue for in the first place! But when you admit this, be aware that you’ll also refute yourself, because you won't be able to argue that its true that there’s no such thing as truth! Oh and by the way, you won't even really be able to know if that’s true either.  Our atheist friend has done the Christian community a great service. While atheism is wicked, I truly appreciate Azrienoch's logical rigor and consistency. His analysis only confirms what I've been saying for years, which goes something like this: If you are logically consistent, there is only one worldview that you can adhere to in the end, Biblical Christianity.

If you opt for skepticism, you’re still inconsistent, because you’re not skeptical about your skepticism. To avoid dying spiritually and intellectually, I'll gladly hang my hat with the former versus the latter. I suspect that we will be hearing more candid admissions like this from our atheist friends, especially as the vestigial remains of Christian virtue and morality slowly disappear from Western society within the next 1-2 generations.

Creation - The Foundation for Marriage, Family, and Morality

INTRODUCTION

Before getting into a detailed study of the Biblical doctrine of marriage, it is important to understand the Biblical foundation for marriage instituted by God at the beginning of creation (Mark 10:6). In other words, we first need to understand the top priority that God placed upon man and woman as the pinnacle of His creative handiwork. Many things that are disturbing and alarming to Christians today are that way because they are largely unable to understand why they are happening. We see more and more divorce in the professing Christian church, professing Christians not caring about their marriages, as well as an increase in homosexuality, lesbianism, and the so-called “same-sex marriage”[1] debate. Families do not function properly, a new generation of American children and teens are more ignorant about basic Bible doctrine than they ever have been before, there is little respect for authority and lawlessness and cold, calloused hearts abound.

Things which were unheard of a generation ago have become commonplace today. The Church is not as effective as it once was, and with few exceptions, it is either just maintaining itself or, in many instances, apostatizing. People find it hard to evangelize because people are so hardened to Biblical truths and full-time evangelists don’t see the conviction of heart in unconverted people that they saw 250 years ago. Why not? It is because our culture, our professing Christians, and our children are being fed a steady diet of evolutionary humanism that runs is direct opposition to the fact that God created everything and He owns it and gets to determine what He wants to do with it. If the fall of man was not a literal, historical event involving a literal man, a literal snake, a literal garden, a literal tree and literal fruit, then sin can be easily dismissed. The humanists know this better than most Christians do and say so in their own writings,

“. . . . Christianity is, must be totally committed to the special creation as described in Genesis, and Christianity must fight with all its full might, fair or foul, against the theory of evolution … It becomes clear now that the whole justification of Jesus’ life and death is predicated on the existence of Adam and the forbidden fruit he and Eve ate. Without the original sin, who needs to be redeemed? Without Adam’s fall into a life of constant sin terminated by death, what purpose is there to Christianity? None.”[2]

The bottom line is this: if Genesis is not accepted as literal history, then there is no foundation for any Christian doctrine to stand upon. Diagram number one does a good job of explaining what I see as the major problem in Western culture today.

Looking at the diagram, you see the castle of Christianity on the right side (representing doctrines such as sin, marriage, salvation, etc.), which is founded on the proposition: ‘God’s Word is Truth.’ Under this is the word ‘creation.’ It’s important to note that ultimately, all biblical doctrines of theology are founded in the creation account of Genesis 1–11. In Matthew 19:4–6, when Jesus was asked about marriage, He quoted from Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 to explain the doctrine of marriage as one man and one woman for life.

And He answered and said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning MADE THEM MALE AND FEMALE, ⁵ and said, FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH? ⁶ “So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.” (Matthew 19:4-6)

It is clear that Jesus believed that the Genesis narrative was real history. If you think about it, if Genesis is just an allegory, or mythological, then marriage can be defined any way you want and Jesus was a liar or a lunatic to believe in a literal Genesis but He most certainly was not Lord. The historical fact that God made man from dust and then a woman from man’s side for the purpose of giving him a companion suitable for him is the only way that marriage can be defended. Jesus and Paul (Ephesians 5:22-32) taught that a couple become one in marriage. This oneness is based on the historical fact that Eve was created out of Adam’s side. Sadly, there are many Christians who have been deceived to believe that God at least used a quasi-evolutionary process to form life and finally man. However, the evolutionary story presents people as being descended from an ape-like ancestor. If, as some Christians insist, God then created souls for this evolved man and woman, then the doctrine of marriage has been destroyed. Only a literal Genesis has the woman being made from the man, and this is the only basis for oneness in marriage.

Take a look at the top of diagram number one; the castle of humanism, and the social issues of abortion, homosexual behavior, etc., are built on the foundation of the idea that “man’s opinions determine truth.” Under this is the word “evolution.” When I use the word “evolution”, most people think of the molecules-to-man belief that Darwin popularized. Although this is certainly a part of evolution, that’s not what I’m talking about per se, because evolution is much more than this. In essence, it is a philosophy of life which teaches that man, independent of God and independent of revelation, determines truth. That means that man’s opinions determine truth. Secular humanism is a religion[3] of sorts that teaches that man is the determiner of all things. Since there is no supernatural being to whom we are accountable, man can therefore decide what truth is for himself apart from any reference to God. The evolutionary philosophy that man is the end product of rocks turning into people through a time, chance, and natural processes working on matter over millions of years is a part of the American secular creeds known as the Humanist Manifesto and Humanist Manifesto II. Listen to a clear statement from the first Humanist Manifesto.

Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created … . Humanism believes that man is a part of nature and that he has emerged as the result of a continuous process … . Humanism recognizes that man’s religious culture and civilization, as clearly depicted by anthropology and history, are the product of a gradual development due to his interaction with his natural environment and with his social heritage.[4]

Humanist Manifesto II says the same thing,

As non-theists, we begin with humans not God, nature not deity. Nature may indeed be broader and deeper than we know; any new discoveries, however, will but enlarge our knowledge of the natural.[5]

It logically follows that the more a person believes he is not a special creation of God, but is just an animal driven by instinct and impulse, the more he will believe that he can decide truth for himself and do whatever he wants as long as he is the strongest. The more he believes there is no God to answer to, the more he can consistently decide what right and wrong is for himself. He will then give in to the desires of the flesh and work hard at justifying those desires by claiming that God doesn’t exist, therefore the Bible has no claim on him. So, why shouldn’t someone like this conclude that marriage can be between two men, or why even bother with marriage at all? The two castles in the diagram above represent a battle: the battle between the humanist worldview and the Christian worldview. At a foundational level, this battle is between man determining truth for himself and God’s Word being the ultimate truth that tells man how he is to live and what he is to believe. Even more simply, it can be summarized as a battle between creation versus evolution.

In the battle of creation versus evolution, the first diagram shows that the humanists are very clever. They have aimed their guns at the foundations of Christianity. They have attacked the authority of the Word of God by undermining the doctrine of creation and the doctrine of the Bible. They have been very successful in undermining the Word of God in our Western culture by indoctrinating generations of young people in evolutionary humanism from kindergarten to college. But remember how they did this: they directly attacked the foundational book of the Bible - Genesis. They correctly understood that if you attack the foundations of our belief system, then the rest of the belief system will crumble quite easily. Through the education system, the media, the movies—through all of the culture—evolutionary thinking is truly all pervasive. Creation versus evolution is not a side issue. These things are really the front lines of the battle.

One humanist admitted his agenda openly:

“I am convinced that the battle for humankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being. These teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever subject they teach, regardless of the educational level—preschool day care or large state university. The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new—the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with all its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism.”[6]

As mentioned earlier, original sin, with death as a result, is the basis of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and that begins in Genesis 3. That is why Jesus Christ came and what the gospel is all about. If the first Adam is only an allegorical figure, then why not the second Adam, Jesus Christ? If man didn‘t really fall into sin, there is no need for a Saviour. Evolution destroys the very foundations of Christianity because it says that “death is a natural part of life”. If you lived on the top floor of an apartment building and there were people underneath that building with jackhammers hammering away at the foundations, would you say, “So what”? That is what many Christians are doing these days. They are being bombarded with evolution through the media, the public school system, T.V., the papers, and yet they don’t even care. The foundations of the “building” of Christianity are being destroyed by the “jack-hammers” of evolutionary humanism. But, inside the building, what are many Christians doing? They are either doing nothing, focusing on getting more people in the church by watering down the gospel by trying to make it palatable to lost people, or they are throwing out jack-hammers and saying, “Here, have a few more! Go destroy our foundations by saying that Genesis is just a myth. We agree with you!” Worse still, theistic evolutionists (those who believe in evolution and the Bible) are actively helping undermine the basis of the gospel by telling Christians that they can hold to the basic principles of evolutionary humanism and mix that poison with the gospel of Christ. As the Psalmist asked in Psalm 11:3, “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” If the basis of the gospel is destroyed, then the structure built on that foundation (i.e., the Christian Church) will eventually collapse. I believe that we are already seeing some of this collapse with the prevalence of pragmatic marketing tricks in evangelicalism, emergent-church nonsense, and syncretism, pluralism, and relativism in our churches. If Christians wish to preserve the doctrinal structure of Christianity and truly seek to change the culture, they must protect its doctrinal foundation and actively oppose evolutionary humanism.

THE RELEVANCE OF THE DOCTRINE OF CREATION

Let’s take a moment to consider the relevance of the doctrine of creation as recorded in Genesis. Jesus says in John 5:46-47 “For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me. ⁴⁷ "But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?” Also, in Luke 16, Jesus quotes Abraham as saying “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.” (Luke 16:31). Both references show the utmost importance that the New Testament placed on the writings of Moses, beginning with Genesis. The writings of Moses are quoted more in the New Testament than any other Old Testament book, but there is one book of Moses which is referred to more often in the rest of the Bible than any other book. The book of Genesis is referred to, or quoted from, in the rest of the Scriptures more than any other. But in Christian and non-Christian circles, and in theological seminaries and Bible colleges, the book of the Bible that is most attacked, mocked, scoffed at, kicked, stood on, thrown out, allegorized and mythologized is the book of Genesis. The book that is quoted from more than any other is the one that is most attacked, disbelieved, or ignored. Why is that so? It is because our adversary is crafty and so are his followers.

The foundations under attack

Again, Psalm 11:3 states, “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” As already noted, if you destroy the foundations of anything, the structure will eventually collapse. If you want to destroy any building, the best way is to blow up the foundations. Likewise, if you want to destroy Christianity, destroy the foundations which are established in the book of Genesis. This is why Satan is attacking Genesis more than any other book. The Biblical doctrine of origins, as contained in the book of Genesis, is foundation to all other doctrines of Scripture. If you refute or undermine the Biblical doctrine of origins then the rest of the Bible is undermined. Every single Biblical doctrine of theology, directly or indirectly has its basis in the book of Genesis. Therefore, if you do not have a believing understanding of that book (not just believing it is true, but believing and understanding what it says), you cannot hope to attain full understanding of what Christianity is all about. You are fooling yourself if you think you understand what Christianity is all about if you don’t understand the book of Genesis. Why do I say this? Well, it’s because the meaning of anything is tied up with its origins. If you want to understand the meaning of anything, you must understand its origins - its basis for what it is and what it says. Genesis is the only book that provides an account of the origin of all things: the universe, the origin of life, of man, of government, of marriage, of culture, of nations, of death, the chosen people, of sin and clothes, and on and on. The meaning of all these things is dependent on their origin. In the same way, the meaning and purpose of the Christian gospel depends on the origin of the problem for which the Savior’s death was necessary.

Why marriage?

How would you answer these questions? Imagine someone coming up to you and saying, “Hey, Christian, do you believe in marriage? Do you believe it means a man for a woman for life? If so, why?” Now the average Christian would say that he or she believes in marriage because it is somewhere in the Bible, Paul said something about it, that adultery is sin, and there are some laws that we are supposed to follow, etc. If you are not a Christian, consider these questions: Are you married? Why? Do you believe marriage should be one man and one woman for life? Why can’t a man have six wives? Or a woman six husbands? What happens if your son comes home and says, “Dad, I am going to marry Bill tomorrow”? Would you say, “You can’t do that, son! It’s not the right thing to do!”? What are you going to do when he says, “Yes it is, Dad. There are even Churches that will marry us.” If you are not a Christian or deny the literal history of marriage as described in Genesis 2, how are you going to reason with him?

Why clothes?

Consider why you wear clothes. Is it to keep warm? What then if you live in the tropics? Is it to look nice? If these are your only reasons, why do you wear clothes? Why not take them off if you want to, where you want to? Does it really matter if you go nude publicly? Ultimately, the only reason for insisting that clothes must be worn is if there is a moral reason. If there is a moral reason, it must have a basis somewhere, and therefore there must be standards connected to the moral reason. What then are the standards? Many girls in our culture (including Christians) just accept the fashions of the day to show off their bodies and the parents are completely accepting and undiscerning. Parents, why should you teach your children that they have a moral obligation to wear clothes to cover their nakedness?

Why law and morality?

What do you tell your children about laws and morality? Perhaps you tell them some things are right and some are wrong, but do you ever explain to them where right and wrong came from? Would you say we have right and wrong because God has given us laws? If so, why is that important? Why does He have a right to say what is right and what is wrong and we don’t get a say so in the matter?

Why sin and death?

Suppose someone came up to you and said, “You Christians are saying that we need Jesus Christ, that we need to confess our sins. What is sin? Why do we need Him anyway? Besides, God can’t be who He says He is. If He is, like you say, a God of love, look at all the death and suffering in the world. How can that be?” What would you say? Sadly, the average evangelical Christian could not answer any of the above questions in defense of his faith. Because Christians cannot answer these questions adequately, they cannot pass that information on to their children who in turn cannot pass it on to the next generation. The net result is generations of squishy, wishy-washy Christians who believe in many things but are not sure why they believe them. They have beliefs in marriage, in wearing clothes, a belief that some things are right and others wrong, and a belief in Jesus to save them from their sin; but ask them why they believe these things and they don’t have a clue. Yet, the Lord commands us in 1 Peter 3:15 to “sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you . . .” Let us consider these point by point.

Marriage

When Jesus was asked concerning divorce in Matthew 19, He immediately referred to the origin of the basis of marriage when He quoted from Genesis 2:24. Interestingly, He quoted from Genesis chapters 1 and 2 in the same verse, which refutes those who wrongly say Genesis 1 and 2 are two different accounts of Creation. What He was saying was something like this: “Don’t you understand? The reason for marriage is that there is a historical basis in the word of God.” If we didn’t have this historical basis from God’s revelation, we wouldn’t have marriage. This is why, if you are not a Christian and you believe in marriage, you are being totally inconsistent because you have no objective basis for it. The only basis is in the Scriptures. You can say it is convenient for you, but you can’t tell your son he can’t marry Bill without contradicting yourself. You would have no justification for telling your son that he can’t marry another man or even an animal for that matter! Now if we go back to Genesis, we read how God took dust and made a man. From the man’s side He made a woman. They were one flesh. Adam’s first recorded words were, “This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” (Gen. 2:23) They were one flesh. That is why, when you get married, you become one, because it has this historical basis. If it didn’t it couldn’t be so. Also you are to cleave to one another just as if you had no parents. Just like Adam and Eve who had no parents. We know it is to be a heterosexual relationship. Why? Because God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. He made them “male and female” (Genesis 1:27). That is the only basis for marriage, and that’s why we know that homosexual behavior and desire is evil, a perverse and unnatural deviancy, regardless of whether people are genetically predisposed to be that way or not.[7] It is time that the Church stood up against the societal acceptance of homosexuality by refuting the claims that it is a natural, normal, and acceptable alternative lifestyle. Paul couldn’t write what he does in Romans 1:26-27 about homosexuality if he didn’t have Genesis as his historical basis.

What about the rest of the teaching on marriage? There is another aspect which has to do with the family and it is the reason many Christian families go to pieces or the kids go hog wild in their early to mid teens. In the majority of Christian homes today it is usually the mother who teaches the children spiritually. What a shameful thing it is that the fathers have not taken on their God-given responsibility! When you look at the biblical roles given to fathers and mothers, it is the fathers who are given the responsibility of providing for their children, providing the family’s spiritual and physical needs (Isaiah 38:19). Mothers are just as much to blame for taking it on themselves. One of the things that happens as a result of this role reversal is that the sons often stop coming to Church because the church is feminized and run by committees of women, though the daughters may keep coming. When the fathers are not the central figure of a young girl’s affection, attention, protection, and spiritual growth, she will find that affection and attention elsewhere; hence, you have teen pregnancies and young girls eventually marrying young men that are physically tall, dark, and handsome and strong yet they are lost. This happened because daddy didn’t provide those things for his little girl because he was too busy pursuing his idols, and she tried to find comfort, love, protection, and security in the next best thing, and in her mind, that next best thing was a zit-faced punk with big muscles, no spiritual foundation, and plenty of testosterone. And we wonder why Christian families are in such a mess.

Did you know that many girls go to the mission field but not many males. A major reason why that is the case and why there are so many problems in Christian families today is that fathers have not taken on the responsibility of being the spiritual leaders of their household as they are commanded. A father is to be the spiritual leader of his wife and children. However, it is not a dictator-type of relationship where men despotically lord it over their wives. Women’s liberationists think the Bible teaches that in marriage, the idea of a woman having to be in subjection to her husband, means that he is a tyrannical dictator. Sadly, many Christian men think like this also. However, it doesn’t mean that at all. Anyone who uses these Biblical roles to justify one person seeking power over another has somehow missed the whole message of Jesus Christ – a message that screams a servant leadership model (Eph. 5:21, John 13:5). If you do not adopt the God-given roles set out in Scripture, you will find that your family will not work and will quickly become dysfunctional.

Clothes

Why do we wear clothes? If there is a moral basis, then you have a reason to wear them. If there is no moral basis, then there is no reason except perhaps convenience, safety, or warmth. But there is a moral basis if you go back to the Scriptures. We read in Genesis that when God made Adam and Eve they were naked before they sinned. But sin came into the world, and sin distorts everything. Sin distorts nakedness. Immediately Adam and Eve knew they were naked, and they tried to cover their nakedness with fig leaves. But that didn’t do the job because they still saw their nakedness. God came and killed animals and gave them animal coats to cover themselves. This was the first blood sacrifice. It was a covering for their sin. The same Hebrew word used for these animal-skin coats is used of the priest’s coat in the Old Testament. It means a complete covering or an “atonement.”

Now, let’s be realistic on these issues. Men are very easily aroused sexually. That is why semi-naked women are used in T.V. commercials, jewelry advertisements, etc. When they reach an appropriate age, parents need to explain to their daughters how easily a man is aroused by a woman’s body. They need to know, because many of them do not understand what happens to a man, and you need to tell them. The New Testament says that if a man lusts after a woman in his heart, he commits adultery in his heart. Remember, sin distorts nakedness. Many Christian girls purposefully show off parts of their body that are meant only for their future husbands to see. You can see the boys’ eyes follow them around. But what is happening? Many of those fellows are committing fornication or adultery in their hearts for which they and the girls will have to answer before God. What we should say is this: there is a moral basis for wearing clothes, because of what sin does to nakedness. We must understand how men are created, that they were designed to be easily aroused and that they should respond to only one woman this way; their wives! Therefore, clothing should minimize to the greatest extent any stumbling block laid in a man’s way. But a man is no less guilty if he succumbs to the ‘second look.’ In light of all these things, we cannot mindlessly accept the fashions of our day because there is a moral basis for clothing. Therefore, there are standards. Knowing what men are like and knowing what sin does to nakedness, you now have a basis for understanding what the standards should be (1 Timothy 2:9).

Law and morality

In many Christian homes the parents have certain beliefs about marriage and clothing. They say to their children, “You can’t wear that” and the teenagers immediate reply is, “But why not?” and the parent answers something like this, “Because it is not the Christian thing”, and the teen asks again “Why not?”, the parents says, “Because Christians don’t wear that” and the “Why not?” reply comes again and again without any Scriptural answer to back it up and eventually this leads to type of moralism or legalism. However, when a parent explains to the child that as far back as in the book of Genesis, God tells us why we must do this or that with regard to marriage, clothing, etc., then the child has an objective basis for understanding why they are obligated to follow the parent’s convictions. Why is there right and wrong, where does it come from, and who gets to determine the difference? Remember the story in Matthew 19 when the man came to Jesus and said to Him, “And someone came to Him and said, "Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may obtain eternal life?" ¹⁷ And He said to him, "Why are you asking Me about what is good? There is only One who is good . . .” (Matthew 19:16-17)[8] So, how do you decide if something is right or wrong, good or bad? God, the only one who is good, created us and therefore owns us. Thus, we are obligated to Him and we must obey Him. He has a right to set the rules since He owns everything. He knows everything there is to know about everything, and therefore we must obey. That is why we have absolutes, why there are standards, and why there is an objective right and wrong.

Now, if you are not a Christian and you think some things are right and some are wrong, why do you think like that? You have no basis for such an idea. Where do you get your standards from? How do you decide what is good and bad? Most of the non-Christians who believe there is an objective right and wrong are practicing the Christian ethic but they don’t have any basis for it. The evolutionary philosophy says, “There is no God. All is the result of random chance and natural law acting on matter over time. Death and struggle are the order of the day, not only now but indefinitely into the past and future.” If this is true, there is no objective basis for right and wrong, but only men’s opinions which change all the time. In the book of Judges we read that when the Jews had no king to tell them what to do, they did what was right in their own eyes (Judges 17:6; 21:25). When there is no absolute authority, you can do whatever is convenient for you. If people believe consistently in a worldview called evolution, they are going to say, “There is no God. Why should I obey authority? Why should there be rules against homosexual behavior or any other kind of behavior that I want to do and others don’t? Why should there be rules against abortion? After all, evolution tells us we are all animals. So, killing babies by abortion is no different than chopping off the head of a fish or chicken.”

The consequences of rejecting God and His absolutes

Missionaries were sent to New Guinea because there were many so-called pagan and primitive people there. Missionaries recount that in one tribe, which has since ceased to be cannibals, men would race into a village, grab a man by the hair, pull him back, tense his abdomen muscles, get a bamboo knife and slit open his abdomen, pull out his intestines, cut up his fingers, and while he was still alive, eat him until he finally died. People hear that and say, “Oh, what primitive savages!” Folks, they were not primitive savages! Their ancestor was a man called Noah. The Indians’ ancestor was a man called Noah, the Eskimos’ ancestor was a man called Noah. Your ancestor was a man called Noah and Noah had the knowledge of God and could build ships. His descendants could make musical instruments, build a big tower, and practice agriculture. What happened to the New Guinea natives is that somewhere in their history, as Romans 1 tells us, they rejected the knowledge of God and they were turned over to foolish, perverse and degenerate things (Romans 1:18-32).

However, this same degeneracy can be seen in so-called civilized nations that cut people up alive all year long (over 40 million since 1973) —and it is legalized. This is what abortion is - cutting people up alive and sucking out the bits and pieces. If you talk with people in Bible studies about abortion, they will often say, “Well, what if my daughter was raped?” or “What if the fetus is deformed? What do you think I should do then?” What they are really asking you is this: “I want to know what is right in your eyes. Don’t give me this God stuff.” Brethren, that’s evolutionary humanism at work. Professing Christians who say these kinds of things don’t understand what the Bible is all about. It’s not just a message that we add to our life to give us a little “pick me up” to help make life a little easier to deal with when stressful times come. Our thinking must start with the Bible, all of our thinking.

Your foundational ideas about reality will determine the framework for the rest of your worldview. That is why the Bible must be the basis for locking ourselves into the right framework. That is why you must start there. Because we have an absolute, i.e., One who knows everything, He can give us the basis for coming to the right conclusions about anything and everything in this world. Christians should start with what our Absolute tells us in order to understand these things. If we go to our Absolute, we only have to read Psalm 51, Psalm 139, and Jeremiah 1, to find that at the point of conception we receive a God-consciousness and a sinful nature that distinguishes us from animals. At the point of conception we are human; thus abortion is murder, and there are no other options. Do Christians make a stand on that? Why does Paul say in 2 Thessalonians 2:15, “stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word of mouth or by letter from us.”? Do we stand firm or do we shake in our boots and cave into postmodern relativism? What we are seeing in our society and churches today is a result of just that - sin gone to seed through the pseudo-intellectual excuse of evolutionary philosophy; a philosophy that is nothing more than a ferocious rejection of God and His absolutes. This explains why abortion is having a hey-day in our world.

The gospel, sin and death

Think about the gospel message for a moment. When God made man, He made him perfect. He made the first two people, Adam and Eve, and placed them in the Garden of Eden where they had a special, very beautiful relationship with God. When He made them, He gave them a free will to choose to obey or disobey and they eventually chose rebellion. This rebellion is called sin and we are all affected by it. All sin comes under the banner of rebellion against God and His will. As a result of that rebellion in Eden, a number of things happened. First, man was cut off from God. That separation is called spiritual death. On its own, the final effect of this would have been living forever in our sinful bodies, eternally separated from God. Imagine living with Hitler and Stalin forever! Imagine living in a horrible sinful state forever. But something else happened. Romans 5:12 tells us that as a result of man’s actions sin came into the world, and as a result of sin, both spiritual and physical death entered the world. To confirm this, you only have to go to 1 Corinthians 15:20 where Paul talks about the physical death of the first Adam and the physical death of Christ, the last Adam. In Genesis 3, God expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden so that they would not eat of the tree of life and physically live forever. Physical death as well as spiritual death resulted from their sin. Why did God send death? Three aspects of death should be considered carefully:

1. God, as a righteous judge, who cannot look upon sin, had to judge sin. He had warned Adam that, “dying, you shall die.” The curse of death placed upon the world was and is a just and righteous judgment from God who is the judge.

2. One of the aspects of man’s rebellion was separation from God. The loss of a loved one through death shows the sadness of the separation between those left behind and the one who has departed this world. This parting should remind us of what sin did and how great a gulf has occurred between God and man as a result of sin. When we consider how sad it is when a loved one dies, it should remind us of the terrible consequences of sin which separated Adam from the perfect relationship he had with God. This separation was passed on to all of mankind.

3. Another aspect of death which many people miss is that God sent death because He loved us so much. God is love, and, strange as it may sound, we should really praise Him for that curse He placed on us! God did not want man to be cut off from Him for eternity because of his rebellion. Imagine living in a sinful state for eternity, separated from God! But He loved us too much for that so He did a very wonderful thing. In placing on us the curse of physical death, He provided a way to redeem man back to Himself, in the person of Jesus Christ, who suffered that curse on the cross for us (2 Corinthians 5:21; Hebrews 2:9). By becoming the perfect sacrifice for our sin of rebellion, He conquered death. He took the penalty which should rightly have been ours at the hands of a righteous judge, and bore it in His own body on the cross.

All who believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior are received back to God to spend eternity with Him. Isn’t that a wonderful message? That is the message of Christianity. Man forfeited his special position through sin, and as a result God placed upon him the curse of death so he could be redeemed back to God. What a wonderful thing God did! On Good Friday, we remember Jesus being nailed to the cross, thus saying “No” to what Adam did. On Easter Sunday, we remember His rising from the grave, which says ‘yes’ to mankind. But evolution destroys the very basis of this message of love. The evolutionary process is one of death and struggle, cruelty, brutality and ruthlessness. It is a ghastly fighting for survival, elimination of the weak, and of the deformed. This is what evolution is all about—death and struggle bringing man into existence: death over millions of years. It is an onward, upward ‘progression’ leading to man. Yet, what does the Bible say in Romans 5:12? “Man’s actions led to sin, which led to death.”

In other words, evolutionists would say death and struggle led to man’s existence. The Bible says man’s rebellious actions led to death. These statements cannot both be true. One denies the other and they are diametrically opposed. That is why the compromisers who claim to hold both positions at the same time (e.g. theistic evolutionists) are destroying the basis of the gospel. If life formed in an onward progression of death and the struggle to survive, how can the first man’s sin be considered a “fall” into death if death had already been around for millions of years? Sin is seen as an inherited animal characteristic and not the result of man’s fall through disobedience to God’s command. The many Christians who accept the belief of evolution and add God to it, destroy the very foundation of the Gospel message they are professing to believe.

Paradise restored

Evolution also destroys the teaching of the consummation of all things. What are we told about the restoration of creation? Acts 3:21 says there will be a restitution of all things, that all of nature will be restored to its original harmony and balance. We read about what it will be like in Isaiah 11:6-9, “And the wolf will dwell with the lamb, And the leopard will lie down with the young goat, And the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; And a little boy will lead them. ⁷ Also the cow and the bear will graze, Their young will lie down together, And the lion will eat straw like the ox. ⁸ The nursing child will play by the hole of the cobra, And the weaned child will put his hand on the viper's den. ⁹ They will not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain, For the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD As the waters cover the sea.” To believe in evolutionary humanism is to deny a universal Paradise before Adam, because evolution necessarily implies that before Adam there was struggle, cruelty and brutality, animals eating animals, and death! If the world going to be restored to that in the eternal state then how is that any better than what we have now? If you believe in evolutionary theory, you must not only give up traditional notions of marriage, clothing, etc., but to be consistent, you must also deny a universal Paradise before Adam and at the end of time. Thus evolutionary philosophy strikes at the very foundation of Christianity.

CONCLUSION

The thinking of generations of public-school educated Christians has gradually changed so that they don’t think in a Christian framework anymore because they are trained to think like secularists. Their presuppositions are different and affect the way they think about marriage, morality, family, abortion, school violence, child abuse, sexual perversion and so on. This anti-biblical philosophy causes people to try to justify all sorts of wrongful actions and in the end, they will become more consistent as our Churches become more secular by abandoning Biblical authority. It is certainly true that people who don’t believe in evolution can do all of these sinful things. But, the more people abandon a Christian basis for marriage, family, and morality, the more these ills will become prevalent throughout our churches and the whole of society.

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[1] Biblically speaking, there is no such thing as a “same-sex marriage” which explains why I used quotation marks. Marriage is, by Biblical definition, a union of one-man and one-woman for life.

[2] G. Richard Bozarth, “The Meaning of Evolution”, The American Atheist, September 1978, 19.

[3] Is the Religion of Secular Humanism Being Taught in Public School Classrooms?

[4] Roy Wood Sellars (original rough draft), A Humanist Manifesto, The New Humanist, pgs. 58–61, May–June 1933.

[5] Humanist Manifesto 2, The Humanist, September–October 1973.

[6] John Dunphy, A Religion for a New Age, Humanist, p. 26, Jan.–Feb. 1983.

[7] It is important to note that as of the writing of this material, there is no objective, biological evidence that homosexuality is a behavior that is genetically predetermined. Even if that were to be the case, it would be an irrelevant argument since genetic predisposition does not justify sinful or unlawful behavior. For example, no rational person will argue that a child rapist is morally justified in their raping of children because they are genetically predisposed to do so. The fact that they were “genetically predetermined” to commit a crime doesn’t get them off the hook. They are still guilty and obligated to pay for their crime regardless of their supposed genetic predisposition. To make things worse for the detractors, this argument cuts both ways, for if people are genetically predisposed towards sinful behavior and that is used as the primary basis for justifying their sin, then they can’t condemn me as unloving and judgmental since I’m genetically predisposed to be that way. They can’t say that what I’m doing is wrong per se since I’m just doing what my DNA tells me to do!

[8] Jesus was not denying that He was God, He was merely asking the rich man to flesh out the implications of what he was saying by forcing him into a dilemma. Jesus was in effect saying, “Only God is good, but you are calling Me good too, so, do you think I’m God?” Either Jesus was good, and thus was God, or else he was bad, and was a mere man. Ultimately, these are the only two options when one is faced with the Christ of Scripture and history.