Diane,
If you would permit me to post this (that explains my previous post). In my opinion, the entire article is quite worthy of a little more of your time (when you get the chance).
http://www.christinyou.net/pages/understandman.html
Here is a short blurb.
The final analogy to be considered is that of the relationship of husband and wife. Romans 7:1-6 seems to picture the Christian as a woman who was spiritually married to a satanic husband, but was released from that marriage by death, in order to be joined to Christ as spiritual husband. More explicitly, Paul wrote to the Ephesians about the relationship of husband and wife (Eph. 5:22-33), and explained that he was “speaking with reference to Christ and the church” (Eph. 5:32). It has traditionally been recognized that the woman is the receiver in the marriage relationship, and the husband has the responsibility to provide loving leadership. Despite any social and cultural gender adjustments, the fact cannot be avoided that the woman is designed for sexual receptivity. The spiritual implication is that all human beings, male and female, are like wives joined to a spiritual husband. We are all designed for spiritual receptivity. The oneness of the marital union wherein “the two become one” (Gen. 2:24; Eph. 5:31) is not a merged, absorbed, or monistic oneness, but is a relational oneness that only functions properly when the Trinitarian relationalism of God’s love is operative in the marriage union. Likewise, the union of Christ and the Christian, when we are wed to Christ and “joined to the Lord in one spirit with Him” (I Cor. 6:17), is not a union of absorption, but a relational oneness wherein the Christian is to remain receptive to Christ in all things.
These analogies are all illustrative of man’s spiritual receptivity, of how man functions by derivation from a spiritual source. When God created Adam, He encouraged him to receive, to “eat freely” (Gen. 2:16) of the “tree of life” (Gen. 2:9), in order to derive the outworking of the divinely inbreathed (Gen. 2:7) life of God in man. The serpent, representing Satan (Rev. 12:9; 20:2), the “father of lies” (Jn. 8:44), lied to the original man, telling him that if he were to eat of the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Gen. 2:9,17) which God had forbidden, he would “be like God” (Gen. 3:5). It was a lie, for only God can be autonomous and independent, Self-empowering and Self-generating His activity out of His own Self-sufficiency. What God is, man cannot be. What God does, man cannot do. Man, the human creature, did not have the inherent resource to be independent and self-generative, for the human functions only by dependency and receptivity. The diabolic lie of man’s capability of being an “independent self”, the lie of intrinsic idiopathic human generation, presented Adam, the representative man for humanity, with the choice of functioning as God intended by receptivity from God, or attempting to function in the self-effort of self-sufficiency. The human creature, being a choosing creature with “freedom of choice,” was the only creature that could choose to refuse to function as God intended, by rejecting the presence of God’s life within. But by his rejection, man did not, for he could not, become an autonomous and self-generative being. Fallen man is unaware that he is still deriving what he does from a spiritual source, “the prince of the power of the air, who is working in the sons of disobedience” (Eph. 2:2), because “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving” (II Cor. 4:4). Generation after generation of mankind has touted their innate and intrinsic abilities in the humanistic thesis that they can function independently, as only God can function. Man has pompously assumed that he was his own center of reference, that he can be the cause of his own effects, that he has unlimited potential to achieve whatever he can conceive.
The Christian premise that man derives all that he does from a spirit source beyond himself is not only antithetical to all humanistic thought, but many in the context of Christian religion reject it also. Much of religion emphasizes the performance of “works” for spiritual advancement. Not understanding that God’s prime function is activity, while man’s prime function is receptivity, they are constantly advocating increased activity for their adherents. The church leaders are repeatedly harping on “getting involved,” on being “committed and dedicated” to churchy busyness that is seldom God’s business. Church attendance, tithing, serving on committees – the incessant calls to “go, go, go, and do, do, do for Jesus” – are never-ending religious mantras. The popular religion of performance cannot accommodate the activity of God’s grace received by faith.
Some religious teaching can recognize the need to repudiate humanistic thought and the idea that man can be an independent, self-originative or self-generative creature. But they often revert to an equally repugnant idea, that of “contributive man,” and utter such abominable statements as, “God helps those who help themselves,” and “Do your best, and God will do the rest,” often thinking that these are Biblical statements or concepts. If the satanic deceiver cannot get man to believe that he causes his own activity, he will at least attempt to get man to believe that he can contribute to activity that pleases God.
Popular evangelical teaching often bristles at the idea that man derives his functional expression from a spiritual source in either God or Satan. Evangelicalism gives lip-service to man’s inability to generate his own righteousness, for Paul writes clearly, “if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly” (Gal. 2:21), but in practice they advocate an unending litany of righteousness by performance of ritual, moral conformity, church involvement, etc. It is man’s derivation of unrighteousness and sin from Satan that evangelical humanism most strenuously objects to. Invariably they argue that this diminishes man’s responsibility, for they are so concerned with man having to make the choices to act properly. Many evangelicals, especially those who espouse Reformed theology, can accept a divine determinism, but they are afraid that man’s derivation from the Evil One creates a diabolic determinism that is akin to the old Flip Wilson comedy routine, “the Devil made me do it!” As indicated earlier, spiritual derivation does not imply any form of determinism, for man still has the response-ability and responsible accountability to make choices of receptivity to derive from one spiritual source or the other.
The either/or of spiritual character derivation is very clear in the scriptures. Righteousness is derived ek theos, “out of God” by faith (Phil. 3:9). Goodness is derived ek theos, “out of God” (III John 11) by one who has “seen God.” On the other hand, sin is derived ek diabolos, “out of the devil” (I John 3:8). Cain’s murder of his brother, Abel, was derived “out of the Evil One” (I John 3:12). The apostle John explains that “the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: every one not expressing righteousness is not ek theos, “out of God” (I John 3:10).
The British Bible teacher and author, W. Ian Thomas, expresses this dichotomy of derivation from either God or Satan so succinctly.
“As godliness is the direct and exclusive consequence of God’s activity, and God’s capacity to reproduce Himself in you, so all ungodliness is the direct and exclusive consequence of Satan’s activity, and of his capacity to reproduce the devil in you! …For iniquity is no more the consequence of your capacity to imitate the devil, than godliness is the consequence of your capacity to imitate God!”6
Evangelicals, as a whole, are not willing to accept this clear-cut dichotomy of derivation, that “what man does, must be derived from a spirit-source.” Instead, they insist that whenever sinful character is expressed, whether in the unregenerate or in the regenerate, it is generated ek eautos, “out of oneself,” which effectively makes man a devil. A popular variation of the thesis explains that sinfulness is derived ek eautos from an intrinsic straw-man called “self.” What is this, but a variation of the humanistic premise that man is an “independent self” that can generate character and activity ek eautos, “out of himself” – the very premise that was explicitly denied at the beginning of this section, because God alone Self-generates His character ek eautos. If sinful expression is blamed on an alleged independent personal resource called “self,” or on some “dirty old man” within, then religion can revert back to the self-effort of performance whereby man attempts to solve his own problems, for his alleged problem is a “self-problem.” In evangelical humanism this often takes the form of masochistic attempts to beat oneself into moral conformity, or to psycho-suicidal attempts to “crucify self” or to “die to self.” Though we are admonished by Jesus to “deny ourselves” (Luke 9:23), by disallowing self-oriented sinful expression in Christian behavior, this is not equivalent to the encouragement of evangelical humanism to become better Christians by crucifying or suppressing this alleged “self”-resource within that allegedly generates our sinfulness. What a con-game the Evil One has going on as he disguises his sin-activity under the cloak of “self,” deceiving man into thinking that man himself is the devil-self who is producing sin, and prompting man to engage in masochistic self-effort to destroy or crucify this “self.” Man is thus regarded to be his own devil and his own savior – this is the lie of evangelical humanism!
Blessings,
Pilgrim
