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IMAG-INATION The Doctrine of Biblical Self-Love

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IMAG-INATION The Doctrine of Biblical Self-Love. Miles J.
Stanford

 


Introduction

Believers today are being challenged
and exhorted to develop a better self-image, and to exercise more
self-love. It is our intent to present both the
unscriptural, and the scriptural aspects of this important facet of the
Christian life.

If I have anything prominently before
me except the Lord Jesus, that thing, however good it is, becomes a screen for
something of myself, and where there is any self- consideration, the region of
spirituality is lost. It may be an amiable thing, but because it is of man and
not of God, it is not spirituality. –J. B.
Stoney


Fall Of The
Fall

There is a growing number of
Christians for whom the fall has fallen. To the degree that the believer
weakens his concept of the fall, he weakens his Christian life and service.
Error concerning the fall results in error concerning the two Adams; and error
concerning the two Adams results in error concerning one’s spiritual growth and
outreach.


Totality Of The
Fall

Scripture leaves no doubt as to the
totality of the fall. It was utter, and irrevocable. God made it very clear to
Adam that if and when he should sin, he would surely die. And the day that Adam
disobeyed God’s single stipulation, he died spiritually–he died unto God. And
all the race of mankind died unto God in Adam that day.

“For as in Adam all die” (1 Cor.
15:22). As a result, “it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the
judgment.” “Therefore, as by the offense of one judgment came upon all men to
condemnation” (Heb. 9:27; Rom. 5:18). “As it is written, There is none
righteous, no, not one.” “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of
God” (Rom. 3:10, 23).

Without question Adam was originally
created in the image of God. “And God said, Let us create man in our image,
after our likeness….”So God created man in his own image, in the image of God
created he him” (Gen. 1:26, 27).

But when Adam died to God, his
God-like image perished with him. “And the Lord said, My Spirit shall not
always strive with man, for that he also is flesh” (Gen. 6:3). “That which is
born of the flesh is flesh” (John 3:6). “Among whom also we all had our manner
of life in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the
flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others”
(Eph. 2:3). “For to be carnally (fleshly) minded is death….Because the carnal
mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither,
indeed, can be. So, then, they that are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom.
8:6–8).

The extent of the apprehension of the
depth and utter ruin of the first Adam nature caused by the fall, determines the
extent to which the new life in Christ can be brought to full growth in the
believer; for just so far as man clings to one supposed “good thing” in him, so
for the power of the Cross is nullified in his life, and so far the growth of
the new life is constricted in him.

Freedom from the dominion of sin is
the message of the Cross, but it can only be realized in experience up to the
extent of the believer’s recognition of the fall, and a consequent offcasting of
the fallen life of the first Adam at the place called
Calvary.


Anomaly

Those who slight the fall refer
consistently to the image of fallen Adam as “marred,” or “blurred,” or “in need
of restoration.” They dare not consider Adam’s image a total ruin because they
are seeking its restoration, its reformation. For them it is back to the
unfallen Adam, via Christ!

There is a strange anomaly at the
core of the Reformation realm. On the one hand they go to the extreme of
teaching that the fall was not beyond recovery of the original; while on the
other hand they go so far as to insist that man is so dead in sin that it is
impossible for him to believe–”total depravity.”

These Calvinists insist that the
Spirit must first regenerate the dead-unto-God individual, thereby giving him
life in order that he may believe unto life. This the Covenant theologians
refer to as “monergistic regeneration: the faith which receives Christ for
justification is itself the free gift of a sovereign God, bestowed by spiritual
regeneration in the act of effectual calling.” –J.I.
Packer


“Faith Cometh By
Hearing”

The Scriptures present the reverse of
this theory. “To him give all the prophets witness, that through his name
whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins” (Acts 10:43). First
believe, then receive. John writes, “He that heareth my word, and believeth on
him that sent me, hath everlasting life” (5:24). First hear, then believe, then
receive. “The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of
the Son of God; and they that hear shall live” (John 5:25). As a result of
hearing, the dead are given life.

James, Peter, and John all clearly
testify to the fact that life is entered into by believing, by faith. James:
“Of his own will begot he us with the word of truth (1:18). Peter, “Being born
again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God” (1
Pet. 1:23). John: “But these are written, that ye might have life through his
name” (20:31).

God commanded Israel to choose life.
“I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before
you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore, choose life, that both thou
and thy seed may live” (Deut. 30:19). Concerning this plea to choose life, Dr.
L.S. Chafer wrote:

God having designed that man as
creature … Continue reading →

THE ADAMIC NATURES

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THE ADAMIC
NATURES


Miles J.
Stanford


Spiritual Sharing Service
(Tri-S-Series) Number 15b of 19

 

The question we are dealing with
is,

Does the Christian have one, or two
natures*; has the old man been eradicated, or
not?

I believe there are two keys that unlock the
scriptural answer. The one is the doctrine of the two men, and
the other is the doctrine of position. First we will consider
the two representative men–the First Adam and the
Last Adam who constitute the foundation of all God's dealings with
humanity.

[* nature - an inherent propensity,
inclination, bent, or disposition.]

THE DOCTRINE OF THE TWO
MEN

“THE FIRST MAN” — When “the
first man, Adam,” sinned, he died positionally–totally
dead to God: spirit, soul, and body. Thereafter his position was manifested in
his condition; he began to die experientially. In God's mercy, it was some 930
years before Adam fully experienced the inevitable outcome of his
position of death.

Adam, as head of the human race, took all of
humanity into that position of death. “In Adam all die” (1 Cor. 15:22).
All in Adam have his life and therefore are “by nature the children of
wrath” (Eph. 2:3). The Adamic life is the source of sin in
everyone, whether unsaved or saved (Rom. 5:12).

Due to the Fall, Adam became
“flesh”–not only his body, but his soul and spirit as well. “My
Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh” (Gen.
6:3). Hence the race spawned by Adam and Eve is “flesh.” “That
which is born of the flesh is flesh” (John 3:6). It is not that the natural
man has flesh, or is in the condition of flesh; he is
flesh.

Paul wrote, “For I know that in me (that is,
in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing” (Rom. 7:18). Note well that he said
“my” flesh. As a believer Paul was indwelt by his Adamic life, the old
man, and he assumed full responsibility for his sinful actions.

In his position Paul was not
“in the flesh,” but “in Christ Jesus.” Still, in his
condition his Adamic life was present with him, and he owned
full responsibility for its sinfulness. He said, “Whatever a man soweth,
that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh, shall of the
flesh reap corruption” (Gal. 6:7,8). He also said that the believer will,
at the Bema, suffer loss for the fleshly deeds done in the body.

Because the first Adam sinned and became mortal
flesh, he was superseded by the spiritual Last Adam, the “new Man.”
This constituted condemned Adam the “old man.” The fallen Adam is the
old man, he is the flesh; he possesses a sinful nature. One complete
man.

The Word speaks of the activities of the old
man, both in the unsaved and the saved, as “the wills of the flesh,
the desires of the flesh, the workings of the flesh, the
wisdom of the flesh, the purposes of the flesh, the warring
of the flesh, the glorying of the flesh.” It also refers to those
who “walk according to the flesh, after the flesh, and make a
fair show of the flesh.” Here we have the personification of the old
man–identically manifested before and after one's salvation.

A man is a substantive entity, a person. The
traits, or characteristics, of a man are non-substantive, and comprise his
nature. A nature is a composition of attributes, and is not to be considered a
substantive entity. Some of the positive characteristics of the
old man, aspects of the old nature, are love, joy, peace, longsuffering,
gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, and self-control. However lovely,
these are but fleshly facsimiles of the fruit of the Spirit as found in
Galatians 5.

On the other hand, some of the
negative fleshly characteristics of the old man, aspects of
that same old nature indwelling every man are, “adultery, fornication,
uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, hatred, strife, jealousy, wrath,
factions, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and
the like.”

Beautiful and beneficial as the positive
characteristics of the flesh may be, all, including both the positive and the
negative, are rejected of God. Why? Because their source is the condemned Adamic
life. For “in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good
thing.”

“THE SECOND MAN” (the Last Adam) —
Who can deny that the Lord Jesus has two natures? And if two natures, two lives:
He is the Son of God, and He is the Son of Man. He is perfect God and Perfect
Man in hypostatic union–the oneness of the God-Man.

The blessed aspects of the Lord Jesus'
divine-human life and nature are His love, His joy, His peace, His
longsuffering, His gentleness, His goodness, His faithfulness, His meekness, and
His self-control. All positive–no negative. He was and is, and ever shall be,
impeccable.

THE DOCTRINE OF
POSITION

THE POSITION FACTOR — Consider the
believer's positional history. Before anything was brought into
being–the universe, the world, Adam–I, a chosen, elect, and called person was
conceived in my Father's heart and purpose. (See Eph. 1: 4, 5; 2 Tim. 1: 9; Ps.
139:16).

My Father called the world into being, and
created Adam to be head of the human race for that world. I was identified
positionally with the source of humanity. When Adam sinned and thereby
positionally died to God, I died in him. When he became flesh, I became flesh in
him. When he was condemned, I was condemned in him.

The rejected old Adam was replaced by the
accepted new Man, the Last Adam. When the Father sent His only begotten Son into
the world, He subjected Him to the death of the Cross in order to rescue me from
my Adamic death, because He loved me as His chosen one from all
eternity.

While the Lamb of God was on the Cross, my
Father laid all my as-yet-uncommitted sins upon Him, and … Continue reading →

None But the Hungry Heart #5

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None But the Hungry Heart #5

What is shared herein is designed to further your
acquaintance with the Lord Jesus on high, and to enrich your fellowship with Him and with
the Father. Through prayerful meditation in None But the Hungry Heart #5, we trust the
Holy Spirit will bring about a strengthening of faith and an upward drawing of heart.

Furthermore, it is hoped that these thoughts may provide
you an opportunity to try your “faith wings”–to learn more fully the need to
abide above, and thereby walk here below in the “Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:2).

“And this I pray, that your love may
abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment (discernment); that ye may
approve things that are excellent; that ye may be sincere and without offense till the day
of Christ, being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, unto
the glory and praise of God” (Philippians 1:9-11).

-Miles J. Stanford; Sept. 1973

 Go
to frames set

5-1.
THE GREATEST

“We love Him, because He first loved
us” (1 John 4:19).

We first come to know something of the Lord Jesus' love by
what He did for us; but that is only the basis for coming to know His love in what He is
to us. The first is known at the Cross, the latter is entered into through personal
fellowship with the risen Lord.

“There are three steps in appreciation of His love for
us. First, I learn that He loves me so much that He saved me. He is our treasure 'My Beloved is mine' (Song of Solomon 6:3). The second step of affection is the consciousness that He loves me
so much that He has a right to me. He would have me for Himself. 'I am my Beloved's' (Song of Solomon 6:3).

“The third step is the consciousness that He loves me
so much that He wants my company 'His
desire is toward me' (Song of Solomon 7:10). Love's
delight is found in the company of its object. May we know in a deeper way, and in a
fuller measure, the sweetness of personal intimacy with 'the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me' (Galatians
2:20).

“Much ministry is lost upon us as to any practical
result, because we are not prepared to be detached from things here, so as to be simply
here for Christ. And the preparation for this is to come personally under the influence of
the blessed attractiveness of the Lord Jesus. When we sit under His shadow with great
delight, everything else becomes so small, and loses its hold upon our hearts.”
-C.A.C.

“But we all, with unveiled face
beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory
to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

5-2.
INITIAL PREPARATION

“Saul armed David with his armor….
And David said unto Saul, I cannot go with these; for I have not tested them” (1
Samuel 17:38, 39).

Years of preparation are worth a moment of truth! Rest
assured that once we are developed and trained by the Holy Spirit, the work whereunto He
has called us will be ready and waiting (Acts
13:2). “Our Lord must have an instrument which He
has formed in the fire and to which He has given peculiar knowledge of Himself.”

“The greater the knowledge committed to a servant, the
more necessary and important it is that he should be much alone with God about it, in
order that he may realize the nature and effect of it on himself before he undertakes to
make it known to others.

“It rebukes the haste and readiness with which many
now enter the ministry, attempting to impress others with a measure of the truth which
they have not proved for themselves. Surely the servant should ever be able to say: 'I believed, and therefore have I spoken' (2
Corinthians 4:13). It is better to lose time as to work
in preparation for service than to lose time in repairing one's mistakes in undertaking a
work for which one is not yet qualified.”

“A servant's discipline must always be in advance of
the service prepared for him. He cannot lead beyond the point to which he himself has been
led. But when the depth and reality of the truth has been established in his own soul, he
is made the channel of it.”

“I have found that many a thing which I had presented
in an extreme way because I was sure of it, I put forth in a simpler and a more real way
when I had touched it in my own experience.” -J.B.S.

“That which we have seen and heard
declare we unto you” (1 John 1:3).

5-3.
APPREHENDED TO APPREHEND

“I count all things but loss for the
excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord” (Philippians 3:8).

Positionally, our Father subjected our old nature to the
Cross and its resultant death. Experientially, He applies the work of the Cross to our old
life, thereby progressively holding it in the grip of that death. He is
“unforming” the old nature in death, and conforming the new nature in life.

“Life more abundant requires that what He did for us
shall be made good in us. In His Cross He dealt with our sins, and He also dealt with
ourselves; but that is something which has to be made good progressively. It is as we
ourselves are dealt with in the power of the Cross that the way is made for His life to
express itself in ever deepening fullness.

“The fact is that it is the old life which is in the
way of the new life and its full expression. It is the natural life which obstructs the
course of the divine life. Thus what has been done for us has … Continue reading →

Holiness, Tradition and Pharisees

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Mark 7


Holiness is one of those words that means different things to
different people, isn't it? What associations does it conjure up in your
mind? For some of us I suspect holiness has decidedly unattractive
connotations. A “holy joe” is one of those religious fanatics who
embarrasses you by his antisocial killjoy attitude to life. “Holier than
thou” is the way we describe pompous prigs who reckon themselves
morally superior to everyone else. Even at its most positive, the word
“holy” I guess conveys rather austere if nostalgic memories of the hymns
we used to sing in school chapel… “Holy, holy,holy” – intoned to a
ponderous organ amid hushed whispers, stained-glass windows, gothic
architecture and acute physical discomfort. No, holiness is not a
quality to which the majority of people feel attracted. 

But then it would rather defeat the object of the exercise if they
did. For the whole point of holiness is to be different, separate,
clearly distinguished from everything that is profane and ordinary. In
Old Testament times the pots and pans they used in the sacrifical ritual
of the Temple were “holy”…because they were kept especially for that
“sacred” purpose. The priests were “holy” too, because of their special
role in offering the sacrifices. Defining such objects and persons as
“holy” was a way of making clear to the Jewish people that in a very
real sense God didn't belong to this world. He was different and
therefore those who wanted to have dealings with him had to be different
too. 

The holiness code that comprises a substantial part of the Book
of Leviticus generated a sacred-secular divide in ancient Israel for
precisely this reason. To embed in every Jewish mind an awareness of the
mystery and transcendence of God… what biblical scholars have
sometimes called his “otherness”. 

The trouble was, some of them took it too far. The idea of
holiness always has this risk attached to it. In the wrong hands instead
of being a vehicle of witness to the sublime uniqueness of God's
person, holiness can all too easily be perverted into mere religious
eccentricity…a pious theatrical that awakens at best the amusement of
the watching world, and at worst its contempt. The boundary between
being sanctified and being sanctimonious, between being pious and being
downright peculiar, is a frighteningly narrow one. The risk of the
former degenerating into the latter is always greatest when the people
of God feel threatened. 

Take the period, for instance, five centuries before Christ, when
the Jews were taken into Babylonian exile. It was a devastating
experience for them. Suddenly they found themselves surrounded by a
totally pagan society. Everything familiar had been snatched away from
them. The instinctive response of any ethnic or religious minority in
such a hostile environment is to become culturally defensive; to guard
with jealous pride every cultural distinctive it is possible to
preserve. And that is exactly how the exilic Jews reacted. They may not
have had the Temple any longer, but they could still circumcise their
children and observe the Sabbath. The might have to speak Aramaic in the
market-place, but they could still use Hebrew in their synagogues.
These cultural markers thus became more important than they had ever
been before. For they were the only way the they could retain their
identity as Jews in the cosmopolitan melting-pot of Babylon where they
were now forced to live. 

In many respects it was a perfectly understandable, even laudable
development. We observe exactly the same kind of thing in many
countries today where minority groups strive to preserve their local
dialect or their national dress against a cultural tide that would
homogenize the entire world if it could. But the trouble was that in the
case of the Jews, because of their special self-consciousness as the
chosen people of God, this need for the maintenance of their cultural
distinctiveness got tangled up with their ideas of holiness. They turned
their traditions into a system of regulations and defined holiness as
obedience to these rules. 

Take for example the issue of ceremonial washing. The Book of
Leviticus certainly laid down certain regulations regarding ritual
ablutions in its holiness code. But the scribes of post-exilic Judaism
amplified these regulations to such an extent it was considered improper
to eat a single mouthful of food if the appropriate handwashing
procedure had not been observed. Mark, you may have noticed, draws our
attention to this practice with what I sense may be a slightly sarcastic
edge to his tone. (Mark 7:3-4)

Now as I say, this kind of legalistic attitude towards things
like ritual washing became increasingly influential in the post-exilic
period. The original biblical idea of holiness was being subtlely
subverted by the need of Jews to defend their sense of cultural
superiority in a world where they were now politically and economically
powerless. The rabbis vied with one another to pile more and more
regulation on top of the ancient law of Moses. They were convinced that
only by the painstaking observance of such rules could the Jewish people
maintain their cultural distance from the Gentiles and thus preserve
their unique privilege as God's “holy” people.And in the first century
no group was more zealous in its conformity to those rabbinical rules
than the Pharisees. 

Now in some respects the Pharisees have had a bit of a raw deal
at the hands of Christian commentators over the years. The very word
“Pharisee” has a pejorative, almost villainous overtone to it, which is
really unfair. For there was much about the Pharisees that was
admirable. (i) this was a group who believed passionately in the
inspiration of scripture and devoted themselves to the rigorous
exposition of the biblical text. (ii) this was a group who zealously
pursued personal holiness (iii) this was group who scrupulously tithed
their income. (iv) this was group who enthusiastically sought to win new
converts to their faith. 

Who does that remind you of? I have to say … Continue reading →

The Directors Chair (Rev. 4 & 5) – Dr Roy Clements

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The Directors Chair

(Revelation 4 & 5)

By Dr. Roy Clements

 

I shall never forget my first visit to the serious theatre. It was a school outing to the Old Vic where they were presenting Macbeth. It was a play in which I had a personal interest because I was to feature in my school's production of the same work later in the term. I didn't have a major part; in fact, I was to be an Apparition – conjured up by the three witches to give Macbeth some rather dubious political advice! I had no name; Shakespeare simply dubbed my couple of lines as the words of 'a bloody child'! But I was all-agog to see how the Old Vic was going to handle this demanding role.

When the moment I was waiting for arrived, I was so enchanted that for all I I knew they could have been real witches on the stage. The Old Vic succeeded in producing not only some most realistic thunder and lightning, but by some clever lighting effects involving fluorescent paint, they produced an extraordinary eerie atmosphere on stage, so that the bloody Apparition whose role I knew so well appeared to hang in a halo of light in mid-air. It was joyously creepy for all the hundreds of schoolchildren who were watching. And it began an interest that lasted the rest of my schooldays, not in acting, but in stagecraft, in the technical wizardry that goes on behind the scenes. I wasn't an actor for the rest of my school career, I was a backstage boy, trying to learn some of those tricks that the Old Vic had demonstrated.

Ever since those days, I have always rather begrudged the prominence which the narnes of actors seem to have on theatre programmes, or on the credits after a TV film, just because their faces are seen. Anybody who has actually worked on a play knows that the real genius, the real brains, are not out there in front of the limelight at all; they are behind the scenes and supremely, of course, in that canvas chair that De Milne made famous, with the word 'Director' written on the back of it.

That's where the real creative genius lies – where the lighting effects, the stage sets, the camera angles, the author's script, and the actors' performance are all welded together to make of all these diverse elements, a single dramatic whole. It is the director who really ought to occupy the centre of the stage, yet he never does, and as a result, audiences are rarely aware of the supreme control that he exercises over everything that is going on.

That backstage experience of mine helps me to understand a bit the meaning of the visionary experience that John records in Revelation 4 and 5. It was the Bard himself, wasn't it, who said that all the world's a stage and all the men and women players. According to the Bible's view … Continue reading →

On Our Children

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Every child in America who enters school at the age of five is mentally ill, because he comes to school with an allegiance toward our elected officials, toward our founding fathers, toward our institutions, toward the preservation of this form of government that we have. Patriotism, nationalism, and sovereignty, all that proves that children are sick because a truly well individual is one who has rejected all of those things, and is truly the international child of the future.
-Dr. Chester Pierce

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