Hello All,
(Just a general disclaimer that I must insert here at the beginning. I am but a lay person, like most of you. And these weekly “thoughts” are but my own. Not the definitive word on this or any topic. Just my own conclusions derived from my own study and faith in God. The greatest hope I have for these weekly “thoughts” is to have them be a springboard for further study on your part. Not to be a weekly treatise to be blindly accepted. So, please read them with this intent, this motive in mind).
This week’s lesson from “The Adult Sabbath School Guide” is titled “The Royal Love Song”. And so our lesson this week is on “marriage as portrayed in this Old Testament book (Song of Solomon)” (Quarterly for Sabbath May 4). As always, I look for statements and phrases that call-out for more detail. Immediately in Sunday’s lesson comes the sentence that calls-out to me for clarification. “Some religions believe in dualism, a philosophy that views the human body as a problem for the life of the spirit. That is, the body is deemed bad while the ‘spirit’ is deemed good”. The Quarterly lesson goes on to state, “In Scripture, however, the human body including its sexual characteristics, is integral to the whole being”. With this last statement, the issue of dualism seems to be put to rest. But is it put to rest in our thinking?
For many of us, if not most of us, a measure of dualism exists in our thinking. We know the desires and lusts that lurk in our hearts. And we also know what kind of person we are supposed to be. And so the battle in our hearts begins… and continues. As EGW states in “Steps to Christ”, “The warfare against self is the greatest battle that was ever fought. The yielding of self, surrendering all to the will of God, requires a struggle; but the soul must submit to God before it can be renewed in holiness” (Steps to Christ pg. 43.) This conflict has been so evident over the centuries, that many Christian believers maintain that the only way to resolve the conflict (over sexual desires) is to be celibate. Have you felt the so-called dualism in your own mind and heart? Is the human body “a problem for the life of the spirit” (quoted above from the quarterly)?
In the Bible, the word translated “flesh” means carnality… our carnal nature. “For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh” (Romans 8:3). This verse has caused so much dissension over the past. Many dedicated Christians believe that Christ couldn’t come in our flesh and still live the sinless life He lived. So, for them, this word “likeness” really means “kind-of like us sinners”, but not really like us sinners. Of course, this understanding does insult to the very idea of “likeness” reinterpreting the word to actually mean un-likeness.
J. B. Phillips in his translation grasped the underlying concept that Paul was making here in Romans 8:3. See his translation … “The Law never succeeded in producing righteousness—the failure was always the weakness of human nature. But God has met this by sending his own Son Jesus Christ to live in that human nature which causes the trouble. And, while Christ was actually taking upon himself the sins of men, God condemned that sinful nature” (see footnote for more comments on this). This makes so much more sense and it helps us understand the true nature of the incarnate Christ (taking our sinful, carnal nature degraded by sin) and helps us escape “dualistic” thinking in our own mind and heart.
Dualism exists in our thinking, in our divided heart and mind, because of our sinful desire to be our own God. This desire creates the schism in our mind between who we were created to be, and who we are sinfully drawn to be. Dualism stays alive and strong in our thinking as long as we strive to have the “world” and “Jesus”, too. And dualism ceases once we yield to our Father and become the sons and daughters of God we were created to be. Sons and daughters who would never use anyone else for our own ends. Sons and daughters who place the “other” above ourselves in all things. Sons and daughters who love truly, as our Father loves truly.
The Teacher’s Quarterly for this week is right when it states, “One of the most influential theological breaks our church has made with existing Christian tradition was to view the human as a whole rather than as a duality”. Sexuality is not only mere physicality. It is immensely tied to our psyche. And so with every other aspect of our lives, too. We do great harm to ourselves when we split our humanity in two like this. Hence the very personal attribute of the “cleansing of the sanctuary”… the day of “at-one-ment”. We need healing of the schism that is inherent in our human desire to be our own God. The struggle will continue in our thinking as long as we keep self alive and strong. Once we yield to Christ, the battle is over. “For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection” (Romans 6:5). If we can say truly, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20), then the dualistic thinking will be a thing of the past. Because, crucifixion-of-self, with Christ, is the only solution. Crucifixion-of-self is the very attribute of all heaven… those who dwell there and those who aspire to be there. May we yield… always. May we stand before our Father with a single-mind, is my prayer for us all.
With brotherly love,
Jim
(FOOTNOTE): The idea of Christ coming and taking a sinless nature goes way back in Christian theology. It exists for a couple of reasons. One, as stated above, is due to sinful man’s incredulity that anyone having a sinful, carnal nature could live a life so united with our sinless Father. The other is an attempt to maintain Christ’s so-called holiness… by making sure that God doesn’t come too close to sin and become tainted by it. This has also led some to believe that God cannot look-upon sin, despite the many, many scriptural texts that tell us that God sees sin in all its depravity… and it makes Him very sorrowful. True “holiness” is seen in God’s willingness to come where we are and “touch” our sin.
It is imperative that God in Christ come close to us and “touch” our brokenness… so it can be healed by the proximity of “Love”. Christ’s touch imparts no sin to Him but consumes sin in us, imparting healing virtue. It is imperative that God in Christ come to where we are, sinners that we are, in order to heal us. We are so full of sin. “Thus it is with the leprosy of sin,--deep-rooted, deadly, and impossible to be cleansed by human power. ‘The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores’ (Isaiah 1:5, 6). But Jesus, coming to dwell in humanity, receives no pollution. His presence has healing virtue for the sinner” (Desire of Ages pg. 266). God must come to where we are, where sin is… deep in our hearts, for we cannot even lift-up our heads from the gutter-of-sin to take the Divine medicine. He must come “in that human nature which causes the trouble” (as quoted above).
Also, as stated above, the phrase “likeness of sinful flesh” has also been a means for sinful man to re-interpret what this means. Self-centered man makes the word “likeness” into “un-likeness”. But John makes no such distinction. He says, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). And as stated above, the word “flesh” in the New Testament means “carnality” (do a search for all the words “flesh” in the New Testament and it will be quite illuminating). Of course EGW supports the idea of Christ coming in our carnal nature. “It would have been an almost infinite humiliation for the Son of God to take man's nature, even when Adam stood in his innocence in Eden. But Jesus accepted humanity when the race had been weakened by four thousand years of sin. Like every child of Adam He accepted the results of the working of the great law of heredity. What these results were is shown in the history of His earthly ancestors. He came with such a heredity to share our sorrows and temptations, and to give us the example of a sinless life”. And this quote is not in some obscure writing of hers. It is found in the widely published “Desire of Ages” pg. 48.
As Adventists, we are missing a vital distinction when we misinterpret Christ’s incarnate nature by stating that He took Adam’s unfallen nature prior to sin. We are missing the total victory we sinners after the fall are to have as depicted in the anti-typical “Day of Atonement” or “Cleansing of the Sanctuary”. The full realization of this “cleansing” is seen in the soul sanctuary of the heart and mind. And this “cleansing” cannot happen as long as we keep Christ at arm’s length and keep our dualistic thinking (this keeps our sinful nature alive and well). We must yield our sinfulness to Him in order for Him to heal us. We need to stand naked before our God and let Him see and touch our sinfulness. We need His love and grace to re-unite us as one with Him… and one with ourselves and our true identity. “By the transforming agency of His grace, the image of God is reproduced in the disciple; he becomes a new creature. Love takes the place of hatred, and the heart receives the divine similitude” (Desire of Ages pg. 391).