The Nature of Man and Fall

Romans · 2024-05-12 · John Perez · Theology Matters

Romans · Sin. The Nature of Man and Fall — sermon from Cypress Bible Church on BibleSlides.

The Nature of Man and Fall Introduction On its webpage, the Smithsonian, is soliciting responses to the question, “What does it mean to be human?”. Here are some of the responses: “Being human means being bipedal”; “To be human is to believe we are the main character of planet Earth yet we are inconsequential mammals on this orbiting rock in the final frontier.”; check this one out, “To be human means to develop more as a human…”. One more, “Other creatures don’t spend half their lives trying to halt the inevitable Death. We do. It’s a curse.” The Smithsonian’s question to the public is not new. For thousands of years, people have debated, discussed, and have written books on what it means to be human. One of the more famous maxims relating to the question comes to us from fifth century B.C. Greece in the form of a command. It is said that in the temple dedicated to Apollos, one of the walls had inscribed into it γνῶθι σαυτὀν which means “Know Thyself”. What is also interesting is that if we were to give a little bit of attention to the public responses to what it means to be human, you will notice that they both assume a couple of things – they assume an ideal state of human existence and that something isn’t right. Is it possible that we as humans – whatever that means – have an impression that we are not what we ought to be? That the problems we experience ought not occur? Think about it this way. We have a good sense of what it means to be a mature adult and for this reason we train, teach, discipline, and reward our children in a way that promotes and encourages maturity and good order. Yet even as adults, we, as a race, look to free ourselves from death, sickness, hatred, injustice and all that troubles us: why? Scripture has a lot to say on who we are and on the fundamental reason for our troubles. It is such a major teaching of Scripture that a doctrinal statement which does not address the study of humanity is incomplete. That is why CBC has a section dedicated to summarizing the Bible’s teaching on what a human is and what our problem is and our doctrinal statement on the nature of man and our fall can be divided into three main topics, which makes good for 3-point preachers like me: The Beginning of Man, The Fall of Man, and the Hope of Man. The Beginning of Man When we come to the study of man formally known in theology as anthropology, we would commit a great error to begin with ourselves to discover what it means to be human. If we were to begin with ourselves to find out what it means to be human, we would, in essence, be no different than Israel during the times of the judges when they each did what was right in their own eyes. What I mean is that by starting with ourselves to discover what we ought to be, we make ourselves the standa…

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