Dear friends,
One of the doctrines of the Bible that is easy to demonstrate and widely rejected is the universality of sin. Sin is not an optional extra choice of some degenerate people. Sin is the inbuilt character of humanity. But what is sin? How did sin come into the world? What temptation did Satan use? How do moralists sin, and why are they amongst the most sinful of people? In this episode of Two Ways News, Peter and I discuss the temptation that came to Eve and its implications for our temptation to sin.
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Yours,
Phillip
Phillip Jensen: Hello again, it's Phillip Jensen from Two Ways News, and Peter.
A few Sundays ago, you were at a church up north.
Peter: Christine and I went to Maitland. We attended a church there, which began with just a handful of people 23 years ago, and now there were 400 people gathered to welcome a new minister. It's an evangelical church within the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches. It's very encouraging. But I’m seeing signs of encouragement all around Australia.
Phillip: At our little church, we had 2 adult baptisms on Sunday. They gave testimonies of how they'd come to Christ in the last year or so. The whole congregation came to see them baptized in the Coogee pool. I came to the office full of the joy of having seen a church having baptisms like that for the first time in many, many years, only to find that Sophie here in the office had 14 baptisms at her church in Leppington on Sunday morning and then another 2 in the evening.
Peter: In so many country towns, churches are growing where the gospel is preached, and people are coming to know the Lord. It lifts the spirits, and we praise God for it.
Phillip: Especially because, as you said in our last episode, it's in people coming to Christ as Lord and Saviour that we see the defeat of Satan. The Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is the truth because he is the Christ. He is the Lord, and he has defeated Satan. That leads us back to the temptation and to our sinfulness because we still sin. We are still tempted.
Peter: Can I ask you, why do you sin? Is it something within yourself? Is it something outside yourself? What is it that leads us to sin?
Phillip: James writes about that in James 1:13-15:
Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.
It's got to do with being defective, but sin is something within me. I think of David in Psalm 51: “In sin did my mother conceive me.” There is something profoundly wrong with humanity, spelt out in Genesis 3.
Peter: Adam speaks for us all. Eve speaks for us all. In Genesis 3, sin comes from outside, or temptation, shall we say, comes from outside of us.
Phillip: But Genesis 3 is different to us in that sin comes to a person who has not yet sinned. That never really happens for us. Adam and Eve at that point are slightly different to us.
Peter: True, but can we see something in Genesis 3 of how, when temptation and sin come from outside of us, about how it operates?
Phillip: I think it parallels us, but it's more profound than that. That is, sin is not our imitation of Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve's sin is our sin. We were constituted sinners in the sin of Adam, says Paul in Romans 5. But to see our sin as purely an imitation of theirs leads to terrible heresy. It's called Pelagianism. Why is that so terrible?
Peter: In the Pelagian view of the world, human beings are born good, not evil. We fall into evil by following the example of others. And if we wish to disengage from evil, then we must follow the example of Jesus. But even so, our evil is not profound. When James talks about evil, he begins by talking about desire in a Pelagian view of the world, where evil is a choice. What James says, is that evil arises spontaneously; our hearts are corrupt.
Phillip: Let's go back and look at Genesis 3 because there we see how sin came into humanity. It's saying this is the beginning of where everything went wrong.
Genesis 3:1-7 says
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made.
He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
It's part of the Bible that is so well known, portrayed in millions of paintings, but made fun of and ridiculed, when in fact it's speaking to a very deep understanding of the nature of temptation, the nature of sin, and the original sin. But more than that, about what we do, how we sin. Satan comes telling lies. But Satan is crafty and shrewd, so he tells the best of lies, that is, half-truths. They are the most deceptive, and when you believe the lie, you give power to the liar. So, this seduction brings the humans under the authority of the snake, who was created to be under the authority of the humans. It comes as the denial of God's word and the denial of God's motives. “Did God actually say?” It's questioning and misquoting God’s word. God said they may eat of every tree in the garden, except the one tree of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil.
Peter: The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is the desire of human beings to determine what is good and evil for themselves. It's taking over the place of God. It is a declaration of war against the kingdom of God, because whereas God declared what is right and wrong, we declare what is right and wrong. The knowledge of good and evil is ours. It is very seductive, and you can testify to this in the world we live in now. When the evil one comes, he doesn't deny God straight off. He takes the word of God and twists it.
Phillip: As he did with Jesus in the three temptations in the wilderness, where he quotes the Scriptures to Jesus but misquotes them, bringing them to a different point than the purpose for which that psalm he quotes was written. We are made like God, and that's part of the devil's temptation for us to be like God. You could say we are like God in the garden, except we're not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because we're not to determine good and evil. That's God's determination of how we are to live.
So, it's a profound rebellion seen not in immorality, but in morality itself. The moralist thinks they are not sinful because they are keeping their rules. But it's their rules they are keeping, not God's. And in that, the moralist is himself the sinful one. The woman rightly rebukes the serpent when she says they may eat of the fruit of any of the trees of the garden, except the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden. But then she added a bit to the scriptures—not even to touch it. God didn't say that. I don't know whether he cared if they did touch the tree or not, but he didn't say it, and one very common form of distorting the Bible is to leave bits out or add bits. But then comes the contradiction in verse four when the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.” That's a fundamental part of temptation, denying the consequences that God said.
Peter: Yes, for example, there's no hell; there's no Day of Judgement; all will be saved in the end. They are very popular beliefs, but it's not what the Bible says.
Phillip: It's loving to give warnings. It's unloving to deny them or even ignore or censor them.
Peter: That's correct. This is a temptation for us all because we are all tempted to distort and add to the scriptures. We must be humble in this and recognize our own sinfulness and come to the scriptures with a humble heart, listening to what the word says and listening to our fellow believers now, but also listening to what people have said before about the meaning of scripture, because we can all fall into this trap.
Phillip: We're all in the same boat. But that motivation is the next armament of the devil's lies. Verse 5:
“For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
There is the half-truth. But what lies behind it is an assumption that God's motives are untrustworthy. God knows that you will become like him in this new way that he does not want because it threatens him. It undermines the trust that is essential for all relationships and the trust in God.
Remember those buses in London with ads by Mr. Dawkins and the atheists? They didn’t say, “God doesn't exist,” but “There’s probably no God.” And then, “Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” The assumption is that if God does exist, you should worry and not enjoy life.
Those and Satan’s lie undermine the character of God, undermining the trust you should have in God's goodness, kindness, and generosity. Genesis 1 and 2 spell out God's generous provision of the beautiful garden and the wonderful trees. With the temptation comes the denial of the right relationships with God that you spoke of in terms of order.
Peter: Anarchy and tyranny follow. One may seem to be the rescue from the other, but it's not, in fact. We mentioned in a previous podcast the great American historian Gertrude Himmelfarb,1 who has a book in which she talks about values versus virtues, pointing out that in the 19th century, people talked about virtues. Virtues are something you may aspire to and something that's your objective. Values are something that you make up for yourself. It's interesting to see how values has become the word rather than virtues. Virtues seem to have disappeared. Why? Well, each school has its set of values. Each person has their own set of values. Now, they may be quite sound values and good values. They may be virtues even by another name, but they don't have to be. That is an illustration of how human beings have exploited the knowledge of good and evil.
Phillip: There was an exercise in business management called ‘values clarification.’ As a group, to know which way to go forward, you needed to clarify your values. It sounds moral, noble, and good. But of course, our values could be making lots of money or ripping off the public. It doesn't necessarily have to be virtuous.
Peter: What should we look out for in the temptation that comes?
Phillip: We've got a lovely set of three words. “The world, the flesh, the devil.” It's reflective of Ephesians 2 and that opening passage about the nature of all humanity that we've lived under. Ephesians 2:1-3:
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
The devil here is called the prince of the power of the air, but he is at work in us because we now have him as our truth, he who is the liar, who now accepted with Adam and Eve that we are the ones who make up the rules, that we are sovereign and can make up the values. That's why I think some of the most sinful people are moralists. The immoral man might know that he's a sinner and accept the reality, but the moralist thinks he's not a sinner because he is making up the rules. It's the difference between sin and sins, which is the difference between symptoms and disease. If you have cancer, you have all kinds of symptoms, but it's the disease that's going to kill you.
Peter: It speaks here of the passions of the flesh. We understand 'flesh’ to be a word not about this stuff that surrounds my bones but rather about the evil that lives within our hearts, the passions of the flesh. But does the moralist have passions of the flesh?
Phillip: Pride and arrogance, they're the passions of the flesh. Self-satisfaction and the desire to be well thought of are passions of the flesh. While you say ‘the passions of the flesh,’ in modern 21st century language, it sounds like degenerate sexual immorality, but that's not the Bible's meaning of ‘the passions of the flesh.’ In Galatians 3, it's divisiveness and self-centeredness. It's very different.
Likewise, you've got to understand ‘the world’ properly. Just as you've got to understand ‘the flesh’ properly. God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son. But we are told, “Do not love the world”. Now, it is remarkable that God loved the world, not because he created a beautiful world, which it is, but because the world in John's gospel is the way the world is in its sinfulness. That's why God's love for the world was to give his Son as a sacrifice for sins. But when John writes of the love of the world later, he writes in 1 John 2:15-17
If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away…
Remember, Eve saw with her eyes that this was pleasant fruit to eat and the desire of the world, worldliness, a slightly old-fashioned way of saying it, of the things that this world holds up as being valuable, worthwhile, and significant.
Peter: Well, it's conformity; conformity to the surrounding culture, rather than conformity to the word of God.
Phillip: Yes, this may be just our culture, but it's upwardly mobile and aspirational. That is, other cultures were not exactly that, but ours is certainly that. It's the materialism, not philosophical materialism, but economic materialism; the desire for better things. The covetousness that runs our society in so many ways. That's the desire for this world. That's the desire of the flesh.
Peter: The temptations that came to the Lord Jesus in the wilderness were real. He, being who he was, was rather more like Adam in this sense than we are. Nonetheless, the temptations were of the evil one, but they're temptations of the world. “I will deliver to you all the kingdoms of the earth if only you worship me,” and so on. How did he defeat them?
Phillip: He defeated them because he was God, the faithful Son, who rested upon the truth of the Word of God, especially in the early chapters of Deuteronomy. Jesus' struggle with the devil reflects the return to Adam and Eve, the return to the people of Israel in the wilderness. They spent 40 years, and he spent 40 days, in the wilderness. In his baptism, God gives him his charge, “You are my Son.” That’s Psalm 2:7, which is Isaiah 42, the beginning of the suffering servant. Jesus is taught that he is to be the Christ by suffering for the world. The devil then comes and says, ‘If you are the Son of God, then provide bread,’ and that is what he does in John 6, and the multitudes want to make him Christ; they want to make him King, but he withdraws. Then the devil tries, ‘If you are the Christ, then put God to the test.’ Jesus reminds him that that was one of the failures of Israel; after the wilderness, they put God to the test. All Satan’s temptations come out of Deuteronomy and what Israel failed to do, which he now does in resisting the evil one. In one sense, his temptations, like Adam and Eve's, were unique to the situation. In another sense, they were common to all temptations.
Peter: They were real, even though he is the last Adam, and you can see it in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Phillip: But do you get the devil tempting you all the time? Have you been in the wilderness, tempted by him, or in the garden, tempted by him? What part does the devil play in the temptations you face?
Peter: I find it very difficult to say, this is the devil, or this is the flesh, or even this is the world. In a sense, it doesn't matter because our response to temptation, wherever it arises, is going to be the same. Trust God, trust His word, even though this temptation sounds as though it is the word of God sometimes and sounds as though it will make you a happier, better person or something like this. But what does the word of God say?
Phillip: But does Satan make you sin?
Peter: Satan blinds the eyes of unbelievers. I don't think you can ever say he makes you sin. Though our sin makes us sin, the evil that I would, I do not. And the good that I would do, I cannot do. These things are true because I am a sick, even dead person. I am, or have been, one whose inner heart is corrupt. But I don't think Satan can make you sin.
Phillip: He is at work in you. Are you experientially conscious of him being at work in you?
Peter: That's what I was trying to say. No, I don't think so. In a sense, it doesn't matter, because sin is sin. Temptation is temptation. And whether it's Satan, or whether it's the world, the flesh, and Satan together, whatever it is, it is temptation. Our response to it will be the same. Namely, take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, and trust the word of God.
Phillip: He can come in persecutions, can't he?
Peter: Yes, and 1 Peter 5 talks about your brethren around the world suffering persecution, and the evil one, like a lion, bringing it on so the evil one can work amongst unbelievers to persecute Christians.
Phillip: But they will not win in the long run, though we may suffer in the present.
Peter: The martyrs are with God, not because of their martyrdom but because of Jesus.
Phillip: He's called Satan, which means ‘the adversary,’ because his lies are his power, and his power over me is my commitment to his lies. In his lies, he is accusing God, and he accuses me. That is, he tells me I'm not good enough for God and that God is not forgiving enough to pardon me. So, he tells his lie about God, that there is no grace, victory, or hope. And he tells his lie about me, that my sinfulness is far too great to ever be forgiven. I've seen congregation members in despair because of some particular sin they've committed, which they feel puts them beyond salvation. The apostle Paul murdered people because they were Christians. If Paul was able to be forgiven, all sins, Jesus says, are forgivable, except the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.
And at the end of Romans 8, if he didn't spare his own Son, nothing can separate us from the love of God that's in Christ Jesus. It doesn't matter how evil we may be; God's grace is greater still. It is so important that we do not believe the accuser's lies, for they keep us from the kingdom; they blind us to the glory of the gospel.
Gertrude Himmelfarb, The De-Moralization of Society: From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values (New York, Random House 1995)
Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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