God and Human Nature                                                       5/23/48

 

Scripture:  Romans 8: 28-34

 

Anyone who reads the New Testament can see that human nature had the same elements and possibilities of good and bad then that it has now.  Those who have had years of experience have observed the same thing --- human nature, good and bad, is much the same as it has been so long as man can remember.

 

The men who were writing the New Testament accounts were dealing with the same kind of conditions and situations with which we deal today, and will be dealing 2 or 100 years from now.  Then they dealt with strife, division, factionalism, covetousness.  Now it is the same.  Then there were artificial personal distinctions between rich and poor and they wrote about it.  It is no different now.  Then, there were some who had splendid visions of the good life and a great eagerness over the ways of bringing it about.  That eagerness is still a great hope for the modern world of people.

 

But the New Testament writers did not confine themselves to immediate issues of conduct and character.  In the passage I read this morning, Paul was talking about the ageless purpose and plan of God for the whole human race -- of all times.  “For whom he foreknew he also foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son.”  Is not the great apostle Paul saying here that God always knew he would have children, and that it is God’s purpose that his children should be like his special Son, Jesus Christ?

 

Of course, when we talk about the children of God we mean people like ourselves -- not angels of imagined perfection, but human beings.  For that is what the children of God must be -- human beings.  To live in a natural world, there must be what Paul calls the “natural man.”

 

There are three questions that spring from this line of thought.  They are these: (1)  What is human nature?  (2) does human nature need changing?  (3)  Can human nature be changed, and if so how and by what means?

 

(1)  First, then; what is human nature?  We think we know what nature is.  “Nature is the universe minus man.”  Nature is sunrise and midnight.  Nature is spring and winter blizzard.  Nature is the frenzy of loving joy in a dog’s eyes and the strike of a serpent with death in its fangs.  Nature is a hillside covered with flowers and a stinking, stagnant pond.  Nature is foliage and flesh and blood.  It is the world of things, and things animate.

 

But human nature is something different.  Human nature is nature plus spirit.  It is nature plus moral consciousness.  It is nature plus a sense of values.  It is nature plus a conviction of responsibility.  Now not everybody has believed this, of course.  Materialism has had its pitiful and futile day.

 

In a book entitled Human Destiny, by Dr. Nouy, there is this significant paragraph:  “The old-fashioned materialist, who is honestly convinced that human life is without a cause or a goal, that man is an irresponsible particle of matter engulfed in a maelstrom of purposeless forces, reminds us of a delightful remark made by the philosopher, Whitehead, who said, ‘Scientists who spend their life with the purpose of proving that it is purposeless, constitute an interesting object of study.’”

 

There are still some of these materialists in our day, both “educated” and unlettered.  The high school graduates of this week will hear such hard-boiled realists say, in shop or in university class, what one remarks: “Man is an ape that chatters to himself of kinship to archangels while filthily he digs for ground nuts.”  Of course it is a question of how he came to know that it is a filthy business to dig for ground nuts; or how such an ape ever surmised a kinship with archangels.

 

The materialist who insists that “Man is a sick fly, taking a dizzy ride on a gigantic fly wheel” must answer the question as to how the fly knows that he is a fly, or that he is sick, or taking a dizzy ride!

 

Another smart cynic remarks that “Man’s life has no more meaning than the humblest insect crawling from one annihilation to another.”  But who is talking?  Is it not the same alleged insect?  And has any insect yet made application for accident insurance?

 

The old-fashioned materialist seems to be, in himself, a denial of the facts of human nature; a denial of his own philosophy.  It seem to me that in his effort to “get said” his observation that “we can’t do anything about man” he succeeds in “getting said” only that he is himself too confused, frustrated, intellectually and morally lazy, to try to do anything about changing human nature.

 

(2)  Human nature is nature plus spirit --- and it is in the realm of the spirit that people need changing!  For it seems clear to me that the answer to the second question: “Does human nature need to be changed?” is an emphatic affirmative!

 

Not so long ago the phrase “noble experiment” was a familiar expression.  Well, it must have been a noble experiment, a long and arduous one, when God made man, when man became a living soul.  God took a chance when he brought forth children.  Fathers and mothers take a chance, run a risk, when they have children.  We all know that.  We plan our home, enter our marriage, decide to have children.  And we plan and purpose that they shall become men and women of strength and good character.  But the risk is always there -- risk that they may arrive defective, or become crippled; risk that evil influences, not of our choosing, may lay hold on them to make them a sore disappointment, rather than a splendid service.

 

Now that is parenthood.  That is Fatherhood - for God, as well as for us.  God takes the risk of bringing us to creation -- not as monotonously perfect angels, but as free men and women with the tremendous power of choice, just as we parents know our own children to be.  And how has God’s experiment turned out?

 

The wreck of lives that go to the devil, as it were; the wreck of whole civilizations; attests the truth in the phorphetic cry of Paul: “To will is present within me, but to do that which is good is not.  For the good, which I would, I do not, but the evil, which I would not, that I practice.”  [Romans 7: 18, 19].  And that utterance is from the same man who could say just as confidently, “I have fought the good fight; I have kept the faith.”  [II Timothy 4: 7].

 

Always there is within our being deeply imbedded in our nature, this sense of right; this consciousness of responsibility; this conviction that human nature does need to be changed for the better.

 

(3)  Now, can human nature be changed?  If we mean that man is to be “de-natured,” a sort of angelic saint who can do no wrong, the answer is no.  Man can not be unmade and remain man.

 

But if we mean that human nature can be controlled and directed; if we mean that spirit can dominate, struggle with, constantly conquer flesh; if we mean that our better nature, which likens us to God, can be in the saddle, then the answer is yes!  With help from the divine, beyond our own selves, we can be so changed, “converted,” controlled, guided, as to be what Jesus called “born again” or “born anew” spiritually.  [John 3: 3].  That is what Paul calls the “new man.”  [Ephesians 4: 24].

 

The tragedy of mortal existence is the mournful fact that hosts of folks, by their own choice, let fleshly self and evil nature dominate.  Man is as prone to sin as flames to spread in tinder.  The hope and triumph of mankind is the glorious fact that hosts of people do struggle to the right, and for the right -- aided by the God in whose great stream they have put their trust.

 

Man can not be made good by law- by any law, even divine law.  Men can become good only through personality.  Herein lies the power of Jesus Christ -- a person.  And here lies the proving of the Christian conviction that God, too, is personal.

 

How can human nature be changed?  Probably you have heard of the engineering problem encountered when the East river of New York City was to be spanned with a great bridge.  Right where the engineers were to place one of the essential piers, there was found an old barge sunken with its load of stones in the mud on the river bottom.  Nearly every human engineering device known was used to move that loaded sunken barge, each effort a failure.

 

A young engineer with a new idea took over.  He directed divers in tunneling under the barge and securing mighty chains beneath it.  He anchored 2 great flat boats on either side of it, and at low tide fastened the chains securely, fore and aft, to the flat boats.  Then he just waited for the tide to come in -- God’s natural tide.

 

As the water rose, the chains tightened and held, with creaking and groaning the sunken barge was lifted clear of the mud, and eased to one side, leaving the site clear for a new bridge pier.

 

Do you want to know how human nature can be changed?  Jesus Christ, the lifting power of God, can change it.  Let the tide come in!

 

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Dates and places delivered:

 

            Wisconsin Rapids, May 23, 1948

            Wisconsin Rapids, March 13, 1960 [pages 9, 10, 11; from “If                                        we mean that man is to be ‘de-natured’”]