Restoring Us to Humanity 1.0, Pt 1

Theology and Politics from a Conservative, Biblical Perspective

Listen to this article here

Imagine for a moment if neither Adam and Eve had ever sinned. Instead of being deceived by the Tempter, they simply said “No” and went on with their life. They eventually ate of the Tree of Life and Satan went away. Having passed the test that God allowed, they cemented their relationship with God and also would have become sinless from that point onward. Eating from the Tree of Life would’ve also provided “eternal life” to them.

But what would relationships and the world look like had Adam and Eve refused to be taken in by Old Slew foot, the supreme liar himself? In my opinion, 1 Corinthians 13 paints a beautiful picture of what people would be like had sin never entered the picture.

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no account of wrongs. 6 Love takes no pleasure in evil, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never fails. (1 Corinthians 13:4-8, NKJV)

Do you know anyone who is defined by this definition of love, provided by the Apostle Paul? I know some folks who are much closer to that definition than I am and that includes my own wife. However, in general, there is no one who has ever lived or is alive now who lives that definition perfectly. Would you agree? Let’s break it down quickly.

Love is:

1. patient
2. kind
3. not envious
4. not boastful
5. not proud
6. not rude
7. not self-seeking
8. not easily angered
9. doesn’t keep track of wrongs
10. takes no pleasure in evil
11. rejoices only in the truth
12. bears all things
13. believes all things
14. hopes all things
15. endures all things
16. never fails

Would you agree with me that not only is that an intensive list, but it is an impossible list to live 100% of the time? If you disagree than maybe it’s due to the fact that you aren’t fully comprehending the ramifications of all of it. Notice also that most of them are presented in the negative with “not.”

How can anyone live all sixteen things consistently without fail? We can’t and neither could Adam and Eve once they fell. However, before they fell, they were every bit the Human 1.0 that God created. I can imagine that their conversation was always loving, never rude, boastful, proud, self-seeking, etc. Their lifestyles emanated lovingkindness not only to one another but to the animals and the earth itself.

In essence, God created an earth and filled it with animals and the start of the human race in order to watch it run perfectly with love guiding everything. The animals created were not for eating, but for Adam and Eve’s enjoyment as they would watch and gain insight from the animal kingdom. Plants and trees also were there for the first two human beings (as well as the animals). Everything worked in beautiful harmony up until the whole situation was ruined by the introduction of sin, embraced by two people who had literally everything but wanted more.

Turns out, when Eve then Adam sinned, they actually fell from their own first estate. We’re all familiar with that. That’s what sin is; a falling away from what God had originally made and intended them to be. In effect, both Adam and Eve became less than Human 1.0.

Segue to Jesus, the second Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45). What do we have in Him? We have another human being 1.0. According to Philippians 2, Jesus is the God/Man. He clothed His deity with humanity and because of His virgin birth, He was born without a sin nature; Human 1.0. This Jesus, this Human 1.0 in the flesh after Adam and Eve, was and remains the perfect definition of 1 Corinthians 13; love. Jesus never failed at it, unlike us or our first parents. There was never a time or a moment when Jesus was self-seeking, rude, proud/arrogant, took pleasure in evil, etc., etc., etc. The life He lived, He lived perfectly in line with absolute love 100% of the time. When faced with temptation, He consistently refused to follow its dictates. He didn’t need to “receive” salvation because He was/is salvation Himself being perfect in every way.

Adam and Eve would not have needed salvation either had they rejected temptation as Jesus did. Instead, they embraced sin and became something they were not meant to become. Jesus, as Human 1.0, never embraced temptation to sin and therefore, always remained Human 1.0.

So what does this mean for us, anything? Yes, it means a great deal actually. What it means initially is that God clearly wants every authentic Christian to be brought back to being Human 1.0. That is really what salvation is all about and I’m not trying to oversimplify it. Certainly, salvation includes ultimately receiving a glorified body and a full removal of our sin nature (when we leave this life), but the entire process we go through while living here in this life is one, which is designed to bring us back to the Human 1.0 that we have never experienced or lived fully.

For a very long time, I have been caught up in wondering “What does God want me to do in life?” and it usually has to do with a vocation. Does He want me in the pastorate? Should I be in some other capacity in a church setting? It’s as though trying to figure out specifically what God wants me to accomplish by way of vocation is the most important thing in my life. Guess what? It’s not.

The most important thing I can ever be focused on and hopefully accomplish (with the empowering of the indwelling Holy Spirit), is to become the very fulfillment of 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. That may seem overly simplistic, but it’s really not. In fact, I have come to believe that much/most of the Holy Scriptures are designed to help us understand that the way we live with respect to God and others, is the most important thing we can ever do in life.

Now of course, God has a plan that’s unique to each person. For some, He may guide them to become pastors. For others, He may guide them to become nurses, doctors, or bookkeepers. But regardless of a vocation God may guide people into, there is something that He values more than that, in my opinion. It is the way in which we live, from the heart.

If we look squarely at the Sermon on the Mount, we come to a section in which we are told that we should “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Matthew 7;12; Mark 12:30-31; Luke 6:31).  Christians can fulfill that law of love in two ways. We can either do it in our own effort, conjuring up the needed strength to “love” people in spite of how we might not like some of them, or we can allow God to work in and through us to recreate or at least become a vessel through which His love flows to other people.

I see the unsaved trying to do this and you might see it as well. You can see the effort. They do it because they think they should and more often than not, they want to get something in return for it. They want accolades or to be noticed and appreciated in some way by other people. Jesus said that we should not let one hand know what the other is doing (Matthew 6:3) and to go into our prayer closet to pray privately before God instead of standing on the street corner and praying out loud to God as a show of religiosity (Matthew 6:5-6). The person who makes a big show of giving a large donation to some organization is not doing that out of love. Likewise, the person who draws attention to themselves when they pray or involve themselves in good deeds, is doing it for pats on the back. Neither of these things has anything to do with love, but self-centeredness.

I’m quite certain, it wasn’t long after Eve and Adam fell that they began picking at each other, became short-tempered and impatient with the other. This was completely unknown to them before they fell, but became part of their lives together after the fall. We also know that as society grew on the earth, so did wickedness to the point that God felt the need to destroy man and the land animals. The only exceptions were Noah and his family and most of the animals taken on the Ark with them (except for those who would be used in sacrifice after Noah disembarked from the Ark after the floods receded).

But of course, the problem is that what God did by starting over was this time, He began with people who were already sinners. What this meant was that eventually, He would be forced to rain down judgment on the entire earth. This is what the coming Tribulation is all about, ending with the physical return of Jesus and the inauguration of His kingdom rule over the entire earth.

During that coming time – the Millennium – the earth, for the most part, will look and act like what it looked and acted like during Adam and Eve’s day before sin entered to destroy things. Of course, it won’t be perfect, because the people who survive the Tribulation and go into the Millennium will continue to have sin natures. This is the reason why Jesus will rule that period with a “rod of iron” (Psalm 2:9; Revelation 2:27). A rod of iron is the only thing that will keep the sin nature resident within people in check, in spite of the fact that Satan will be sequestered in the Bottomless Pit for the duration of the Millennial Kingdom period.

Though much of the world’s population and the physical world itself is resolutely moving toward the coming judgment of the Tribulation period of seven years, Christians are not. Paul tells us that we will never experience God’s wrath (1 Thessalonians 5:9), though God can and does discipline His children from time to time just as a good parent disciplines a son or daughter.

So while this world and most of the people on it are consistently moving toward some form of God’s judgment, God is dealing with Christians in a completely different way. For the authentic Christian, God is recreating within us the image of His Son (1 Corinthians 15:49). That sounds good, but what does it mean?

Usually, when people talk about God recreating the image of His Son, the talk usually becomes a bit ethereal/spiritual. Certainly, there is an element of spirituality associated with it, but where the rubber meets the road, what does it come down to? I believe, as I’ve alluded to, it comes down to the perfect definition of 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, the section on the meaning of love. Jesus/God is love and in Him there is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5). What this essentially means to me is that our salvation will include the creation of Jesus’ character within us, which is exactly what Paul speaks of in his chapter on love that he wrote to the Corinthian believers. In essence then, it is not dependent upon our vocation in life (though God certainly directs there). It is far more dependent on how we live; what emanates from within us to other people (Christians and non).

There are essentially two types of people in life; the unsaved and the saved.  Unsaved people increasingly follow and embrace Satan and his rebellious attitude. In doing so, those people become less and less human (the opposite of what God originally intended humans to be), as they continue in that lifestyle. It is truly a downward spiral away from God as Paul highlights in Romans 1.

Saved people are moving closer and closer to God with the result of becoming more and more genuinely human as God intended as evidenced by our love. This, my friend, is our purpose and when we embrace this purpose, things begin to fall into place in our Christian walk.

Here’s the problem though. No matter how loving we become in this life, no matter how well God is able to recreate His Son’s character within us, we will continue to have the sin nature that is constantly trying to pull us away from God and, instead of being loving as God defines, pushes us to be self-centered.

The struggle then is to draw near to God on a continual basis so that the flesh/sin nature is overcome and ignored. We will never be perfect at it in this life. However, one day, we will be free of our sin nature and will also have glorified bodies. We will at that point be the completed picture of being Human 1.0, the very thing that God intended when He first created.

Consider your life and ask yourself am I more loving today based on 1 Corinthians 15:4-8 than I was last week, last month or last year? Don’t dwell on it, but simply use it to figure out if there has been growth in your life, change for the better (as far as God is concerned). We should be in the act of becoming more loving, more patient, less self-centered, less arrogant, increasingly rejoicing in truth, bearing all things, etc.

Ultimately, salvation is saving us from death on the negative side, but it is also bringing us back to the intended creation of God originally, Human 1.0, on the positive side. We will eventually get there but it is our job to assist God by submitting to Him and His will on a daily basis so that the characteristics of godly love will be shed abroad in our hearts (Romans 5:5).

I’ll have other articles on this upcoming based on the many examples given to us in Scripture.

Theology and Politics from a Conservative, Biblical Perspective