Biblical psychology

Prefatory Note

This book is simply compiled from verbatim reports of my lectures on Biblical Psychology, delivered at the Bible Training College, 45 North Side, Clapham Common, London, England, during 1911.

The reports were taken by my wife and sent on to the editors of the " Revivalist, " who now, out of the generosity of their hearts, are publishing them in book form.

May this "Introduction to the Study of Biblical Psychology'' stir up the minds of the saints, lest Satan as an angel of light instil error. (2 Pet. 1 : 12, 13.)

Oswald Chambers.

Chapter I. Man: His Creation, Calling And Communion

(Although the passages quoted appear as "texts," they are really portions of connected revelation.)

1 CONDITIONS BEFOKE MAN'S CREATION. Gen. 1:1.

(a) Celestial Creations. Job 38: 4-7.

(b) Celestial Catastrophe, Isa. 14: 12; Luke 10: 18.

(c) Celestial Condemnation. John 8: 44; Jude 6.

2 CONDITIONS LEADING TO MAN'S CREATION. Neh.

9: 6.

(a) Terrestrial Chaos. Gen. 1: 2.

(b) Terrestrial Creations. Gen. 1: 2-25.

3 CLIMAX OF CREATION. Gen. 1: 26, 27.

(a) The "Son of God." Gen. 1: 27; Luke 3:38.

(b) The Six Days' Work. Gen. 1:28-31.

(c) The Sabbath Rest. Gen. 2: 1-3.

1. Conditions Before Man's Creation.

Between Genesis 1, verses 1 and 2, there is a great hiatns. Verse 1 refers to an order of things before the reconstruction referred to in verse 2. I mean- by (a) celestial creations, the creations that were before men and our system of things as we understand them. These celestial creations all belong to the period before man. The creations first alluded to then are not men, but something other than man. Job 38, verses 4 to 7, has a distinct reference to such a time when the "sons of God shouted for joy." Who were these

2 Man: His Creation,

sons of God? They were certainly not men; they were unquestionably angels and archangels, and you will find that the indirect inference from the Bible is that God had put that former world under the charge of an archangel "Lucifer."

The Bible also alludes to (b) a catastrophe before man, was created, which makes the first and second verses of the first chapter of Genesis understandable. God gave the rule of this universe to Lucifer, and he opposed himself to God's authority and rule, and dragged everything down with him, and consequently called forth on this earth a tremendous judgment, which resulted in chaos "and the earth was without form and void." You will find this catastrophe referred to in such passages as Isaiah 14:12, and Luke 10:18, "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from Heaven." When did out Lord behold this? Surely it is legitimate to suggest that it refers to the period before our Lord's incarnation, when He was with God, in the very beginning, before all things. (This particular verse is frequently taken to refer to the time yet to be, and that our Lord is annihilating time in His forelook.) These verses are like mountain peaks revealing a whole tableland of God's revelation of the order of things before man was created.

Then comes (c) the condemnation of the "angels," a celestial condemnation, nothing whatever to do with man, but the condemnation of Lucifer and all his angels. (Jude 6.) When- Jesus Christ alludes to the

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beginning, He does not mean the beginning of man; He means the beginning of the creation of God which was long enough before man was created. (See John 8: 44.) f ("Hell" has nothing whatever to do with man primarily.) Hell is a place of angelic condemnation. You will never find that God says Hell was made for man. It is true that it is the only place for a man who rejects God's salvation. Hell was the result of a distinct condemnation that was passed by God on celestial beings, and is as eternal as those celestial anarchists.

There are three amazing episodes that indicate the conditions before the creation of man, viz.: that the archangels and the angels governed a wonderful world which God created in the beginning, and which God's Spirit is alluding to by that phrase in Job, "The sons of God sang together.' ' Lucifer fell, and with him all his angels in a tremendous ruin (clearly mentioned in Genesis 1:2), and "the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." Without some such indication, the second verse would be unintelligible, for to say that "in the beginning God created the Heaven and the earth," and then to say that "the earth was without form and void" is a confusion and a confounding. The inference is that between the epochs referred to in the first and second verses there has occurred this catastrophe which the Bible does not say much about. The evident purpose of the Bible is to tell us what God's

4 Man: His Creation,

purpose is with man. Roughly outlining that purpose, we might say that God created man to counteract the devil.

2. Conditions Leading to Man's Creation.

(a) Terrestrial Chaos. (Gen. 1:2.) Satan has been the means of the ruin of the first created order, and now God begins to create another order out of the confusion of ruin. "Void" means the aftermath of destruction by judgment, or the result of Divine judgment.

(b) Terrestrial Creations. God began to create things. Genesis 1 : 2-25, gives a detailed account of the creation of the earth and the life on it. The Bible nowhere says that God set processes at work, and out of these processes were evolved the things which appear. The Bible says the things of this world were created by a distinct "fiat" of God. If the Bible entirely agreed with modern science, it would soon be "out of date," because modern science is in the very nature of things bound, to change. Genesis 1 indicates that God created the earth and the life on the earth to fit the world for man.

(c) Terrestrial Cosmos. The order and beauty of this world were created by God for man. Genesis 1, verses 4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25 and 31, all say that "God saw that it was good." After the judgment by God on the previous order, God created "a new thing," to fit all for a totally new being whom no angel had ever seen before. He was to be a man, and he was to stand at the end of the six days' work as a creation

Calling and Communion. 5

of earth, and at the threshold of God's Sabbath day. God created man, not <an angel, and not God Himself. He created him to be a unique being. Man was related to this earth, created out of this earth, and yet he was created in the image of God, whereby God could prove Himself more than a match for the devil by a creation a little lower that the angels (the order of beings Satan belongs to). This is, as it were, God's tremendous experiment in this creation. He puts man at the head of the Terrestrial Creation. The whole meaning of the creation of the world is to fit and prepare it for this wonderful being called Man that God had in. His mind. There is nothing in the Bible about evolving and developing man as a "survival of the fittest," or the "process of natural selection." The Bible reveals that we are earth and spirit, a combination of the two. The devil is spirit, just as God is; the angels are spirit; but when we come to a man, man is to be earth and spirit.

3. Climax of Creation.

(a) "Son of God!" -(Luke 3: 38.) Adam' was a son of God. As far as the terrestrial is concerned, there is only one other primal "Son of God" in the Bible, and He is Jesus Christ. This is an important point. Yet we are called "sons of God," but how? By being reinstated through the atonement of Jesus Christ. We are not the "sons of God" by natural generation. Have you noticed that Adam did not come into the world as we do? Neither (lid Adam come into the world as Jesus Christ came. Adam was not " begot-

6 Man: His Creation,

ten;" Jesus Christ was. Adam was " created/ ' God created Adam, He did not beget him. We are all "generated," we are not created beings. Adam was the "son of God," and God made him as well as everything else that was created.

In Genesis 1:27 we read, "So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them." This is a point of importance. "Adam and Eve" are both needed before the image of God can be perfectly presented. God, as it were, is all that the best manhood presents us with, and all that the best womanhood presents us with. This aspect will be dealt with again in subsequent lectures.

(b) "The Six Days' Work." This word "day" unquestionably means roughly what we understand by twenty-four hours, and has no such meaning as "Day of Atonement" or "Day of Judgment." These terms do not refer to a "solar day," but to a "period of years of time." The devotion to the ephemeral scientific doctrine of evolution must be held responsible for the endeavor to make the Bible mean periods of years, instead of a solar day. The particular unparabolic use of the term "morning and evening" in Genesis distinctly indicates a solar day. Man was the end of the six days' work. In God's plan the whole of the six days' creation was meant for man. (The tendency nowadays is to put the six days' work of creation above man. Men and women are far more concerned about dogs and cats than about human beings. It is the

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reverse of what God made it. The whole purpose of creation in God's plan is man.)

There is not only the tendency to exalt animals above man, but there is the new speculation of the superman, i. e., a doctrine which holds that man, as we understand him and as the Bible reveals him, is not the climax of creation, but there is a higher race yet to be called "the superman/ ' and that man is as inferior to this being that is going to be as the ape is to him. Now all through the New Testament Jesus Christ foretold, and the Spirit of God, foretold, that we were going to have the "worship of man" installed, and it has begun already, it is in our midst to-day. We are told that Jesus Christ and God are simply ceasing to be of importance to the modern man, and what we are worshipping more and more now is humanity, and this is slowly merging into a new phase. All the "up-to-date" minds are looking towards the manifestation of a "superman/' a being much greater than the being we know as man. II. Thessalonians 2, gives us the picture of the head of this great expectation. He is to be the darling of every religion; there is to be a consolidation of religions, and races and everything on the face of the earth, a great socialism. The ethical standard for the superman claims to be higher than Jesus Christ's. The tendency noticeable already is that people object to some of Christ's teaching, such as "Loving your neighbor as yourself/' they say, "That is selfish, you must love your neighbor and not think of

8 Man: His Creation,

yourself/' The doctrine of the superman is absolute sinless perfection. We are going to evolve a being, they say, who has got to the place where he cannot be tempted. This is all an emanation from Satan. Man is the climax of creation. He is on a stage a little lower than the angels, and God is going to overthrow the devil by this being who is less than angelic. God has, as it were, put him in the "open field," and He allows the devil to do exactly what he likes up to a certain point, because God says, "I know that He who is in you is greater than he that is against you." That is the explanation in our own spiritual life-setting. Satan is to be humiliated by man, by the Spirit of God in man, and by poor fallen beings, too, like we were, but all by the wonderful regeneration through Jesus Christ.

Man is the head and the purpose of the six days' creation. Man's body has those •constituents in it that connect it with the earth; it has fire and water and all the elements of the life of animals, and consequently, God keeps us here. It is man's domain, and we are going to be here again after the terrestrial cremation. "Hereafter" without the devil, without the sin and without the wrong. We are going to be here marvelously redeemed in this wonderful place which God made very beautiful, and which has been, played havoc with by sin, and creation is waiting for the "manifestation of the sons of God."

Not only is man the head and the climax of the six days' work, but he is the beginning of, and stands

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at the threshold of (c) the very Sabbath of God. God's heart is, as it were, absolutely at rest now that He has created man, even in spite of the fact of the fall, and all else; God is absolutely confident that the whole thing will turn out as He said it would. The devil has laughed at God's hope for thousands of years and has ridiculed and scorned that hope. God is not upset or alarmed about the final issue. He is certain that man will bruise the serpent's head. This refers to those of us who are born again through Jesus Christ's amazing atonement.

The first condition was chaos, God created angels and they fell and there was ruin; than God remade the void into a new creation, and by making a being never existent before, a being a "little lower than the angels. "

Chapter II. Man: His Creation, Calling And Communion

MAN'S MAKING.

4 THE MAN OP GOD'S MAKING. Gen. 2: 4-25.

(a) The Image of God. John 4: 24.

(b) The Image of God in Angels. Gen. 6: 2; Ps. 89: 6; Job 1: 6; 38: 7.

(c) The Image of God in Man. Gen. 1:26; Ps. 8:4, 5.

5 THE MANNEE OP MAN'S MAKING. John 1: 3.

(a) Man's Body. Gen. 2: 7.

(b) Man's Soul. Acts 17: 28.

(c) Man's Self -Consciousness. Prov. 20: 27; 1 Cor. 2: 11.

N. B. Visible creations that surround man are not in the image of God.

Some notes will be given on the appearances of angels

in our material universe.

Some notes also on the human representations of God.

4. The Man of God's Making.

God's heart, so to speak, is at rest now that He has created man. i(Gen. 2:4-25.)

(a) The Image of God. (John 4:24.) "God is spirit." This is a mountain-peak text which reveals a whole tableland of God's revelation about Himself.

(b) The Image of God in Angels. The phrase ' ' sons of God" in the Old Testament always refers to angels, and we have to take from the context whether they are "fallen angels" or not. Angels have no physi-

Man, His Making. 11

cal frame, they are not like man, and they are not manifested after this order of things. If, however, they are called "sons of God," the inference is clear that they bear the image of God.

(c) The Image of God in Man. The image of God in its primary reference to man must refer to the hidden or interior life of man.

From these three revelation facts in God's Book, men have reasoned backwards. They have said that because men have bodies, God has a corporiety, too. This mistake began centuries ago and it is continually being revived, the reason being that the Bible does refer to the form of God. For instance, the Old Testament alludes over and over again to what is called the " anthropomorphic " view of God. God is represented as having hands and limbs and looking like a man, and from this the inference is easy that surely God has a body like man. The answer is that all the Old Testament pictures of God are forecasts of the Incarnation, and have nothing to do with stating that God is in the form of a man. Read the passages in Isaiah alone, and they will reveal the apparently conflicting statements about God; He is represented in many contradictory phrases, yet immediately you read the life of Jesus Christ in the New Testament, all these contradictions blend in that unique Being, Jesus Christ, the second Adam. However, the Bible does speak of a "form of God" (Phil. 2:6), but the error arises from our too readily inferring that form" means physical body. The great Triune God a has "form/' and the term used for that form is 11 glory.' ' Our Lord refers to this in John 17: 5. Our word " Trinity M is an attempt to convey the externally disclosed divine nature itself, and " glory' ' is the Bible term for conveying the idea of the external (so to speak) form of that Triune Being. This will be alluded to several times in the course of our studies in Biblical Psychology, and we will thus get familiar with this profound revelation.

(Sometimes God is referred to as the sun, but the sun is never stated to be made in the image of God, though there are illustrations in God's Book drawn from the sun to illustrate Him. But nowhere has it ever been stated that God made the sun in His own image.)

Angels in the Bible record certainly do appear to men. You may take this as a correct inference from the revealed facts in God's Word, that angels have the power of will to appear to human beings, when those human beings are in suitable, subjective conditions. That power is given to "good" and "bad" angels alike. You will find this inference a great guide regarding "Spiritualism." Spiritualism is not a trick, according to the Bible; it is a fact. Man can communicate with beings of a different order from his own, and he can put himself into a state of subjectivity in which angels can appear. Angels may thus be said to have a power of will to materialize themselves. It is probably to this that Paul refers in Romans 8 : 38 and Ephesians 6 : 12.

Man, His Making. 13

The Image of God in Man. The image of God in man is primarily spiritual, yet it has to be manifested in the body of a man also. We read in Psalm 8:5 that God made man a "little lower than the angels,' ' that might as well be translated a "little lower than God and the angels.' ' You will find that man's chief glory and dignity is that he was made of the earth to manifest the image of God in that substance. We are apt to think because we are made of earth that this is our humiliation, but it is not so. It is the very point that God's Word makes most of. He made man of the dust of the ground, and the redemption of Jesus Christ is for the dust of the ground as well.

Man's body before he degenerated, must have been dazzling with light. (We get this by direct inference from Genesis 3:7.) Man was obviously naked before his disobedience, and the death of his union with God instantly revealed itself in his body. (See next chapter.)

5. The Manner of Man's Making.

God did not create man by direct fiat but by His own deliberate power He moulded him. (See Gen. 1:26, 27.) The first mistake we must note is the inference that the soul was made along with the body; the Bible does not say it was. The Bible says that the body was created prior to the soul. Man's body was made by God, and it was built out of the "dust of the ground," that means that man is constituted to have affinity with everything on this earth. This is not his calamity, it is his peculiar dignity. (We dot not further our spiritual life "in spite of our bodies/ ' but in and by means of our bodies.) Then we read that God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life, and man became a "soul-enlivened nature.' ' There is another breathing mentioned in John 20 : 22, when our risen Lord breathed on the disciples and said, "Receive ye the Holy Spirit." This is not exactly the same thing as Genesis 2:7. In the latter reference God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life which became man's spirit, not God's; but in the former reference in John, Jesus Christ breathed into His disciples Holy Spirit. "When God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life, man did not become a living God, man became a "living soul." Thus in man, degenerate or regenerate, there are three aspects, spirit, soul and body. The uniting of man's personality, body, soul and spirit, may be brought about in various ways. The Bible reveals that sensuality will do it (Eph. 5:5); that drunkenness will do it (Eph. 5:18); and finally that the devil will do it (Luke 11:21) ; but the Holy Ghost alone through Jesus Christ will do it rightly, this is the only at-one-ment. When our personality is sanctified, it is not God's Spirit that is sanctified, it is out spirit (1 Thess. 5:23), and cleansing from filthiness of the spirit refers to man's spirit. God's inbreathing into man's nostrils called into actual existence his soul, which was potentially in the body (potentially means existing in possibility,

Man, His Making. 15

not in actuality). So man's soul is not his body or his spirit, but is that creation which holds his spirit and his body together, and is the medium of expressing his spirit in his body. It is not true to state that man's soul moulds his body; it is his spirit that moulds his body, and his soul is the medium the spirit uses to express itself.

It is absolutely impossible for us to conceive what Adam was like as God, made him, his very material body instinct with spiritual light, his very flesh in the likeness of God, his spirit in the image of God, and his soul in absolute harmony with God. In the personal life of a man who has fallen away from God, his soul and his spirit gravitate more and more to the dust of the earth, more and more to the brutish life on one side and the Satanic life on the other. The marvelous hope before us is that in and through Jesus Christ, our personality in its three aspects is sanctified and preserved in that condition blameless in this dispensation, and that in another dispensation body, soul and spirit will be all instinct with the glory of God, (Whenever an Old Testament character succeeded in doing God's will perfectly, earth seemed to lose its hold on him, e. g., Enoch, Elijah. Again, why did not Jesus Christ go straight back to Heaven from the Mount of Transfiguration? He emptied Himself a second time of the glory of God and came back again for the humiliation of the Cross. Then when Jesus Christ comes again, those who are saved and sanctified will be changed "in the twinkling of an eye," all the disharmony will cease and a new order begin.)

What does glorification mean? Adam is never spoken of as being glorified in the first decades of creation. Glorification is Christ enthroned in fulness of consummating power, having subdued all things unto Himself, and then finally entering back into the final being of the original Triune God as "in the beginning" before any first creations were.

In conclusion, God made man in His own image and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became, not a living God, but a living soul, a soul-enlivened nature, and this whole bodily temple, every corpuscle of blood, every nerve, every sinew, every muscle was the temple that could manifest an exact harmony with God and manifest the image of God in the very form of man in perfect faith and love. The angels can only manifest the image of God in what we call bodiless spirits, there is only one being who can manifest God on this earth, and that is man. Satan thwarted that purpose, and then laughed his devilish laugh against God, but the Bible says that God will laugh last.

Chapter III. Man: His Creation, Calling And Communion

MAN'S UNMAKING

1 THE PEIMAL ANAECHY. Gen. 3; Eom. 5: 12.

(a) The Serpent. Gen. 3: 1.

(b) The Serpent and Eve. 2 Cor. 11: 3.

(c) The Serpent, Eve and Adam. 1 Tim. 2: 14. OEIGINAL SIN is— Doing without God.

( 2 THE PEE-ADAMIC ANAECHY. Ezek. 28: 12-15.

(a) Satanic Pretensions. Implied, Matt. 4: 8; 2 Cor. 4: 4.

(b) Satanic Perversions. Gen. 3:5; implied, Job 1: 9.

(c) Satanic Perils. Jude 6; Matt. 16:23; 2 Thess. 2:9. OEIGINATOE OF SIN— Dethroning of God.

3 THE PUNISHED ANAECHISTS. Gen. 3: 23, 24.

(a) Destitution and Death. Gen. 2: 17.

(b) Division from Deity. Gen. 3: 8, 13. *

(c) Divine Declaration. Gen. 3: 15.

OEIGIN OF SALVATION— Dating way back to God.

Now we come to the revelation statement as to how sin was introduced into this world.

1. The Primal Anarchy.

•(a) The Serpent. (Gen. 3: 1.) This creature was evidently a beautiful creation of God, and we must beware of imagining that is was in the beginning as it was after God's curse. God, after the fall of Adam, cursed this beautiful creature into the serpent, to feed on dust and to crawl; and consequently the serpent in the physical domain is the picture of Satan in the spiritual domain. In our universe of physical things, we will find many which represent spiritual things ; they are, as it were, pictures of them. The serpent is the physical picture from man's standpoint of what Satan appears in the spiritual domain from God's standpoint. However, this line of thought properly belongs to Biblical Philosophy, so we will only thus allude to it in passing.

(b) The Serpent and Eve. (2 Cor. 11:3.) Why did Satan come via the serpent, and to Eve, why did he not go to Adam direct? In talking about man and woman as they were first created, it is exceedingly difficult to present that subject without getting introduced to all sorts of small, petty and disreputable ideas, especially nowadays, relative to the distinctions between man and woman. In Adam and Eve we are dealing with the primal creations of God. Adam was created immediately by the hand of God, and Eve was created mediately. Eve stands for the soul side, the psychic side, of the human creation, all her sympathies and her affinities are with the other creations of God around. Adam stands for the spirit side, the kingly, Godward side. Adam and Eve are together the likeness of God, for God said, "Let us make man in our image, male and female created He them." Woman stands not as inferior to man; the revelation made here is that she stands in quite a different relation to all things, and both are required to make the complete, rounded creation of God referred to by the big general term MANKIND. Eve having affinity and sympathy with the creation round about, would naturally listen with very much more unsuspecting interest to the suggestions that came through the subtle creature that talked to her. The Bible says that Eve was deceived; the Bible does not say that Adam was deceived ; consequently Adam is far more responsible than Eve, for Adam sinned deliberately. There was not the remotest conscious intention in Eve's heart of disobeying, she was deceived by the subtle wisdom of Satan via the serpent.

Adam, however, was not deceived in any shape or form; when Eve came to him he understood it was disobedience, and he sinned with a deliberate understanding of what he was doing, so the Bible associates sin with Adam (Rom. 5 : 12) and transgression with Eve. (1 Tim. 2 : 14.) [In this connection it is of importance to note that the Bible reveals that our Redeemer entered into the world by the woman. Man as man had no part whatever in the redemption of the world ; it was "the seed of the woman." In Protestant theology and in the Protestant outlook we have suffered much from our opposition to the Roman Catholic Church on one point, viz.: our intense antipathy to Mariolatry, and we have lost the whole meaning of the woman side of the revelation of God. All that we understand by womanhood and by manhood, all we understand by fatherhood and motherhood is embraced in the term "El Shaddai." (Gen. 17:1.) This is a mere hint at a line of thought we cannot take up here.] Perhaps one may legitimately make a distinction between transgression and sin in human conduct. (See Matt. 6: 12-15.) Transgression is nearly always an unconscious act, there is no conscious determination to do wrong. Sin is never an unconscious act, as far as culpability is concerned, it is always a conscious determination. Adam was the introducer of sin into this order of things. Original sin is doing without God. A noticeable feature in the conduct of Adam and Eve is that when God turned them out of the Garden they did not rebel. The characteristic of sin in man is "fear and shame.' ' Sin in man is doing without God, but it is not rebellion against God in its first stages, there is no rebellion anywhere in Adam and Eve against God.