We are looking at the subject of meditation. If we profess to be Christians then that implies certain obligations on our part. If a person is a Christian they will pray. Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful says Paul (Colossians 4:2). They will read the Bible - it is God breathed and useful for teaching, correcting, rebuking and training us to be righteous. We should also give ourselves to meditation on God. In Psalm 119:15 David says that he meditates on God's precepts and considers his ways. In Philippians 4:8 Paul encourages us ... whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things. Use your mind to go over these things.
To help us in this, we are suggesting subjects that you can usefully meditate on. The week before last we spoke about how we can think about God himself - his nature and attributes. I don't know if you have tried this but it would be good for all of us to take some time and find a quiet spot where we can give ourselves to thinking about God. Rather than thinking of God in a vague and disorganised way you could do worse than to take Question and Answer 4 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism and just go through it slowly and carefully. It asks "What is God?" and the expected answer says "God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth." If you could just spend a minute or so on each element there - God being a Spirit, his infinitude and eternity, his immutability or unchanging nature. That would be ten minutes well spent.
Then last week we thought about the states of Christ - his humiliation and exaltation. We suggested that with the humiliation you could begin by thinking about Christ's incarnation, the Word becoming flesh. Then there are the sufferings that he endured on our behalf all his life, culminating in his death, his death on a cross and his burial in the tomb. As for the exaltation, it begins with his resurrection from the dead on the third day, followed by his ascension into heaven so that now he is in heaven where he is at God's right hand, interceding for his own and from where he will one day come to judge this whole world. Again, what could be more profitable than to give yourself some time to think through all those various stages in the states of Christ.
This week I want to commend to you another topic for meditation - the four-fold nature of humanity. We should meditate on God. We should especially meditate on Jesus Christ, the Saviour. We should meditate on God's Word and on his works too. We should also meditate on ourselves. There is a danger in such meditation of becoming introspective and self-centred, of course, but there are ways of thinking about ourselves, self-examination if you like, that are both God honouring and profitable. The way I want to highlight this morning is what is called meditating on the fourfold nature of humanity. Some of you, no doubt, will know what I mean when I say that but others of you will look blank and say that you have no idea what is meant. Of those who look blank many of you probably do know what I mean in fact, although you would not have expressed it like that.
So what do we mean when we speak of the fourfold sate of humanity? When we think of human beings as they have existed and do exist and will exist, we can isolate four distinct states or modes of existence. What do I mean? Well, firstly we can go back to Adam and Eve and how it was for them in the Garden of Eden before the Fall and we can identify the first nature of humanity as one of primitive integrity. Of course, we come secondly to the fall of humankind into sin, the state we are now in by nature - humanity's entire depravation. But then, thirdly, we know that even at the time of the Fall recorded in Genesis 3 God gives hints that he has a plan to deliver sinners from their sinful nature and by means of that plan of salvation sinners have been exchanging their sinful nature by conversion to a nature that we can speak of as begun recovery through new birth, the third nature. Conversion here on earth is not the end of the story, only the beginning and so the fourth and final nature refers to the Christian's consummate happiness in the world to come.
There are various ways of speaking about this. In his book Human nature in its fourfold state the Scottish Puritan Thomas Boston writes of
1 The State of Innocence 2 The State of Nature, where he goes on to delineate the sinfulness of human beings in their natural state, the misery of human beings in their natural state and the inability of human beings in their natural state 3 The State of Grace 4 The State of Glory
To put it simply, there is
Before the fall, After the fall, After regeneration and In glory.
A more more modern writer sets things out in table form
Across the top line you have the headings Pre-Fall Man, Post-Fall Man, Reborn Man and Glorified Man. Under those headings you have two lines that say first that a man is able to sin or to not sin, secondly that they are able to sin and unable not to sin. Thirdly, it is that the person is able to sin but is also able to not sin. The final column is where the person is both able to not sin and unable to sin. You see that? Adam and Eve were able to sin or to not sin. Sadly, they did sin and so we are now born into a world where we are not only able t sin but also unable to not sin. Once we are converted we are in the position where we are certainly able to sin but also able to not sin, which is a wonderful privilege. One day in heaven, we will be in the most glorious position of all where we will be not only be able to not sin but also unable to sin, even if we desired to do so, which we will not.
So let's think how we can meditate on this rich subject. The obvious place to go is Genesis 3, where we see the first two natures and then perhaps Revelation 20, which refers to the last two.
1. Meditate on human beings in the State of Innocence - something to ponder
In Genesis 3 we read about how Adam and Eve and in so falling brought down the whole of humankind. If you think about it there must have been a day when one of their children hurt themselves or had to be reprimanded or some other scene where the children expressed their dissatisfaction with the situation and Adam and Eve had to inform them that the world they were in had not always been like it was. There was an age of innocence before the Fall. As the Westminster Confession puts it "Man, in his state of innocency, had freedom, and power to will and to do that which was good and well pleasing to God; but yet, mutably, so that he might fall from it."
As the children's catechism puts it Adam and Eve were holy and happy. They had never sinned and there was no misery. However, they did not stay holy and happy. They had the option to end their holiness and happiness and they did.
A A Hodge puts it like this
"Adam in his estate of innocency was a free agent, created with holy affections and moral tendencies; yet with a character as yet unconfirmed, capable of obedience, yet liable to be seduced. by external temptation .... Of this state of a holy yet fallible nature we have no experience, and consequently very imperfect comprehension."
Things to ponder. I think there are two things to ponder here. Firstly and obviously what we have lost. We do not know what it is to be holy and innocent. I suppose the closest taste we get of it is as children. Adam and Eve we are told were naked and without shame as were we to a certain age. But it did not last. And that age of innocence did not last though it is good to ponder it and imagine how it must have been, however long or short it lasted.
But then we ought to think in another way. Dr Lloyd-Jones says somewhere
"Adam was perfect, Adam was innocent, Adam was made in the image and likeness of God, but he was never made a partaker of the divine nature (as the New Testament says) ... that privilege does not make us gods; but it does make a real difference to us. It puts us into a new relationship to God that even Adam did not enjoy. ... Though he was perfect Adam was subject to fall and failure; but – and I say it with reverence and to the glory of God – those who are ‘in Christ’ cannot finally fall away; they cannot become lost. ... In Christ not only are the blessings which Adam lost restored to us, but we are given even more; in this new relationship to God which we enjoy in Christ we stand in a higher position than Adam. .... "
2 Meditate on human beings in the State of Nature - something to deeply regret
As to our present state we are still free agents to some extent but because of the fall we are morally corrupted within and spiritually dead. We are spiritually blind in my understanding, my affections are perverted, I am (to quote the Confession again) "utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil" and hence we have "wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation;" so that man "is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself," or even "to prepare himself thereunto."
Article 10 of the 39 Articles of the Anglican church is similar:
"The condition of man after the fall of Adam is such, that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and good works, to faith, and calling upon God: wherefore we have no power to do good works pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us when we have that good will."
We know man is depraved both from experience and from what the Bible says about human depravity, about our state by nature (the blindness and darkness and deadness it speaks of and the fact that by nature we are slaves to sin and children of Satan) and about our need to be born again.
When Thomas Boston writes of this, he writes not only of the sinfulness of human beings and of the misery of human beings but also of the inability of human beings to change themselves.
It would be good for us all to sped time thinking about how sinful we are - sinful nature and sinful in practice. We are without excuse. And think of the misery that sin has brought to this world too - the frustration and alienation and the malice and war and agony and sickness and death. With that there is our utter inability to change our situation. Education won't do it; wealth won't do it; religion won't do it. By nature we are utterly helpless.
How full of compassion we ought to be for men and women still in their sins and pray for them to be converted. Also be thankful that we who are believers have been delivered from such a state and mourn the days wasted in sin.
3 Meditate on human beings in the State of Grace - something to be thankful for
But then that is not all that the Bible speaks of is it? It also speaks of a being born again, a first resurrection that means that God's Holy Spirit implants in certain people, deep in their souls, a new spiritual principle, habit or tendency that as it is nourished and directed by the same indwelling Spirit, frees a person from his natural state of slavery to sin and enables him to be filled with the free desire to do what is spiritually good. Of course, because of remaining sin, the lingering habits of the soul, there continues to be a conflict within for Christians and we do not perfectly do right. Both what is good and what is evil can be found in us. But we are headed in the right direction and it is good to think about the state of grace and all the blessings it brings and give thanks to God as we mediate on all his love and kindness.
Again we say give thanks to God for his mercies. What privileges are ours, if we believe.
4 Meditate on human beings in the State of Glory - something to long for
The state of grace is not the final state. We believe in a fourfold state. There is also the state of glory that is the blessing of all who go to heaven. In heaven every remainder of the old corrupt moral tendencies is gone forever. The gracious dispositions implanted when a person is born again are now perfected. The whole person is now brought to the measure of the stature of perfect humanity in the likeness of Christ's glorified humanity. And that is how we remain forever - perfectly free and without change in perfect holiness.
What a glorious future we have. Praise the Lord!
Hodge sums up the four like this -
- Adam was holy and unstable.
- Unregenerate men are unholy and stable; that is, fixed in unholiness.
- Regenerate men have two opposite moral tendencies contesting for empire in their hearts. They are cast about between them, yet the tendency graciously implanted gradually in the end perfectly prevails.
- Glorified men are holy and stable. All are free, and therefore responsible.
How good to think about such things and give glory to God. Ponder Adam in the Garden, lament the fall into sin and the wickedness that marks us by nature. Give thanks for regeneration and look forward to the glory to come.