Concerning Nature
By John Gavazzoni

It is pretty much a common concept among Christian fundamentalists that Adam's disobedience so intrinsically affected all mankind... the whole of humanity which has proceeded from his loins... that we are all now possessed of, and by, a sinful nature. Preachers go so far as to speak, not only of man being sinful, but having a nature OF sin... a sin nature. This is a terribly fallacious doctrine. Mankind's nature, de facto, is not constitutionally a sin nature, but rather, a nature afflicted by what it is NOT. We are all sinners by act, by behavior, but certainly not by nature. There is in our flesh a not-me-really at work.

Yes, Paul wrote of that, actually disclaiming sin as something he did: "Therefore I conclude, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me, that is, in my flesh." Something not of God AND not of us is at work in us. We sin in opposition to our nature, not according to it. Sin is strange, not native, to us. Sin is simply, in a word, unnatural, for if it were natural to us, it would cause us to thrive. It would serve wholeness of soul. By its presence, our souls would prosper and be in health, but all must recognize surely that sin is not beneficial. It is toxically destructive, BUT with all its destructiveness, it is powerless to intrinsically alter the essential constitution of nature.

As an example, on the physical plane, when the human body suffers infection from an invading bacterium, we don't think of that infection as changing the intrinsic constitution of our physical nature; we understand (hopefully) that our nature, rather than being fundamentally altered by the infection, is instead, under attack by something alien to its constitution. On the spiritual plane, we are, to be sure, powerless to change this very actual existential condition. We must be rescued by That which is above us, yet hidden deep within us.

Sin and death are not intrinsic to our nature, they are, as Paul puts it in Romans, the first chapter, "against nature." The work of God in salvation through His Son, Jesus, is meant to restore reality to our knowledge of who and whose we are. Paul gets to that in writing that, "we shall know as we are known." God knows us as we are: His children born of Him, thus natured by Him, albeit suffering from the spiritual sickness that Paul defines as a darkness and ignorance of the heart. "My sheep hear my voice and I know them."

Sin causes nature to suffer, but it is powerless to intrinsically alter nature. We are not only estranged from God, we are estranged from ourselves, i.e., being estranged from God we are estranged from the Nature that natures us, which truly defines us. Salvation restores us to our roots, to what Karl Barth called, our Primal Origin. We are lost; we have lost our way, and Jesus was sent, as the Way, to bring us back to the Father, "the Father of spirits," the Father of the spirit of each of us.

Love is native to us, for God is love, and God is our Father. Love wins in the end, i.e., God wins in the end, in the success of His plan to bring us back to Himself where the real, true person that we are dwells within Him. John wrote that "God is Love," that "love is of God," and "ye are of God, little children." Jesus is "the Son of His (the Father's) love." Jesus is our Reality.

As the Son (in the Greek) "came out from within God," we came, as the many sons, out from within THE Son. We have a beautiful shadow/type of that spiritual procession in the procession of Isaac out of Abraham, then Jacob out of Isaac, with the ongoing procession of all the children of Abraham leading to Christ, within whom all humanity dwells, in turn, within God.

We have the account in the Old Testament, quoted in the Book of Hebrews, of the Son thanking and trusting God with the children He (God, the Father) has given Him (the Son) just as Abraham by his seed, as it were, gave, within that seed, all the children of Abraham through Isaac, all from that original seed of Abraham's. This is a story-type of that One Seed, Christ, who is the true origin of the true humanness of all humanity.

John, in his first epistle, wrote that he who is born of God continuously (in the Greek) does not sin "for his seed remains in him." We are born again (returned to our original birth in God) by that incorruptible Seed, according to Peter. It's an impenetrable Seed. The corruption of the world into which God sent His Son was not able to penetrate the Divine Seed in which is the Divine Nature. As God's children, we are heirs of God and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ of that nature. Our inheritance is not some mansion on high, it's the inheritance, by nature, of God-likeness. Like Father, like S(s)on(s)