Lifting of Restraint

When we see carnage and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia or Sudan we are not seeing the work of Satan or the judgement of God, but we are seeing human nature with the constraining power of common grace lifted from it. At times God simply allows people to behave according to their own nature without restraint.

When we see the immorality of our nations on the television we are seeing God’s judgement in the form of lifting His restraining power on society and handing them over to their own nature. Usually God gives society what they do not deserve because He is good. Man never sees that, but just congratulates himself.

Image of God

Adam was made in the image of God. This does not mean that God lived in Adam, as Christ lives within us. Adam was created with self-awareness and with a conscience, so man would not live mainly by natural instinct, as animals do, but would consider his environment and make judgments according to God’s will. But in the Fall Adam lost his innocence and so, after the Fall, it is not correct to say that mankind is still in the image of God.

Since Adam’s sin every one is born in the image of Adam. Mankind is no longer in the image of God after the Fall. After the Flood, God told Noah that man must not murder man, because man was made in the image of God. This is referring to the original Creation. It is not referring to man’s state after the Fall. The command meant that man must honour the distinction between humankind and animal-kind. After the Fall, God testified of man:

And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that He had made man on the earth and it grieved Him at His heart. (Gen 6:5-6).

And the Lord smelled a sweet savour; and the Lord said in His heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done. (Gen 8:21).

Of Jesus, John said:

But Jesus did not commit Himself to them, because He knew all men and needed not that any should testify of man: for He knew what was in man. (John 2:24-25).

And Jesus said of man (the Pharisees):

You are of your father the devil and the lusts of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own: for he is a liar and the father of it. (John 8:44).

Jesus did not mean this just for a few Pharisees, but for unregenerate man. They are not in the image of God, but in the likeness of the devil. This is the truth about man. This does not mean that we are without hope. It just means that our hope is not in ourselves.

Some claim that after the Fall man is still in the image of God, at least in part and the Fall has only marred that image or corrupted it. They claim this is evidenced by the good things man does, by his judgement in fairness, by his conscience, by his deeds of charity, by his value of art and by his inventive abilities.

The truth is that if there is any good, it is due to God’s grace, to God not handing man over to his own corruption. It is not due to any goodness within man. Anything man has, whether it is salvation, or just general graces upon his life and society, is a gift. None of it is due to man’s own intrinsic (internal) goodness. We have nothing “we did not receive” as a gift (1 Cor 4:7).