THEOLOGICAL STUDIES
THE BAPTIST FAITH AND MESSAGE
INTRODUCTION
When we come to the Baptist Faith and Message, we come to a document which describes the beliefs of Baptists for over the past 300 years. Notice that this document describes the beliefs of the vast majority of Baptists. Unlike many other denominations, Baptists are not creedal. Creeds assume an air of infallibility and a strait-jacket form of uniformity. Baptists believe that only one document should command that kind of allegiance—the Bible. Confessions, on the other hand, are living, breathing descriptions of the beliefs, in this case, of Baptists.
BAPTIST BELIEFS IN COMMON TO ALL CHRISTIANS
III. MAN
Man was created by the special act of God, in His own image, and is the crowning work of His creation. In the beginning man was innocent of sin and was endowed by his Creator with freedom of choice. By his free choice man sinned against God and brought sin into the human race. Through the temptation of Satan man transgressed the command of God, and fell from his original innocence; whereby his posterity inherit a nature and an environment inclined toward sin, and as soon as they are capable of moral action become transgressors and are under condemnation. Only the grace of God can bring man into His holy fellowship and enable man to fulfill the creative purpose of God. The sacredness of human personality is evident in that God created man in His own image, and in that Christ died for man; therefore every man possesses dignity and is worthy of respect and Christian love.
Gen 1:26-30; 2:5, 7, 18-22; 3; 9:6
Psa 1:1-6; 8:3-6; 32:1-5; 51:5; Isa 6:5; Jer 17:5
Matt 16:26; Acts 17:26-31
Rom 1:19-32; 3:10-18, 23; 5:6, 12, 19; 6:6
Rom 7:14-25; 8:14-18, 29; 1Co 1:21-31; 15:19, 21-22
Eph 2:1-22; Col 1:21-22; 3:9-11
A. Man: Created in God's Image
According to Gen. 1:27 man was created "in the ____________ of God." What does that mean?
According to Col. 1:15 Jesus is the "______________ of the invisible God."
According to Phil. 3:21 and 1 John 3:2 what will happen to Christians when Jesus returns?
According to the BF&M, "Man was created by the special act of God, in His own image, and is the ______________ work of His creation."
Such a claim runs so counter to the modern view of man. For many today, man is THE problem. Nature would be so much better off if man had never existed. Facts really don't support this view, much less Christian theology. Nature is a violent entity; man actually to a large extent has domesticated it. For example, man's best friend is only man's best friend after he has been domesticated. If not domesticated, the dog can be a vicious scavenger.
C.S. Lewis in TCON constantly implies that everything always went better when a son of Adam was in placed in charge of everything.
Because Christ created every person in His image and since Christ died for all (though all may not accept His offer of salvation), according to the BF&M, "every man possesses _______________ and is worthy of _________________ and Christian love."
In The Weight of Glory, Lewis writes: "It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all
our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a
real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat—the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden." [Meaning of the words "vere latitat": vere – really, truly, actually, indeed; rightly, correctly, exactly; truthfully; latitat – keep hiding oneself, remain in hiding, be hidden; lie low; lurk]
Look at the way the Bible itself expresses this. According to Genesis 1:28 "God blessed them [Adam and Eve]; and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and _______________ it; and ______________ over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth."
Unfortunately, because man is a fallen creature, he no longer reigns over creation like God intended him to. What, though, is going to happen to Christians when Christ returns (Rev. 3:21)?
B. Man: A Fallen Creature
According to the BF&M, "Through the temptation of Satan man transgressed the command of God, and fell from his original innocence; whereby his posterity inherit a nature and an environment _______________ toward sin, and as soon as they are capable of moral action become transgressors and are under condemnation.
The Bible teaches that when Adam sinned in the Garden of Eden, something drastic happened not only to Adam but also to all of mankind. This event is called "The Fall." Catholics believe that each person born after Adam inherited Adam's sin. (They baptize babies in order to remove Adam's sin. This permits the baby to escape from limbo where it would never see God's face; baptism allows the baby to be ushered into the presence of God. This is the reason Catholics baptize aborted fetuses outside abortion clinics.)
(Why do the Catholics believe in things such as limbo and purgatory when the Bible definitely does not teach such things? The reason is that the Bible is not the only authority for Catholics. Catholics, based on the theology of Irenaeus, believe that when man sinned in the Garden of Eden, only his character was tainted with sin, not his mind. As a result, even people who have never read the Bible can come up with divine truth. For this reason, Aristotle and several Catholic thinkers are regarded as being as authoritative as the Bible itself. We believe that sin affected the entire man, including his mind. We believe that we can only come to know God by means of His revelation to you and me.)
Evangelicals, on the other hand, believe that people have inherited Adam's nature which is INCLINED towards sin. While differences exist regarding beliefs concerning this nature, the biblical view seems to be that we have inherited from Adam a weak, bent, or flawed nature. Although we are not born with a sin nature, whenever this human nature encounters Satan and temptation, it yields to sin, thereby becoming sin nature. Christ dies not only to remove this sin nature, He rises from the dead to give us His divine nature (John 3:3, 5; Eph. 4:22-24; Col. 3:10; 2 Pet. 1:4). Although Adam has affected us all, he has not caused us all to sin. We are responsible for our own sins.
Although all mankind has fallen, One Man, though, has gained victory. What does Paul call this One Man in 1 Cor. 15:45?
Just as the first Adam affected us all negatively, so this last Adam has affected us all positively. Just like we choose daily to follow the first Adam's lead by sinning, we can choose to follow this second Adam. If we attach ourselves to this New Man, the last Adam, then we shall experience His destiny just like we experienced the first Adam's destiny. Christ, because of His obedience to God, has been seated at His right hand in glory in the heavenly places. Where does God plan to seat us who have attached ourselves to this Christ, to this last Adam (Eph. 2:6)?
