Walking through the blackest death and the horrors of sin and the unimaginable broken relationship with God; Ethics Chapter 2 Herman Bavinck

 

We now consider our odyssey into the dark waters of the fall.  In the first chapter we saw that humanity through Adam and Eve were created perfect which goes in the opposite direction to a lot of philosophies.   The main question is; What went wrong?

 Concerning Eve on page 80 Bavinck starts to look at how Eve was influenced to sin. Her consciousness was manipulated by the Serpent allowing her to take on board a delusion.  Bavinck says that she saw herself becoming ‘other’; through pride she denied the consequences of sin ‘that she wouldn’t die’; She denied the sin itself by thinking  ‘her eyes would be opened’;  she would ‘become like God’; With pride she turned to the tree and wanted the ‘wisdom’ that comes with eating the fruit.

So then for Bavinck in a moment Eve falls into sin (last paragraph page 80).  This is a real deep sentence from the Master theologian;

 

 “We see then that sin gains entrance through the consciousness, works on

the imagination, arouses yearning, reaches for the ideal that is conjured up,

and finally, having perceived it through the senses under the influence of that

imagination, grasps for it.”

 

He then proves this process from scripture;

James 1^14-15

¹⁴ But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. ¹⁵ Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death. James 1:14-15 NASB

 

Obviously, sin is a horrific thing because it pulls us away from God and our relationship with God.  So, if this is the problem, I am sure later on he will talk how things will be made right.  But for me this is gold dust because now we have an idea how sin gets into us in the first place.  As believers we can pray, we can turn to Christ and it says somewhere that he will give us a way of escape.  Now I understand why Paul was always mentioning the ‘mind’ in Romans and 1 Corinthians. Paul also gives us good advice somewhere that we focus on “whatever is good whatever is lovely dwell on these things”.   Sports people a lot of times say that what you eat, is what you become.  It is the same with spiritual things, this is why we ought to pray because it keeps us in contact with the Lord.  Reading our bibles or focusing on positive stuff will make us more positive.  We are less likely to sin if we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus because our imaginations will be on spiritual things.

If we focus on things of the world our imaginations will become more worldly.  How fickle we are as human beings.  I’m not saying that you cannot enjoy yourself. Wholesome activities such sports, meeting with friends, learning a new language; there is nothing wrong with these things, but we are being warned about our imaginations.  This shows how weak people really are. 

 

Today we live in a hedonistic world.  At the click of a button we can buy and pay for what drives us.  Advertisers want to get into our minds and make decisions that will make them wealthier and you the poorer with the added bonus that you have committed some sins along the way.  For example, I want to collect this, I have to have the latest phone et al. I’m not saying that you cannot buy stuff but there are consequences that you personally cannot see, and it might be that one has been corrupted along the way.

We ought to pray more, we ought to remember those less able than ourselves.  Loving God and loving our neighbour, we ought to be doing both.

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