The reason that evolutionary people cannot understand the
realities of God is because they are blindly convinced that the only way to
measure anything is through science, and that the only things science can
measure are natural things.
Evolutionists are committed to naturalism. They worship
nature as if it has the mind to create everything through mindless evolutionary
processes. They believe that nature has produced everything out of nothing,
even though the science of the natural cannot provide one observable example of
nothing producing anything at all.
The reason that evolutionists are so doggedly committed to
naturalism is because, “the natural person
does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and
he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”[1]
You see, God, who defies the naturalist with being totally
and utterly spiritual, declares why the “natural
person” has no ability to conceive of how the most intricate of designs,
and the most complex of systems, originate in the most brilliant mind of all.
The natural person does not accept the truth about God, awesome as that truth
is, because he is “not able to
understand.”
When we are “not able”
to do something we do not deny the something that we are not able to do. We do
not deny someone playing the piano as brilliantly as we hear on a recording
just because we are “not able” to see
them doing so, or just because we are “not
able” to do it ourselves.
However, the “natural
person” is not able to understand the “things
of the Spirit of God” for the simple reason that they are “spiritually discerned,” and he has
written them off as non-existent. God knows he is not non-existent. God knows
all that exists outside of the realm the evolutionist tries to confine to the
natural.
God’s book is filled with the truth about how our world was
created, who we are as human beings, why we are so messed-up, and what he has
done to redeem his creation. These things are not false just because the
natural person says they are false. A beautiful song is not false just because
a deaf man cannot hear it; and a beautiful sunset is not false just because a
blind man cannot see it. In the same way as we know about natural things
through our natural senses, we know about spiritual things through our
spiritual senses.
The problem is that the “natural
person” does not have spiritual senses. He is blind to spiritual things
because he is only natural. Spiritual things exist, much to the frustration of
the adamant evolutionary zealot, but he cannot see them. He cannot hear God because
he has hardened his heart. He cannot feel the presence of God continuing his
work of finding and saving lost sheep. He does not feel God, and he does not
want to feel God.
So, if naturalists are completely unable to conceive of what
is spiritual, and the God who created the natural world is spirit,[2]
how is there any hope for natural people?
The hope is in the fact that God teaches people this:
to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.[3]
God’s book tells us that people who are presently “dead in the trespasses and sins in which
you once walked,” who are “following
the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the
spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience” who are living “in the passions of our flesh, carrying out
the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath,
like the rest of mankind,”[4] can
be made “alive together with Christ.”[5]
It is when we are made “alive
together with Christ” that we can “put
on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and
holiness.” We cannot become like God in the old self, hence the need to
take it off, throw it away, crucify it, get rid of it, shut it down. It will
never be like God, and has no ability to do so.
Our only hope is what Jesus referred to as the new birth. Jesus
said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless
one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”[6]
The reason we cannot “see the kingdom of
God” unless we are “born again”
is because the once-born person is a naturalist to the core, and “the natural person does not accept the
things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to
understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”[7]
Only when we are “born
again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,”[8]
can we then experience the spiritual reality that sees God, and knows God, and
loves God.
Jesus once said to a naturalistic woman, “God is spirit, and those who worship him must
worship in spirit and truth.”[9] She
could not see who he was until he made this simple declaration, “I who speak to you am he.”[10]
The woman had just stepped out as far as her natural mind could go, telling Jesus,
“I know that Messiah is coming (he who is
called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.”[11]
When Jesus announced himself, the woman’s eyes suddenly
opened, and she went to her community with the exciting declaration, “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever
did. Can this be the Christ?”[12] As
a result, many people “believed in him
because of the woman's testimony, ‘He told me all that I ever did.’”[13]
By the end of a couple of days’ visit with Jesus, many people
from that town “believed because of his
word.”[14]
They then said to the woman, “It is no
longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for
ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”[15]
How is it that these people could “believe” and “know” that
Jesus was “indeed the Savior of the world”?
For the same reason that Jesus’ disciples “believed, and have come to know, that you
are the Holy One of God,”[16]
and could confidently affirm, “You are
the Christ, the Son of the living God.”[17] Jesus
explained it as, “Blessed are you, Simon
Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who
is in heaven.”[18]
As natural men, the disciples would not have understood
anything Jesus taught them. However, when the Spirit of God gave them spiritual
discernment, they were able to understand and acknowledge who Jesus really was.
This is why Jesus “rejoiced in the Holy
Spirit and said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have
hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little
children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.’”[19]
God continues to give spiritual discernment to people living
in a naturalistically blind world. His word describes it in a variety of ways,
including this, “Now Jesus did many other
signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but
these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of
God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”[20]
Those who vehemently deny what God himself has written in
his book are not smarter for having no knowledge of the God who created them,
or of the redemption he offers in his Son, Jesus Christ. Being spiritually dead
to God is nothing worthy of boasting.
Rather, it is those who come to God as little children,
seeing what the naturalistic adult mind cannot see, who recognize that the
Bible, the word of God, has given us everything we need to know and love Jesus Christ,
and the Father who sent him into our world. They believe and know who Jesus is,
and that they have life in his name.
And no amount of blind people can convince them to deny what
they have seen by faith.[21]
© 2015 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517,
Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted,
Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good
News Publishers.)
[1]
I Corinthians 2:14
[2]
John 4:24
[3]
Ephesians 4:22-24
[4]
Ephesians 2:1-3
[5]
Ephesians 2:5
[6]
John 3:3
[7]
I Corinthians 2:14
[8]
I Peter 1:3
[9]
John 4:24
[10]
John 4:26
[11]
John 4:25
[12]
John 4:29
[13]
John 4:39
[14]
John 4:41
[15]
John 4:42
[16]
John 6:69
[17]
Matthew 16:16
[18]
Matthew 16:17
[19]
Luke 10:21
[20]
John 20:30-31
[21]
I John 1:1-4
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