Man’s Lost Condition

by Aaron Bethikambe Gamede

Man’s lost condition starts with the Fall. Subsequent to the Fall, Adam hid himself from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. The precious fellowship between man and God was broken. With the break of fellowship, man became lost. Adam’s lost condition, which implied both spiritual and physical death, was mysteriously imputed to posterity.

Man’s lost condition starts with the Fall. Subsequent to the Fall, Adam hid himself from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. The precious fellowship between man and God was broken. With the break of fellowship, man became lost. Adam’s lost condition, which implied both spiritual and physical death, was mysteriously imputed to posterity.

The evidences of man’s condition over the years are the numerous jails, the increasing number of broken homes and juvenile delinquents, unending wars and strifes, the fashionableness of immorality, drunkenness, dishonesty and materialism.

His lost condition mans that man has become: a lost sheep, needing the Good Shepherd to fund him; a blind sinner, needing to be anointed with Christ’s eyesalve that he might see the wondrous things out of God’s law; a naked disgrace, needing to be clothed with the "garments of salvation"; a dead corpse in trespasses and sins, needing to be quickened by the eternal life-giving Physician; a stumbler fallen into a horrible pit of miry clay, needing to be pulled out and set upon the Rock of Ages; a forlorn traveler in darkness, needing the Light of the World; a hungry soul needing the Bread of Life; a thirsty heart, needing the Water of Life which forever springs up into everlasting life; a stormy heart, needing the Prince of Peace "passeth all understanding."

"BOOTSTRAP MECHANISM"
As a result of the Fall, the break of fellowship between God and man left in man’s heart an insatiable longing for the restoration of that fellowship. Some desperate human efforts to restore that broken fellowship are summed up as the "bootstrap mechanisms" for changing man’s lost condition.

Even in this hopeless exercise, Adam and Eve led the way.

After the Fall, "the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked." It was their realization of the departed glory of God’s robes of righteousness that urged them to initiate the operation bootstrap" device. Their unilateral puny effort to recapture the departed righteousness of God consisted of sewing together fig leaves for garments. From then on, mankind has devised and still devises numerous techniques of regaining the lost fellowship between man and God. The first one was and still is religion, whose objects of worship are either tangible or intangible. The tangible objects range from the ancient golden calf to the modern statues of the "Queen of Heaven" found in certain contemporary churches. The intangible gods are rationalism and spiritism.

In this sense, rationalism may be regarded as a theory that upholds reason as the only way back to the state of God-likeness. It was originated by the devil when he said to our first parents: "God Both know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods." From then on, man’s depraved mind became "the measure of all things." For example, Plato is recorded to have said, "Reasoning is the only road to truth. Man must be educated in order to attain justice and through it to become like God." The lamentable thing is that no school of rationalism succeeded in bringing man back to the image of God-likeness. The last schools of rationalism, before the advent of the only Way back to God, were those of the Stoics and the Epicureans that Paul found in Athens. The Epicureans and Stoics concluded that man can never really know anything about God, so why worry? Only the skeptic can live a life of peace, for he cares neither skeptic can live a life of peace, for he cares neither for good or evil. "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you die." After all is said and done, "when death is, we are not." But such skepticism was a temporary conscience tranquilizer, for it was soon revealed as nothing less than an escape mechanism from man’s desperate need of salvation.

Strange as it might seem, even after the Son of Man had come to answer all of man’s basic questions, and to bring him back to God-likeness, man still persisted in walking the devil’s beaten path of rationalism. The Renaissance was actually the rebirth of that rationalism. Today that road of rationalism is a maze of labryinthine pathways.

One of the pathways is that education is the only means of restoring God’s righteousness in man. But the undeniable evidence of growing crime, immorality, drunkenness, racialism, hatred, strife and wars among the educated peoples of the world negates the validity of this philosophy.

Environmental conditioning advocated by the social scientists is yet another man-made technique. Some of the social scientists maintain that if governments would see that workers get high pay and are charged less taxes; if there were more recreational facilities in every populated community; if all people were provided with modern houses with modern facilities and balanced diet; if more and more orphanages and reformatories were established, a godly utopia would be built on earth where man could not resist "holy influences."

Perhaps the most popular school of rationalism today is Communism. Its latest doctrine teaches that man can be good without religion. It emphasizes that faith in Christ is myth. Over 900,000,000 people are claimed to be the victims of this doctrine, and the number is said to be growing.

In contemporary Africa the ancient spiritism is taking a new turn. Some of the semi-westernized Africans of Southern Africa have devised numerous attempts to regain fellowship with God, without a personal faith in Christ. For example, there is now a popular device of syncretizing fetishism with our Christian faith. The "good spirits" have been substituted for the Holy Spirit. Sacred sticks and ropes are said to be "possessed" with the Holy Spirit, which has power to cast out demons and allied evil spirits. Divination has been substituted for "prophesying."

Strange as it may seem, the same device has been practiced by a few imported European churches. Ancestor worship has been syncretized with some forms of Christianity for centuries! Instead of calling the departed spirits "ancestors," they have been called "saints." Just as the ancestor’s function in animism was to relay man’s prayers to God, the saints of pseudo-Christianity do the same.

To capitalize on the confused religious situation, some African political preachers now encourage giving a deaf ear to the evangelical cry of absolute necessity for personal faith in Christ alone. The popular argument now is: "The imperialists have been blessed by God because they have not abandoned their faith in their ancestors under the guise of "saints." We Africans are suppressed right and left by the colonialists because we have been so stupid as to forsake our ancestors. If we now return to our own ancestors, God will have mercy upon us, and will deliver us from the colonialists, neo-colonialists and imperialists." This new "gospel" is not falling on deaf ears. Sacrifices of animals to ancestors are being resumed with great enthusiasm in many sections of the sub-continent today.

The above examples of man’s efforts to ‘save himself apart from Christ merely highlight man’s lost condition. Whatever "bootstrap exercise" man has adopted in his desperate effort to restore the departed righteousness of God, which was his before the Fall, has failed and will continue to fail. If man takes religion into his heart, he will merely increase his fears and uncertainties; if he takes Christ into his heart, he will have life eternal. Christ can do what religion cannot do. If man takes away the founder of a religion – be it Mohammed, Buddha or Shembe – his religion will remain. But if a man could take away Christ from Christianity, nothing would be left.

GOD’S ETERNAL PLAN
As God’s watchmen, who should not keep silent, let us stand on Africa’s Mount Kenya and proclaim, as never before, God’s eternal plan for changing man’s lost condition.

Historically, the plan was laid by God immediately after the Fall. "Where art thou?" was God’s first step in His mission of seeking and of saving "that which was lost." Although the plan of saving man is eternal, its symbolic application was demonstrated immediately after the Fall.

Man’s leaves of self-righteousness were replaced by leather skins of God’s righteousness. The skins’ durability, warmth, and beauty were types of eternal life in Christ, in whom is the good or evil. "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you die." After all is said and done, "when death is, we are not." But such skepticism was a temporary conscience tranquilizer, for it was soon revealed as nothing less than an escape mechanism from man’s desperate need of salvation.

Strange as it might seem, even after the Son of Man had come to answer all of man’s basic questions, and to bring him back to God-likeness, man still persisted in walking the devil’s beaten path of rationalism. The Renaissance was actually the rebirth of that rationalism. Today that road of rationalism is a maze of labryinthine pathways.

One of the pathways is that education is the only means of restoring God’s righteousness in man. But the undeniable evidence of growing crime, immorality, drunkenness, racialism, hatred, strife and wars among the educated peoples of the world negates the validity of this philosophy.

Environmental conditioning advocated by the social scientists is yet another man-made technique. Some of the social scientists maintain that if governments would see that workers get high pay and are charged less taxes; if there were more recreational facilities in every populated community; if all people were provided with modern houses with modern facilities and balanced diet; if more and more orphanages and reformatories were established, a godly utopia would be built on earth where man could not resist "holy influences."

Perhaps the most popular school of rationalism today is Communism. Its latest doctrine teaches that man can be good without religion. It emphasizes that faith in Christ is myth. Over 900,000,000 people are claimed to be the victims of this doctrine, and the number is said to be growing.

In contemporary Africa the ancient spiritism is taking a new turn. Some of the semi-westernized Africans of Southern Africa have devised numerous attempts to regain fellowship with God, without a personal faith in Christ. For example, there is now a popular device of syncretizing fetishism with our Christian faith. The "good spirits" have been substituted for the Holy Spirit. Sacred sticks and ropes are said to be "possessed" with the Holy Spirit, which has power to cast out demons and allied evil spirits. Divination has been substituted for "prophesying."

Strange as it may seem, the same device has been practiced by a few imported European churches. Ancestor worship has been syncretized with some forms of Christianity for centuries! Instead of calling the departed spirits "ancestors," they have been called "saints." Just as the ancestor’s function in animism was to relay man’s prayers to God, the saints of pseudo-Christianity do the same.

To capitalize on the confused religious situation, some African political preachers now encourage giving a deaf ear to the evangelical cry of absolute necessity for personal faith in Christ alone. The popular argument now is: "The imperialists have been blessed by God because they have not abandoned their faith in their ancestors under the guise of "saints." We Africans are suppressed right and left by the colonialists because we have been so stupid as to forsake our ancestors. If we now return to our own ancestors, God will have mercy upon us, and will deliver us from the colonialists, neo-colonialists and imperialists." This new "gospel" is not falling on deaf ears. Sacrifices of animals to ancestors are being resumed with great enthusiasm in many sections of the sub-continent today.

The above examples of man’s efforts to ‘save himself apart from Christ merely highlight man’s lost condition. Whatever "bootstrap exercise" man has adopted in his desperate effort to restore the departed righteousness of God, which was his before the Fall, has failed and will continue to fail. I£ man takes religion into his heart, he will merely increase his fears and uncertainties; if he takes Christ into his heart, he will have life eternal. Christ can do what religion cannot do. If man takes away the founder of a religion – be it Mohammed, Buddha or Shembe – his religion will remain. But if a man could take away Christ from Christianity, nothing would be left.

GOD’S ETERNAL PLAN
As God’s watchmen, who should not keep silent, let us stand on Africa’s Mount Kenya and proclaim, as never before, God’s eternal plan for changing man’s lost condition.

Historically, the plan was laid by God immediately after the Fall. "Where art thou?" was God’s first step in His mission of seeking and of saving "that which was lost." Although the plan of saving man is eternal, its symbolic application was demonstrated immediately after the Fall.

Man’s leaves of self-righteousness were replaced by leather skins of God’s righteousness. The skins’ durability, warmth, and beauty were types of eternal life in Christ, in whom is the perfect righteousness of God. Like Adam and Eve and the prodigal son, to be clothed with the robe of righteousness man must "come to himself" and yield himself to God. The innocent animals God killed typified the "Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world." The killing of innocent animals, instead of Adam and Eve, is the first lesson on substitutionary death. God commanded Israel to practice this religious exercise for many centuries, so that "when the fulness of time" came for God to send His Lamb, man’s mind would have been prepared to understand and to receive the plan. When the Lamb of God cried, "Father, Father, why hast thou forsaken me?" the transaction of taking our sins upon and into the Lamb of God, and of giving us the righteousness of God that we should receive with the hand of faith, was completed. The blood of the animals that covered man’s sin at the Garden of Eden pointed to the blood of the Lamb that would take away man’s sin.

Cain’s sacrifice of vegetables, which he had produced "out of the sweat of his brow," was rejected by God because it had no life-giving blood, and would later confuse men in their understanding of the difference between faith and works, law and grace, justification and forgiveness, believers and professors.

Just as sin came into the world through a woman (Eve), so would salvation come through a woman (Mary), whose "seed" (Christ) would crush the head of the serpent (the devil) by His resurrection from the dead. It was no coincidence for the risen Savior to talk to a woman (Mary Magdalene) before anybody else had a chance. Our Lord had to do so, to show God’s fulfilled plan of man’s salvation. If man rejects this plan, he is eternally doomed.

The trouble with man is his tendency to reject the miraculous personal Christ of the Bible and to reconstruct a finite and impersonal ore. There are people who know Christ either as a baby in Mary’s arm, or as a dead martyr on the wooden cross; a philosopher and teacher of Socrates calibre; a Jesus who could be understood if He were demythologized by the elimination of such doctrines as the miraculous birth, resurrection, and return. Whatever man’s interpretation of Christ might be, the truth stands: without Christ – who is God the Son, the eternal Redeemer; whose birth, ministry, death, resurrection, and personal return were prophesied; the only way to God; the only door to heaven; the absolute truth; the only bread and water of life eternal; the only embodiment of God’s righteousness; the only Savior, High Priest, and King; the only almighty Prince of Peace, who alone can impart to a believing heart "peace that passeth all understanding"; the only victorious Savior over sin and death – man is lost.

A personal faith in a personal Christ is life eternal. That faith enables a believer, through the indwelling Holy Spirit, to overcome the world, the flesh and the devil; it makes prayer and meditation real; it gives the believer a Spirit-illuminated world and life view. When accompanied with unconditioned obedience, implicit trust, and dedicated service, it enables a believer to execute a faithful and fruitful ministry.

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