Focus: Human Nature (Pt.1)

Text: Jh.2:23-25

"Many BELIEVED in his name, when they saw the miracles which he did. But Jesus did not COMMIT himself unto them, because he KNEW all men. And needed not that any should testify of man: for he KNEW what was in man."

Long time ago, Socrates said, "Man, know thyself." Man is a mystery to himself. The psychology of human nature and nurture are mind-beggaring. The Bible contains an autopsy of human depravity and the fact that iniquity claims antiquity. Something is fundamentally wrong with man, and we know it.

Paul lamented, "O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death." Isaiah, in his day, cried out, "From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment." And on encountering God, he saw himself for what he was, and said, "Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips" (Isa.1:6; 6:5). Same thing for Peter, who said, "Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord" (Lk.5:8).

David said, "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me" (Ps.51:5). That is our human nature. And let me repeat the appeal of Socrates: Man, know thyself.

Human nature is really unnatural. It is not nature as God made or intended it. It is a flawed nature. It is a soiled and damaged nature. Like the potter's clay in Jer.18, man is marred and needs to be remade. And as our Lord Jesus would say, "An enemy has done this." Apart from Adam, none of us knows experientially what the original nature of man was like. We came into the world having a twisted and depraved nature.

This moral disease of human nature is the reason Jesus would not commit Himself to man. Man, by reason of the Fall, has the potential to fail. In our text, the words 'believed' and 'commit' are the same in the Greek. Jesus is simply saying that human nature cannot be trusted. After all, the people who sang, "Hosanna, hosanna," were also the ones who shouted, "Crucify him, crucify him!" Paul says, "In my flesh, dwelleth no good thing," and again, he says, "Sin…dwelleth in me" (Rom.7:18,20). The Lord Jesus says, "The flesh profiteth nothing…" "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of"(Jh.6:63; Lk.9:55).

The lesson of human nature is that we are not the original version of ourselves, and "all our righteousness, "says Isaiah, "are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away" (Isa.64:6). Read and reflect on Paul's words in 2Cor.1:9. We'll continue tomorrow.

by Bishop Moses E. Peter