The week two of enmity and reconciliation is called, and it is a play on the Puritans. You know, when they said in their little handbook for children, the New England Primer, they wrote, in Adam's fall we died all. And there's a scripture for it. It's 1 Corinthians 15, 22. And all I did is I substituted the word sin or die with a particular symptom of spiritual death, which is hatred. Hatred is certainly a symptom of falling away from God. So, there it is. In Adam's fall, we're haters all. Okay, well, and people will bring in some more chairs. We've given them instructions, so we should be good in a couple minutes. But here we go. The design of others. We talked about that last week. Well, guess what? It's been distorted. It's been distorted in our own hearts because of sin. So the fall is also going to be foundational. The design was foundational last week, but we need another week to talk about the fall, the distortion of the design. So we're going to get into some practical things after this week, not that this week is not going to be practical, but we just needed one more week of laying some more foundation. Thank you. So this is our second of two foundational weeks and then we'll have seven weeks of going into various aspects of this disease and how to combat it. We're going to have to get some good working definitions for the rest of the course of our study. For example, we're going to have to ask what is hatred? or enmity. And when I say the word enmity, if you're not familiar with that word, just remember that's a synonym for hatred. Enmity, hatred, hostility, that sort of thing. Is hatred ever righteous? We're going to be asking that throughout the course of our study. If not, why not? If so, how so? What is selfishness? We're going to talk about what selfishness is today. What is the cause of hate? Is it natural or is it learned? Or is it both? Can we experience hatred without being selfish? Can we ever be selfish without being hateful? Are there degrees of enmity? Is there ever a point when we're not guilty of it? And if not, why in the world would you bother probing these questions? Answer, because if you don't, then you are guilty of it. It is because you are selfish, and paradoxically, because in addition to being selfish, it's because you hate yourself. So that's a pretty bad picture. We're going to cover five things today, but the first of the five things we have to cover, we actually have to get back into the design. One more thing about the design, I'm going to talk about selfishness and I'm going to view it through the lens of a school called egoism, which might interest you and might not, but we're going to use them to define what selfishness is and is not. Egoist doctrine of sin, that's the first place we're going. Secondly, we're going to look at the Puritan Doctrine of Sin, and then the three last sections are going to be the shorter ones. What I'm going to do is you're going to see in the Puritan Doctrine of Sin that there's what they call Original Sin, And the whole Christian tradition has a category for that. And then out of that nature comes what they call actual sin, and then out of that comes habitual sin. And all we're going to do is we're going to take that one part of sin, called enmity or hatred, and we're going to look at original enmity, actual enmity, and habitual enmity. So that's where we're going, our first point, second point, third, fourth, and fifth. So that's where we're going to go today. But I have to prepare you, the first half of this class, and if we don't get done with that half today, that's fine, we'll just add another week, I'm okay with that. But we're going to go deep, deep into the pool in these first two points. before we get practical. And then we'll do seven weeks of getting really, really practical. But you have to do this deep stuff first. Because you have to say, okay, we need definitions. Definitions are hard, but once you have them, then you're all singing off the same page. Okay? So, the big idea, here's the big idea, and I know you guys don't have student notes, so I'll just say it twice for you. The big idea is that by nature, we pass our days in malice and envy, hated by others, hating each other that is just word-for-word Titus 3 3 I'm just using it for our nature still as Christians by nature we pass our days in malice and Envy hated by others and hating each other so I take that big idea directly from Titus 3 3 and where Paul is describing our characteristic state before we came to Christ. You say, well, if that's before we came to Christ, why are we talking about it as if it applies to us? Well, because it doesn't exclude the remnant of that condition in the sinful nature of the Christian. So, it may not characterize our lives anymore, but it may still plague our lives. What might have characterized us as mere sinners does not cease to plague us as saints. That's why we have to look at it, because we have to attack it and fight it and recognize it in ourself. But before we get into the bad news, one more thing about the self, about the design, and that's what's bringing the word self as a synonym for soul. And I'm going to do this in the most shocking way first. I'm going to use an atheistic doctrine. to clarify mistakes that Christians have made by us, so that we don't make the mistake anymore. So, we've been assuming that the self always acts for its own ends. We talked about that a little bit last week, the end, the chief end of being happy. That's just, we have to, there's no way around it. But there's so many schools of psychology and so many schools of ethics throughout the world today and throughout history that we have to define our terms here too. We have to draw the difference between chief ends and subordinate ends, and we're going to have to define the concept of selfishness. Let me erase our outline, and let's get into this egoist doctrine of sin. And by the way, the word ego in the Greek just means I or myself. In the English, thanks to Freud, in the English that has a negative connotation. That means me at the expense of everyone else. That's not what the word means. The word just means self, or I. You've got one, or else you don't exist. There's no way around it, and God made it good to glorify Him. So that's going to be our first problem, if we don't get that. So, the reason we're going to have to define these terms is that the hatred of any soul is exactly what it is, only because it's going to violate what the soul is. So, when you think of ego, think of I, which equals self, which equals individual soul. Okay? So, no bad words yet. Forget about Freud. Forget about the way that that word has been used in modern culture. That is not what the word means. And if you hate that, you hate yourself and you hate others. And that's kind of a problem. So that's the irony of thinking of that in a bad way. If we hate anyone, including ourselves, then what we hate is a self calculating pursuer of ultimate ends. The self, or the soul, is a self-calculating, in other words, I am reasoning about what will make me happier, what is the right thing to do here. Pursuer, we're just using synonyms. Pursuer, wow. There's no spell check on the whiteboard, so I'm gonna go with it. Pursuer, sure, yeah. If we hate the self, that's what we hate. And I don't think we want to define selfishness as the love of self, purely and simply, and then call that evil. Because then that makes love evil and hatred good. And that's a problem. Now, the most famous exposition of acting for personal ends comes from Aristotle. But if you're bothered by being instructed by a pagan, you might turn to Jonathan Edwards' work, The End for Which God Created the World. He uses that word end, which means design or reason I'm doing something. The End for Which God Created the World, in order to see the highest expression of this idea. And one of the things he does at the beginning, page after page, painstakingly showing you the difference between what he calls an ultimate end, So I'm going to put a circle here on the right. Big circle. Ultimate end. The main reason I'm doing something. I'm going to put the person, the rational calculator, moving in a certain direction. That's pretty good. Pretty good motion right there. There we go. He's looking over there. But in order to get that end, he has certain subordinate ends. So I'm going to put SE for subordinate ends. And as they go to the right toward that ultimate end, they're going to get bigger and bigger. So for example, if I say, what did you do today? I said, I went to the store. And I say, why did you go to the store? Well, I went to the store to get some Bread and medicine. Why did you go to the store to get bread and medicine? To give it to my child. What do you think, I'm selfish? I do that for myself first. Why do you want to give that to your child? Because I want my child to be healthy. Why do you want your child to be healthy? Because, and so on, and so on, and so on, until you arrive at an end behind which there is no other. So an ultimate end is a reason that I do something for no other end greater than that. And what Aristotle came to the conclusion of, and Christians throughout the Middle Ages, and then finally Jonathan Edwards, is that every human being does what they do in order to be happy. Augustine said that if you asked anybody why they became a Christian, their answer would truly be, in order to be happy. And you see, even in the self-denial passages of Jesus, where he says if anybody does not take up his cross and deny himself, in John's Gospel, in chapter 12, we see a clarification. He says that if you love your life in this world, and then he flips it around, if you hate your life in this world, you will gain it for eternal life. So the Bible never treats self-denial as an end in itself. The ultimate end that everybody acts is in order to better themselves. to be happy, to be fulfilled as an individual. And if you're having in your mind right now some picture of Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and my goal in life is to self-actualize, that's not what we're talking about here. Because this can be defined by the self as an end in himself. That's not what we're talking about. You weren't made for yourself, you were made to be as happy as you possibly can be. Do you see the difference? If you don't know why you yourself can't make yourself ultimately happy, perhaps you don't know that you will die someday. That's one strike. Death tends to be a major strike against being your own highest satisfaction. Because in order to have a highest possible happiness, you'd have to live forever, and that pleasure would have to never be frustrated. Just a couple of examples. So, long story short, If you've ever listened to any Piper stuff and Christian hedonism, this is what we're talking about. Christian hedonism is just a small portion of what you could mean by egoism. So certain Christians, like Gordon Clark for example, have talked about a kind of Christian view of the self, pursuing and rationally calculating what is the highest possible good for me. And what we find out in the Christian worldview is it happens to be the same thing, it's the highest good for you. And you can't love other people unless you pursue that and commend that to other people. So, I'm operating on an assumption in this class, and one of the assumptions is that you've been persuaded of Christian hedonism. that you've listened to some of Piper's stuff, maybe you haven't read Jonathan Edwards, maybe you haven't read any of that stuff, but hopefully you see that in the Bible, that God, when he saves us, is actually appealing to our sense of and our desire to live forever and to experience a greater life by infinity than the life which is sick and dies now. Okay, so I'm assuming that up front, and I kind of have to. Well, one atheist in the 20th century that's becoming popular again, due to the libertarian movement and other such movements, is an atheistic philosopher named Ayn Rand. And she developed a philosophy called egoism. I shouldn't have erased that, because that was going to help make my point. Okay. Here's the ultimate ends, there's those subordinate ends, and so on. And here's, man is the rational calculator here. And she rightly understood that the collectivist idea in the modern world, now she blamed it on the wrong thing, but she rightly saw that Soviet Russia and Nazism and unfortunately America going in that direction, believes that what's good for other people is for me to drop dead and for you to get my stuff like a parasite or a vulture. Okay, that's the only other option you have. And that's why we have socialism and stuff like that, that ethic that is sometimes called altruism. which bills itself as selfless-ism. Now Rand emotionally flew off the reservation and blamed Christianity for this, when in fact it was a modern idea, but we'll get to that. But Rand, the atheist, agrees with Edwards at this point. He says, quote, without an ultimate goal, that's that biggest bubble over there, without an ultimate goal or end, there can be no lesser goals or means. A series of means going off into an infinite progression toward a non-existent end is an impossibility. What is she saying there? In other words, if I don't care about my child living to the fullest, I won't really care about him living or her living on right now, so I can, for example, preach the gospel to her. And if I don't care about that, then I won't care about their health. And if I don't care about their health, I won't go to get the medicine. And if I don't go to get the medicine, I won't go to the store for it, and so on and so on and so on and so forth. In other words, if you don't have an ultimate desire, this process never gets going. You say, wait a minute. Atheists, unbelievers, act all the time, that's true. They do seek for things that they can only find in God. But in sin, they're looking for all those things in all the wrong places. They will not come to God for those things. But they are acting, every single person is acting because they believe that these immediate actions will give them this ultimate end. whether it's simply the highest amount of pleasure in this lifetime, or escaping some thing that you fear, whatever it is, you're doing it ultimately to be happy. And what in you is doing that? Your reason. Your mind is considering, is being persuaded that one thing is the biggest thing, the most real thing, either the most enjoyable thing, or the most fearsome thing, and you have to avoid that to have joy. But unless there's a reason behind every other reason for each and every action that I engage in, the process of me doing something for my good will never begin. But all human beings do act according to what they perceive will deliver ultimate happiness. Now in Ren's egoism, She defines a whole lot of words in ways that are very, maybe offensive at first. Some of them, I think, are good in a provocative way. Others, I think we have to throw out altogether. But she defines love, for example, it's not helpful that this is the same color as all the things I put it down on. I can't see it. Even with my glasses, I can't see it. Anyway, she defines love as value, in other words, the highest value. Now, she's going to go back on this because she's an atheist. But at any rate, I think that's a good definition of love. Because, if you really care about the object of your love, you're going to want them to experience the greatest amount of joy, in other words, the greatest expression that they were made for. Okay? Now, the problem for an atheist is that an individual life determines this for themselves. Okay, so now what she's doing against socialism is pretty clear. I get to determine what is valuable. The state or the community or the collective or the community doesn't get to decide what is the most valuable end that I'm acting for. But what's the basic problem with having an individual living organism which is the best thing she could call them. What is the basic problem with having my life, that's all I'm going to say, just my life, as the ultimate standard of value? What about our lives? What about somebody else's? What if the highest value to me is wiping you out? You say, well, you can't do that. But according to what standard? According to what standard if you are that kind of an egoist? Here's the main definition that she redefines that is the reason we're bringing this up, and that is selfishness. She wrote a book, perhaps her most famous non-fiction book, called The Virtue of Selfishness. And selfishness... Now, you could say, well, let's smooth this out and call it self-ism. But that's not necessarily going to help either, because if that's the ultimate thing, then you have a finite self. In other words, someone less than God determining what will even give you the most pleasure, that's even a problem. But selfishness is defined as action for one's own end. Action for your own end. That's just an undeniable part of our psychology, action for your own end. First of all, the only one that can act is the self, and the only reason you act in every case is because you are persuaded that that particular thing will give you the most pleasure at that particular point. You believe that that is the best thing to do. So, if that's what you're going to mean by selfishness, well, I don't deny that there is no other action that's human, that's for your own end, but why call that selfishness? Well, no person can act but according to what you believe as true and beneficial. So that's absolutely inevitable. But selfishness has the connotation of acting for one's own and at the expense of someone else. In fact, most of the time when we hear that word, or we hear the word self, We simply assume that my own ends and your ends are in irreconcilable conflict. But is that the way God designed the world and put individual selves in it? God did that. And so he was under the impression that your highest possible happiness is not in conflict with somebody else's highest possible happiness. So is that God's idea? That my own end is at the expense of somebody else's? Or is that a product of the fall? So, I'm not for using words in a way that's a stumbling block for people, so I don't feel compelled to use that word that she uses. Let's just use this other word, egoism, if you want to. And even that, I don't like using any isms that are short of Christianity, because an ism has the connotation that that's the basic lens, the basic lens through which you see everything else. But let's just do a little bit of comparison here. I have two pictures which I wish I did have time to make student notes for, but I haven't given you these pictures, but I'll put them on the board. And as I said, if we have to do two weeks on this week too, that's fine. We'll just make it a 10-week class. I'm fine with that. So in one picture, this is more the design. You have the self, the ego, looking upward. Trust me, he's looking upward. He's pointing upward. Yeah, there you go. He's holding a sign that says, up there. And he is a self. He is ego. And he is pursuing his highest possible joy. Now, let's call this infinite egoism. Now, I'm going to scrap the word egoism in a second, but I'm just trying to get us to not blame the wrong thing at first. Okay, so he's going to pursue God. Now, the people around him, what do they see when he is pursuing his highest possible satisfaction? What do they see? Well, you know, obviously if they're a sinner and they're a rebel against God, they may see a raving lunatic. But what should they see? What does this, when you praise something as more satisfying than all other things, what receives the glory? The thing you're praising. You're drawing attention to that thing outside of yourself. So infinite egoism I would define as the self pursuing the highest glory. So let's put an arrow, highest conceivable glory, the highest glory he can conceive of. Okay, now again you say, but what if the highest glory somebody perceives is some form of debauchery? Well, the problem there is not the pursuit of the highest glory, the problem there is irrationality. He's wrong about what is ultimately satisfying. Well, over here, let's call this finite egoism. And Ayn Rand's biggest problem is that she was a finite egoist. She let the life form that's going to die sometime in the next 70 years, define what the highest glory is, so how did I define that? Oh, defining glory down to the self. The problem is always defining Glory down. Selfless, what did he say? I forget. Self-sacrifice. The idea that self-sacrifice is a higher virtue in the Christian faith and something other than love, or the same thing as love, is an idea that's not Christian. That idea comes from Stoicism in the ancient world and Kant in the modern world. And Lewis goes on to talk about how the fact Jesus, when he appeals to us, he appeals to our sense of happiness. So self-sacrifice is never an end in itself. And so the problem that God has with us is not that our desires are too strong, it's that they're too weak. And he says, we go on fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to us like an ignorant child who goes on making mud pies in the slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased. So that last part of that quote, I remember. But here, you have a block here. You have defining glory down. And when that's happening, what do people see when you're talking about whatever it is, whether it's reason or pleasure or things, what do people see? They see you. And they either like what they see, and you have an idol there, or they find you to be an arrogant jerk, but either way, what they see is you. In other words, they see the ego, and the ego is not a clear lens through which they see the value of God. What does that have to do with love and hatred? Well, if everybody else was made for the same reason you were, namely, to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, then it becomes all-important what people see when they see the ego. In fact, you can't even define love and hatred without getting this right first. The physical harm, maybe, that you're thinking of, that's the first thing you think of when you think of an act of hatred, that is a symptom and may very well lead you astray, may make you think that you never hit somebody in the face for love. No, actually, there's a lot of times when you want to hit somebody a good beating in the name of love. Okay? And it doesn't take your imagination too long to see what some of those things are. But that's why we're doing this up front. Let's get to the Puritan doctrine of sin. That's right, right? Yeah, that's the right clock. Okay. Let's get to this second point, and we're laying some groundwork here. The Puritan doctrine of sin. Trust me, this will become practical as we go on. Secondly, the Puritan doctrine of sin, and it's one of its symptoms and a huge one, enmity. So what's going to be true about sin, and the Puritans are right about this, it's biblical, I'll show you, is going to be true about enmity or hatred. So this is just a species of this genus called sin. And one Puritan in particular, a guy named Anthony Burgess, wrote a book defining Puritan work on the subject called Original Sin in 1658. And his contribution was to list out three types of sin that he called original, actual and habitual. And these words mean just what you would think they mean. So let's take a soul. Let's take a person. This person is in the fall. It is a fallen soul. It is one who has inherited sin from Adam. And so what's this? This is original sin. Namely, that inherent sin. Sin in here. My sin nature that I derive from being a product off of the Adam assembly line. Now, what does an assembly line produce? So, for example, if you are a sin factory, what do you tend to produce? Sin. And so, off the assembly line comes actual sins. And these are the things that you think of when you think of sins. Now, what do I mean by habitual sin? Well, here I mean a hardening. A hardening. around that. So that's my diagram. I'll stay with us wherever we go. And what's true about sin is going to be true about enmity. So original sin is that inherited from Adam, and therefore inherent. Actual sin is that evil acted upon by each person in all of life. Now, by the way, it's not that Original Sin is not actual, in the sense of being factual or real, and it's not by actual, we mean the qualities of the real thing in act, and brought about by... So, this is, this is something, don't try to get away with this, this is something everybody does, and this is real, so I don't mean, so actual, I just mean actualized here, okay? But everybody has this, and it's real, okay? So just clarify what we mean by these terms. and then outward it flows to others. A couple of authors who wrote a book called Puritan Theology wrote about habitual sins. They say, habitual sins are those frequent sins committed by men and women and these, writes Burgess, indeed must be confessed to be indwelling and fixed sins in us. And these habits of sin do much intensify and strengthen our original corruption. So this, when I say hardening, I mean intensifying or growing exponentially. In other words, when I sin in this way, and it's an indwelling sin, it's a habit, I learn to love it more, and my reason is immediately enlisted to come up with reasons, self-justifications why it's the right thing to do, and so on, and so on, and so on, and so on, and so on, fast. Okay? So that's what we mean by habitual. It's an active thing. Now, hatred of man must follow hatred of God. Why is that, from what we saw last week? If man was made in the image of God, and if I hate God, what will I think of man? See, man is made in the image of God. As God becomes the object of the sinner's hatred, it is still true that the one thing in all creation that most reminds the sinner of God is what? His fellow man. Therefore, when the psalmist described the totally depraved state of humankind in Psalm 14, he included in verse 4, that they eat up my people as they eat bread. Now, the Puritans help us make one more distinction that's going to help chart our course at the beginning, and that's the difference between the relationship of sin to the unregenerate and the relationship of sin to the regenerate. Today, we have some more language than the Puritans did back in those days, and so we could summarize their doctrine like this. They had a word that we don't have anymore. Well, we still have it. You can look it up, but we don't tend to use it. In fact, I'm going to struggle to spell it. Concupiscence! What does that mean? With Cupid and his knowledge? What is that? What is concupiscence? Well, not quite. Here's what the word means. It is defined as covetous lust or desire for things forbidden. So, God has a way for you to live, a design. You want something else. So, think of Adam and Eve in the garden. What was the nature of the lie? It was essentially this thing called concupiscence. We could say it this way today. Concupiscence is the DNA of all sin. The DNA of all sin. That's going to become crucial in what hatred is. Now, where does this come from? Does it come from the mind? Does it come from the affections? Does it come from the will? I would say it comes from all. Now, if you say it comes from the heart, You've got it difficult. It is true that the Scriptures teach that this comes from the heart. Keep your heart with all vigilance, Proverbs 4.23, for from it flows the springs of life. So, where does life, whether it's pure or polluted, come from? It comes from the heart, according to Proverbs 4.23. And Jesus said in Mark 7.21 and 23, from within, out of the heart of man, comes evil thoughts. All these evil things come from within. and they defile a person. But if you say that sin and therefore hatred comes from the heart, you have to know that when the Hebrews said heart, they meant the totality of man's inner being. In other words, the whole of his intellectual soul. They didn't divide it up like a pizza pie like we do. They recognized it as a totality, all of which were supposed to be united. So the psalmist says in Psalm 8611, unite my heart to fear your name. In other words, make my thinking and my feeling and my doing all with one voice say that you are God. The Puritans said about this that it is not the physical organ, but of the mind. Understanding, will, conscience, that is, all the parts are faculties of the inner man. And all of these were submerged in the sin of our first parents. Another Puritan, Edward Reynolds, wrote that it is as natural for the heart to lust as it is for the eye to see. Now, the unregenerate person is prone to all kinds of sin. And what prevents this person or that person from those kind of respectable sins that are actually committed, and sees, oh, that guy's pretty much a moral person, at least by comparison, the only thing that stops him from being Hitler are nothing but context, time, circumstance, animal fears, bodily constitution. Without those things being shuffled in a particular deck by God's providence, by His grace for particular people, we all, as Paul said, pass our days in malice and envy and would hate ourselves and each other. Now what's going to round out this introduction, this early material to our study, is that we're studying the root of enmity as Christians. So we're leaving behind, in a sense, the way that sin relates to the unregenerate, and we're going to bring this in. We want to know the relationship of sin and hatred to the regenerate heart. Why? Do we beat each other up? No. Because we want to know if we have a fighting chance against it, and how to go about that fight. Romans 7 becomes a lynchpin text in the Puritan treatment of sin in the regenerate. You know Romans 7, right? Where Paul's having, I call it, that spirit-inspired panic attack. But he's doing introspection. He's not exaggerating, and he's not talking about a pre-conversion experience. He's talking about him loving the law, yet, and there's this struggle. Well, John Owen warns professing Christians about sin in general, and take this warning to yourself. this warning that, quote, they that find not its power are under its dominion. In other words, if you don't find that Paul is right in Romans 7, if you don't find that Paul in Romans 7 is actually describing your own struggle, it means that either you've already been defeated as a Christian, or else you're not a Christian at all. You're not born again. And what is true about indwelling sin is true about its wretched handmaiden enmity. or hatred. So just like Paul says, there's a law of sin that I find. I want to obey God's law. In other words here, I want to love, but I find that there is this law, in this case, a principle of hatred, living like a dangerous companion in the soul. And Owen says that it is a living coal that must not be disregarded or it may consume a person. Now the good news is, for a Christian, is that Romans 7 is conveniently placed right in between, sandwiched between Romans 6 and Romans 8, where Paul does not merely command the death of indwelling sin, but he shows us how it is a vanquished dragon. Though it still coughs up fire until the day that we die, we see how we put to death the deeds of the body, including hatred. And this class is going to be about putting out those fires of hatred. And of course, a good fireman who does not know where the fire is, nor which equipment to use if he got there, is a contradiction in terms. And so if we're going to be good hatred killers, we have to know where it is, and we have to know what equipment to use once we get there. Alright, now let's take these last three things, now we're going to apply this doctrine, this progression, to enmity. And we're going to see what, just briefly define what we mean by original enmity, actual enmity, and habitual enmity, so we can, just so we can see it in motion, in slow-mo. And then we'll open it up to questions. What is hatred most basically? Now consider that the essence of hatred is not anger, it's not strife, it's not bitterness, it's not envy. Those are all symptoms. Those are all effects of a more primal, rotten sense, a more original spite. We have to understand that the human soul is a unity, as we've said, mind, affections, and will. And in the fall, each faculty of the soul that was designed to glorify God love other people, how by enjoying God to infinity, and that'll be what people see, that faculty of the soul has been darkened in their understanding, Ephesians 4.18, so that reason has been enlisted in the service of sin. Fallen reason must perceive the lie as an object of truth. Fallen reason must perceive the curse that God punishes us with as an object of injustice. so that there is an original hatred to the God whose image we will actualize in all our bitterness toward. There's an original hatred of God that issues forth and explains all of our hatred toward others. So let me define our terms. Original enmity. Here's my definition. Original enmity. Let's put O-E. Gotta go quick. The rebel's hatred of the image because of what it says about God. And that's important. The word because is important there. Because of what it says about God. So remember our ethical maxim, the positive of this. We do what we do. Everything is what it is because of what it says about God. Well, guess what? When we recoil against that in the fall, Original enmity, in other words the fountainhead of all enmity, is our hatred of the image because of what it says about God. So that when we see a human soul behaving properly, when we see a human soul in its essence, what it was meant to be, moving from the invisible to the visible, we recoil in contempt. Flesh doesn't bother us. Somebody doing something for temporal gain doesn't really excite us badly too much. Appetite won't bother us. Animals have all those. So it's neutral. We're okay with that. But show me a sustained line of reasoning. Show me an action that is designed to last, for permanence. Show me somebody thinking about something that has eternal consequences, and when we see that, we think about God and we hate it. And we hate the person for doing it. Herman Melville's American fiction classic, Moby Dick, gives us a famous picture of the finalized state of hatred. And many literary critics have been persuaded that Melville positions Captain Ahab as Adam and his race. And perhaps maybe even modern man chasing down that whale. And the white whale represents what? God. And if you've never read Moby Dick, maybe you've seen Star Trek 2, The Wrath of Khan. Anybody? Do you remember? Do you remember when Khan was dying, when he quoted that line from Captain Ahab at Captain Kirk? Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale. To the last I grapple with thee. From hell's heart I stab at thee. For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee. Sounds like a charming guy, right? But actually, That's the picture of us all, apart from Christ. Hatred will destroy us, but not ultimately because of some Pollyanna opposite where love is perfectly natural and what we'd all be doing if some divisive guy didn't show up. Captain Ahab is no generic man here, as in some other man, some other guy. But he's rather all flesh, so that Paul can say in Romans 8, 7 that the mind that is set on the flesh is enmity toward God. The mind of the Son of the flesh is hatred. It doesn't just hate God. It is hatred towards God, apart from Christ, and we still have that sin nature in us. We have another principle now, the Spirit, giving us the fruit of the Spirit. But our nature is defined by hatred toward God. We have a covenant with hatred. that seeks to reverse God's covenant at the beginning, where He enjoins us to revere life and to protect life. Why, in Genesis 9, 6, why must a group of men stop somebody, even by force, even by death? Someone who attacks another man because, Genesis 9, 6, man was made in the image of God. We attack it, even in our hearts, for the very same reason that God forbids it, because of what it says about God. I have some stuff in here about aren't there right times to hate, and there's parts in the Psalms that David seems to suggest that, and it has some qualifications. I'll be happy to go into that afterwards in the question and answer time if you want. But here's the point in this first point. This despising of the image of God is a despising of the essence of God. You would not despise the image of God unless what it reminded you of made you sick. And this despising of God is therefore a despising of infinite glory, and therefore a despising of infinite joy. Remember what we just said about the process of subordinate ends never getting started unless you have a sufficient chief end. What this means is that if we now hate the ultimate object of glory and joy, we hate the true ultimate end, well then it is going to follow that we must hate any lesser, loving means toward that object. If I hate God, I will hate all of the things that will get you to God. If I see people doing the kind of things that remind me of getting to God, I will, and I will come up with really cool reasons for not doing that thing. Oh, you're just so puritanical. Or, oh, we're just playing a video game here. But it is motivated by hatred. of the ultimate object of joy. Well, if that's the case, what do we get when we have actual enmity? A. I've got to go quick. Actual enmity is the hater's selfish motive in any action that denies to an image of God the sight of their chief end. So, it is the hater's selfish Motive so we have an actual motive every time so I wasn't thinking about it wrong Genesis 6 5 says that he looked down from heaven and saw that all the thoughts and intentions of their heart were only evil all the time and the word for intentional in the Hebrews used one other time in the Bible in Jeremiah about the moist bubbling up of the clay that is your subconscious even your dreams are hating God in God's sight The hater's selfish motive in any action... So it sounds like we should just be talking about theology and worshiping all the time, Matt. Bingo! I do not apologize. Correct. Yes. Or you are motivated by hate. You are hating the people around you when you're blocking them from their sight of their highest joy. The hater's selfish motive in any action that Denies to an image of God, any image of God. What about a young image of God? They're just not ready. They'll get to that once they have some fun yet. Are they an image of God or not? Might they die tomorrow? Oh, you hadn't think about that yet. Denies to an image of God the sight of their chief end. Chief end, ultimate end, synonyms, just remember that. Why does this work? Well, if the soul of myself or another, any soul, is made to glorify God by enjoying Him forever, enjoying Him to the fullest, then I hate the soul, and therefore I hate God, either by omission or commission. So remember, sin is either a sin of omission, I fail to do what God requires, or it's a sin of commission, I do what He forbids. So if you're familiar with that breakdown, you'll see the same thing about hatred. By omitting the love of the greatest glory that should be commended to you. I actualize enmity by neglecting the soul, by starving the soul, by obscuring from the soul that greater glory which the soul needs for food. So, not loving one's wife, not respecting one's husband, or not teaching or not disciplining one's child are just three examples of not-relationships of omission. But the principal way of destroying the soul, even in these cases, is by negation of that eternal food most necessary for its infinite existence. Now, the opposite of omission is commission. That's where I do what God forbids. And it'd be easy to make the external harm of another person the essence of hatred. But this is to treat the person as a body-to-soul, or a just-body kind of being. That's naturalism. If you define hatred that way, you're actually defining the soul down to atheism, and you'll wind up doing more harm. you'll wind up treating them like an animal, or an animal first and then a soul. Now, in both omitting glory and committing harm, there is selfish intent. Now, finite egoism would be the ethic pursued in those cases. Paul used the words to Titus, malice and envy. Now, if we're short on examples here, it's only because this entire course is going to be filled with examples. a tour into actual enmity for seven more weeks. But let's just put a little bit of flesh on it with one example at the beginning. The example of murder. In the Bible there's a distinction between murder and killing and there's a distinction between murder of the heart and then the actual physical spilling of blood that you might be thinking about. First of all, there's a different Hebrew word for murder. and the general taking of life, because God is commanding the armies of Israel to frequently take life. But scripture also makes an internal, objective enmity of the heart, the difference in the guilt of the crime of murder. So in Numbers chapter 35, God sets up a city for people who have killed without murder. So he's treating them as a potential murderer, but he's teaching them to make a distinction. Numbers 35 through 24 says, if he pushed him out of hatred, or hurled something at him, lying in wait so that he died, or in enmity struck him down with his hand so that he died, then he who struck the blow shall be put to death. He is a murderer. the Avenger of Blood shall put the murderer to death when he meets him. But if he pushed him suddenly without enmity, or hurled anything on him without lying in wait, or used a stone that could cause death, and without seeing him dropped it on him so that he died, though he was not his enemy and did not seek his harm, then the congregation shall judge between the Manslayer and the Avenger of Blood in accordance with these rules." Were these rules arbitrary, or was there not something behind it saying that murder is first and foremost something of the heart? Now, we see this with Jesus in Matthew 5, 21-22. Jesus said, you've heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not murder. And whoever murders will be liable to judgment. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council. And whoever says, you fool, will be liable to the hell of fire. Now, let's be honest. How many of us in here are guilty of that on a daily basis? It's a good thing that Jesus paid for our sins, because those sins deserve hellfire. Finally, lastly, habitual enmity is the hater's hardening motion as he or she grows in glory-denying hatred. So it's not just the hardening that stays still. He is learning to be good. He is willingly, lovingly, lapping it up in the school of demons to say, teach me to not just hate more, but teach me the right arguments to use to myself and others to justify this hatred of others. So, habitual enmity is the hater's hardening motion. The hater's hardening motion as he or she grows grows, matures, gets better at glory denying hatred. Remember, we want to keep the essence of it before our mind. Let me give you a biblical example for this, rather than go through my whole section. But here's the point, as you read this verse, and this verse comes from 2 Samuel 13, 15, our hatred grows exponentially in proportion to the clarity of the conviction in it. In other words, what do I mean by this? I mean that once we've hated somebody, the very thought of the person that we hate, and the very thought of our last move with that person, often the very sight of them, stirs up hatred to an even deeper fire, which is why we react the way and we start justifying ourselves when we leave a confrontation. So Amnon, who had violated his sister in 2 Samuel 13, 15, it says at the end, then Amnon hated her with a very great hatred, so that the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the love with which he had loved her. Now, of course, there's quotes there in Scripture sarcastic. He didn't really love her, but even that passion was you know, dwarfed with comparison to this hatred, and Anon said to her, get up, go. In other words, nobody said a word to him, if you read the account. Nobody said a word to him yet. He knew what he did was wrong, he was convicted, and the sight of her made him sick to his stomach and as if a demon had become him. And he hated her even more. The more we think in hatred about all that which was the occasion for our hatred, the more we turn inward to justify it and so fan its flames. And perhaps we've not outwardly harmed somebody else like that. any justification for such an action, but perhaps it is a kind of irrational contempt for another person, who simply reminds us of something loathsome in ourselves, or of something frightening about somebody else in our past, or annoying about somebody in our past. It's simply easier to feed the distorted image and maintain a safe distance by a kind of internal secret character assassination. So we exaggerate their quirks, We read into their words and their actions as having villainous intent. Last point here, this is a funny example of this. The psychological community, always wanting to lend a helping hand to our sin, has now discovered a disease called misophonia. Have you ever heard of that? Misophonia. And it's not misophony. Miso is in the Greek, it's hatred, and phonia, phonia, phon, hearing. So it's literally, literally, it'd be a hatred of sound. and say, oh, it's an audio thing. Go on Wikipedia. They'll say, oh, it's an audio thing. It stimulates the drum and the scientific, oh, look at me, scientific terms. And then when they get around the listing, all the things they mean by it, this is a direct quote. I think what you're going to find is that when they're described, it is always only the sounds or personal quirks of the people closest to us that drive the sufferer into an irritated fit. So, quote, clipping their nails, brushing teeth, eating crushed ice, eating, breathing, sniffing, talking, sneezing, yawning, walking, chewing gum, laughing, snoring, typing on a keyboard, whistling or coughing, certain consonants or repetitive sounds. Some are also affected by visual stimuli, such as the repetitive foot or body movements, fidgeting or movements they observe out of the corner of their eyes. I've got a hunch that that is not a medical condition at all. I think you hate the people who most remind you of God because they are closest to you. And I'm telling you, everybody, if they're honest, knows that. All right, I have a couple of other things to close, but I'm going to close it with that because we need time for questions if there's going to be five minutes of questions. I know that you're painting a big picture of hatred, but I was wondering if there was a, and you may have done that last week, I missed it, but you know, like you said, hatred of man must follow hatred of God. What do you mean by hatred? Do you mean the actual, you know, as Jesus was pointing out, I realize he was making a point of wanting that person dead, or do you just mean you're wanting their demise? I think so. I think it's wanting their demise. If they could go off to a secluded island somewhere in some far corner of the universe and not die, they'd probably be okay with me. But even there, is that not hatred? I don't want to chop their head off, just make them go away so I never have to think about them again. Well, that's still hatred. That's kind of a cheap hatred. The only reason we say that is so that we don't feel guilty for the actual execution. Well, I think that people would not define it that way. What we're talking about, I don't think they would define it as hatred. But I think it's because they don't want to consider themselves murderers. Right. And remember, Jesus said, if anybody even said, and in one of the Gospels, he uses the word raka. It's this Aramaic word that means, essentially, you're done, you're going to hell, you're worthless. He uses the word worthless in Matthew's gospel. It's that kind of judgment he warns against in Matthew 7. And we do that, and that, if hell is real, and if life is as short as it is, that's one of those statements that we'll never be able to finish, we'll never be able to do justice to the end of that sentence until Judgment Day, but still, if that's true, then consider how much we loathe other people, including ourselves, by not carrying that through. Did Eve have this concupiscence in her heart? Did she want to forbid an apple? Did she have that before she actually took the apple? Was that the sin? Did the sin come from abortion, for example? Absolutely, it has to. Was he designed by God to be a sinner? Nope. And now we're getting into heavy stuff about Calvinism and Providence, but no, only Calvinism can answer this question. And that's another problem. Unbelievers know this problem exists. They know that there has to be an origin of evil. And that every effect, and if evil is not God, then evil has to be an effect. And so if evil is an effect, and every effect has a cause, then evil has a cause. And if we say, well, it was just Adam's free will, that doesn't really answer the question. So the shoe's on the other foot. The question is now, the answer to it is the child's version I give to everybody is this. I say, where'd the light go? Or where did I get all that darkness from? Did I have a pocket of darkness that I just unleashed into the room? Or did light go away? And it's going to be the same thing here. Come to the Augustine classes on Wednesday morning. Nobody drew this out better than him. Evil, Romans 8.20. The creation itself was subject to futility not by its own will, but by him who subjected it in hope. Evil is the deprivation of good. It has no being on its own. God can let go, he's morally able, and he's metaphysically able to let go what he creates, and it disintegrates, it returns to its nature, nothingness. And so Eve was created perfectly good, God let them go, and they returned to their own nature, seeing darkness, loving darkness, and that's where that concupiscence comes in. But that's the answer, and there's no other answer beside it. And if you give me an hour or two, I will convince you that so much that you'll be singing it in your sleep. And you'll realize that no other idea has been explained so much until you thought. The light going off is just sort of a picture we use in the middle of it that kind of explains it. Because if you don't believe that, you don't believe in God. That's important. If you don't believe that, you don't believe in God. You've been calling God sort of a vapor or a feeling or something like that. But if you believe that something coexists with God, that's Mormonism, that's pluralism, that's a pantheon of gods. But unless you believe that God is the ultimate thing, and that all other things... You see, we want to get God off the hook. Oh, God's not the author of evil. Question where do you see that phrase in scripture? And when did you hear that God wanted you to get him off the hook for that? Isaiah 45 7 says I create light and darkness well-being calamity. I the Lord do all these things God ordained evil every square inch of it. He did not commit any evil. He ordained sin sinlessly by creating things good and letting some of those things go and the question at that point is Well, why would he good question, but that's a different question. I That he did that is undeniable. Okay, real quick. So if they're good and he lets them go, why do they intend to go towards evil? Because they're created ex nihilo, and that's an expression that means out of nothing. God spoke everything into existence. So if I ask you, what is the nature of any created thing? The first answer has to be nothingness. We are created out of nothing, and therefore if God lets us go to our own nature, where do we go? To nothing, to nothingness. So we lose being. So evil is half to nothingness. Yeah, evil, yeah, you could say it that way. There's a lot of ways that you can define evil, but metaphysically, evil is simply the absence of good, or that which opposes being.