We have seen in the foregoing message that the believers’ life is in three stages: God’s creation, the fall, and God’s salvation. The same is true of the believers’ nature. Therefore, in this message we shall consider the believers’ nature in God’s creation, in the fall, and in God’s salvation.
In God’s creation we have a human nature. Acts 17:26a says, “He made from one every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth.” The “one” here is Adam. God made from Adam every nation of men to dwell on the face of the earth.
In Acts 17:28 Paul goes on to say, “In Him we live and move and are, as even some poets among you have said, For we also are His offspring.” This indicates that man’s life and existence and even his actions are of God. This does not mean that in creation man has God’s life and nature and lives, exists, and acts in God as do the regenerated believers in Christ, who are born of God, possess His life and nature, and live, exist, and act in God’s person. Rather, this verse is saying that all human beings live, move, and exist in God.
According to the poets referred to in Acts 17:28, we are God’s offspring. Mankind is God’s offspring just as Adam was supposed to be the son of God (Luke 3:38). To say that Adam was a son of God does not mean that he was born of God and possessed the life and nature of God. Adam was created by God (Gen. 5:1-2), and God was his origin. Based upon this, he was supposed to be the son of God, even as the heathen poets considered all mankind to be the offspring of God. They were only created by God, not regenerated of Him. This is absolutely and intrinsically different from the believers in Christ being the sons of God. The believers have been born of God to have God’s life and nature (John 1:12-13; 3:16; 2 Pet. 1:4). Because God is the Creator, the source of all men, He is the Father of them all (Mal. 2:10) in a natural sense, not in the spiritual sense as He is the Father of all the believers (Gal. 4:6), who are regenerated by Him in their spirit (1 Pet. 1:3; John 3:5-6).
All human beings have been produced by God through creation and have a human life and nature. To be produced by God is one thing, and to be born of God is another thing. All human beings are the offspring of God in the sense of being produced by God. But the believers are sons of God in the sense of having been born of Him. There is no indication in the Bible that the offspring of God, the human beings produced by God, have the divine nature. But the New Testament reveals that the believers, who have been born of God, are partakers of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4). Therefore, we must differentiate between the offspring of God and the sons of God. All human beings are the offspring of God produced by Him, but the believers are the sons of God born of Him through regeneration. Whereas the believers in Christ have the divine life and nature through regeneration, mankind in general has only a human life and a human nature through God’s creation.
The human nature created by God is a pure nature without any mixture. In the sight of God, the man created by Him was “very good” (Gen. 1:31) and “upright” (Eccl. 7:29). Therefore, the created nature of man was originally good and upright.
In Romans 7:21 Paul speaks of his “willing to do the good.” This desire to do the good is related to the law of the mind (Rom. 7:23), which gives us this desire and therefore may be called the law of good in our mind. The law of good in the mind is derived from the good created life, which was obtained at the time of creation. This explains why, even before we were saved, there was in our mind a natural inclination to do good, to honor our parents, to be kind to others, and to improve ourselves. This indicates that in God’s creation there is in man’s soul an element of goodness, an element that naturally belongs to our good created nature. This nature was created by God pure, and thus it was not mixed with anything evil.