Great Doctrines of the Bible—God the Father, God the Son/ Martyn Lloyd Jones

14. The Creation of Man 

First of all, Lloyd Jones talks about the uniqueness of the creation of man.

a). In Genesis 1:26, “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’” It is quite clear that “the three Persons of the blessed Trinity held counsel together before man was created” (154). Besides, “there was a kind of pause” between the creation of other things and man (154).
b). When God created man, there is no such phrase “after their kind” (154).
c). God created man in a very peculiar and distinct way: “then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature” (Genesis 2:7); that is to say, “there is a distinction between the body and the spirit, the material and the immaterial parts” (154).
d). Man “was made Lord over the whole of creation, over all nature, over all creatures, and all the beasts” (155).

With regard to the theory of evolution, Lloyd Jones, here puts forward several propositions to refute it. First, the Bible pauses before the creation of man, and this shows that God did a unique thing. Second, Man is essentially different from all animals: “He has self-consciousness; he has moral freedom; he clearly is capable of abstract thought; and he is capable of religion and worship.” (155-156). Then, man started in top and then fell from that; this differs from the theory of evolution—“it is always an upward process” (156). In addition, “the human race is one” (157). (See Romans 5 & 1 Corinthians 15: 21-22).

There is evidence outside the Bible: a). “the human race is but one species”; b). the likeness of humans from different places; c). the common traditions; d). languages of a common source; e). man of the same psychology (158-159).

With regard to “the constitutional nature of man” (159), there are two main theories:
a). Dichotomy: “man as body and soul” (159).
b). Trichotomy: “that man has a body which is material, a soul, which is the principle of animal life, and a spirit which is the God-related, rational and immortal element” (159).

Lloyd Jones cannot decide which of the two groups he belongs to, but he affirms that the Scripture does draw a distinction between spirit and soul. For him, “man has spirit but is a soul,” and soul is about “the whole personality” (161). (See Geneses 12:5; 46:26).

Then, there is one difficulty: “What is the origin of the soul in each individual?” (162).
a). The first idea is “the pre-existence of the soul” (162), but there is no evidence to prove the truthfulness of it.
b). Then, the second idea is Traducianism: here, “the soul seems to be regarded as something material” (163). There is a grave difficulty: it is about “the person of our Lord if he derived His soul from man” (163).
c). The third idea is Creationism: “each individual soul is the immediate creation of God and that we do not get our souls from our parents” (163). There is a difficulty: “where does its tendency towards sin and evil come from?” (164).

Finally Lloyd Jones wants us to face this kind of problem with humility and with reverence and godly fear since we cannot have absolute understanding of it. It is certain that God didn’t create a sinful soul, and it is also certain that human depravity is inherited; besides, the human nature of Lord Jesus was not sinful.