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Catalog ID-Short Title	Bibtex:	Date	Series:	Importance	Status
LTWM009 - NaturalMan	Ankenman-Identity » more…	1977–07–01	Ankenman Mansfield Series Lectures » more…	» more…	ok

The Natural Man

“In one verse Paul wrote more truth than all the many theoretical psychology books I’ve read. It’s a clear, foundational understanding. Everyone here should understand it, because everyone’s been a natural man at one time or another.”

See Rom. 1:18f

“they knew God…neither were thankful…became vain…gave them up unto uncleanness…”

1. This is what everyone has undergone on an individual level
   1. As Paul traveled in Greece, he pointed out we have a general relationship with God. And our reaction is, “God wouldn’t be God if he didn’t love people…and I sure do deserve it!”
   2. “Not being thankful…heart darkened” Their attitude is, “God cares for me and I deserve it!” This is the source of the thin love of man: failure to be thankful.

See 1 Cor. 4:7

1. “I’m a self-made man!” someone may say
   1. Yes, but within a framework of a loving God and others who’ve given to you so many privileges. No man lives unto himself! When we fail to be thankful, we’ve fallen into the natural/Adamic man, and we end up doing not only what’s sinful and harmful to ourselves, but we rejoice in it! [and pull others into the same…] We kick up our heels & have fun doing unthankful acts!
   2. If you take a look at your life, you would answer Paul’s question with, “Not one thing!”
2. Our first awareness of our emotional life comes from parents.
   1. We react in the very same way in relation to our parents: “Daddy / mommy love me, and I sure do deserve it!”
      1. If we don’t grown from this infantile , sinful, love-taking reaction, we still feel this way: “I deserve somethin!”
3. Classical example of a hard-workin man… (at 12:00)
   1. Loves his wife / children…but every other Fri night takes some {$} and goes gambling.. uses some of the “grocery $$” and loses that which he should’ve been setting aside to provide for his family because deep down inside he feels “I deserve to win!” He doesn’t think, “If I win, I’m taking from somebody else…”
   2. Every soul who has emotional problems, every soul that feels hurt, every soul that’s nervous Every soul that has insanity every soul that has an emotional illness that tears the body apart eventually comes down to “I deserve to have something, and they aren’t giving it to me!” That’s the natural reaction…
   3. It’s the little boy who says, “Mommy, I want an ice cream cone,” and she says, “Well you can’t have it,” and he kicks her and says, “I deserve it Mommy! You have to give it to me! If you don’t love me Mommy, you’re not a good parent!”
      1. Or, “If you don’t love me God, you’re not a good God! You’ve got to love me by my needs! I deserve it!”
   4. Paul has laid forth the most powerful verse understanding all the human misery of mankind: that simple tie between the unthankfulness of man and the horrible sinfulness of man. I don’t know if you appreciate how horrible mankind is. You can read about it, but once you’ve seen it…
4. Take A 15 year old who’s just finished stabbing his father.
   1. As I weave through his terrible emotional upheaval, and the family comes to tell me this & that story, I saw a picture of everyone sitting on the edge of a volcano ready to demand for whatever they need. No love. No giving. All demanding. Then murder of one’s own father begins to make sense—in a really perverted way.”
   2. You say, “But I’m not like that!” No—you’re not like that totally. You have that evil in your heart that says if you’re not getting it you’re goin to do something about it.”

Often our “doing something” is anger.

1. Anger is what the devil uses to substitute our emotional need for love.
   1. Psychology says, “Express your anger! Show what you feel, then you’ll be all right.” Why? Because you’ll feel better, since you relieved yourself of the [secondary] problems connected to the repression. You won’t actually have any better love ties.
      1. You’ll never see a policeman say, “Let your anger out!” That’s because he has to go to the local bar on Fri nights and break up all the fights. And that’s what he sees: 20 people hanging around there all letting their anger hang out. His cry is, “Supress it! Supress it! You don’t have a right to be angry!”
2. No anger rights!
   1. You don’t have a right to be angry externally, and you don’t have a right to be angry internally. You have the right to feel thankful about the good you’ve received, and the command—really, the privilege—of forgiving what you received that wasn’t so good.
   2. Until you move on from being simply a love-taker and move into the area of being a giver, you have to way of doing this.

The Mature Man

1. Can be either a Christian or non-Christian.
   1. You’ll talk to bitter Christians who’ll say “sometimes my non-Christian friends treat me better than the Christian ones. They won’t talk about me, etc…” They’re confusing the maturity that some people can have in relationship to life and comparing it to the immaturity of people who may be Christians (or carnal Christians).
      1. You’ll notice I’ve not planned on saying anything about carnal Christianity. It doesn’t plan for it. It may talk about it, but not plan for it. That’s because Christians are not to be immature. They’re to be constantly maturing. When I deal with Christians with problems, what I do is throw out the fact that they’re a Christian and start dealing with that Old Man down there.