Theological term
Anthropopathism
23 sermons · All terms
The Psalmist's Description of Depravity
Psalm 14 furnishes a comprehensive doctrine of total depravity, showing that man's rejection of God is not merely intellectual but ethical — a practical atheism that issues in universal corruption and abominable works. The psalmist's two-part structure moves from the description of the ungodly (vv. 1–3) to the deliverance of the godly (vv. 4–7), with Paul amplifying the same argument in Romans 1–3 by citing and structurally imitating the psalm. The only remedy for the corruption of the heart is not behavioral modification but the righteousness of Christ received through faith — the salvation that comes out of Zion — which gives believers both ground for evangelism and comfort in a sin-cursed world.
CTF 2025 - Session 8 – Q&A Panel
A Q&A panel from a theology conference on the doctrine of God addresses questions arising from the preceding lectures on classical theism. Three theologians field questions on divine impassibility (including whether God can be grieved), the eternal decree and the covenant of redemption, divine aseity and the Son's relationship to the Father, the nature of time in the eternal state, the role of philosophy and natural theology in arriving at the classical doctrine of God, and whether genuine evil exists within God's sovereign economy. The discussion throughout presses for formulations of doctrine that protect divine simplicity, immutability, and impassibility while preserving the integrity of biblical language and confessional categories.
The Ministry in Lystra
Acts 14:8–18 presents Paul and Barnabas in Lystra, where the healing of a man crippled from birth provokes the surrounding pagans to identify the apostles as Zeus and Hermes come in human form. Paul's corrective address to the Lystrans teaches the non-divinity of creatures and, by implication, the sharp ontological distinction between the living God and all that he has made. The study moves from the healing account into a substantial exposition of divine impassibility and simplicity, grounding those doctrines in the phrase 'of like passions' and tracing them through the confession, Scripture, and the Reformed theological tradition.
The Resurrection and the Life, Part 3
John 11:28–37 confronts the reader with the full weight of Christ's hypostatic union: the same person who will momentarily command a dead man to walk is here groaning in anger and weeping at the graveside. This passage presses the question of the Savior's true humanity — that he assumed human nature with all its essential properties and common infirmities, yet without sin — as the indispensable ground of redemption. The sermon traces Mary's complaint, the Lord's outrage at the ravages of sin and death, and his tears as expressions of genuine human emotion consistent with immutability in the divine nature, drawing on the Westminster Larger Catechism's answers on why the Mediator must be both God and man. The hearer is finally confronted with the same question Jesus put to Martha: 'Do you believe this?'
The Promise of God's Presence
Exodus 33 confronts Israel with the consequences of the golden calf: God threatens to withhold His special presence, lest He consume a stiff-necked people in the wilderness. Moses responds not with passive acceptance but with escalating, bold intercession — arguing from grace received, from Israel's covenant identity, and finally from a desire to see God's glory itself. The sermon traces God's anthropomorphic self-disclosure, His accommodation of Moses' three petitions, and His self-proclamation as the God of sovereign grace and compassion. The controlling application is that it is the Giver, not the gift, that the people of God must desire above all things — and that access to His presence now comes through the mediation of Christ alone.
The Idolatry of Israel, Part 1
Exodus 32:1–14 records the catastrophic breach of Israel's covenant oath, sworn only weeks earlier in Exodus 24, as the people demand a visible god and Aaron fashions the golden calf. The passage exposes the persistent human tendency toward idolatry — rooted in total depravity and inflamed by impatience, carnality, and the craving for a manageable deity — and demonstrates that their sin was not a denial of Yahweh but a second-commandment violation: representing the true God by a forbidden image. The sermon then turns to Moses' masterful intercession, grounded in appeals to God's power, his glory before the nations, and his covenant oath to the patriarchs, and concludes with extended treatment of divine immutability and anthropopathism to explain why Exodus 32:14 ('the Lord relented') cannot be made to teach flux or change in God.
2nd London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689) - Sunday School Study - August 29, 2021
What does it mean that God is 'without body, parts, or passions'? This study works through Chapter 2, Paragraph 1 of the Second London Baptist Confession of 1689, examining the perfections of God under three classical categories: divine incorporeality (God has no body), divine simplicity (God is not composed of parts), and divine impassability (God does not undergo emotional change). By grounding each doctrine in Scripture and the church's historic theological grammar — including the distinction between proper and improper predication, accommodation, and anthropomorphism — the exposition argues that God's transcendence over every creaturely category is not a cold abstraction but the very foundation of confident worship and unshakeable assurance for his people.
The Second Commandment
The Second Commandment (Deuteronomy 5:8–10) does not merely forbid the worship of false gods — it forbids the worship of the true God in a false manner, a distinction that carries enormous weight for how the church orders its worship today. The sermon works through the commandment's prohibition against idols and images (including pictorial representations of Christ), the theological rationale grounded in God's jealousy and immutability, the transgenerational consequences of false worship understood not as a hereditary curse but as the imitation of godlessness, and the promise of mercy to those who love and obey God. The positive application is the Regulative Principle of Worship: only what God has commanded is acceptable, and anything beyond or contrary to that command — however sincere the motive — constitutes the offering of strange fire to Yahweh.
The Rejection of Saul by the Lord, Part 2
The rejection of Saul in 1 Samuel 15:24–35 exposes the anatomy of false repentance, the character of a reprobate, and the nature of a God who does not change. The sermon works through Saul's admission of guilt, Samuel's execution of Agag, and the theological tension between God's expressed regret and his immutability, resolving that tension through the doctrines of divine impassibility and anthropopathism. The justice of God in dispatching the wicked is shown to be a cause for righteous rejoicing, not moral discomfort, as texts from Judges 4–5 and Proverbs 11 confirm. Saul's downward trajectory — blame-shifting, false piety, delusion, fake repentance, and apostasy — is held up as a warning that great privilege does not equal saving grace, while Christ's imputed righteousness is offered as the only ground of true standing before God.
The First Missionary Journey, Part 10
Acts 14:8–18 presents Paul and Barnabas in Lystra, where a miraculous healing of a congenitally lame man provokes the crowd to mistake the apostles for Zeus and Hermes. The sermon moves through three movements: the healing and its spiritual significance, the apostles' repudiation of pagan worship, and Paul's proclamation of the living God to a purely pagan audience. Particular attention is given to the doctrine of divine impassibility — the classical confession that God is without passions — as the necessary corollary of divine immutability, with pastoral argument that this doctrine secures rather than undermines the believer's confidence in God's unchanging love and justice. The sermon closes with an appeal to repent of all idolatry and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ as the only Savior for sinners.
Genesis 18:16-33
Genesis 18:16–33 presents the Lord's evaluation of Sodom and Abraham's intercessory prayer on behalf of any righteous persons within the doomed cities of the plain. The passage establishes two theological axioms: divine omnipotence silences doubt concerning God's promises, and divine justice — 'shall not the judge of all the earth do right?' — silences every charge of divine arbitrariness. Abraham's descent from fifty to ten righteous persons is examined as a model of humble, persistent intercession, set within a wider biblical pattern running from Moses and Samuel through Jeremiah, Daniel, and the New Testament exhortations of 1 Timothy 2. The sermon calls God's people to regular, corporate intercessory prayer for all kinds of men, including civil authorities, grounded not in human merit but in the great mercies of God.
Genesis 9:8-28
Genesis 9:8–28 divides into two sections: God's establishment of the Noahic Covenant with its sign of the rainbow, and the sin of Ham with the subsequent prophetic curse upon Canaan and blessing upon Shem and Japheth. The Noahic Covenant is identified as a common grace covenant securing the stability of the created order so that the covenant of grace may be proclaimed. Noah's prophetic pronouncement in verses 25–27 is treated as programmatic for redemptive history, tracing the two seeds of Genesis 3:15 through the flood into the post-diluvian world, culminating in the Gentile inclusion foreshadowed by 'Japheth dwelling in the tents of Shem' and confirmed at the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15.
Genesis 8:1-22
Genesis 8 records the abatement of the flood, the exit of Noah's family from the ark, and God's covenantal promise never again to destroy every living creature by water. The chapter is structured as a mirror image of chapter 7: everything that came upon the earth in judgment now reverses in restoration. Noah's first act upon leaving the ark is not to secure food or shelter but to build an altar and offer burnt offerings — the response of a man who walks with God by grace through faith. God's promise in verses 21–22 establishes what will be developed in chapter 9 as the Noahic Covenant, a common-grace covenant that stabilises the created order so that God's redemptive purposes may unfold until Christ comes to deal definitively with sin.
Free Grace Baptist Church - September 19, 2018 Bible Study
Genesis 6:8–22 presents the flood narrative not primarily as natural history but as a theological tableau of human depravity, divine justice, and sovereign grace. The passage establishes a foundational biblical pattern: grace precedes and produces righteous conduct, so that Noah is not found righteous because he earned grace, but rather found blameless because God first granted him grace. The sermon traces the stark literary contrast between Noah, a man made just by divine mercy, and an earth filled with corruption and violence ripe for God's wrathful judgment, while drawing typological connections between Noah as a second Adam and the Ark as a figure of Christ, the shelter from divine wrath. Hearers are called to recognise that the same grace operative in Noah is the only distinction between the redeemed and the condemned, and to remain faithful in a faithless generation by looking beyond present trials to the God who sovereignly guides his people through judgment to life.
Genesis 6:1-8
Genesis 6:1–8 presents some of the most contested verses in the Pentateuch alongside some of the clearest. The identity of the 'sons of God' in verses 1–4 has generated three major interpretive traditions — angelic beings, tyrannical rulers, and the godly line of Seth intermarrying with the ungodly line of Cain — and the sermon surveys each view while favouring the Sethite interpretation without demanding confessional certainty on it. Verses 5–8 then deliver an unambiguous portrait of universal human depravity and the righteous judgment of God, interpreted through the theological categories of anthropomorphism and anthropopathism to guard the immutability and impassibility of God against misreading. The sermon closes by showing that grace precedes conduct in Noah's case, establishing the pattern that runs through all of Scripture: God's sovereign grace produces the righteousness it requires.
He Cares for You
The murder of Naboth the Jezreelite in 1 Kings 21 exposes the convergence of covetousness, governmental tyranny, and idolatry — and demonstrates that no crime against God's people escapes divine notice. The chapter divides into two broad movements: the orchestrated injustice Jezebel engineers against Naboth (vv. 1–16) and Elijah's prophetic condemnation of Ahab (vv. 17–29). Four conclusions emerge: God's people will face injustice in this world; governments may administer that injustice; God nevertheless intervenes in the affairs of men; and the abandonment of the first table of the law invariably produces the abandonment of the second. The chapter closes on a surprising note of divine mercy — even Ahab's shallow remorse moves God to suspend judgment, which becomes a ground for confidence that a true penitent who comes to Christ will receive far more.
1 Kings 9
1 Kings 9 functions as a theological hinge in the narrative of Solomon's reign, positioned between the golden era of chapters 5–8 and the decline traced in chapters 10–11. God's second appearance to Solomon confirms his approval of the completed temple while issuing a sobering conditional warning: faithlessness — above all, idolatry — will cost Israel its land, its temple, and its Davidic dynasty, precisely as the covenant curses of Deuteronomy 28 stipulate. The second half of the chapter catalogues Solomon's political pursuits in foreign affairs, defense, worship, and trade, each carrying subtle narrative signals of the decline to come. The sermon closes by tracing how Christ fulfills what Solomon forfeited: the land recovered through the Abrahamic promise, the temple realized in his body, and the throne secured forever in the Davidic covenant.
2 Samuel 24:1-25
Second Samuel 24 closes David's reign with a sobering account of a sinful census, divine judgment, and the necessity of atonement — raising difficult questions about divine sovereignty, second causes, and human culpability. The chapter sets David's genuine repentance in sharp contrast to Saul's hardness, and traces the themes of propitiation and substitution that run through all of redemptive history. The threshing floor of Araunah is identified as Mount Moriah — the future site of Solomon's temple — so that the sacrifice David offers becomes a typological pointer to the atoning work of Christ. The sermon calls hearers to maintain short accounts with God through prompt confession, to receive the Spirit's conviction as a mercy rather than an offense, and to offer worship that costs something.
Exodus 25-40
Exodus 25–40 reaches its climax in a single governing truth: Yahweh dwells with His people. Working through the three-part structure of these chapters — the command for the tabernacle (chs. 25–31), the challenge to it in the golden calf incident (chs. 32–34), and the construction and filling of the tabernacle (chs. 35–40) — the sermon traces how a holy God specifies the precise terms by which sinful people may approach Him, exposes Israel's adulterous rebellion on their covenantal 'wedding night,' and then demonstrates God's staggering grace in renewing the covenant through the imperfect mediator Moses. The tabernacle's deepest meaning points forward to Christ, who tabernacled among us (John 1:14), mediates a better covenant (Hebrews 8), and through His Spirit indwells believers as His temple (1 Corinthians 6) — calling the congregation to prepare their hearts and worship God only as He has prescribed.
False Repentance and the Immutable God
The final section of 1 Samuel 15 (verses 24–35) exposes the anatomy of false repentance through the self-serving confession of King Saul, who admits sin while still deflecting blame and soliciting public honour. The study contrasts Saul's hollow words with David's unqualified confession in 2 Samuel 12, showing that genuine repentance owns sin without excuse, is directed Godward rather than reputation-ward, and issues in changed conduct rather than mercenary requests. Samuel's unyielding fidelity to the divine word sets the standard for prophetic and pastoral ministry. The chapter closes with the comfort of divine immutability: the God who tears the kingdom from Saul is the God who cannot lie or relent, and that unchangeableness is the believer's firm foundation.
1 Samuel 15:10-23
Saul's partial obedience to God's command to destroy the Amalekites exposes the anatomy of hypocritical religion: self-congratulation in the face of clear disobedience, blame-shifting, and the use of pious pretexts to cover rebellion. Working through 1 Samuel 15:10–23, the study examines how Samuel's confrontation strips away each layer of Saul's self-justification and arrives at the declaration that to obey is better than sacrifice. The text drives home that partial obedience is not obedience, that rebellion against God's word carries the gravity of witchcraft and idolatry, and that the only honest response is open confession and reliance on the perfect obedience of Christ in the sinner's place.
1 Samuel 15, Part 2
Divine impassibility — the classical Christian doctrine that God does not undergo emotional changes — stands at the center of a textual tension in 1 Samuel 15: verses 11 and 35 record that God 'greatly regrets' making Saul king, while verse 29 declares that the Strength of Israel 'will not lie nor relent, for he is not a man that he should relent.' This study argues that there is no contradiction, paradox, or problem in the text, but that the apparent tension is resolved by understanding anthropopathism (the ascription of human emotions to God in Scripture as accommodated language), the priority of divine-essence texts in interpretation, and the inseparable relationship between impassibility and immutability. The practical stakes are high: to modify impassibility is to unravel divine simplicity, omniscience, independence, and eternity, and ultimately to rob God of his divine nature and religion of its firm foundation and assured comfort.
Divine Impassibility (2LCF 2.1)
Divine impassibility — the classical Christian teaching that God does not undergo inner emotional changes of state, whether from without by his creatures or from within by himself — is the subject of this exposition of 2nd London Baptist Confession chapter 2, paragraph 1. The confession's phrase 'without passions' is shown to be an entailment of divine immutability, simplicity, and aseity: a God who could be moved, excited, or disturbed would be neither most absolute nor self-sufficient. Biblical texts establishing divine immutability ground the argument, while the phenomenon of anthropopathism in Scripture (God 'grieved in his heart,' God 'crying out like a woman in labor') is explained through the category of revelatory condescension — God lisping, as it were, to finite creatures — not as evidence of genuine emotional change in the divine being. The doctrine is shown to yield concrete pastoral fruit: it protects the uniqueness of the incarnation, grounds the believer's comfort in a God who is most loving without ebb or flow, and fuels doxology.