Our Sinful Nature…How BAD is it?

The following is a summary of session 6 & 7 of Study–>See–>Savor!

Our Sinful Nature…How BAD is it?

Seeing Our Natural Condition in Relation to God Is so Important!

In these two sessions, we looked at our natural condition apart from any grace exerted by God to restrain or transform us.

 Certainly, we could perform more evil acts toward our fellow man than we do. God’s grace keeps sin “in check” so we are not as bad as we could be!

 

1 Corinthians 10:31

Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

Romans 14:23

But he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and whatever is not from faith is sin.

Ouch!  What a slam on natural “virtue” that doesn’t come from a heart humbly relying on God’s grace.

 The terrible condition of our heart will never be recognized if we only compare ourselves to others.   Our sin is mainly against God, not others.  Until we acknowledge this, we really don’t understand our horrible condition.

 

James 2:10-11

For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all. For He who said, “DO NOT COMMIT ADULTERY,” also said, “DO NOT COMMIT MURDER.” Now if you do not commit adultery, but do commit murder, you have become a transgressor of the law.

Our Sinful Condition

SIN affects every one of us.

Romans 3:23

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

1 Kings 8:46

There is no man who does not sin.

Psalm 143:2

And do not enter into judgment with Your servant, for in Your sight no man living is righteous.

1 John 1:8

If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.

Our rebellion or treason against God is total, that is, apart from the grace of God there is NO delight in the holiness of God, in fact, we HATE the sovereign authority of God. 

We can be very religious and very generous. We can pray and fast, as Jesus said (Matthew 6:1-18). John Piper states it this way, “But their very religion is rebellion against the rights of their Creator, if it does not come from a childlike heart of trust in the free grace of God. Religion is one of the chief ways that man conceals his unwillingness to forsake self-reliance and bank all his hopes on the unmerited mercy of God (Luke 18:9-14; Colossians 2:20-23).

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Romans 3:9-11, 18

What then? Are we better than they? Not at all; for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin; as it is written, “THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE; THERE IS NONE WHO UNDERSTANDS, THERE IS NONE WHO SEEKS FOR GOD . . . THERE IS NO FEAR OF GOD BEFORE THEIR EYES.”

“Men do seek God. But they do not seek him for who he is. They seek him in a pinch as one who might preserve them from death or enhance their worldly enjoyments. Apart from conversion, no one comes to the light of God.” John Piper

John 3:19-21

This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.

Romans 1:18

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.

In our rebellion, everything we do is sin.

Romans 14:23

Whatever is not from faith is sin.

“If a king teaches his subjects how to fight well and then those subjects rebel against their king and use the very skill he taught them to resist him, then even those skills become evil.

 Thus man does many things which he can only do because he is created in the image of God and which in the service of God could be praised. But in the service of man’s self-justifying rebellion, these very things are sinful.

” John Piper

Hebrews 11:6

And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.

Romans 7:18

For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not.

“This is a radical confession of the truth that in our rebellion nothing we think or feel is good. It is all part of our rebellion. The fact that Paul qualifies his depravity with the words, “that is, in my flesh,” shows that he is willing to affirm the good of anything that the Spirit of God produces in him (Romans 15:18). “Flesh” refers to man in his natural state apart from the work of God’s Spirit. So what Paul is saying in Romans 7:18 is that apart from the work of God’s Spirit all we think and feel and do is not good.

  NOTE: We recognize that the word “good” has a broad range of meanings. We will have to use it in a restricted sense to refer to many actions of fallen people which in relation are in fact not good.

  For example we will have to say that it is good that most unbelievers do not kill and that some unbelievers perform acts of benevolence. What we mean when we call such actions good is that they more or less conform to the external pattern of life that God has commanded in Scripture.  

However, such outward conformity to the revealed will of God is not righteousness in relation to God. It is not done out of reliance on him or for his glory. He is not trusted for the resources, though he gives them all. Nor is his honor exalted, even though that’s his will in all things (1 Corinthians 10:31). Therefore even these “good” acts are part of our rebellion and are not “good” in the sense that really counts in the end—in relation to God.”  John Piper

Our inability to submit to God and do good is complete, total.

Romans 8:7-8 says, “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, indeed it cannot; and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”

  The “mind of the flesh” is our minds apart from the indwelling Spirit of God (“You are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit, if the Spirit of God really dwells in you,” Romans 8:9). We can’t reform ourselves.

 

Ephesians 2:1 says that we Christians were all once “dead in trespasses and sins.” The point of deadness is that we were incapable of any life with God. Our hearts were like a stone toward God (Ephesians 4:18; Ezekiel 36:26). Our hearts were blind and incapable of seeing the glory of God in Christ (2 Corinthians 4:4-6). We were totally unable to reform ourselves.

At this point in our study, we took a field trip….to the cemetery.  See the post, “A Field Trip to WHERE??”

 

 

 

 

Ephesians 2:1-5

And you were DEAD in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved).

Romans 8:5-9

For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For the mind set on the flesh [literally: “the mind of the flesh”] is death, but the mind set on the Spirit [literally: “the mind of the Spirit”] is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh [literally: “the mind of the flesh”] is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.

John 3:5-7

Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’”

Romans 6:17-18

But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.

Ephesians 4:17-18

So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart.

John 6:44

No one can [ABILITY] come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day.

1 Corinthians 2:14

But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.

Jeremiah 17:9

The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately [incurably] sick; who can understand it?

What do we deserve as punishment for our treason/rebellion?  Eternal wrath!

 

Ephesians 2:3

Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.

“We were under God’s wrath because of the corruption of our hearts that made us as good as dead before God.

  The reality of hell is God’s clear indictment of the infiniteness of our guilt. If our corruption were not deserving of an eternal punishment God would be unjust to threaten us with a punishment so severe as eternal torment. But the Scriptures teach that God is just in condemning unbelievers to eternal hell (2 Thessalonians 1:6-9; Matthew 5:29f; 10:28; 13:49f; 18:8f; 25:46; Revelation 14:9-11; 20:10). Therefore, to the extent that hell is a total sentence of condemnation, to that extent must we think of ourselves as totally blameworthy apart from the saving grace of God.
” John Piper

 

2 Thessalonians 1:8-9

[God will] deal out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. These will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power.

Matthew 25:46

These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.

Summary and Conclusion

Apart from any enabling grace from God, our hardness and treason against God is complete, everything we do in this rebellion is sin. We CANNOT submit to God or change ourselves! We deserve eternal punishment.

It is imperative that we see ourselves as bad as we really are. If we think of ourselves as basically good or even less than totally at odds with God, our understanding of God’s grace in saving us will be misunderstood. But if we see ourselves under this horrible truth of our natural sinful condition, we will then see and appreciate the glory and wonder of the amazing grace of God.