Originally posted 10/29/24
This is the third in a series of articles about theology. If you haven’t read the first one, click here. If you haven’t read part 2, click here.
Everyone sins a little, but most people are good by nature.
Thirty-nine percent of Evangelicals believe that people are good by nature. I remember when my kids were little; I did not have to teach them how to be disobedient. They already knew how and it was on full display some days more than others.
Www.gotquestions.org tells us, “Originally, human nature was perfect by virtue of having been created so by God. The Bible teaches that human beings were created “very good” by a loving God (Genesis 1:31), but that goodness was marred by the sin of Adam and Eve. Subsequently, the entire human race fell victim to the sin nature. The good news is that at the moment a person trusts in Christ, he receives a new nature. Second Corinthians 5:17 tells us, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” Sanctification is the process by which God develops our new nature, enabling us to grow into more holiness through time. “This is a continuous process with many victories and defeats as the new nature battles with the “tent” (2 Corinthians 5:4) in which it resides—the old man, the old nature, the flesh. Not until we are glorified in heaven will our new nature be set free to live for eternity in the presence of the God in whose image we are created.”
There are at least twenty-two different verses in the Bible that address the depravity of man. It’s easy to become misguided in our beliefs. Society tries to convince us that we cannot tell anyone they are wrong. We must be loving in all circumstances. In other words, anything goes. Scripture does not support that belief. Romans 3:23-24 tells us that, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,” Romans 3:10 says, “as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one;”
While it is nice to think that I am mostly good and I only have to be better than the person next to me. However, that is contrary to Scripture.
Even the smallest sin deserves eternal damnation.
Fifty-five percent of Evangelicals believe this statement is true. I am troubled that forty-five percent of Evangelicals do not believe this statement. This statement really goes pretty well with the last statement. Our society has made us to believe that it is not ok to tell someone that they are wrong. Our youth athletic programs gives every child a medal just for participating. Working to achieve a goal seems to be a thing of the past. Covide destroyed a generation of children who no longer know how to persevere to achieve a goal. I work in a school that still has consequences for abad behavior. We have been led to believe that providing consequences for poor behavior harms a child’s self-esteem. We have done all these things without considering the consequences. Social media has made it all worse. We are a mess and it will cause many people to spend eternity in hell.
The thought of spending eternity in hell is frightening. I am not sure I could say it any way close to www.gotquestions.org. I know I found similar information in other places. Let’s read it together:
“In the shifting winds of modern cultures, the idea of everlasting torment and damnation is difficult for many people to grasp. Why is this? The Bible makes it clear that hell is a literal place. Christ spoke more about hell than He did of heaven. Not only Satan and his minions will be punished there; everyone who rejects Jesus Christ will spend eternity right along with them. A desire to reject or revise the doctrine of hell will not mitigate its flames or make the place go away. Still, the idea of eternal damnation is spurned by many, and here are some reasons for it:
The influence of contemporary thought. In this postmodern era, many go to great lengths to assure no one is offended, and the biblical doctrine of hell is considered offensive. It is too harsh, too old-fashioned, too insensitive. The wisdom of this world is focused on this life, with no thought of the life to come.
Fear. Never-ending, conscious punishment devoid of any hope is indeed a frightening prospect. Many people would rather ignore the source of fear than face it and deal with it biblically. The fact is, hell should be frightening, considering it is the place of judgment originally created for the devil and his angels (Matthew 25:41).
A flawed view of God’s love. Many who reject the idea of eternal damnation do so because they find it difficult to believe that a loving God could banish people to a place as horrific as hell for all eternity. However, God’s love does not negate His justice, His righteousness, or His holiness. Neither does His justice negate His love. In fact, God’s love has provided the way to escape His wrath: the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross (John 3:16-18).
A downplaying of sin. Some find it shockingly unfair that the recompense for a mere lifetime of sinning should be an eternal punishment. Others reject the idea of hell because, in their minds, sin isn’t all that bad. Certainly not bad enough to warrant eternal torture. Of course, it is usually our own sin that we downplay; other people might deserve hell—murderers and the like. This attitude reveals a misunderstanding of the universally heinous nature of sin. The problem is an insistence on our own basic goodness, which precludes thoughts of a fiery judgment and denies the truth of Romans 3:10 (“There is no one righteous, not even one”). The egregiousness of iniquity compelled Christ to the cross. God hated sin to death.
Aberrant theories. Another reason people reject the concept of eternal damnation is that they have been taught alternative theories. One such theory is universalism, which says that everyone will eventually make it to heaven. Another theory is annihilationism, in which the existence of hell is acknowledged, but its eternal nature is denied. Annihilationists believe that those who end up in hell will eventually die and cease to exist (i.e., they will be annihilated). This theory simply makes hell a temporary punishment. Both these theories are presented as viable options to the biblical teaching on hell; however, both make the mistake of placing human opinion over divine revelation.
Incomplete teaching. Many contemporary pastors who do believe in the doctrine of hell consider it simply too delicate a subject to preach on. This further contributes to the modern denial of hell. Congregants in churches where hell is not preached are ignorant of what the Bible says on the subject and are prime candidates for deception on the issue. A pastor’s responsibility is “to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 1:3), not pick and choose what parts of the Bible to leave out.
Satan’s ploys. Satan’s first lie was a denial of judgment. In the Garden of Eden, the serpent told Eve, “You will not surely die” (Genesis 3:4). It is still one of Satan’s main tactics. “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers” (2 Corinthians 4:4), and the blindness he produces includes a denial of God’s holy decrees. Convince the unsaved that there is no judgment, and they can “eat, drink and be merry” with no care for the future.
If we understand the nature of our Creator, we should have no difficulty understanding the concept of hell. “[God] is the Rock, His works are perfect, and all His ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is He” (Deuteronomy 32:4, emphasis added). His desire is that no one perish but that all come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9).
To contradict the Bible’s teaching on hell is to say, essentially, “If I were God, I would not make hell like that.” The problem with such a mindset is its inherent pride—it smugly suggests that we can improve on God’s plan. However, we are not wiser than God; we are not more loving or more just. Rejecting or revising the biblical doctrine of hell carries a sad irony, which one writer put this way: “The only result of attempts, however well meaning, to air-condition hell is to assure that more and more people wind up there.”
This may not be popular, but we cannot deny the truth of Scripture.
https://www.gotquestions.org/eternal-damnation.html
God counts a person as righteous not because of one’s works but only because of one’s faith in Jesus Christ.
Ninety-three percent of believers agree with this statement. The Pharisees were notorious for adding things to the law. The only thing that is necessary to be saved is a belief in Jesus. It is a belief in Christ alone. It is not a belief in Christ plus ________.
What is the difference between faith and works? God’s Word tells us:
Heb 11:1 says, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Christ is the object of our faith. Works are the things that we do once we believe. Our works demonstrate the love that we have for Christ and his people. Let’s look to God’s word to find the answers.
Titus 3:5, “he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit,”
Romans 11:6 “But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace.”
Ephesians 2:8-9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
Galatians 2:21, “I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.”
Everyone is born innocent in the eyes of God. Americans with Thirty-two percent of Evangelicals think this is a false statement. I am troubled that this number is so low. Society wants to discount the nature of man. We live in this time when no one wants to told that they are wrong. Everyone wants to feel good about themselves. We have been conditioned that we cannot harm someone’s self-esteem. What have we sacrificed instead?
Have we reached the time, even in the church, where we cannot tell people that they were born with a sinful nature? Scripture will not support this type of logic or thought process. We are not born good. Due to Adam and Eve’s sin, everyone who follows is born with a sinful nature.
In www.gotquestions.org, we read: “The Bible teaches that none of us are good. We are all born sinners with a sinful, selfish nature inherited from Adam. Unless we are born again by the Spirit of God, we will never see the kingdom of God (John 3:3).
Psalm 14:2–3 counters the idea that anyone is “good”: “The Lord looks down from heaven on all mankind to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God. All have turned away, all have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.” Add to this Jesus’ statement that “No one is good—except God alone” (Luke 18:19), and we see that we all stand guilty before God.”
“In the beginning, God created an absolutely perfect world. God called His creation “very good” in Genesis 1:31. The Garden of Eden was the perfect environment for the first humans, Adam and Eve. Even in that perfect environment, with all their needs met and living in a state of innocence, Adam chose to disobey God. Adam couldn’t blame environmental factors for his sinful choice; it was simply an act of his will to rebel.”
“When Adam disobeyed God, the first couple lost their innocence, they were ejected from the Garden, and, importantly, their basic nature was corrupted (Genesis 3:7–12). Sin and death became a part of creation. Later, when Adam had a son, the Bible describes the event this way: “He had a son in his own likeness, after his own image” (Genesis 5:3). Like father, like son. The sinner begot a sinner. Now Adam’s sin has spread to all creation: “Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12).”
People are not born “good” because every one of us has been affected by Adam’s sin; there are no exceptions. Romans 5:18 says that “one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people.” We are sinners for two reasons: we actively sin ourselves (we are sinners in practice), and we bear a sinful character passed down from Adam (we are sinners by nature). That’s why we all face physical death: “In Adam all die” (1 Corinthians 15:22).
“It’s hard to imagine a sweet, innocent baby being a sinner, but the Bible indicates that even children possess a sin nature. Logically, if our sin nature is inherited from Adam, then babies must already possess the bent to sin. “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child” (Proverbs 22:15). Bolstering the truth of this proverb, a child’s sinful behavior begins to manifest itself quite early in his development; as soon as a child is able to start choosing between obedience and disobedience, he will begin “testing the waters” of disobedience. Children are naturally selfish, and their wayward nature is evident to anyone who has ever been around children.
“The definitive passage on the fact that people are not born “good” is Psalm 51:5. Here, David speaks of his own sin nature beginning at conception: “I was guilty when I was born; I was sinful when my mother conceived me” (CSB).”
There is nothing inherently “good” within any of us. There is nothing in us that could earn salvation, and on our own we have no ability to become worthy of God’s favor. We deserve only God’s wrath (Ephesians 2:3). We are dead in our sins (Ephesians 2:1). But thanks be to God, who chose to send His Son, Jesus, into the world. Jesus lived without sin, and His death on the cross paid the penalty we deserved.”
Stay tuned for Part Four
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