Man Must Repent

“As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.” (Romans 3:10-11 )

These are not comfortable words. They were not meant to be. Paul is not describing a handful of notorious sinners — he is describing the whole of mankind, every son and daughter of Adam without exception. Yes, that includes YOU.

No one seeks God.

No one understands.

No one is righteous.

Never has been, never will be. Because of this, before we can speak of salvation, mercy, grace, forgiveness, justification, the cross, eternity with Christ, and all the other amazingly wonderful and comforting messages of the Bible, we absolutely must deal with this verdict.

The First Refusal

From the moment Adam and Eve disobeyed their Creator in the Garden, humanity has attempted to deflect conscious acceptance of guilt. Adam blamed God - yeah, really, he blamed GOD when he says “the woman” was given to him by the Creator. Eve blamed the serpent. IN this moment we can say that all of humanity blamed God for what we did. You and I have continued this abhorable practice in pertuity the saw way every persone between Adam and us. We really are vile creatures!

It isn’t not a minor character flaw that we blame God, it is a fundamentally defining characteristic of all humanity. It’s our goto move when confronted with everything. We are, by nature, accusers,deflectors and liars. We lie constantly and the only one we lie to more than we lie to ourselves is God. We point the finger to circumstances, at others, at God himself — rather than inward at the treacherous heart that Scripture says is “deceitful above all things” (Jeremiah 17:9 ). What’s crazy about this revelation about our hearts is that God isn’t deceived - it is US who are decieved. EEver hear youself copmplaining about the guy who cut you off, or the item that that the cheker forgot to scan and charge you for and how it’s thier fault for not seeing it - yeah, your deceived. We are so deceived that we wont admint we have an instinct to deny guilt at every turn. Yet the guilt is itself evidence of the guilt we are denying. A man with a clear conscience has nothing to deflect.

Deflecting of course is a tragedy. Evasion does not make us innocent. In fact it makes us more than doubly culpable — once for the sin, again for the refusal to own it, again for the lie to ourselves refusing culpability, again for lying to God, often for lying to the other peopl involved, or affetected… Sin is a disgustingly infectious cancer that spreads faster than the speed of light.

What Was Destroyed

That is precisely why repentance is a requirement before salvation. Salvation comes through faith. Faith in Christ and him having paid the price on your behalf. You don’t need faith if you have no sin. But we kind of established that you do have sin in abundance, and with sin in the way you can’t get to that kind of faith without repentance. When Adam/we rebelled, the relationship between man and God was destroyed: “By the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation,” and “by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners” (Romans 5:18-19 ). All men have “no hope, and [are] without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12 ).

Dude! Those last words ought to sting hard. They’re brutal. Without hope. Without God in the world. This isn’t just what i think or some historical theological position — it’s the reality of all humanity apart from grace. It’s sad, it’s horrifying and it ought to make you cray and tremble. If you don’t shake at the horror of the prospect of no hope and then absence of God, you quite liekly do not undersrand the gravity of your existence. We were made for communion with our Creator, and we shattered that communion through Adam. We destroyed all that God gave us and ended up with the world we now inhabit in a state that is not how God made it made it. It is the world as we broke it and continue to break it. Every lie, every grief, every argument, every murder, every rape, every bit of sex outside marriage between a man and a woman, every child abused by parent, every parent abusing a chile, every abortion, every war, every grave hearken back to that first act of rebellion and adds fuel to the fire destroying the very life God has given us.

Our relationship with God was destroyed in the Garden. It cannot be repaired by human effort, religious ceremony, or moral improvement. The offense left us dead in “trespasses and sins”. Only the living God himself could provide the remedy. He has provided himself as the remedy and commands we repent…