The Universal Condition of Sin, No. 2
RO25-02

All of mankind is viewed by God, you remember, as having sinned in Adam in Eden. So, everybody is born with real moral guilt before God. That is because as far as God is concerned, when Adam sinned, you and I sinned with him. We also learned that Adam, through this act of sin on his part, acquired a different kind of nature. He acquired a fallen nature. We call it an old sin nature. And he has passed this old sin nature on to his posterity. He became a sinner by sinning. We become sinners just by being born into the human race, because we are born already with this fallen nature.

Everyone, because they do have this old sin nature, therefore, falls short of matching up to God's standard of absolute righteousness, which Paul has been talking about here in the opening of the book of Romans. Everyone has fallen short of the absolute standard of God which is spoken of here as His glory. And the reason for this is because all of us are born in a fallen condition.

"All Have Sinned"

1. Imputed Sin

   One: we have what we have just referred to as our sin in Adam. That's called imputed sin. That sin is imputed to us. The moral guilt of Adam's sin is imputed to all of us. He was our representative. Because we were in him, we partook (in the eyes of God) in that act.

2. Inherent Sin

   Secondly, we have inherent sin. Inherent sin is what we inherit from our parents in the form of the old sin nature. They pass that on directly to us. This is the reason Jesus Christ did not have a human father. So, He was born outside of this stream of sin which had been injected into the human race.

3. Personal Sins

   Then the third element of sin (the third type) is personal sins. These are the individual acts of evil. They are mental and overt expressions of evil which flow from the old sin nature.

Now, sin has affected all facets of the human soul. For this reason, we say that man is totally depraved. It has affected your will; it has affected your emotions; and, it has most certainly affected your mentality. Some theologians in the Middle Ages made the mistake of viewing mankind's fall as a limited fall; that is, that only parts of your soul were affected. And the part that they did not want affected is the mind. So, they concluded that the mind was not affected by the fall – that man's mentality could still think God's thoughts, though his will and his emotions could not express themselves in the direction that God approved.

The reason they made that mistake is because they would read some of the ancient philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, primarily, as well as others. And they would find that these people, simply by human reason, had come up with some thoughts that we would have to recognize were good thoughts. They were commendable thoughts. Sometimes they were compatible to Bible doctrine. So, they fell into the mistake of saying, "How could these men use their rationality, and use their reason, and come up with such accurate information concerning the things that we do find confirmed in the Bible? And they made the conclusion that it was because the mind was not affected by the fall in Eden.

However, the thing that they did not observe was that these same philosophers came up with many things which were contradictory to the Word of God, and which were in direct conflict to the Word of God. And in time, the Roman Catholic Church suffered by the incorporation of the ideas of these philosophers into its system of doctrine. That's what degenerated the medieval church from the pristine purity of the New Testament church. It was because these humanistic elements of the thoughts of man's rationality from these great philosophers was injected as Bible doctrine, when it was not by the doctrine.

So, along with it came not only the things that these men had thought that we could say, "Well, that's true," but along came many things which were not true. Had they been more careful students of the Word of God, they would have looked at Romans 3:23 and said, "Wait a minute. I don't care how good a man's thinking is, his mind is falling. His mind is distorted from God's thoughts. His mind is warped.

Consequently, as we look at man, we find that in his mentality, he does not see God. That's the truth about him. That, of course, is previously what we read here in the third chapter, as Paul quoted many Old Testament passages. And one of the things he pointed out was that man does not seek God.

Furthermore, he pointed out that man is unable to provide any divine good for salvation. Man can't do anything good that would merit salvation. In fact, we find from the Word of God, and from experience, that man is a natural rebel against God's authority. Man rebels against God. Man is not naturally compatible with God. Man wants to push God out of his life. Man wants to elbow God out of the way. Man in his natural state finds God a hindrance to what he really is, and to what he wants to do naturally.

Furthermore, man is unable to live in the real world. He has nothing to tie all of life together. Man and himself needs information. We showed you through the book of Romans how God who is out there is not silent, but has spoken to us. He spoke to us through creation. He spoke through us through the fact that the image of God is within us, and we can't deny it. He spoke to us through the person of Jesus Christ. And He has spoken to us in the most complete way through the written Scriptures.

So, he has spoken, but man who shoved this aside and pretended that God has never said a word to us. So, man tries to tie life together on his own. And the great philosophers of old tried to do this. They recognized that there has to be something that gives meaning to all the details of life, and gives explanation for why we do things the way we do: for the good things we do; and, for the terrible things we do. But they never could find it because man, by his reason, is boxed-in to a limitation that he can never break out of. God has to break in. Man cannot break out. When man tries to break out through drugs; through séances; through the occult; through rationalism; or, through emotionalism, that always goes down toward Satan, not up toward God. He always ends up in a satanic direction.

So, here is the condition in which all of humanity finds itself. That's why I say this is a very dramatic statement. It is one of the most important pieces of information the human race needs to know about itself – that all have sinned and lack God's absolute righteousness. If you can accept that, and if you can start from there, you're on your way to getting your life back to the order with which God originally intended that it should have – back to the original blessing and purpose that he had designed for it. But if you will not accept that, this principle (all have sinned), then you will go farther and farther astray until ultimately you will come to the place where you will throw your hands up and say, "What's it all worth?" And you will find yourself in utter despair and utter hopelessness. That is exactly where millions upon millions of people in our world stand today. This is where our nation (where American society as a whole) now stands today. We have come to where we are in a status of hopelessness, and consequently, it is being expressed with an attitude of apathy.

Where Did Sin Come from?

Who was the First Sinner?

So, we have evil in the universe which did not originate with God, but it originated with God's creatures: angels; and, humans. They are the cause of it.

The Results of Sin

Romans 3:23

There is a Wall between God and Man

The Blocks of the Wall

1. Sin

   The first block is a block of sin itself. We read in Romans 3:23, right here, that all have sinned, and they come short of the glory of God. What this verse is telling us is that man is a slave to sin. The Scriptures further confirm that. Man is in a slave market of sin. And because he is in that slave market, he is separated from God.

2. The Penalty of Spiritual Death

   Then there is another block in that wall, and that is the man is under a penalty, and that penalty is spiritual death. Romans 6:23 tells us that, and we shall get to that later: "For the wages of sin is death." And the wages of sin there that he's speaking of is spiritual death. Physical death accompanies that, but spiritual death is involved there. So, here's a penalty that man has to pay. God says, "Everybody has to die spiritually." Now you can't go to heaven spiritually dead. So, here's something that just has separated us from God. We're slaves of sin. We can't roam free into God's heaven. We're actually in a slave market of sin. We're under the penalty of spiritual death.

3. The Old Sin Nature

   Then there is another block that separates us. This block is the old sin nature. The old sin nature is what causes spiritual death in us. This is described for us in Ephesians 2:1: "And He has made you alive who were dead in trespasses and sins. We are spiritually dead because we have an old sin nature. So the old sin nature demands the penalty of spiritual death, and it's all because of the start of the whole thing – the matter of sin. So, our old sin nature is a problem to us, separating us from God.

4. The Holiness of God

   Then there is a very major block that separates us. And that's the holiness of God. The holiness of God is expressed in two ways. First of all, this which we have been learning here is that God's holiness demands absolute righteousness from a person. Romans 3:12 says, "They are all gone out of the way. They are together become unprofitable. There is none that do good. No, not one." There is none that has absolute righteousness. Yet, here it is. God's holiness says that if you're going to be in heaven, you must be absolutely righteous.

   But there's another part to God's holiness. Not only is He absolute righteousness, but He is perfect justice. And His perfect justice demands that sin be paid for. So, in Romans 3:25-26, we read, "Whom God has set forth to be a propitiation (or a payment of satisfaction) through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are passed through the forbearance of God, to declare, I see at this time, His righteousness, that He might be just and a justifier of him who believes in Jesus."

   The thing he's talking about in that verse is the fact that God is just. God had to have satisfaction paid for sin. Either you do it, or someone else. So, the holiness of God deals with His "+R" righteousness and His "+J" absolute justice. Those separate us from God.

5. In Adam

   Then the capstone of the whole thing is the fact that, as we indicated, we're born in a position in God's eyes, which the Bible describes as being "in Adam." "In Adam" is a place of spiritual depth. 1 Corinthians 15:22 describes this position: "For as in Adam all die, even so, in Christ shall all be made alive." To be "in Adam" places us in a position of spiritual death.

God's Solution

So, when you end up, what you have here is a line. The Triune God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) is on one side, and man is on the other side. Now there's only the line of reconciliation that God has created. This is God's reconciliation. All man has to do is say, "I'll step across. I'll believe it" – relying upon God to save him, and relying upon God to make provision.

So, that's the state in which we are now. However, even though God has removed this, this is the issue that God says we all face. We are all under sin, and if we refuse to step across this line, this is what we're going to be. We're going to still be facing a wall that we cannot get through. It has been removed. And I'm happy to tell you that if you're ready, you can step across the line.

Now, this does raise an interesting question, doesn't it? Anybody who thinks a little bit recognizes that something is very, very wrong in American society today, because most Americans are not really impressed by the fact that we are a nation of sinners. The rejection of what Romans 3:23 tells us has established a depravity in American society today which we have never had in the past. The American people were once a society functioning on the principle of the Bible's revelation. And it functioned on the fact that man was fallen. Therefore, we even established a form of government which said, "Hey, wait a minute. People began as sinners. Sinners have to be controlled. Therefore, we must put together a form of government where sinners can be controlled. They call that "checks and balances."

So, one of the most brilliant forms of government that the world has ever seen was born upon this continent in the form of the American constitution, which said that we will establish a legislative branch to make the laws; we will establish an executive branch to execute the laws; and, we will establish a court system to (interpret) the laws. But each of these three groups will be independent of one another, and nobody can control the other person, and they can each bring pressure to bear upon the other two.

The result was that they began with this recognition that man is a sinner. They took this biblical principle, and they created a form of government like this. All of the nations which came out of the Reformation, which ours did (indirectly), and the nations of Northern Europe who came out of the enlightenment of the Reformation based their governments upon that kind of a system – a system that recognized that man was evil and needed to be controlled. Governments in the south of Europe and in Eastern Europe, which did not have the heritage of the Reformation, failed to recognize that, and failed to establish governments like that, and that's where totalitarianism rules today, and out of nations that came out of those countries, like Latin American countries out of Spain.

Humanism

However, unfortunately, those of us who stand in the Protestant heritage have become the victims in our day of humanism all over again. The thing that destroyed early Christianity and ended up in the Roman Catholic Babylonian system has now entered the Protestant realm, and humanism has again become the dominant voice, not only in theology, but in all institutions of life: government; education; entertainment; and, everything.

So, today the United States is functioning on the principle of humanism, which rejects the basic fact that God has made a revelation to us, and that man is sinful. It rejects the revelation from God that man is sinful.

So, today we in this country are functioning on humanism. Well, we will tell you a little bit – just a brief refresher on this philosophy, because it's so important. It's a term which indeed does describe a philosophy of life. Humanism views man as independent of God. It views man as an autonomous creature. It views man as not being under sin. It views man as being fully able on his own to find meaning and values for his life through his reason alone. Humanism is very fond of saying that man can learn things on his own through his own reason.

I hope you have understood once and for all that the United States no longer stands upon the Word of God. The Bible is no longer a significant book in American life. It is no longer a significant book in American thinking. You might say, "Well, then why do we have to stand up and take oaths upon the Bible? Because it's just a vestige. It's a hangover from a previous era. The time will come when that will not be required of us. It is simply a hangover from the era of our Christian heritage. More and more, these hangover things, as new generations come along, are going to be discarded as being pointless, meaningless, and unnecessary.

One of the things that humanism now believes is that everybody should not have babies. One of the humanist thinkers has suggested that all the water supplies of our cities should have a chemical put into them so that bearing children is impossible unless you have an antidote for it. And the antidote will be controlled by the government alone, and will be handed out as welfare departments decide that this couple should have children: "So, therefore, we'll give you the antidote, and you may have a child." That is humanism.

The genetic engineering that you're hearing so much about is humanism. The consequences of this are absolutely unbelievable. American society functions only on vestiges (on memories) of the fact that there is such a thing as an absolute standard of right and wrong.

Abortion

What if the Supreme Court was wrong? What if the Supreme Court has missed God's true principle here? What if, at the moment of conception, which is what I think is the case, a fetus is a genuine living human being with a living soul? What if the Supreme Court is wrong? What has it led our land to do? To murder millions and millions and millions of children. On what basis did it make that decision? Did you ever ask yourself that? How could the Supreme Court do that? When they ask doctors, the doctors say, "Listen, man, from the first moment of conception, that is a viable operating human being. It has all the functions and all the capacities of the human being. It just develops along just like you keep developing after you're born. Some doctors have pointed out you're born in a condition, but you keep on developing. From the moment of conception, you're developing, and you're human."

The legal profession says, "Well, we don't know. We can't really say. We have to have a decision on this. But you say, "Well, then, where did the Supreme Court get this notion?" You go to theologians, and theologians are heavy on the side that that fetus is a human being, though there may be some questions that the Bible may not be as entirely clear on this as we'd like it to be.

Arbitrary Law

Sociological Reasons

The Will to Resist

We are such a nation, practically, today. We do not have the will to resist aggression anywhere in the world. The leaders of our government would not dare do it, even if in the depths of their hearts, they were screaming out to God to stand up against aggression. They can make pronouncements, and they can get pious platitudes, but they won't go beyond that. They'll never put an American soldier in the field facing an aggressor, and cut him down.

There was a time before arbitrary law in this country when that's exactly what we would have done. The Supreme Court has ruled for abortion on sociological reasons, because they think this will be good for most people. By the same principle they've imposed busing. They have abandoned an ally in Vietnam by deliberately handing him over to the enemy. We practice deficit spending even though we know that it creates inflation. Why do we do it? Because of sociological reasons, we think it's good for most Americans for the government to spend more than it takes in.

All of this is based on the principle of humanism. Well, you can multiply that on and on. Why do we do this? Because humanism is now our way of life. Humanism says, "There is no infinite personal God out there who has spoken to us. He has not revealed to us any fixed standards of right and wrong." Humanism, therefore, leads to evolution in matters of origin. Everything comes from an impersonal force so there is no absolute value. Because everything comes from an impersonal force, "what is" is what's right. And if "what is" is my taking your life, then it's OK for me to kill you. It's all right for me to murder you because that's "what is." It's all an impersonal force. Humanism has led to the concept of evolution. Humanism leads to totalitarianism in government. It always has to have rule by an elite which sets the standards and sets the values.

Of course, our country is in a turmoil – struggling and trying desperately to disengage itself from this kind of a domination by an elite. You've heard people say, "I can't understand this. We elect people to governmental positions. We send them to Congress. We put them in the White House, and then they promptly do the things we don't want to do."

The Common-Situs Bill

President Carter said, "I'll sign it." So, the Senate stormed in and they passed it. Then a strange thing occurred, in the grace of God – the House rejected it. The House is going to get the voice of 70% of the people. But if the 70% of Americans hadn't raised any kind of fury, do you know what would have happened? The House would have passed it, and the president would have signed it, and we would have said, "Hey, wait a minute. We send these people to Congress. We appoint them on our representative system to execute our will, and what we want doesn't happen."

What do you think would happen if we were to say, "Let's have a national referendum on busing?" What do you think would happen to busing? What do you think would happen if we said, "Let's have a voice of the people on this issue and on that issue? Let's just have a national vote on it. And then you guys in Congress can go and act accordingly." They would never do that, because so much of humanistic thought would be undermined. These men whom we send to Congress are possessed by this arbitrary mentality. They are the elite who are deciding for us what is good for the people. They are the natural expression of humanism – a totalitarian, arbitrary elite that sets the standards and makes the decisions.

The Roman Empire was based on humanism. Why were the Christians killed? You may say, "Well, because they believed in Jesus Christ." No. As we pointed out to you before, it wasn't because of that. There were plenty of different religions, incidentally, in the Roman government. The truth of the matter was that you could believe anything you wanted in the Roman government. But humanism in the Roman Empire had led to the point where there was one top man, and that was the emperor. And the emperor was now god. Finally, he came to be god. And it was required that you worship what was called the spirit of the empire, and the genius of the emperor – the spirit of Rome, and the genius of the emperor. And he was, in the later stages of the empire, actually viewed as a god.

The trouble with the Christians was that they would not take that statement which was required of the citizens to call Caesar "Lord." You had to do it once a year: "I call Caesar Lord." That was because the word" Lord," as you know, meant deity, and Christians only called Jesus Christ "Lord." Now if Christians had worshiped Jesus Christ and called Caesar "Lord," they'd have had no trouble. Humanism required that the Christians recognize a top totalitarian authority, and the Christians, for this reason, were a threat to the empire. The Christians were coming along and telling the Roman Empire, "Hey, hey, hey, we've got a message from God out here. It's the Bible. And, we read this in the Bible, and it condemns what you, the Roman government are doing."

The Roman government says, "Wait a minute. We've got a group of people who are judging the government. Kill them." Humanism leads to oppression, and to totalitarian domination, and it can never tolerate having an authority that can judge it. That's why Russia does not tolerate being judged by those who rise up and bring over Christian concepts and principles by which to condemn what the Russian government is doing, any more than the Roman government was doing. And that's why Christians were killed – because they were judging the government. They had a standard. They rejected the humanism of the Roman Empire.

Socialism and Communism

However, when you do that, it is always necessary to have repression and loss of personal freedom, because humanism has no fixed points. Therefore, people are lawless, and violence is the natural result of humanism. So, there always has to be repression. Humanism leads to arbitrary law based on the majority will, or the edict of an agency of government. There are no standards to be judged by. Humanism leads to socialism and communism in economics. It pursues equality, not liberty. And humanism finally just leads to despair and hopelessness, and it results in the spirit of apathy. That's where we are today in this country. Why? Because we have started with the principles that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, and we don't believe it. And we say, "No, man is all right. Man is not sinful. And man can do something if you just give him a chance. Let's just get together; use our brains; put our efforts together; and, pool our strengths, and we will come up with that which will be blessing to mankind.

So, we are shot-through from the top to the bottom in this nation with this defective viewpoint of man. And with this defective viewpoint has come the consequences of ignoring the real facts of man's sinfulness, and acting under the illusion that he has no real moral guilt, and now we are suffering the consequences. The saddest part about that is that all you and I as Christians can do now is to prepare ourselves to ride it through until the Lord returns. This cannot be reversed. I doubt that it can be reversed. We may make islands of improvement, but it cannot be reversed.

However, I do not think that we should be pessimistic to the point that we ourselves become apathetic. I think the time has come for Christians to start lighting a few candles. And I think the time has come that maybe we, right here at Berean Memorial Church, can do something about lighting the candle that will at least be a little beacon in a sea of the darkness of humanism. It would alert the Christian minority that there is a way of calling leaders to account for something better than their humanism.

As has been pointed out many times, Christians do not have to be in a majority to move a society toward divine viewpoint principles. You just have to have somebody who begins sounding off.

Well, this is where we are. We're here because we have let people sound forth the mistaken notion that man is not sinful – that man in himself is all right, and that he is not a bad thing. And the Word of God says, "If you think that, then you will go exactly nowhere."

Couldn't God have Created us not to Sin?

On the one hand, we have a sovereign God who has created the world and preplanned everything in it. On the other hand, we have the Bible telling us that man has absolute moral freedom: sovereignty of God; and, freedom of man. And the Bible says that they're both true. That's an antimony.

Now, could God not have created us without the capacity to sin? Why did He sin? The fact for us today is that sin is here. Sin is a reality. All of American life rejects it. There are fixed points of rights and wrongs. All of American life rejects it. There is a Bible which is God's voice speaking to us in our hemisphere. He has broken through to talk to us in our material realm from His side. And all of American life has rejected it. Americans are humanists. A few of us are Christians. The reason we're that is because we know that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. That's the starting point.

However, God has given us a very great solution that we'll be looking at. It is that solution that is the candles that we can light. I think we should start doing it.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1975

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