The Pathology of Sin
Galatians 5:16
Galatians Lesson #060
August 8, 1999
www.deanbibleministries.org
Opening Prayer
“Father, we thank You so much that we have the privilege and opportunity to study Your Word. Your Word is sufficient for every issue in our lives, and in it, You not only tell us that You have solved the sin problem, which is the greatest problem we will ever face, but that on the basis of the finished work of Jesus Christ on the Cross, every other problem has been solved and can be solved in our lives.
Now, Father, as we study Your Word, we pray that You would make it clear to us that it might shed its light in the areas of our soul, which in the process of being renovated, we might think Your thoughts after You and that the mind of Christ may dominate in our thinking. We pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.”
We continue our study of what it means to walk by means of the Spirit. This is one of the most important doctrines that we can study, and this is one of the most crucial passages for us to study in order for us to understand this whole concept.
Galatians 5:16, “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.” We are given a promise, an unconditional result. It is a very strong negation in the Greek, and it means it is absolutely impossible for you to carry out the desire of the flesh, e.g., the sin nature. What we see here is that there is this contrast between the sin nature and walking by means of the Holy Spirit.
About three weeks ago, we began to analyze what the Scripture teaches us about the sin nature. This is important because so few people really take the time to study what the Scripture says about the sin nature, and I think very few of us are willing to look in the mirror and admit the horrors in our soul that the sin nature describes. Because people fail to take into account the realities of the sin nature and the depravity of mankind, they consequently operate on an unrealistic view of man.
There are a lot of various disciplines in academia from the realm of psychology and sociology to political theory, advertisement, to all kinds of different things that all build their concepts on an understanding of the nature and makeup of man. Everything truly from economics, moral theory, law, ethics, advertising, sales—everything is predicated upon a certain understanding of who and what man is. If you are operating on a false view of man, then whatever you construct upon that is going to necessarily be false. This is one of the great dividing issues in all ideology.
Thomas Sowell, a very conservative political thinker, has written a wonderful book called “A Conflict of Visions”. His basic thesis is that everybody tends to always line up on one of two sides of every issue. You always tend to line up on the same side of the issue with everybody else. The underlying issue is how people view the essential makeup of man—is man inherently good or is man inherently evil? How you answer that question will affect a myriad of details in life: how you solve problems, how you face adversity, the way you think people can find happiness and meaning in life, how government is run, the basis for law and the Constitutional interpretation. Not to mention the most important issue of all which is your own spiritual life and your own relationship to God.
In the last few weeks, we have looked at what the Scripture teaches us about sin and that we have a sin nature. It comes from Adam, and every single human being is born with a sin nature, born totally depraved. That term does not mean man is as bad as he can be or that man is absolutely evil. Man is impacted and affected and distorted by the sin nature in every category of his being and makeup—the totality of his soul from his self-consciousness to his mentality, his volition, his conscience.
The original image of God (that man was created in God’s image and likeness) still resides, there is still a residue, but it has been distorted and marred. Adam’s original sin has caused a constitutional defect; it is not a disease that man has. If it is a disease, then the solution to the problem is much more superficial and simple, but if it is a constitutional defect, then the solution must be much more radical.
The solution, of course, to man’s sin and the sin nature was the payment of Jesus Christ on the Cross as our substitutionary atonement. That provides the basis for solving the problem of the sin nature.
I want to look at the pathology of the sin nature.
1) Definition. Pathology is the scientific study of the nature of a disease. In this case, the sin nature is not a disease but a constitutional defect, so we will define pathology as the scientific study of the nature of this defect and its causes, processes, development, and consequences.
The way you do a scientific study is you collect all of the available data on the subject, and then you correlate it, categorize it, and classify it. The data that we are examining is the information in Scripture. That is how you do theology. That is why it is said that theology is the queen of the sciences. Not in the sense that it is a science like biology or botany or zoology or physics, but it is a science in the sense that you have a field of data. That data is the Bible, and through the use of observation and an inductive study method, you correlate all of the facts that you have in the Scriptures. You relate them together, classify them according to topic, categorize them, and as a result of that, you learn what the mind of Christ has to say about all the various subjects addressed in the Scripture.
We are going to look at the pathology of the sin nature, i.e., how does it operate: what are its causes, its processes, development, and consequences.
2) The sin nature was originally acquired when Adam sinned, so this means that it is not normal. Everything since the Fall of man, everything in human environment is abnormal. By that I mean that God created the universe perfect—He created the earth perfect, He created the environment perfect, He created the animal and plant kingdoms perfect, and He created man perfect. He placed perfect man in a perfect environment, and He gave man volition. That volition is the issue.
Man, represented by Adam, had one choice before him; there was only one sin that Adam could commit in the Garden and that had to do with whether he obeyed God with respect to the prohibition of eating the fruit on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So perfect man and perfect environment knew no sickness, had no problems, no adversity to face that he could not handle through the provision of God, so all of his thinking and perceptions were perfect.
Yet once he sinned, he acquired a sin nature which totally changed his makeup and had a devastating effect upon his environment. So the environment was no longer perfect, and he was no longer perfect. It affected every aspect of his soul: his self-consciousness, mentality, volition, and conscience.
That sin nature is passed on genetically to all of his descendants. The only human being that has been born without a sin nature is our Lord Jesus Christ, Who, because He was born of a virgin, did not acquire the genetically passed on sin nature. He was born without a sin nature; He was born perfect and lived His life perfect and never committed any act of sin. For that reason, He was able to go to the Cross and die as our substitute.
Every single person in human history is born with this constitutional defect. That means we are all marred at the very essence of our being by the sin nature. We lack perfect righteousness; we are all born minus righteousness. Because the righteousness of God cannot have fellowship with the unrighteousness of man, what the righteousness of God rejects, the justice of God condemns. Mankind is repugnant and obnoxious to God.
I keep stressing that because we have a tremendous tendency because of our sin nature to think that there is some little something about us that is pleasing to God, that is attractive to God, and that somehow we can do something that gains God’s approbation. God approves of nothing.
Because the very nature of man at the very core of his being is a sin nature, everything that comes forth from man is tainted by this sin nature, whether that involves sinful deeds on the one hand or relatively good things on the other hand. Everything that we do apart from the grace of God has its source and origin in this sin nature and that means it is rejected by God.
I’m not talking about relative good because we can compare ourselves to other people and there are certainly good things that we can do that are helpful and beneficial to mankind and to ourselves, but in comparison with the absolute standard of God, we are repugnant and obnoxious to God. From the moment we are born, when we are lying in the crib cooing and squirming and smiling and looking so wonderful and innocent, we are not.
3) No person is born innocent because they have all received the guilt of Adam’s sin. This is not guilt because they have committed sin; this is guilt because Adam’s original sin has been imputed to their sin nature and so they are guilty. We sin because we are by nature sinners; we are not sinners because we sin. Man is inherently evil, and left to his own devices, he is bent on making life work apart from God.
When we come to talk about children, it is important to lay down a few definitions and important points. If the child dies before the age of accountability, then they are saved and go directly to Heaven on the basis of the fact that God is righteous. The issue at salvation, just as the issue at the Fall, was volition. They have not reached a chronological and/or spiritual or mental age whereby they can understand the issues and make a responsible choice in relation to the gospel.
This age of accountability varies from culture to culture. In the U.S., I know of situations in Christian homes where children because of the ministry of their parents, Sunday School, 5-Day Clubs, Good News Clubs have been exposed to the gospel on a repeated basis and, as early as 2 ½ on their own initiative, have asked the question, “Mommy, I want to go to Heaven. Can I trust Jesus as my Savior, too?” It can happen culturally, it can happen very early because of certain factors.
In other cultures where someone is never exposed to any sort of Christianity, in a stone age or primitive culture (for example, in Africa or Papua New Guinea), God consciousness may not come until adolescent or even adult years. It all depends on many different factors. God is aware for each individual just exactly when that age of accountability is.
The age of accountability, therefore, means the age at which a child becomes conscious of the existence of God. According to Romans 1:19–20, there is plenty of evidence throughout the creation of the invisible attributes of God. The Scripture says “… so that they are without excuse.” Every human being knows God exists. Even the atheist who shouts from the mountaintops is fully aware in the deepest recesses of their soul (although they would never admit it, not even at the pain of death) that God exists.
Romans 1:18–19 “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.” Because man is unrighteous; the orientation of his soul is to suppress the truth. Some people want to take this as a gnomic present, which would make it characteristic of every human being. That is a subjective decision that is usually informed by hyper-Calvinism.
“… who suppress the truth …” What this means is this is negative volition at God consciousness: they know the truth, they have perceived the truth, and from that point on, they are actively suppressing the truth. Every unbeliever, every atheist who is suppressing the truth in unrighteousness knows about God. It is evident within them because God made it evident to them.
Verse 20, “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.” That means that no heathen in Africa, South America, or Harlem is ignorant to the point that they can claim that “I have an excuse—nobody ever told me.” God says that there is more than enough evidence just by looking up at the stars in the sky and looking around that He exists and for them to be accountable to that.
The age of accountability means that when a person reaches an age when they are aware of this evidence, they recognize the existence of God, and they are able to understand the gospel, at that point, they have a choice. They can choose to either know more about God, or they can suppress the knowledge. If they go positive at God consciousness and decide to know more about God, it may be 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 years before the gospel is ever made clear to them or they accept the gospel.
Interesting, just as a side note, you can also see scenarios where people are positive at God consciousness, but then afterwards in their search for truth, they go through all sorts of meanderings, circumlocutions, getting involved in one religious activity after another. Just because you see somebody caught up and fanatic about their cultic involvement or atheism or anything else, it does not mean that at some point in their life they weren’t positive or won’t be positive.
There are many cases—and we hear testimonies now and then—of people who go through these kinds of permutations in their life: searching, looking, going from one religious activity to another. Finally, they hear the gospel, it is made clear to them, and they trust Christ as their Savior.
Every child reaches the age of accountability at different stages. They are able to understand the gospel and to make this choice. That is why they are accountable.
The age of accountability does not mean that we are not accountable or responsible for our decisions and actions until we reach that age. Some people might make that assumption. From the point a child is born until they are, let’s say 3 or 4 or 5 years of age, we have a tendency in this western civilization to think of them as innocents, as not guilty.
What I’m trying to get across to you, as the foundation of our thinking, is that is not reality. Reality is that they have a sin nature, and that sin nature affects every aspect of their being and decision-making process from the point of birth on.
Point 3 recognized several conclusions. No one is born innocent. If any child dies before the age of accountability, they are saved. At the age of accountability, it does not mean they are not accountable for their actions or not responsible until they reach that age. It has only to do with their salvation.
4) The sin nature is an orientation to independence from God. That is the essential meaning of the sin nature. It means that we are asserting our autonomy. It comes from two Greek words: AUTOS meaning self and NOMOS meaning law. The basic orientation of the sin nature is “I will determine my own destiny. I will define reality on my own terms. I can make life work apart from God.” Frankly, that is the reminder of the five “I wills” uttered by Lucifer in Isaiah 14, culminating in the 5th “I will”—“I will be like the Most High.”
We think that we can be independent of God. Therefore, the sin nature is defined as the propensity, inclination, and proclivity to violate the character and standards of God and the desire to make life work without God. We think that we can define meaning, purpose, happiness in life. We think that on the basis of our own experience, intellect, native ability that we not only can come to an accurate understanding of these concepts but that we can define how to get there—we can develop strategies for achieving happiness and meaning in life.
We think that on the basis of our own native ability, apart from God and the grace of God, we can solve problems on our own—we know enough. It is this inherent orientation of the sinner’s fallen soul.
Now the sin nature we know is motivated by lust patterns at the very core of the sin nature. These lust patterns will move the sin nature in one of two directions—we call these trends. You either trend toward asceticism or legalism, or you have a trend toward antinomianism, licentiousness, and lasciviousness. Furthermore, you tend to operate in one of two areas: either an area of weakness that produces personal sins or an area of strength that produces human good or dead works.
We get all caught up in the problem of dead works. We do many good and wonderful things, and we can come up with all kinds of ideas and solutions to our problems that make life work very well. The unbeliever can gain a certain modicum of control in his life that makes him seem very happy, very stable, and that he really has a handle on the issues of life. That is very deceptive because we never do.
This is all part of the pathology of the sin nature. We can get so caught up in human good and operating on morality and asceticism and legalism that, in fact, we are like the Pharisees—we end up in moral degeneracy, but we are quite content, and we find ways in which life works for us. We have managed to figure out ways to deal with any pain, suffering in our lives. Some people go through circumstances where they don’t have a lot of overt pain and suffering to deal with, and so their lives look fairly stable and comfortable.
But what Scripture tells us is that no matter what you do, if its root is the sin nature, the result has no spiritual value, and it will ultimately be destructive to the spiritual life, even though it might bring a level of stability in life and you may be quite functional no matter what your circumstances might be.
Just a reminder that the sin nature motivated by lust patterns leads to two trends: asceticism or antinomianism, in opposite directions, and we either produce personal sins from the area of weakness or human good from the area of strength.
5) We have to remember that the sin nature is the only and exclusive control factor for the soul at birth. Your soul is the real you. We break it down academically into components, but, in reality, these components interface in very close ways. We have a mentality, a self-consciousness, conscience (where our norms and standards reside), and volition (which is the decider in the soul).
Whether we realize it or not, we are always functioning volitionally. You may not be aware that you are making choices, but you are. A lot of people go through life, and they are never very volitionally aware. They just feel like they are following whatever their body wants them to do, and that they are programmed that way. They just never think about doing anything different or exercising any level of self-control.
Residing in the cell structure of the body is the sin nature. The sin nature has a material source and an immaterial influence. It is continually seeking control of the soul. As an unbeliever, that is the only control factor. That means that as far as the production is concerned, the only production is that which is either human good or personal sin.
Because the unbeliever does not possess a human spirit, there is no doctrine resident in the soul whatsoever, there is no Holy Spirit resident in the soul, so he cannot produce anything else or make a decision that is based on anything other than human viewpoint no matter how good or wonderful or nice it might be or how close it might line up with Scripture.
There are many moral people who will apply many biblical principles in their lives and as a result will have a level of stability in their lives. But nevertheless, it is still human good and personal sin. What does the Scripture say in Isaiah 64:6 “… all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment…” Remember what the Scripture says: we are born enslaved to the sin nature; we are born in bondage to sin.
Romans 6:16–17, “Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey [that is your gnomic principle], either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness? 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.” If you go out and hire yourself to someone or give yourself to them as a slave to obey them at all times, then you are their slave, and they are your master. You are under their complete control at all times.
Paul goes on to say that by analogy, if you present yourself to sin, then you are a slave of sin, resulting in death. If you present yourself to righteousness, then you are a slave to righteousness. As a believer, you are positionally no longer a slave to sin. The power of the sin nature has been broken. It is broken at the point of salvation. You still have a sin nature, its presence is still very real, its influence is still very strong, but you no longer have to follow its dictates.
Up to the point of salvation, you are a slave to sin, and you always have to follow the dictates of the sin nature. What does that mean? From infancy to salvation, you are a slave to sin; every single human being is. The only decisions they can make, the only actions they can take, flow from the sin nature.
I hope I have made myself clear because where I’m going to go from this is going to be a little challenging and might be a little upsetting to some of you. It’s hard for us to get a handle around some of this unless we start off with the right presuppositions.
6) Since no child is born a believer, there is no option for them in life other than sin nature control and human viewpoint problem-solving techniques. Whenever the unbeliever faces the onslaught of adversity or the pleasures of prosperity, the only way to deal with it is what? Sin nature control. When pleasant or adverse circumstances present themselves, that young child growing up has to make certain decisions as to how they are going to respond or react to that pleasure or pain.
The only options available are wrong. Think about the implications of that. It doesn’t matter whether you are growing up in a wonderful home with Christian parents who are protecting you and taking care of you, or whether you are growing up on the streets, in the slums, as an orphan, or whether you are growing up in the United States or Europe or Asia. The environment is not the issue; the issue is going to be volition and what’s in the soul. The only thing that is in the soul for every single person is the sin nature.
What happens in the pathology of sin is as a child begins to grow, he is going to receive input through his senses. He learns to taste, and it takes a while for all of those taste buds to connect where you develop a fairly sophisticated palate. It may not be until you are in your thirties before you can distinguish a lot of different flavors.
All of these things are processes; it takes time to develop all of those senses. You begin to develop your tactile senses of touch. That is why you give your kids all kinds of nubby things, slick toys, and coarse toys to develop the sense of touch.
They begin to recognize voices that they hear the most. At maybe 3 or 4 months, they begin to recognize their mother’s voice and father’s voice. They also begin to develop the sense of smell. Various smells become familiar to them. As they grow and mature physically, then their ability to recognize these things develops even more.
At the same time, the child from the moment they are in the crib begins to go through various pleasurable and painful experiences. They have the pleasure, the warmth and comfort of being held by their mother. They have the pain of hunger. They decide “I have this pain in my stomach. How am I going to get that solved?” They learn to cry and scream, and as soon as they do, they get a little attention and food. The brain processes that very rapidly, and they realize that they have a strategy here: if I have this problem in my stomach and scream loud enough, it will immediately get solved and somebody will come.
Then they find out that if they cry a little more, maybe they’ll get picked up and held and cuddled and have a nice warm environment. This child begins to develop strategies, processing information from the environment and developing strategies and techniques to get those needs met.
It is one thing to talk about the pain of hunger or being thirsty or just the misery of being tired and, on the good side, the various pleasures. It is one thing to talk about that in what we would think of as a normal scenario. But when you take that pain and pleasure and then extrapolate that out to its most extreme as when you have a young child whose parent dies and they go through that tremendous grief, they are not old enough to understand the dynamics of grief.
They are not old enough to understand death; they just know that this person who has been close to them, held them, been loving is no longer there. It is painful and hurts and how are they going to deal with that. They don’t have the more mature skills that you would develop later and don’t know anything about God and His timing, that God has a plan for every person’s life, and it’s a perfect plan. At the time of death, God has decided that is the perfect time for that person to be absent from the body and face to face with the Lord.
They can’t operate on that; they are not a believer and don’t understand anything about doctrine. They have to deal with that pain in some way, and they develop a strategy for doing it. The same thing applies to various pleasures, and they decide what pleasures they can get easily that somehow will perhaps take care of that pain they are going through.
Then we might extrapolate that out even further. You go through various scenarios where there is physical or sexual abuse—all kinds of different scenarios that are horrible to think about that go on in the homes too often today. It goes on in many homes in this country, not just the homes of unbelievers but also the homes of believers. People come out of these homes, and they have grown up in this kind of a scenario. All along the way, they have developed, just like every one of us has, various strategies for achieving what they think is happiness, stability, meaning and purpose in life.
That is what happens when anyone grows up, and they go through those adolescent years. What are they trying to do? They are trying to figure out the meaning and purpose and direction in life. All of this is a process in maturing, but if the only solutions available are human-viewpoint solutions, then the end result is always going to be catastrophic. The Scripture will call it temporal death. Even if the solution is socially acceptable, provides a modicum of stability and happiness, and not something that is overtly self-destructive, what the Scripture says is because it flows from the sin nature, it can have one and only one result.
The sin nature has lust patterns. We have someone growing up and from their early age, this sin nature is active. It is influencing every single decision that is being made during the day. A child may respond to pain and pleasure through personal sin, or perhaps their trend is more toward asceticism and legalism so they are trending toward human good.
You can have a scenario where within one home—let’s say down in the ghetto in some urban area—you have two children: the older daughter and the younger son. The older daughter has a trend towards personal sin, so as that older child decides that the way to handle life’s problems is through approbation, before long that child and her trend toward antinomianism and lasciviousness is involved in illicit sexual relationships and ends up in prostitution making her life miserable. It is typical of the sociologist and psychologist to go and blame the environment because they grew up in a certain kind of a home without certain influences.
In that same home, you have the younger son grow up. His trend is towards asceticism and morality. As he gets older, he sees maybe a priest walking down the street or some other religious leader and gets attracted to religion and starts trying to resolve problems in life through religious activity and morality. He is operating on human good. That son then as he gets older perhaps decides to go into some sort of social work or become clergy in some kind of religious organization in order to help other people.
What made the difference was always volition. Their volition was affected by the core sin nature and the various trends there.
7) As we grow, we develop various techniques and strategies for gaining our objectives, and these are related to five different factors. The issue is always volition, but our volition is always being influenced by one or more of these factors.
First of all, there are certain genetic predispositions. Just because you have a genetic predisposition doesn’t mean you have to yield to that. We live in an age today when you hear especially in the homosexual movement, a lot of talk about the fact that there is identification of certain genes. If you have this gene, you are going to be homosexual. Yet, you hear various stories that are never relayed in the press or on television of people who are in the homosexual lifestyle, and they become believers. They turn from that lifestyle because of the application of doctrine in their life. You can even have that in the realm of morality.
This last week I heard a very articulate presentation of this on a talk show. A lady, probably in her mid-forties because of some of the chronological data she gave, wrote in and had been involved in a lesbian affair when she was in her college years. She admitted that she still had the strong temptations at times in that direction. She is married and has adolescent children now. She obviously became a believer, and she said, “I came to realize that God’s plan for my life was not for me to fulfill every sexual urge I had, but for me to control those sexual urges through His power and to do what He put me on earth to do.” I thought that was very well stated. That is that process of maturity.
We have a sin nature that is constantly pushing us into those directions of autonomy and in the direction of the trends of our soul. The issue in the Christian life is to learn doctrine and by walking by means of the Holy Spirit to control those urges and the sin nature. That is exactly what this passage is talking about.
We have to recognize that there are these certain genetic predispositions. That is why when we get a little older, every now and then we find ourselves doing something, and we shock ourselves because we see or sense one of our parents in that activity. We are simply repeating what they did, and it just stuns us. Some of you haven’t gotten old enough to see that yet, but that is a preview of coming attractions.
We have sin nature lusts and trends. You have certain lusts and trends unique to your sin nature; your siblings may be similar or completely different. You may be very different from your parents, and you parents may look at your kids and wonder if they came from somewhere else because their sin natures don’t seem to have anything to do with your sin natures.
You also learn from observed behavior patterns. As you are a child, you are constantly processing information and observing the behavior of your parents and how they respond and react to life’s situations. That is how you learn—you learn by imitation. That is scary if you are a parent.
Then you learn from instilled behavior patterns. You observed your parent doing it one way, and then you try it. They instill a different behavior pattern in you because they take you out behind the woodshed and spank you for that. I think the first time I uttered “damn,” I didn’t even know what I was saying. I know I never heard my mother say it, but I probably heard my grandfather say it. He said things like that quite frequently. It just came out of my mouth. I was about seven years old, and the next thing I knew, I had a mouthful of suds, and Dial soap didn’t taste very good. They were instilling in me a different behavior pattern from the one I observed.
We not only have genetic predispositions, but we have observed and instilled behavior patterns. Then we just have personal likes and dislikes. We just do something because we like it. There is no great, deep psychological reasoning—it’s not because we were dropped on our heads when we were a kid or because we were abused or because of anything like that. It just happens to be the trend of our sin nature, and we like it and enjoy it and to us it brings a level of happiness and pleasure. Then we get some doctrine, and we find out that’s all wrong. But those are the various factors that influence our decision-making process and why we choose certain ways to deal with the problems in our life. But the issue is always volition.
Modern man because of our psychological orientation thinks that somehow you have to figure out all the whys and wherefores and go back to the root, discover where it came from, how it came from, what mama did or what papa did, or what you saw on television that causes you to do what you do now.
That is not what the Bible says. Never do you find anybody in the Scripture addressing the horrible consequences in people’s lives on the basis of “let’s sit down and talk about it and figure out why you do what you do.” You do what you do because you are a sinner, and there is only one solution and that is volition.
You have to learn some doctrine so you have some volitional alternatives. You have to learn that you have a new power source, and that is the Holy Spirit. You are going to walk by means of the Holy Spirit in doctrine by applying doctrine to your life, and that is going to change your life. That is the process of the spiritual life. It shifts responsibility completely to your own shoulders.
It is not what happened to you when you were a kid because frankly whatever happened to you when you were a kid happened to everybody else when they were a kid. It might not be the exact same thing. In your case, it might be much more horrible than in someone else’s case.
I know of circumstances when I was growing up that happened with friends of mine in their homes with their siblings. They grew up in wonderful environments, and their view of their parents is 180 degrees opposite of their siblings’ views of their parents. One says they were never abused, and the other goes through various psychotherapy counseling sessions and comes out and says that they were abused and beaten. A lot of times, it is just that one kid recognized the discipline in terms of spanking was necessary for their behavior and to train them, and the other one was very rebellious and he just thought that discipline was abuse. That is how he processed that information, so they change their perspective on things.
It doesn’t matter; we are all victims of Adam’s sin. We are living in a fallen world, and because of that, we all go through various horrible circumstances. Some are much worse than others, but the Scripture says there is one and only one solution and that was provided for by Jesus Christ on the Cross.
8) Options are always available whether we realize them or not, whether we are aware of them or not, or whether we want to admit it or not. There are always options available, and many times there were options available which we either ignored or rejected or even if we were not aware of them, we could have become aware of them.
The point I’m making here is that from the time you are a child, you are making decisions. A lot of times we are not aware, not volitionally conscious that we are making those decisions. Sometimes there is just a knee-jerk response from our sin nature, but we are making the decision. We want to do it, and we do it.
As a result, we are accountable, and we are going to reap the consequences of those decisions in our life. As you grow up, you are going to set certain habit patterns in your soul for dealing with adversity, pleasure, pain, and hostility all through life. Some of those techniques are going to be very helpful and beneficial; some of those techniques are going to be personally destructive, but they all have their root in your sin nature and a deep-seated commitment to make life work apart from God.
No matter how functional they might make you, no matter how much pleasure they might bring you, no matter how successful you might become as a result of that, God looks at all of those strategies that you develop from your sin nature, and He says that they don’t count for anything, and they are all wrong.
What are the mechanics of this? Let’s turn to James 1:13–14—a crucial passage for us to understand when we talk about the sin nature. “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt any one. But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust.”
Tempted is the word PEIRASMOS, which refers to an overt test or an internal motivation. Here it is temptation from the internal sense. God is not dangling out the evil carrot for you to move toward. The stress is on the individual nature of the situation. We are each individuals in the family of God as believers, and we each have the same solution, which is the spiritual life that God has provided for us.
The word for temptation relates to the activity of the sin nature, whereby the sin nature solicits the soul to a certain response that is either going to be human good or personal sin. It always begins with personal sin—that is the temptation. Once the soul goes negative to doctrine, chooses personal sin, then you may react immediately to human good and from thereon out be involved in human good.
There are three sources of temptation the Scripture says. Two are overt, and one is inside of us. The two overt sources of temptation are Satan and the whole demonic realm, and they usually work through an orderly system of ideas, which the Bible calls the KOSMOS. The KOSMOS is that orderly system of ideas promoted by Satan and which we sometimes refer to as human viewpoint, or the Bible also calls foolishness.
The cosmic system may involve a whole array of ideas, some of which are antithetical to each other, but the bottom line is it promotes a way of solving life’s problems that is totally independent of God.
It is not a sin to be tempted. You are always going to be tempted by your sin nature, and temptation is not a sin. Yielding to temptation is the sin, whether you are yielding to that temptation in terms of your mental attitude, in terms of emotional response, or in terms of overt activity. It is the yielding to temptation, not the temptation itself which is the sin. What we see in the description of the sin nature in James 1:14 is first there is the temptation, and then there is the response to temptation: negative volition to doctrine, positive volition towards the sin nature.
“But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust.” Lusts are the motivating factor in the sin nature. The interesting thing here that we should note is that the word for lust is the Greek word EPITHUMIA. This word is not only found here in James 1:14 but is also found in our passage in Galatians 5:16ff, where it talks about the flesh [sin nature] lusts against the Spirit. There is this constant warfare, and the word EPITHUMIA is used to describe that warfare. That desire for control is the root meaning of EPITHUMIA. We are enticed by our own lusts. The lust pattern is the internal motivation of the sin nature.
James 1:15, “Then, when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin [personal sin]; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death.” When lust is united with negative volition, that is when it produces personal sin. I want you to see this—it is very clear. When anything flows from the sin nature, whether we are talking about personal sin or human good, because it has its source in the sin nature, God says that the end result is always going to be death, not life.
The Bible talks about various different kinds of death. It talks about physical death, spiritual death, the second death, positional death (the believer’s identification with Jesus Christ on the Cross), sexual death, and operational death. When we are talking about a believer here, we are talking about both operational death and temporal death, which is sin nature control of the soul. At this point, the believer says to the sin nature, “Yes, sir. I’m going to let you be my master.”
So we are putting ourselves temporally back in slavery to the sin nature. It’s not a permanent enslavement, and we can exercise our volition by using God’s grace recovery procedure: we confess our sins, we are forgiven our sins, and at that point, we are free from control of the sin nature and back under the filling of God the Holy Spirit so that we can walk by means of the Holy Spirit.
The Scripture talks about operational death and temporal death for the believer. For the unbeliever, there is no option. They are always in carnality and temporal death because they are enslaved to sin. The result is when the believer continues to operate in temporal death, the long-term results are devastating. As you let the sin nature control, whether it is in mental attitude sins, in overt sins, following your lust pattern in whatever way it makes you smile that particular day, the long-term result is it begins to fragment your soul.
That is why the writer of James says that a person who is like this is double-minded (James 1:8). The Greek word is DIPSUCHOS. PSUCHOS is the word for soul and DI is two. It begins to split or fragment the soul. You become fragmented all over the place, and the more you fragment, the more you self-destruct.
This is why believers end up in psychosis and neurosis, and they make many foolish decisions. They can end up living a life that is indistinguishable from an unbeliever—alcoholics, drug addicts, sexual perverts, or they can end up like the Pharisees in the New Testament in moral degeneracy. The result is that it is destructive to life, and even though they think they are finding happiness, it eventually is going to collapse.
9) The consequence of all human viewpoint problem solving is death. No matter how much it makes your life functional, the result is death. For the believer, the issue is not functionality, the issue is not being able to handle life problems and be a success. The issue is spiritual growth and maturity operating exclusively on the power of God the Holy Spirit, walking by means of the Spirit, and handling life’s problems through the principles of God’s Word as extrapolated in the 10 stress busters, which we have been studying in James. It is God’s problem-solving devices that are the issue, and unless you are solving problems that way, the result is going to be destructive.
One thing about human viewpoint is human viewpoint tends to always focus on the enormity of the problem and the horror of the circumstances, and it always tends to emphasize the innocence of the person and, therefore, suddenly shifts the blame to the person who causes the victimization. That is why we have a society today that emphasizes victimization because that shifts responsibility from the person who is acted upon to the person who performs the action. The issue is not who does what to you; the issue in life is how are you going to choose to respond to whatever adversity there is in your life. As Job says, (Job 5:7) “For man is born for trouble, as sparks fly upward.”
10) The only hope, the only real answer is biblical Christianity. It starts at the Cross. Jesus Christ paid the penalty for every single sin in human history. God poured out those sins, He imputed those to Jesus Christ on the Cross, and during those three hours on the Cross, God darkened the earth so that man could not see the suffering that Jesus endured during those horrible hours when He paid the penalty as our substitute on the Cross.
The biggest problem we face in life is the problem of sin because that underlies everything else. If we were still in the Garden, if Adam had never sinned, we would still be living in perfect environment, and there would be no adversity, no difficulty, no victimization, no abuse, no suffering, no evil. Everything in life is the result of Adam’s sin and the introduction of sin into our environment and into our constitution. As a result of that, because Jesus Christ solved the greatest problem we will ever face, which is the problem of sin, we know that Jesus Christ can solve every other problem in life.
We have specific promises for that. 2 Peter 1:3–4 “Seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, in order that by them you might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.”
The complete omnipotence of God and all His knowledge and all His resources have been brought to bear so that He can solve every problem in the human race. His divine power has granted to us EVERYTHING—not some things, not most things, but everything—pertaining to life (all of the issues of life) and godliness (our spiritual life).
The solution is through your relationship with Jesus Christ. Through His great and precious promises, “you might become partakers of the divine nature”—that is, growing to spiritual maturity, reflecting the character of Jesus Christ in your life. The only solution begins at the Cross with faith alone in Christ alone, and it continues through learning and application of Bible doctrine. Because it is through Bible doctrine that we learn to define reality.
When you are one month old or one year old or 10 years old, you do not know any doctrine and you cannot define reality. So how have you constructed your view of reality? From your own limited resources that are bent on defining reality apart from God. We all grow up with a distorted view of reality that is ultimately self-centered. Because we have this distorted view of reality, we have a distorted way of solving problems. We have to reconstruct that.
That is what Romans 12:1–2 is all about. Romans 12:2, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” Do not be conformed to the thinking systems of the world, the human viewpoint strategies of the world. “Transformed” is the present passive imperative of METAMORPHOO, which means to have a complete inner transformation by the renovation of your thinking. So you have to learn.
From day one to probably when you got into your twenties, even if you were saved at a young age, you took in and learned all kinds of things and all kinds of human viewpoint. Now the whole process of the spiritual life is you have to unlearn that, and that is hard. That is why the spiritual life and spiritual growth is an intense process and a life-long process. We have to unlearn all those habits of thought, habits of response, habits of emotion that we learned and instilled in us and that we chose from the time we were born until adulthood, and we figured out this is the way to make life work.
In a lot of ways, it made life work, but then we knew there was more. That came through Christianity and learning what Christ did for us on the Cross. So we have to unlearn everything, and we have to replace it with Bible doctrine in the soul. Then we have to make moment-by-moment decisions to apply that doctrine.
12) Along with the Word of God, we have the indwelling Spirit of God who is the power of the spiritual life under His filling ministry and through whom all things are possible. We will continue here next time. Galatians 5:16–17, “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh; for the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.” We will look at what it means to deal with this opposition, this war on the inside. In the next hour in John, we will look at how Jesus addresses this whole issue to the Pharisees when He said, “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” John 8:32.
Closing Prayer
“Father, we do thank You for this look into Your Word and how we have the promises of Your Word. We know that no matter what happens in life, the only resources that matter are the grace resources that You have provided for us, which we acquire at the Cross. Apart from that, no matter what we do, no matter how well we handle life or how poorly we handle life, no matter how wonderful or how tragic our circumstances, we can never have true happiness, true stability or find meaning in life.
Yet through Your Word, through the work of Jesus Christ on the Cross who paid the penalty for all of our sins, because of all that He provided for us at that time, we can solve any problem, we can deal with any heartache, any tragedy, and we can have true happiness, stability, and life. But that comes from learning and applying Your Word.
Father, we pray that if there is anyone here this morning that is unsure of their eternal destiny, that they would take the opportunity to do so right now. There is no hope apart from Jesus Christ. The Scripture says “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31). “And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Father, we pray that You would help us as we concentrate on these things and see how they apply in our lives. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”