Some of our statements in our State of Theology survey deal with the doctrine of God and who
God is.
But we also have statements that deal with who we are and our understanding of human
beings and humanity.
And one of those statements is this: “Everyone sins a little, but most people are good by
nature.”
Now, when we put that statement to evangelicals, 46% agree with that statement.
Now, this is in direct contradiction to what the Bible teaches about the nature of human
beings.
You know, Paul tells us in Ephesians chapter 2 that we are not by nature good.
In fact, what he tells us there is that we are by nature “children of wrath.”
That’s the biblical teaching.
So how did we drift away from that biblical teaching?
And how did we get to a point where 46% of evangelicals, who are supposed to understand
the gospel, would affirm what Paul affirms about basic human nature?
And one of the answers to that is that we live in the modern world.
And one of the tenets of modernism is the perfectibility of man—not from some outside,
necessary force (a divine agent), but the perfectibility of man from within.
We see this all over.
Sometimes it goes by the name of “progressivism,” but it’s the idea that we have it within
ourselves—because we are good people—that we have it within ourselves to be even better
people, and we can even be perfect people.
And this is one of those situations, again, where culture has overly influenced our thinking.
It has negatively influenced our thinking.
It drifts—it causes us to drift away from the biblical portrayal of who we are.
And here’s why this matters.
Well, number one, we have to affirm what the Bible affirms about who we are.
But it also matters because this gets at the necessity of Christ and understanding His
work.
If we don’t see ourselves as totally depraved, as utterly unable to do anything good—what
does Scripture say?
“There is none who do good.
No, not one.”
If we don’t see ourselves in that light, we will never see the work of Christ in the
proper perspective.
The higher view we have of ourselves, the lower view we have of who Christ is.
But that lower view that we have of ourselves, and that absolute low view as a child of wrath—well,
that causes us to cry out for our need for Christ.
Because then we recognize that we’re not just talking about little sins here and there
that maybe some divine being can sort of sweep under some cosmic rug.
No, we’re talking about our sin separating us from a holy God—an eternal separation.
And there’s only one hope, and that hope is to be found in Jesus Christ, in His righteousness.
And His righteousness will overtake our unrighteousness.
His righteousness will swallow up our unrighteousness.
But if we don’t see ourselves as a sinner, and if we don’t see ourselves as, by nature,
under the wrath of God, we will never have an appreciation for what Christ did for us
on the cross.
And we’ll never have an understanding of the gospel.
This is really important.
It has an effect not only on our theology; it also has an effect on how we view each
other.
It has an effect on how we understand society, and how we understand the role of government,
and how we understand the role of law, and how we understand even the role of education.
This is fundamental to living rightly in God’s world, understanding who we are as human beings.
And what this survey shows us is not only is there faulty thinking out there in culture—we
might just come to expect that and understand it—but it shows us that that faulty thinking
has infiltrated and permeated the evangelical church itself.
And so, we must respond to this.
We must teach people what the Bible says about who God is and who we are, because only when
we understand that will we understand who Jesus Christ is.