Guest Column
by RAY WOLBRECHT
Where does evil come from? Humanists say that man is basically good and that evil comes from his surroundings, his culture. Who makes up his culture? Other people do. So that ism doesn’t work. It’s a fact that man is born with a sinful nature. We enjoy sin. Ah, the lusty appeal of an affair; the secretive theft of goods and ideas; the plotting of revenge; and the worst: Pride, which puts a man in the insidious psychological, destructive and covetous competition with every other human being … and God.
We live in a fallen world in the midst of fallen people. What’s on TV and the movies and what we read in the daily newspaper confirms it. We sin and don’t fret about it unless we get caught.
There are those who think there is no hell. But when asked if Jesus was a liar, most will affirm that he wasn’t. He spoke of hell more often than he described heaven, so hell must exist.
The Bible says man was created innocent. The Creator walked with him and they shared ideas. When man decided he wanted to have the knowledge of good and evil and be like God, he certainly got his wish. Since man was made in the image of God with enormous intelligence and the ability to reason and create, he has the ability to make sin with infinite depth. There is no limit to the havoc and depravity that he could be responsible for.
So, what to do? Australian men will bond with a best friend they will call a mate – the kind of fellow that will jump in front of a bullet for him. Well, that’s the plan. Find someone who will take the punishment that we deserve for our sins. The acceptance of this gift is not for sale nor can it be earned. It’s free. On the other hand it can be rejected. Every day a person makes hundreds of decisions that will determine if he wants God back in his life – or not.
A person in the fallen state doesn’t have to stay there. Acknowledgement of the fact that he is a sinner and a willingness to reverse that trend is called repentance. And God made a promise to forgive. Better yet, He forgets it ever happened! And the punishment has already been paid in full by the death of His Son.
C.S. Lewis says there is no way he’ll ever understand why the Redemption plan was done this way. In the same way, if he’d been responsible for a plan of how humans make little copies of themselves, the way in which we do it would’ve never occurred to him.
Once repentance is initiated and forgiveness accepted, we go from being a creation of God to being a child of God. We become like a child to his daddy. What sweet memories that digs up!
Unfortunately man still carries the sinful nature and it is a battle to the death. The Apostle Paul in Romans Ch. 7 agonizes over this dilemma. “….what I do not want to do, I do; and what I want to do, I do not do. But when I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who am doing it; rather it is the sin living within me that does it.” A non-believer will oft times have a bad impression of Christianity when he sees a so-called Christian screw up. The difference, though, is the changed heart. Before repentance, the man sinned and enjoyed it, but now, when faced with the deed, he hates what he did and repents. Once again, as promised, it’s forgiven and forgotten.
When this “new person” dies in this redeemed state, the sinful nature is removed and once again that purpose for which he was created is re-established – to walk with God and share with each other their most intimate thoughts.
Each human is invited into this personal relationship – the privilege to converse with the Creator of the universe. This is the boiled down essence of Christianity. With repentance and the acceptance that the punishment has already been paid in full, the relationship begins. Amen.
I’m wrong about a lot of things, but not this one.
