Life on the Lowest Plane
The wisdom of the natural man has its source in himself. He rejects anything and everything which cannot e apprehended and explained by his own unaided reason.
1 Corinthians 2:14, "But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned."
Sin has so twisted and perverted the intellect of the natural man and satan has so blinded his mind that he often things he knows more than God. Pride leads him to exalt his on mentality to such an extent that, if God says anything which his tiny intellect and puny reason cannot comprehend, then he declares God's saying "foolishness." He boldly proclaims God's sacred truth to be fable; God's eternal Word to be an earth-born myth. His endeavor to fathom God's ocean of truth with his little teacup of a mind is pathetic, and his arrogant method of casting aside God's supernatural revelation when it goes contrary to his sin-saturated reason is pitiful indeed.
2. The heart of man was defiled.
Jeremiah 17:9, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked."
Mark 7:21-23, "For from within, out of the heart of man, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: All these evil things come from within, and defile the man."
What a picture of the human heart! Yet it is a true one because it was taken by the divine Photographer "who knows what was in man." Who can look upon this awful picture and others given on the same divine authority, such as Romans 1:29-32, Gal. 5:17-21, Psalms 14:1-3, and not call man's case absolutely hopeless except somehow a miracle be wrought?
Man was made to love God with all his mind, heart, strength and soul. His heart was created with the capacity to respond to the love of God with love. man was made to love his fellowmen. God wishes man to love his neighbor as himself.
But what is the condition of the world today both as regards man's relationship to God and to his neighbor? It is an awful but a tragically true prediction which God made in His Word of the present world condition.
2 Timothy 3:1-4, "This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, truce breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God."
When did man fall into such an evil state as is here described? The moment God's first man stepped outside of God's will by his own voluntary choice, and carried the human race with him, that moment he dethroned God and enthroned self in his own affections. From that moment man left to himself has been inherently and incurably selfish.
3. The will of man was perverted.
To will to do God's will is man's highest privilege, his most godlike prerogative. To live wholly within the will of God is to have righteousness, peace and harmony reign everywhere. This was God's intention in His universe. All angelic beings, as well as man, were made to be obedient subjects of God the Creator. But in satan pride led to self-will; self-will to rebellion; rebellion to refusal of authority; and the refusal of authority to lawlessness. satan, having stepped outside the will of God and become a rebel, tempted Adam and Eve to do the same. They yielded to his temptation and eve since the will of mankind has been off the main track.
But if man has not been willing to submit to the will of God which is always kind, beneficent and loving, surely he will not submit to the will of his fellowman which is often selfish, tyrannical and despotic. So the world of politics, commerce, industry, education and even religion, is intersected with side lines built by the ingenuity of masterful minds who wish to satisfy their unquenchable thirst for other men's possessions.A heaven-inspired description of the perversion sin made in man's will and of the lengths of lawlessness into which it led him, is given in these verses:
Judges 17:6, "In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes."
Romans 8:7, "Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be."
G. Campbell Morgan sums up the ruin wrought in the human soul by Adam's fall as follows: "Thus in the spiritual part of his nature, man by the fall has become unlike God, in that his intelligence operates wholly within the material realm, whereas the divine wisdom is spiritual, and therefore explanatory of all material facts; his emotion acts from wrong principles of self-love, whereas the divine love ever operates upon the principle of love for others; and his will asserts itself upon the basis of passion for mastery, whereas the divine will insists upon obedience, through determination to serve the highest interests of others."
Sin mad the human body a battlefield. Sin not only invaded the realm of the spirit and the soul but also that of the body and made that which was intended to be the spirit's congenial home its prison house. That which should have been spiritual tends to become sensual. That which God purposed to be the channel through which the spirit within man could touch the external world and bring blessing to it was turned into the instrument through which satan reached the spirit with his defilement. The body became satan's broadcasting station.
Romans 7:23, "But I see another law in my members, warring, against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members."
~Ruth Paxson~
(continued with # 19)
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