Part 6 - The Depravity of Man
Tom Shrader examines the condition of humanity before God, using Romans 3 to demonstrate that no person is righteous or good by divine standards. He distinguishes between how we evaluate people versus how God sees them, explaining that depravity refers to our spiritual condition rather than just our conduct. The teaching emphasizes that all people, regardless of how good they appear, are spiritually dead and need salvation.
“When Paul looks at mankind, and he studies man, and he looks across the board, his conclusion is there's no righteous one, there's no good one, there's no one who understands, there's no one who gets it.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Christianity 101 (2004)
Recorded: 2004
Duration: 41 min
Themes: sin, salvation, grace, authority, truth, righteousness, spiritual, judgment, new believer, questioning faith, struggling with guilt, seeking purpose, young adult, doubting salvation, feeling condemned, searching for meaning
Scripture: Romans 3:10-12, Romans 3:23, Romans 1:18-32, Romans 2, 2 Chronicles 6:36, Ecclesiastes 7:20, 1 Timothy 3
Theological Themes: total depravity, human nature, biblical authority, soteriology, salvation doctrine, original sin, spiritual death, divine judgment
Full Transcript
The Doctrine Comes Before Behavior
This is actually something a little different today. We've never done this before, and that is to break for Christmas and then come back to not have a series done. We've always timed it in the past so that we're finishing a series, then we start something fresh after the first of the year. I'm really nervous about doing this because this session today has one specific point. It's to drive you to a point in your life where you understand that you have this extraordinary need, but we don't provide any solution for you. This is just like real life today then, I guess. We'll come back after break and give you that solution.
It's Christianity 101, and bear with me again. I want to make sure we set the table and have this established. We started by talking about the fact that in life you have to have some level of authority. Doctrine is important.
I was watching the O'Reilly Factor last night at the very end when they were emailing in and they said something like... Obviously O'Reilly said something a couple of days before and it said, "How can you call yourself a Christian when you don't show this compassion?" That's the typical thought process is to say a Christian behaves a certain way. No, a Christian believes a certain way. That precedes behavior. I know I'm grinding that, but that's a huge thing. You live in a world that defines Christianity by how you behave. Your Christianity is really defined by what you believe. When you have those beliefs in place, then the behavior follows. That is very, very, very important.
The Need for Final Authority
So doctrine is important. We need answers. We need a final authority. I've been a part of, and I'll bet you have too, just dozens and dozens and dozens of discussions where it's clear that we're not going to arrive at any conclusion because we can't agree upon an authority. By the way, even when you agree upon authority, it doesn't mean you're going to drive it to the same conclusions. It's not unusual for the Supreme Court to come out and say, "Okay, here's the Constitution, here's the body of law," and their decision is 5-4. Just because you have this final authority doesn't mean that everyone is going to see things exactly the same way.
But what we know is this. In this Bible, in this Word of God, we know that we have the truth of God here. It's not that this Bible contains truth. It's that this Bible is truth, and there's an extraordinary difference. This Bible is true, and it is to be believed.
Setting the Foundation
Now, with that in place, we can discuss some very important issues. I've been waiting. We're a week late getting the tapes. The colonel's been gone, and he's back today, so everything feels a little bit better. But that CD or tape on the way out, on side one, there's about a 20 or 25-minute discussion on the idea of who's God, and why are we so confused about God? If you were here, it would be a great review. If you weren't, I think it's important. It's an important discussion.
So we looked at that. We looked at the Father. Then we looked at Jesus. We said, there's the dividing issue now. Doors are slamming. Conversation's great. Everybody wants to talk about God. Praise God. We'll talk about God. It'll be spiritual. But once I talk about Jesus and define who Jesus is, now we define the terms. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. Doors slam shut. Now you're either for me or against me. Last week, we looked at the Holy Spirit, the role of the Holy Spirit.
This week, we've done something pretty clever here. We have, on your outline, called this the Holy Spirit, but in reality, it's not. So that's a little mistake. What we're talking to you today, the title of the day is, and I said this last week, we're going to talk to, I guarantee you this, we are talking today about your favorite subject. I know it. I know we're talking about your favorite subject today, because we're talking about you. As long as we're talking about you, you're happy, even if we're just beating the snot out of you. At least we're talking about you, and that makes you feel comfortable.
The Mental Exercise of Good and Bad People
So we're talking about you. We're talking about mankind. We're talking about every human, and that's going to relate to you as well, obviously.
Do a little mental exercise for me here, will you? Get in your mind, just, it doesn't matter, arbitrary, it's just mental. Don't need to write it down. Don't need to talk out loud. Just take a second and think of five good people. There's one calling right now, so there's one. Think of five. Think of five good people. Just bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. Don't have to be in this room. Don't even have to be that you know them. Doesn't mean you're going to have breakfast with them or vacation with them. Just five good people.
Now do this. Think of five bad people. That somehow is always a little easier than the other one, for me anyway.
If we do that exercise, and we're going to get a different kind of list in here, but if we did that exercise, we go over to Fashion Square today, get a room, put a hundred people in it, and say, "Think of five bad people, think of five good people." Those people are going to run down an inventory list, bam, bam, bam, bam, based on what they see in these other people's lives. That's how you typically do it. He's a good guy. Well, why is he a good guy? Well, he's a great provider. He's got a good job. He's a heck of a dad. He's a great neighbor. Puts up Christmas lights. Turns the stereo off. He's great. She's terrible. Why is she terrible? Well, you know, she's never on time. She gossips. She slanders. She's a terrible person.
God's Perspective vs. Man's Perspective
Here's what we want to see today. We want to see mankind, not through our eyes, but through God's eyes, and it's very different. We drive to a very different conclusion. In fact, I'm going to go ahead and give you the conclusion up front. Romans chapter 3. You can open your Bibles, if you have them, to the book of Romans. We're going to spend some time in there.
In Romans chapter 3, Paul is giving you his conclusion. Paul is like this brilliant prosecuting attorney who has decided, as he looked at mankind, what his conclusion of the condition of man is. There it is in Romans chapter 3, verse 10. Here's his conclusion: "There is none righteous, not even one. There's none who understands. There's none who seeks for God. All have turned aside, and together they have become useless. There is none who does good, not even one."
That's the conclusion. When Paul looks at mankind, and he studies man, and he looks across the board, his conclusion is there's no righteous one, there's no good one, there's no one who understands, there's no one who gets it. So when you say to Paul, give me five bad people, he says, no problem. Give me five good people, he said, I can't give you one. Out of the whole, in our case, 7 billion people on the planet, I can't give you one.
Defining Terms: Natural Man vs. Spiritual Man
Let's clarify this. We're going to talk about natural man, or fallen man. We're talking about man, woman, boy, girl, every person, and the condition spiritually that they're in when they come into this world. When Paul says no one is good, he's not looking at Christians and saying there's no good Christian. He's saying when I look at natural man, the condition of man, there's no one who's good, there's no one who's righteous, there's no one who understands. They're lost.
If I say to you, I'm lost, you're going to say, well, what you need are directions. What we're talking about here is we're lost in that sense, that we'll never understand life, but we're lost in a greater sense. Our life is in jeopardy. Our eternal destination is in jeopardy. What makes it so tragic is we may not even realize it.
It's like one of those horror pictures. There are all sorts of different scary movies. One is scary when you just see events and there are guys shooting - that's a certain level of fright. But to me, the most frightening are when somebody's going around their normal business, and there's somebody who's out there who's stalking them. When you're in the movie, when the producer will give you a shot from inside the stalker's eyes, and you just see through a mask people doing their normal business - that's scary. Because he's in jeopardy, she's in jeopardy, and she doesn't know it. What Paul's saying is all mankind is in jeopardy, and most of them don't even know it. They're lost.
The Need for Deliverance
What we need are not natural men, but spiritual men. We need to be found. We need to be delivered. Saved. Saved from what? We need to be saved from the tyranny of sin. We need to be saved from the bondage of sin that's in our life. No one can do good. Why? We need to break that bondage to sin. We need to be rescued from that, but also delivered from eternal damnation.
That's a petrifying thought. I was talking to somebody the other day, and they were visiting their parents who's in the hospital, dying, and not a Christian. They were talking about how bitter and angry and combative this father of theirs is becoming. What's happening? He's scared to die. He doesn't know where he's going, and by not knowing where he's going, he knows where he's going. He's petrified of it.
He needs to be delivered. He needs to be rescued. My friend will sit down and say, "Dad, here's why you're feeling this way. Here's the truth. Here's the sin. Here's the deliverance. Here's Jesus. Dad, just come in repentance and faith, and get that stuff out of here." When you want to see how stubborn and bitter we are, there you are at the end of your life, dying, coming face to face with a God who's telling you He's going to judge your sin. Scary.
Paul's Case for Universal Sinfulness
Paul gives us this condition of man. Here's his conclusion: no one's good. Then he takes chapters one and two to build this case. Here's the first point when we're looking at this idea of depravity: depravity talks more about our condition than our conduct. It's more about the condition of our heart.
The condition that we find when we look at our own life, and Scripture is filled with it. 2 Chronicles 6:36: "For there is no man who does not sin." Ecclesiastes 7:20: "There is not a just man on earth who does good and does not sin." The passage we looked at in Romans chapter 3 - you'll see that all through Scripture. Our heart is deceitfully wicked.
The Crucial Nature of This Doctrine
This is personal now. I personally think when you figure this out today, you get this lesson right today, all of a sudden a lot of what are typical doctrinal pitfalls go away. This is a crucial issue. One author writes this: "The view one takes concerning salvation will be determined to a large extent by the view one takes concerning sin and its effects on human nature." Another one writes: "It cannot be said too often that a false theology finds its source in an inadequate view of depravity."
The Condition of Man
Here's what we're talking about. What's the condition of man when he comes into this world? Well, we've all sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We're all sinners. That's the condition of our heart. How many sins must I commit to be a sinner? Technically the answer is zero. That's the whole point. I come into this world under condemnation from Adam's sin. I'm lost and I'm separated from God. Now, if you want to say, "Well, you've got to at least sin once," that's fine. You're going to get there pretty quickly and everybody's going to be fine. We don't have a problem with that. But that's the condition of man.
This is God's view of man. And in one sense, it's even man's view of man. Let me read you this. This is from the Minnesota Crime Commission. They did a study years ago on juvenile delinquency. This is not an evangelical organization. They couldn't care less about God or the things of God or anything of God. They're studying kids from a human perspective.
A Secular Study Confirms Biblical Truth
Here's their conclusion. Talk about juvenile delinquency. "It must be remembered that no infant is born a finished product. On the contrary, every baby starts life as a little savage, is equipped, among other things, with organs and muscles over which he has no control, with an urge for self-preservation, with aggressive drives like anger and fear over which he has practically no control. He is completely selfish and self-centered. He wants what he wants when he wants it. His uncle's watch, his bottle, his mother's attention, his playmate's toy. Deny him those wants, and he seethes with rage and aggression, which would be murderous were he not so helpless. He is dirty, has no morals, no knowledge, no skills."
"What this means, of course, is that all children, not just certain children, are born delinquents. And if permitted to continue in the self-centered world of infancy, given free reign over his impulsive actions to satisfy his wants, every child would grow up a criminal, a thief, a killer, a rapist. And in the process of growing up, it's normal for every child to be dirty, to fight, to grab, to steal, to tear things apart, to talk back, to evade."
Here's their conclusion. Every child has to grow out of delinquent behavior. A secular group that sees man as exactly God says He is. A dirty little creature.
Understanding Depravity
When we talk about depravity, two things. You've got them on your outline. We're talking first about the condition, not the conduct. Secondly, by depravity, we do not mean that every person is as bad in their behavior as they can possibly be. What we're saying is they're as bad off as they can be.
Saddam Hussein didn't kill all of his wives. Adolf Hitler didn't kill his mother. Jeffrey Dahmer didn't cut up and eat every little boy he met. Michael Jackson, you fill your own joke. But do you see how that goes?
So this is the point. Mark Twain wrote this. Somebody, I get the question, how long does it take to prepare a lesson? Well, some take longer than others. I've got 54 years in this lesson today. When you're talking depravity, a lot of times I have to talk about things I don't know anything about. I've got a Ph.D. in this baby here. I know this stuff.
The Dark Side We Never Show
Mark Twain wrote this: "Every person is a moon who has a dark side which he never shows to anybody." Sarah and I went to Sea Ranch last weekend. We actually took four or five days, and that's where we go in August. So it was a neat time. We actually scheduled it three or four months ago, and she got engaged the weekend before we left. So it gave us something to talk about. It really gave her something to listen about for that time. I'm just kidding. It gave us something to talk about.
Well, this time of year, you can get rain. So we're driving. Last Saturday night, she said, "Let's go to the movie." Well, to go to the movie there is not like to go to the movie here. There aren't a lot of options. There's one movie theater that services basically a 70-mile area, and it's a 14-mile drive that takes about 30 minutes, and it was raining, and off the ocean, the water was just blowing and beating. It was tough.
So we went up to see Runaway Jury, which I had not seen. I don't go to a lot of movies. I hadn't seen it. Well, I don't know if you've seen it. If so, let me recall a scene for you where Gene Hackman is trying to pollute this jury pool, and he's got a magnificent point in there. It's Twain's point. He's trying to figure out how to capture this jury and persuade this jury to give Him the verdict that he wants. And his thing was, "We need to know these jurors. Every person has a secret." See, that's you. You've got a flinch. Meaning that you aren't going to tell anybody else.
One French essayist writes this: "There's no man so good where all his thoughts and actions submitted to law that he would not deserve to hang ten times in his life." That's just the way we are. And we kind of go yes for that, but you're going yes way too quickly. You've got to sink to the depths of what this means now in your life.
The Heart Problem
That's the condition of man. That's who man really is. Man is, in his heart, deceitfully wicked. He cannot do good. He will not do good. He does not want to do good by God's standards. He can't do good. Why? Not because he can't carry a turkey down to feed a hungry guy. He can't do good because he can't do it with the right motive in his heart. The problem is internal. It's not external.
I became a Christian March 6th of 1980. Right about that same time, Tommy Woods became a Christian. Some of you know Tommy. And so we're one day over at Chubb's having a burger. These were the good old days. And it had been about a year after that, and I said something to Tommy about, we're talking about conversion, and my conversion was awfully radical, certainly to those around us. I said, "Tommy, but yours was so different." And he said, "No, no, no, no, Tom. Mine was just as radical. It just wasn't as visible." In other words, I was a good guy, and everybody around me
That's the point that Paul's making here. So now he breaks us into two groups. And for sake of discussion, we're going to look at really bad people, those five and all of them they represent, and then those really good people.
The really bad people are pretty simple. The really bad people, again, I'm just going to direct you to your outline, and then I'm just going to kind of fill in some gaps here, and you read a little bit, and we'll get through this, and hopefully it'll make you want to study this a little more.
People Are Really Bad Because They Ignored God
People are really bad because they ignored God. Romans 1, verse 21: "Although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God, nor gave thanks to Him." Every once in a while, I will ask the question, what do you have to do to go to heaven? And then we get into these long debates and discussions. Let me ask you this. Natural man, not Jews or Christians, natural man. What does natural man have to do to go to hell? It's a little bit of a reverse twist here. What does natural man have to do to go to hell? And the answer is nothing. That's exactly what you have to do. Just keep doing what you're doing. And what you're doing is nothing.
Here's what you see it there. He's not glorifying God, and he's not giving thanks. Now, if this is what natural man does, and this is part of what God lays out in this blanket indictment about man, if this is what natural man's not doing, then our Christian lives, it seems to me, should be built around the idea of glorifying God and giving Him thanks. If that's what natural man's not doing, then that's what we ought to be doing. We ought to be glorifying God.
That's what Paul says. In everything you do, whether you eat or drink, do it for the glory of God. What's he doing there? What's he saying? Is he saying, say a prayer before breakfast? No, that's good. That's fine. That's a good thing. Do that. That's not what he's saying. He's saying, even in the most mundane things of life, you do it for God's glory. And through life, especially as you understand that you are a depraved person, now you thank God because you understand your salvation is not based upon you, but it's based totally, completely around Him.
The Downward Spiral Begins
So here's what they do. They don't do anything. His problem now is he begins to spiral down. We're in chapter 1. Look at the second part of verse 21 and 22: "But their thinking became futile, and their foolish hearts were darkened, although they claimed to be wise, they became fools."
I find this all around me with really bright people. Every Easter week, the American Atheist Association holds their nationwide conference, and they pick that weekend just to stick it right in your ear. That's what it's all about. And if you go down, they were here in Phoenix a few years ago. If you go down and you talk to them, you're going to find guys there that are way smarter than I am. I know that. More degrees than a thermometer. They've got education. They've got expertise. They've got all that stuff.
And yet, all of a sudden, you start talking to them, and they cannot begin to deal with this idea of truth. And when you ask them why two or three times, they'll say some pretty stupid things to you. And so they're on this search, either one, ignoring that God exists, and we'll look at that idea in a minute. They're just saying, well, there isn't any God. Or two, not of the atheists, obviously they just say there's no God and ignore it. Or you'll see people who will just ignore the one true God and make up their own God.
Foolish Speculation and Self-Deception
And they'll do things that make no sense. I read this last week. Larry King is an agnostic. Agnostic is, remember, it's the person who doesn't have the courage to be an atheist. He's an agnostic. He's an agnostic who edited a book five years ago on prayer. Now, how can this be? How can a guy who doesn't think there's a God edit a book on prayer? What are you praying to?
And you listen to people, and you listen to them talk, and you watch them go to Sedona and line up their ying and their yang, and all that goes with it, and find crystals and talk to them, and what you find is some just silly, foolish speculation. They're starting to spiral down. They're starting to implode. Their problem's internal. And then it moves to the outside.
God Gives Them Over
Romans 1, verse 24: "God gave them over to their sinful desires, to their hearts of sinful immorality, degrading their bodies with one another." Because of this, He gives them over their lust. He gave them over to their depraved mind. It's the same term that's used there in Greek literature to describe the deliverance of a prisoner for execution. He gives them over to their uncleanliness.
Look down at chapter 1, verse 28, 29, 30. They're full of envy and murder and strife and deceit and malice. They're gossips. They're slanders. Now, get that. Do you see the next one? They're God-haters. Now, what makes this so unusual is they might be spiritual people.
In 1 Timothy, chapter 3, Paul says this: "In the last days, men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful." And he goes through this whole litany of sin. And he says this: "They will hold to a form of godliness, but they will deny its power." Hold to a form of godliness, but deny its power. What's the power in godliness? It's the person of Christ.
God's Restraining Grace
Here's what God does. God does not make these people do bad things. God just simply lets them pursue the desires of their heart. Every once in a while, you'll get those questions like, "Why aren't there more? Or why is there ever a Saddam Hussein? Or why is there a Charles Manson?" And my question is, I don't understand why there aren't more of them. Because that's who you really are. Even God's grace is restraining them. But what God does in certain instances is...
God's Evidence in Creation
Just remove His restraints and let these people go wild. They were talking about Saddam Hussein last night. They were talking about a guy from the CIA, and he said, "The only way..." To me this is interesting. And he said, "Because I've been trained in my own life to do this. I don't even know what that means." That's scary. But he said, "The only way that Saddam Hussein can function is to compartmentalize every area of his life and never let them come together and never let them touch one another because if he did, he'd be nuts in a second. Everything's compartmentalized."
And what God has done is to say, "Here's an example of what you... You want to know what man's really like? Man's not really like Mother Teresa. Man's really like Jeffrey Dahmers. Or Paris Hilton." That's what everybody wants to use now. To me, Paris Hilton is somebody confused. You see that? And that's what He's talking about.
Here's what His point is. In verse 20 of chapter 1—like I said, we're moving around, back and forth—He said, "And they have no excuse. For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, His eternal power and His divine nature have been clearly seen so that men are without excuse." Men are responsible.
The Tape Recorder Illustration
I know it's repetitive for some of you, but let me take you through this again. I need an object. I guess I'll take this. This is made by somebody. Morantz. It's a tape recorder. This tape recorder screams of the existence of the Morantz company.
If I said to you, "Here's how we got this tape recorder. One day there was some knobs over here, and there was a disc over here, and there was some circuit boards over here, and a cord over here, and a casing over here. And then one night we came in, and it all came together." You would say to me, "That's nuts. That couldn't possibly happen." And I said, "That's exactly right. It took billions and billions of years for that to happen." And you would say to me, "That's still nuts. That still didn't happen." And you would be exactly right.
We know that something had to create this tape recorder. It just didn't happen. What's fascinating to me is people will take something that's infinitely more complicated than a tape recorder. They'll take the universe, and say, "It just happened."
And what Paul is saying is, if you look around, you look up to the sky, astronomy, down to the ground, biology, it screams of a Creator. Now you're not going to know Jesus from that. But you're going to see a Creator. An intelligent Creator around Him. So that every person who does not acknowledge that Creator is standing there without excuse. And that's Paul's point.
The Wrath of God Against Suppression
What do they deserve? Here's the answer. They deserve judgment. Chapter 1, verse 18 and 19, "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and the wickedness of man who suppress the truth." They block it out. That word suppression there is an active holding down.
Here's my favorite illustration. One year at Christmas, the girls were really young. Somebody gave them a jack-in-the-box. No parent would buy this toy for a kid because of the obvious reason. So they would get this, and here's what they did. They got it, and they said, "How does it work?" And we showed them, and they loved it. They'd go, "Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do..." And it was good because they were young, and it would take them a day to get the thing back in there. They just couldn't. They didn't have the dexterity to do that.
All of a sudden, they discovered that if they put their hand on top, they could hold it down, and they could go, "Do-do-do-do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do-do-do-do..." That was not a good thing. And so we had to tell them that last night someone broke in and stole your jack-in-the-box. It's gone. Left the TV, left the cash on the dresser, but took that jack-in-the-box. But what they did is they held that down.
That's the same idea here. I want you to see this. They didn't just casually ignore it. They had to suppress it. The evidence of God is so clear around you that the only way you cannot see it is to aggressively, proactively suppress it. And God's going to judge them.
Our Response to Judgment
And you know what you're saying when you're sitting there and you're saying, "Sick them, God. Get them, God. Go for it, God." For the end of his life, the Oklahoma City bombing took place and Barry Goldwater was still speaking publicly. And it was pretty tragic to watch him at the end. It was just sad. It's an inspiration to me to try to understand when to quit. And at the end, Oklahoma City bombing, and they said, "What should we do with these people?" Here's what he said. This is almost a quote. He said, "Well, first we should do is take them in public, cut out their eye, then cut off a limb, then cut off another limb, then cut off their private parts."
Now, what he said is what you were hoping, though, isn't it? Get them. What are we going to do with Hussein? Get him. What do we do with... Here you go. What do you do when you get that sniper in Washington? Get him. Get him. Get him, God. Get him. Get him.
The Shift to Religious People
Now, here's the problem. You're saying that because you're saying, "I'm not one of them." What Paul does is make a subtle shift here in chapter 2, and he starts talking about people who see themselves as good people. Now, what he's talking about, and I'm going to let you do the work here, what he's talking about really is the Jews and the law. When he's talking about the Jews and the law, here's what he's saying. I'm talking about religious people. Religious people who have not seen their heart changed. Who are saying, "I keep the law."
Remember when Jesus came and He spoke against the Jewish leaders? What did He say? "You're like whitewashed tombs. You look great on the outside, but on the inside, you're filled with dead man's bones."
Jesus is speaking in the Sermon on the Mount. Here's what He said: "You've heard it said..." Now, when He says that, what He's talking about is the oral tradition of the teaching that they've heard. "You've heard it said that a man should not commit adultery." And you're saying, "Good, because I haven't done that." But He's saying to you, "If you've looked upon a woman..." "You've heard it said you shouldn't commit murder." And they're going, "Absolutely. Never done it." And He said, "But if you say 'raka' to your brother, if you say, 'You're an idiot...'"
See, all of a sudden, Jesus comes along and says, "It's not about the law." Do you get it? You cannot keep the law. The Ten Commandments were not given for you to keep perfectly because you can't do it. The Ten Commandments are a mirror that you hold up. The law of God, especially that teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, you hold up and you go, "Wait a minute, I could never live up to this."
Only Christ Fulfilled the Law
Only one person has fulfilled the law and that was Jesus. That's what we're getting ready to celebrate here a week from today—Him coming into this world. And He comes into this world. He lives a perfect life and that's important because we're going to get to the real important date on the calendar when we get this year to April 11th or something, when we get to Easter. Because the perfect Lamb paid the perfect price for you and me.
So if you're sitting there and you're saying, "I'm really a good person, you know, I'm okay," He's saying, "No, no, no, no." No one is okay in and of the law themselves. And what you deserve—you too deserve—is judgment.
So He gets into Romans 3, verse 23: "The righteousness of God comes to all through faith in Christ who believe. There's no difference among for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified freely by His grace through Christ, through the redemption that came through Christ. God presented Him as the sacrifice of atonement." He paid the price.
Understanding Depravity
Let me see if I can get a bow on this. Time's away from us. When we talk about the condition of man, we're talking about his heart is deceitfully wicked and he cannot do anything good—not in your evaluation, not in my evaluation, but in God's evaluation. When we talk about depravity, we're not saying man's committed as many sins as he possibly can. We're saying man's as bad off as he can possibly be.
Let me give you an illustration here. This came out of a conversation. I'm talking to a guy and he said, "When I die, I want to die in my sleep." You ever thought that? Yeah. Just thought, you know, what I want to do is lay in bed, watch Everybody Loves Raymond, doze off at the very end, click the off switch, and then I just die. That's all I want to die. I just want to go away.
Well, let's say that happens. And I go into a mortuary. And I got three slabs in front of me. On this first slab is this guy who just died in his sleep. You've seen people like that. It's almost like you feel like you could walk over and shake them and say, "Wake up, wake up." They just look so natural, so comfortable.
Next to him is a guy who's out for a walk one day and steps out and he gets hit by a car and it throws him a little bit and he's got all sorts of internal injuries and he's got a little bit of swelling, but not a lot, and he's sitting there on the second slab. On the third slab, some guy riding a motorcycle—well, who else am I going to pick on?—some guy riding a motorcycle, he slides, hits a wall, and they just get a spatula, scrape him up, and they throw him on the third slab.
All Are Equally Dead
So you got this now, right? Natural, this guy dies in his sleep, this guy gets hit by a car, this guy's just demolished in a motorcycle wreck. Let me ask you a question. And this is an important question. Which one of these guys is deadest? Not which one is a dentist—which one is the deadest? Well, you got the answer, right? They're all dead. They're all dead.
Now, let me make the leap here to what we're talking about today. Here on this first box is this guy who's a pretty good guy who's good to his neighbors and works at the United Way, and he's down at the mall right now ringing a bell going ding-a-ding-a-ding-a-ding. But he doesn't know the Lord. He's a natural man, natural condition. The next one is a guy who cheats and steals, and you really wouldn't want to do a deal with him because you just got to watch yourself pretty well and he slanders you and he's a pretty bad guy. And then the third one, we need an icon, so we'll just put Saddam Hussein there. All natural men, all apart from Christ.
Which one of them is the most depraved? From our perspective, we'd go three, two, one. From God's perspective, He goes all of the above. You see that? That is absolutely critical because now we're seeing man as God sees man, not as we see him. All of a sudden, we see man right now not as we think he is, but as God knows he is.
The Universal Condition
And that's every person in this world. That's all seven billion on the planet right now and the six or seven billion who've already lived here and they've already passed on. That's the condition of natural man. That's the condition of some of you in this room, would be my guess, and certainly of some people who are going to hear this CD or tape.
What's the solution? What does this dead man need? See, there's only one thing a dead man needs. We talk about this a lot. There's only one thing a dead man needs. That's life. Where do you find life?
Well, unfortunately, we now have this long break for Christmas. But when we come back, we're going to pick up right there for the new year.
Father, help us see this truth. Help us see our life as it really is. And for those of us who've understood that we were dead and we're now alive through an act of Your grace and Your mercy and our faith in Your Son Jesus, Father, let us have hearts that are filled with gratitude and thanksgiving that glorify You. Brothers, we get ready for one week from today when we gather around...
and we commemorate. We set this day aside to commemorate the birth of Your Son Jesus. Let us do it with hearts overflowing with joy because we understand that this baby grew up to live a perfect life. To die on a cross, to pay the price of the sin of His people, so we could have eternal life. And we pray that to You this morning in Jesus' name. Amen. Have a great Christmas.