Humans Attack God's Glory

I. God seeks to glorify Himself in all things. God's glory is the excellence and beauty of His character. For God to be glorified means that the excellence of His character is displayed--called attention to--in the universe so that God is rightly exalted and praised for it. Why is this loving of God? Because love (genuine concern for others) is one of the things God is seeking to glorify, since "God is love," and because God's glory (the excellence of His character) is what brings us the greatest happiness. In fact, God glorifies Himself in Christians by satisfying us with His glory.

A. What is a life-changing application of this truth?

1. Pursuit of our joy and God's glory are not at odds. They are the same pursuit because we glorify God by enjoying Him. God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. This frees us to seek our joy in God, and God to seek His glory in us. Seek your joy in God to the highest possible extent!
2. If someone were to ask you, what value is it to be in a Bible study about God's sovereign grace in salvation, how would these truths help you answer the question?

II. Thus, God's loving purpose in creation was to fill the earth with His glory (Genesis 1:26-28). But man rebelled against this purpose and sought to overthrow God's place as supreme by seeking to find happiness in his own independence, rather than God's glory (Genesis 3).

A. Jeremiah 2:13

1. What is the essence of sin? How does this make sin an attack on the glory of God?

B. Genesis 2:17; Romans 6:23; 1 Thessalonians 1:7-11

1. How does the eternity of hell show the seriousness of sin? the value of God's glory?

C. Proverbs 16:4; Job 42:2; Isaiah 46:10; Revelation 22:1-5; Habakkuk 2:14

1. Has God's purpose to fill the earth with His glory failed?

D. Ephesians 3:10-11; Romans 9:22-24

1. How does sin ultimately fit into God's purpose to fully glorify Himself?

E. God has enacted a plan to save the world. It is this plan that we are going to examine and appreciate in our Bible study. But before we can fully understand and appreciate what God does, we must understand how we have ruined ourselves. Before we can fully appreciate and understand God's amazing grace and His great love in saving us, we must understand how terrible our sin really is, and how helpless we were in it. Dave Busby has said, "Your amazement at the grace of God will never exceed the understanding you have of your depravity."

III. What effect did Adam's sin have on his descendants (all humans)?

A. Adam's sin is imputed to all of his descendants. To impute means "to lay to someone's account such that they are fully and justly responsible for it." We are thus held accountable for the guilt and sin of Adam. Why does God impute the guilt of Adam's sin to us? God created us in union with Adam. That is, He created Adam as the federal head, or representative, of the whole human race. Therefore, Adam was representing us as well as himself when he sinned. On that ground, God imputes to us the guilt and act of his sin. The imputation is not a "legal fiction" because Adam was acting as our representative. If this all sounds very strange to you, remember that this doctrine is common to all Christian denominations, even Roman Catholicism.

1. Romans 5:12-21 is very clear that we are imputed with the guilt of Adam's sin.

1. Verse 12: How did sin enter the world? What was the result of sin? How does the death of infants show that all humans are born guilty of Adam's sin?
2. Notice that at the beginning of verse 12, Paul says "one man sinned," but at the end he says that "all sinned." This can only be explained if he is regarding the one sin of Adam to be the sin of all people. That is, all people were represented by Adam such that his sin is rightly regarded as our sin as well.
3. Verse 14: Adam was a type of Christ. We attain to eternal life by what another has done--Christ. Therefore we are originally guilty of sin by what another has done--Adam, Christ's type.
4. Verses 15, 16, 17, 18, 19: Why did "the many [all humans]" die? Why did judgement arise? Why did condemnation result to "all men"?
5. Paul says that death reigns over all because of Adam's sin (v. 17), condemnation reigns over all because of his sin (v. 16) and all are constituted sinners because of Adam's sin (v. 19). In other words, all human beings were indicted with Adam's sin, which is the basis of our death and condemnation.
6. v. 19 teaches that all are regarded (constituted) as sinners because of Adam's sin. This is another way of saying that Adam's sin is imputed to all: Just as believers are declared "righteous" in Christ, so also all humans were declared "guilty" in Adam.

2. 1 Corinthians 15:21-22
3. Let me sum up. Adam sinned by eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This is Adam's sin in a way that it is not our sin--since we did not personally do it--yet it is brought to bear upon us in a way that makes us deserving of its guilt. This is because, in creating mankind, God established a union between Adam and his descendants such that God looked upon us all as being one with him, as a trees root is one with the branches. This does not mean that God looked at Adam as the same person as me, but that Adam acted as the representative for the whole human race. It is similar to congress--your congressman acts as the representative of your state. The decisions he makes, represent you. On a larger scale, our president may decide to send our country to war. Because of what he did, you are considered to be at war with our enemy simply by virtue of being a citizen of this country, even though you did not personally make this decision. The president acted as your representative.

B. Adam's sin also resulted in what is called original sin. Original sin refers not to Adam's first sin, but to the results of his first sin. Specifically, it refers to the fact that all humans are born sinful as a result of our fall in Adam. Adam's sin and the guilt of it is directly imputed from Adam to each individual, but the sin nature is transmitted indirectly to us--it is transmitted from one generation to the next through conception and birth. The guilt of Adam's sin was directly transferred from Adam to you, whereas your sin nature you received from your parents, who received it from theirs, and on back to Adam.

C. Scriptural evidence for original sin.

1. Ecclesiastes 7:29
   1. How did God make man originally? What went wrong?
2. Psalm 51:5
   1. How are we born now?
3. Wickedness is often spoken of in Scripture as something belonging to the human race as a whole. This implies that it is the property of our species. Thus, we are all born sinners, since sin is regarded as a property of humanity.
   1. aPsalm 14:2, 3.
      1. Does anybody understand or seek after God?
      2. What is the significance of "together they have become corrupt"?
      3. Read verse 5. How can we reconcile this verse, which speaks of the existence of righteous people, with verse 3, which says that "no one
   2. bJeremiah 17:9
      1. 1Whose heart is desperately sick?
   3. cEcclesiastes 9:3
   4. dJob 15:14-16
   5. e1 John 5:19
      1. 1What is in the power of the wicked one? Why? Who has escaped the power of the wicked one (see also v. 18)?
   6. fOne may object: these texts speak nothing of infants, only those who are old enough to make moral decisions. All of those people are wicked, but this doesn't mean that infants are. But as Jonathon Edwards remarks, "..this would not alter the case...For if all mankind, as soon as ever they are capable of reflecting, and knowing their own moral state, find themselves wicked, this proves that they are wicked by nature."
4. Scripture calls men wicked from childhood and youth (which includes infancy).
   1. Prov 22:15
   2. Gen 8:21
      1. "The word translated youth, signifies the whole of the former part of the age of man, which commences from the beginning of life. The word in its derivation, has reference to the birth or beginning of existence...so that the word here translated youth, comprehends not only what we in English most commonly call the time of youth, but also childhood and infancy"-- Jonathon Edwards.
   3. Psalm 53:3
      1. Serpents are poisonous as soon as they come into the world. The previous verse also identifies the wicked people as mankind in general.
5. God executes His judgements on infants. Thus, they must be guilty of original sin.
   1. When God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, he said he would not destroy the righteous with the wicked (Genesis 18:25). The only righteous person found was Lot and his family. They were therefore rescued. But the infants were left to be destroyed in that city. Therefore, the infants must have been wicked. This means that infants must be guilty of original sin.
   2. Numbers 31:17; 1 Samuel 15:3
      1. God explicitly commanded Israel to destroy the opposing nation's infants along with its adults. These are troubling passages! But that is because we have not grasped the fact of original sin.
      2. How do these passages prove original sin? Do these passages, then, show the justice in God's action? If we do not think that God was just in doing this, do you think that we are blind to how bad sin really is-- especially in infants?
6. If we are not born sinners, why must we be born again?
   1. John 3:6
7. If there is no original (or imputed) sin, there is no need for us to be redeemed by Christ.
8. If humanity is not born in sin, wouldn't we expect there to be some people who have "beaten the odds" and never sinned?
9. "The Old Testament ceremonies of circumcision of the new-born child, and of purification of the mother, were designed to teach that man comes into the world sinful, that since the fall human nature is corrupt in its very origin"--Loraine Boettner.
10. Common observation also shows original sin: "[man] is obviously under a curse for something, from the beginning of his life. Witness the native depravity of infants, and their inheritance of woe and death. Now, either man was tried and fell in Adam, or he has been condemned without trial. He is either under the curse...for Adam's guilt, or for no guilt at all. Judge which is most honorable to God, a doctrine which, although a profound mystery, represents Him as giving man an equitable and most favored probation in his federal head; or that which makes God condemn him untried, and even before he exists"--Dr. R.L. Dabney.

IV. It is clear that we all fell as a result of Adam's sin. But how far did we fall?

A. We have fallen and we can't get up. Before you were saved, were you simply drowning in the sludge pit of sin, in need of a life preserver so that you could grab on to it to be saved? OR, were you dead on the bottom of the sludge pit--and thus unable to do anything to contribute to your salvation? In other words, were you dead or just drowning?

1. Ephesians 2:1-5, 8-9
   1. How does Paul answer this question?
   2. Did we grab on to a life preserver to get saved?
   3. What is the gift of God (v. 9)?
2. 1 Corinthians 2:14.
   1. "Natural man" means one who is not born again, and thus unsaved.
   2. Does the natural man accept the things of God?
   3. What does he think of God's ways?
   4. Can he even understand the things of God?

B. Thus, the Bible answers that we were dead at the bottom of the sludge pit of sin before we were saved. Dead people cannot choose life. Instead, they must be made alive by someone else. Thus, Christ had to dive down into the sludge, bring us up from the bottom, and bring us to life again with His spiritual CPR (this is called regeneration, or being born again). Then, because of this, we believed. You did not choose to be born again--you couldn't because you were dead. Rather, your spiritual rebirth had to come first as a sovereign act of God, and this made you to believe.

1. John 1:12-13; John 3:3
   1. Do people choose to be born again?

C. This reveals that the natural state of human beings is total depravity. This means that we are born with no moral good in us. We are born hating God and loving sin. Humans are not basically good, but basically evil (because of the fall). Since there is no good in us, we cannot do one good thing. And since there is no good in us at all, we cannot choose Christ unless God gives us a new heart (regenerates us).

1. Romans 3:9-18
   1. Try and put in your own words what Paul is saying about humans.
   2. This verse makes clear that sin has corrupted every facet of our being. Our throats are the scent of an open grave; our tongues and lips are full of deceit and the poison of asps; our mouths are full of cursing and bitterness; our feet are swift to shed blood; our whole person has destruction and misery in its ways. Thus, all humans are corrupt; each human is entirely corrupt; each human is also extremely and desperately corrupt.
2. Romans 7:18
   1. Does anything good dwell in Paul's flesh?
3. Romans 8:6-8
   1. Are unbelievers anything but "flesh" (see v. 9)?
   2. How do unbelievers feel about God?
   3. How can a person come to God when they hate Him?
   4. Do you agree or disagree, based on this verse: God would not command us to do something that we are morally unable to do?
4. Genesis 6:5; 8:21
   1. How many intents of man's heart are evil? How often? Since when? Since choosing Christ requires a good intent, how can we ever come to faith in Christ? Who, then, determines who is saved?
5. Jeremiah 13:23; Matthew 7:18
   1. Can we change ourselves?
6. John 3:19-21
   1. Why do people refuse to come to the light?
   2. How can a person repent of their sin when they love it? How can they come to Christ when they hate Him?
   3. So what must happen to them before they will come?

D. Everything unbelievers do is sin

1. Romans 8:7-8; 14:23
2. Titus 1:16
3. Hebrews 11:6

V. Application

A. Recognize that the only way a person can be believe is if God first chooses to change his heart. Thus God, not man, ultimately determines who is saved.

B. God commands us to remember that this is where we came from (Ephesians 2:12). This is what Christ saved you from. Therefore...

C. Have a deeper appreciation and awe at the grace of God that saved you. See how precious and powerful it is.

D. Understand the great danger that the whole world is in, and how blind the world is to this danger! What a terrible thing! And you would be just as blind to the path you were on if God had not given you eyes to see and believe. We must see the seriousness of the situation that the lost world is in, and try and wake them up. Finally, consider this statement: "Much of the easy-going indifference in Christians and in non-Christians' attitudes toward Christianity is due to our failure to emphasize the seriousness, danger, and depravity the world is in because of sin."

E. To God be the glory: next week we will see the wonders of His love and grace to rescue his people from this terrible danger! Again, we will never see this as we should unless we understand the depths of our sin.

Go back to Contend for the Faith.

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