July 12, 2009

“What’s Wrong with Me?”

Romans 3:9-20

Occasionally, TV shows try to tackle the reasons for the ugly side of human experience. Whether it’s House or Horatio, Seinfeld or Raymond, one just ends up scratching one’s head.

A memorable episode of All in the Family years ago, Archie Bunker is arguing about Christianity with his atheistic son-in-law. Archie wants his newborn grandson to be baptized and Michael will have none of it. At last Meathead asks, “Tell me this, Archie. If there is a God, why is the world in such a mess?” Bumbling his way along, he turns to his wife and says, “Why do I have to give the answers, Edith? Tell this dumb son-in-law of yours why, if God created the world, the world is in such a mess.” She whimsically answers as only Edith could, “Well, I suppose it’s to make us appreciate heaven better when we get there.”

The Bible is filled with wonderful offerings of the knowledge of God, the glories of creation, the beauty of love and relationships. “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good” in Genesis 1. The Psalms burst with God’s goodness. “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth” (Ps 8). “Your love, Lord, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies” (Ps 36). Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10). “We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1). “My command is this: Love one another as I have loved you” (John 15).

Yet the Bible is filled with troubling offerings of the rebellious and sinful side of us human beings. I hope this isn’t the first or only time someone is in church this morning at 1st Pres. Because I am going speak on this, the more troubling message of the Bible. Last week, it was “What’s Right with God?” This week it’s “What’s Wrong with Me?”

I. Fallen Human Nature (vs. 9-11)

In a carefully reasoned letter to the early church in Rome, the apostle Paul lays out the Biblical view of the universal fallen nature of us human beings. “We have already made the charge,” he writes, “that all people (Jews and Gentiles alike) are all under the power of sin.” Then he quotes richly and devastatingly from his Bible. Psalm 14: “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God.” That’s for starters. Then comes “turned away… worthless… open graves… deceit… cursing and bitterness… bloodshed… ruin and misery.”

There are three views of humanity commonly held. The first is optimism. We are basically good and are progressing with each generation and millennium. However, anyone who honestly views the mounting starvation and suffering, the hatred, selfishness or indifference all across our planet cannot possibly hold this view. There is more than a slight flaw in humanity. The second view is pessimistic. We human beings are sick – acutely, gravely, critically, mortally sick. But with the proper care, drugs and miracles of modern spiritual medicine and the will to live, there must be a cure. After all, each one of us is not as bad as we could be. There are just too many instances of goodness in us human beings to say that we are all just sick. But human nature isn’t improving at all. The problems that Jesus and his followers point out are still very much present in us and our world.

The third view is the Biblical one. We human beings are dead; not merely sick, but already dead. – so far as our relationship with God is concerned. God really did say, “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” The Fall affected each part of this magnificent creation of God. With the fruit of doubt, unfaithfulness and rebellion, Adam’s spirit died, Eve’s fellowship with God was broken, their souls began to die (as they began to lie, cheat and kill), and their bodies died eventually. God said, “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

So how bad is it? Pretty bad. In medicine, there is a condition known as myasthenia gravis. MG literally means “serious muscle weakness.” Muscles in the body cannot respond to the signals sent from the brain. In those afflicted with by this neuromuscular disease, the motor-end-plates are missing. Although the brain sends the signal, it is never received by the muscle. If the muscle does not respond for to too long a time, it fatigues and eventually shrivels up.

This is what happened in the human personality with the Fall and the death of the spirit. Perhaps it is pneumasthenia gravis, serious spirit weakness. We were meant to receive signals sent to us from God. But with the effects of the Fall, the motor-end-plates died. The signals are still there; God is still speaking; but the signal is not received and the spiritual life, our spiritual muscle withers and dies.

Look at the three terms Paul uses to describe us – righteousness, understanding, and seeking. No one naturally lives in a right relationship with God (that’s what the word “righteous” means). Quite the opposite. Most don’t give a rip about God and even those of us who do find it difficult.

No one “understands” the things of God unless Christ comes in, regenerates the heart and mind and discloses the graces and glories of life in Christ. Paul expresses this in I Corinthians 2: “The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.” I’m sure that you’ve had conversations with non- or not-yet Christians. There’s either a blank stare on the face or outright rejection of the basics of the Biblical message.

And, no one naturally seeks God. It is the Lord who makes the first move. God will bring something or someone into your life through which or whom the Spirit touches your life. Then comes the opening, the beginning, the opportunity for a life of faith.

II. Redeemed Human Nature

This doesn’t mean that Christians don’t still struggle with the affects of the Fall. You and I know well how sin can plague our lives and relationships. Paul recognized this in Romans 7 as he speaks of his own experience. “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do. But what I hate I do. I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.”

One of my favorite Christian musicians (Phil Keaggy) set a C.S. Lewis poem to music. I’ve been singing it a lot lately. It goes like this. “All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you. I never had a selfless thought since I was born. I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through; I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

“Peace, re-assurance, pleasure are the goals I seek, I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin; I talk of love – A scholar’s parrot may talk Greek, But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.”

So, what’s the answer? “Every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. No one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.” And Paul asks, “Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Lewis concludes his poem, “Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack, I see the chasm; And everything you are was making my heart Into a bridge by which I might get back From exile, and grown man. And now the bridge is breaking.

“For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains You give me are more precious than all other gains.”

Conclusion

What’s right with God? Everything, ever so much. The glories of creation, the beauty of love and relationships. What wrong with me? Everything, ever so much. But stay tuned. Next week we will read and see how God sets things right. There is hope; there is Good News. There’s much to go through in this life to deal with our own down side of being human. And there’s much to go through in faith to receive and realize the redemptive healing graces of God in Jesus Christ.

Let us pray together.