Episode 5 – Dead as a Doornail
Hi! Welcome back to the Proverbs 9:10 Ministry Podcast, No Trash, Just Truth! We’re in the middle of a series titled No Half-Truths Allowed. We’re your hosts, Rose Spiller and Chris Paxson. Last episode we talked about our holy, perfect, Sovereign Creator, and the fact that we were made to glorify Him and enjoy Him forever. Today, we’re going to talk about what went wrong in the world God created. Rose, Why do people do bad things that obviously don’t glorify God?
Excellent question! And the excellent answer is found in the Book of Genesis. When God created Adam and Eve He put them in a perfect paradise. They only had one rule they had to follow as we see in Genesis 2:17, “But 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 surely die.”
As we all probably know, they broke that rule. Genesis 3:1 – 7 tells us what happened, “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.
He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You[a] shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” 2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” 4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise,[b] she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
This narrative is what is referred to by Christians as “the fall of man;” the moment humanity sinned against God. This was not just about some fruit. God put Adam and Eve in a paradise, gave them everything they could possibly want, it was perfection! There was only one thing they couldn’t do, and not only could they not obey that one thing, but if you compare the passage you just read to the instructions God originally give Adam in Genesis 2:16 you see how Eve twists what God told them. We don’t know if it was Eve that twisted the words, or Adam when He told her. They can’t even get that right! This was the parents of the whole human race intentionally deciding and declaring that they did not want to be ruled by God! Instead, they wanted to make their own decisions. This was Adam and Eve rejecting their Creator!
Rose, I think we should explain to our listeners what that has to do with them. Why don’t you explain what our first parents’ disobedience has to do with us?
I can’t say it any better than Paul, so let me quote him from Romans 5:12, “sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned”
Paul is saying that death came to all of us because of Adam and Eve’s sin. Can you elaborate on that for us and explain some of the other things that came along with that?
Part of the curse was Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were told that from then on, work would be hard; there would be pain in childbirth; they would feel guilt and condemnation. And worst of all, they became alienated from God. This wasn’t just physical death, but spiritual death too!
This spiritual death refers to us being born “dead” in our sins.
Dead as a door nail?
Dead as a door nail.
Some people don’t may not realize this, but unlike us, our first parents were created with the ability to not sin. They were born totally innocent. Adam and Eve were created morally upright. They had the ability to obey God completely – something the rest of humanity ever since the fall has been without. The Bible tells us that Adam and Eve were the only humans (except for Jesus) who were born sinless.
That’s an important point. They did not have the indwelling sin nature that the rest of us do.
But they did sin.
Yeah, and at the fall, Adam and Eve’s sin infected all of humanity from that time on. Humans are now born with a sinful nature. This is why some versions of the Bible use the word “flesh” to mean when we’re driven by human desire, which is inherently sinful. Every single person is born with a sin nature that is hostile to God. Unlike Adam and Eve, we are not born innocent nor are we basically good, as the world teaches. We are sinful from birth and are born enemies of God. Again, let’s defer to Paul and the Book of Romans to further explain this, Romans 3:10 – 18,
11 None is righteous, no, not one
no one understands;
no one seeks for God.
12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
no one does good,
not even one.”
13 “Their throat is an open grave;
they use their tongues to deceive.”
“The venom of asps is under their lips.”
14 “Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.”
15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood;
16 in their paths are ruin and misery,
17 and the way of peace they have not known.”
18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
Those passages of Scripture you read (and others) really change our definition of SIN then, don’t they? I mean, usually, we think of sin as isolated things we do that are “bad,” but these verses tell us that we sin because that’s our nature. In other words, we sin because we’re sinners from birth. We’re not sinners because we’ve sinned! I was thinking the other day how defining sin in light of this changes the way we should discuss sin in some ways. Just think of how many Christian argue about SPECIFIC sins, usually in an attempt to make their own sin seem “less” offensive than someone else’s. But when we realize this is the state we’re ALL in, it gives us more compassion. But that’s a discussion for some other day!
Yeah, we argue over sins (little ‘s’) meaning the individual acts we do that are sinful, but our problem is SIN – (Capital ‘S’), which is our inborn nature to be rebellious against God!
Exactly. So, Chris, how bad are we?
Our sin nature affects every part of our lives. The term we use for it is “total depravity.” We’re not as bad as we possibly could be, but there’s not one area of our lives that is untouched by sin. Before we are saved, we are actually enslaved to our sin – we’re in bondage to it. Chained. That’s the state we find ourselves in.
We’re actually “hostile” to God. One place that comes from is Romans 8:7 that says, “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.” What are some of the implications of being hostile to God, and actually alienated from Him?
Being born hostile to God means that no part of me wants to conform to God’s law – not in the way I act, not in my attitude, not in my motivations, or in any other way. I’m an enemy of God and that means there is nothing I do that is pleasing to Him. The reason is because nothing I do in my sinful nature is done for His glory which is the purpose we were created for. Like I said before, there is no part of us that is untouched by sin. That means that no action of ours is completely untouched by it either—even the things we do that are considered “good.” There is always some element of sin laced in with it, whether that sin is pride, self-righteousness, or wanting to look good to others. All of our best deeds are tainted, as it says in Isaiah 64:6 says, “All our righteous acts are like filthy rags” – And we haven’t event mentioned the bad things we do!
You know, if you go back to the original Hebrew, “filthy rags” meant menstrual rags.
That’s pretty gross! But our sin is gross when compared to God Who is perfectly holy! In our natural state, our sin touches every part of what we do, so without being saved, nothing good we do is done for the purpose of glorifying. God.
You're saying, for example, that all of the non-Christians out there, all of the secular groups doing humanitarian work or other good things in the eyes of humanity, are not pleasing to God because they're not doing it for His glory?
That’s correct! Even though what they’re doing may be for the general welfare of mankind, and even though they may be doing it for noble reasons, the root of their sin, and everybody’s sin, is pride and wanting to be our own bosses! That was what Adam and Eve wanted – autonomy from God! They didn’t want to live under His rule and authority. They weren’t content to live for His glory – they wanted their own. It’s rebellion, and unfortunately, that’s where the human heart gravitates to – glorification of self!
And as you said we cannot help ourselves. Unless we are saved, We are enslaved to sin and rebellion. Our indwelling sin nature has left us helpless and in a very bad predicament…. we are completely dead – dead as a doornail – in it. Ephesians 2:1-3 tells us, “you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind,
Just like a cadaver lying on an autopsy table, we’re dead. And dead men cannot move their arms, or legs, or open their eyes, or think, or do anything. We are the same when it comes to making ourselves right with God. We have no way of offering justice for what we’ve done. We can do absolutely nothing to save ourselves. Dead men can’t reach out for God. Dead men can’t go searching for God. Dead men wouldn’t even be able to think of doing such things.
Ok, Chris, now it’s my turn to step on some toes! We’ve seen in the book of Romans that spiritual death came to all through Adam, everyone is alienated from God and hostile towards Him, and nobody “seeks after God” in their dead spiritual state. So, to say you’ve “found Jesus,” is not only wrong, it’s impossible! Besides, Jesus isn’t the One Who’s lost! He doesn’t need finding – WE do!
You’re absolutely right! There is nothing in us to make us want to find God, or to seek Him on our own. There’s not an ‘island of righteousness’ that God left in us, or even one little spark of goodness in us that makes us desire God. We’ll talk about that in a later episode, and we cover the false teachings of Pelagianism, Arminianism, and Wesleyanism.
We are going to talk about this in a later episode, but we don’t want to leave people with the idea that their “choice” meant nothing. From an earthly perspective, it certainly did. But what we’re saying is that they couldn’t have done that without the Holy Spirit regenerating their heart first. We’ll go into that more in detail in a future episode.
But getting back to Ephesians 2, the rest of that verse says, “and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”
Rose, when Ephesians 2:3 says that we’re “children of wrath,” it obviously means the wrath of God. It has to be the wrath of God because as you read earlier in the verse, before we are saved, we are following Satan. We don’t have to openly worship Satan to be his follower, we just have to be an enemy of God’s. Our inborn sin nature makes us enemies of God, hostile to Him, and totally at odds with doing anything that’s glorifying to Him. Because of who we are before we are saved, in comparison to Who He is in His perfect holiness and righteousness, we are ALL the objects of and deserving of His wrath. In verses 5-9 of Paul’s letter to the Colossian church he says these words, “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming.” In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices” Just those verses alone indict everyone. Even if God’s wrath is coming on account of only these things, no one trusting in their own righteousness is safe.
You’re right when you say those verses alone indict everyone. And that’s just a few verses! Romans 1:18-20 says, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. When Paul goes on to list some of the unrighteousness he’s talking about, the list is pretty sobering. It includes: idol worship, homosexuality, evil, coveting, malice, envy, murder, strife, deceit, haughtiness, gossips, slanderers, haters of God, the rude and arrogant, boasters, inventors of evil, disobedient children, the foolish, the faithless, the heartless and the ruthless! That’s a pretty comprehensive, inclusive list!
Get what Paul is saying here – we need saving from God! This is different than how people tend to talk about it. We hear that Jesus saved us from sin, and Satan, and death. And all of that is true, but we need to understand that we ultimately need saving FROM GOD ‘s wrath. Jesus dying on the cross and suffering God’s wrath in our place (as our substitute) is called penal substitution.
In the Old Testament they paid the penalty by sacrificing animals. The people placed their hands on the sacrificial animals, in order to identify with them to signify the transfer of sin and guilt from the sinner to the substitute, and then the animals were killed. In other words, the sinner could live because the animal died in the sinner’s place, bearing the punishment the sinner deserved. The problem was, this wasn’t a perfect substitute and it was only temporary, they had to do it over and over again. This was to point the people to their need for a perfect (and final) substitute, which was Christ! This is the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement – that Jesus was the perfect and final substitute who endured Divine judgement, the punishment we deserve, to obtain forgiveness for His people
You know, Chris, I had a friend who asked me, “In the end, don’t you think that God just forgives everyone?”
The truth is, blood that had to be shed even for unintentional sin! Numbers 15:27-28 says, “If one person sins unintentionally, he shall offer a female goat a year old for a sin offering. And the priest shall make atonement before the LORD for the person who makes a mistake, when he sins unintentionally, to make atonement for him, and he shall be forgiven.”
That shows how big a deal sin really is to our perfectly holy God! AND, as we talked about in the last episode, God is not only perfectly holy, but He is also perfectly just! And as we defined holy justice – people get what they deserve – God has to punish all sin. Since our Creator is just, it’s no surprised that His creation is wired with a sense of justice. If we are robbed, we want our stuff back; or at the very least, restitution from the thief! When we see children hurt by an adult, we want that adult in jail, maybe even executed! When we see cruelty to animals, we want justice done for what the poor creatures who have suffered. Everyone resonates with the idea of justice. If we’re honest about it, we don’t want sin overlooked, and God CAN’T overlook sin… God’s justice must be satisfied, even for the things we may want to blow off as “mistakes” and “mess-ups”. Ouch!
Just to clarify, without being saved by Christ, even a “good” person by human standards – they never hurt anybody, they do good deeds, follow the rules, etc. – is in the same position as someone who we generally would classify in our minds as “very bad” because we can’t be perfectly holy.
Yes. We are all in the same position before God – guilty! And no matter how good we are by human standards, we are not pleasing to God and our relationship with Him is broken.
So, where does that leave anyone not saved by Christ?
Again, we can defer to Paul. 2 Thessalonians 1:8-9 says, “He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the Gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and the glory of His might.”
Paul is pretty clear here, but so many people claim there is no Hell, even some who call themselves “Christians”.
This might be the epitome of false teaching! The idea of hell is very unpopular because the idea of it is grim and down-right terrifying! Andy Stanley is one of the latest to teach this heresy. But hell is real. Jesus warned repeatedly in the book of Matthew about the reality of eternal punishment and of some being cast into "outer darkness" where there will be "weeping and gnashing of teeth, for instance in the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25:30 where He says to “cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
After that, Jesus goes on to say, “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world …. Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” It sure does sound like if you don’t believe in the doctrine of eternal punishment – in other words, you don’t believe in hell – then you’re at odds with what Jesus taught!
Likewise, Revelation chapter 20 tells us about the Book of Life – all of those God has elected to save. What happens to those God has not saved? Rev 20:15 gives a pretty graphic picture, “And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.”
In light of the fact that hell is real, what are the dangers you see in how sin is taught in many churches today? and even worse than that, when we like to think of it as “messing up” or “mistakes,” but not as something that offends God!
Gosh, where to begin, Chris! I know churches that don’t even use the word sin! Like you said, they use “mess ups,” or “mistakes.” A mistake is forgetting to put sugar in brownies! People need to understand what sin is – an offense against our Holy, Sovereign Almighty God. And then they need to understand that they are a sinner, and that apart from Jesus, they will take the punishment for their sin! Thinking any less will lead you into heresy and could, literally, be a matter of life and death – or maybe it would be more accurate to say that it could be a matter of where you spend your life after your death.
I can’t help but think of the countless churches or ‘revival meetings’ where people are called up the altar without being told they are sinners and that they need forgiveness! How many have done, said the “sinner’s prayer,” and might not really be saved because they weren’t told a true and complete Gospel message?
Or sitting in your seat and repeating that prayer after the pastor … you know, “eyes closed, heads bowed, tell Jesus you want Him to come into your life.” hopefully they’re at least given some kind of instruction afterward to make sure they really understand what they were praying for, but doesn’t even always happen!
I’ve seen it multiple times where you’re not directed to anyone afterward who can make sure you understand, you’re just told to pick up your “new believer” packet as you exit, and there’s some stuff in there and a book or something that’ll help you on your journey!
Hell is real. And every single human being deserves to be there for eternity, because there is no one without sin. God doesn’t base His judgement of who deserves hell on how good we are compared to other human beings. I was with the communicant’s class in Sunday School the other day and I heard a phrase I hadn’t before. The Elder teaching them said “God doesn’t have grandchildren.” And I thought “What a great line!” It’s true! We can’t rely on the faith of our parents or grandparents or anyone else to save us, can we?
No we can’t, and that brings us back to the point we made earlier – without Christ, we’re all DEAD – Dead as a Door Nail! If today’s discussion seemed like a downer, it was supposed to! When we understand the gravity of what we’re being saved FROM, it makes being saved by Jesus all the sweeter! In our next episode we’ll talk about the freedom that salvation through Jesus gives us.
Thanks for tuning in! As always, if you have questions or comments feel free to contact us. We would love to hear from you! Have a blessed day!