We are all sinners and are all deserving of going to hell. The series I did on sin has clearly indicated this to us. If you have not seen it, then go to my blog and read on it. Now that we know that we are sinners and deserve to go to hell and are on our way to hell, is there anything that we can do to save ourselves, anything? Can we even save ourselves? Let’s look at that.
Is it possible for a human being on his own to realise that he is a sinner and that he needs to repent and accept Jesus as his Saviour? Is it possible? No! Human beings by nature are children of wrath.
Ephesians 2:3 (ESVST)
among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
Sinning to us as human beings comes naturally. It is not something that we learn, it is something that is in us. Disobeying God comes natural to us. So therefore by nature, we deserve God’s wrath, God’s anger. The important point here to note is that we are by nature children who deserves God’s wrath for we are by nature sinners.
A human being by nature does not accept the things of the spirit of God.
1 Corinthians 2:14 (ESVST)
The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
Our default reaction is to reject things of the spirit of God. We see them as stupid and we fail to understand them. Remember that here we are talking about our default natural reaction. Because we naturally are sinners who deserves God’s wrath and naturally we reject the things of the spirit of God, we became slaves to sin.
Romans 6:17 (NIV)
But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance.
In our sinful natural behavior we became slaves to sin. Sin became our master. None of us seeked God. None of us seek God. We all turned and continuing to turn our backs on God.
Romans 3:10-12 (ESVST)
as it is written: “ None is righteous, no, not one; 11 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.”
Not only are we naturally sinners, naturally deserving of God’s wrath and slaves to sin but we have also turned our back on God and we do not seek him at all. While Jesus, our Lord and God, who is the light was on earth, we rejected him as the light and we chose darkness.
John 3:19 (ESVST)
And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.
We are such sinners that our hearts are deceitful and desperately sick. Our hearts are simply in need of help and because our hearts are so sick, only evil thoughts come out of our hearts. There is no good in our hearts at all.
Jeremiah 17:9 (ESVST)
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?
Mark 7:21-23 (ESVST)
For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, 22 coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. 23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”
Just take a look at the kinds of things that come out of our hearts, don’t they look familiar? We are beyond repair. We are completely dead in our trespasses and in our sins.
Ephesians 2:1 (ESVST)
1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins
It will take only divine intervention for us to be able to avoid eternal death. Only a divine intervention can save us, as for us, we cannot save ourselves at all. All these verses simply show us that we are incapable of on our own, repent from our sins.
Not only are we naturally sinners, naturally deserving of God’s wrath and slaves to sin but we have also turned our back on God and we do not seek him at all. While Jesus, our Lord and God, who is the light was on earth, we rejected him as the light and we chose darkness. We are such sinners that our hearts are deceitful and desperately sick. Our hearts are simply in need of help and because our hearts are so sick, only evil thoughts come out of our hearts. There is no good in our hearts at all. We are beyond repair. We are completely dead in our trespasses and in our sins. It will take only divine intervention for us to be able to avoid eternal death. Only a divine intervention can save us, as for us, we cannot save ourselves at all.
Romans 5:6 (NIV)
You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.
When we were still powerless. Powerless to save ourselves from sin. Powerless to repent on our own. Powerless to release ourselves from the hands of the devil. Powerless to defeat sin. Christ realizing that we are too weak to save ourselves, just at the right time, he died for us.