The Noetic effects of Sin

Introduction

Happy Father’s day men. I debated changing my message to be themed around a father’s day theme, but decided that what I am dealing with today does have implications for men in general.

Guys have you ever been driving along on the road thinking you knew where you were and finally after your passenger seat GPS has told you over and over you are lost, you finally realized you were truly lost?

As men we have a hard time acknowledging the limitations of our reasoning capacities. We think we have things figured out and generally know what we are doing. We might acknowledge we don’t know rocket science or something like that, but we feel pretty confident in our general knowledge of life. But then our knowledge betrays us.

We are left with the aftermath of things not going the way we thought they would. Maybe we have held to a certain belief all our lives and all of a sudden it turns out that we are proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be wrong. Maybe we thought we knew the right way to interact with our wife and it backfires on us. Maybe we thought we were doing a good job raising our children, but something comes up that shakes our confidence in how we parented. Its healthy to have a crisis of confidence like this every now and then because it reminds us that we are mortal and leads us to humility. Man’s mind has become fragil.

This morning we are going to take a diversion into a theological topic that you may be briefly aware of but haven’t thought of in detail. In Romans 1:21–22 “Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,” Paul makes the claim that because of man’s depravity towards God man has been effected by sin. Because man refused to acknowledge God and has supressed the truth man’s thinking has become corrupt.

Today we are going to talk about the noetic effects of sin. Mankind's fall into sin has effected every part of our being. That includes the way we relate to God, our emotions, the choices we make; but sin has also had an effect on our mind. The word noetic comes from the Greek word for mind nous. Sin has had an effect on our thinking. It is not such an effect on our thinking that man can never come to a knowledge of truth, but that the most important truths are hindered:

Our knowledge of God’s word is effected

Preaching of the cross is foolishness 1 Corinthians 1:18 “For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.”

1 Corinthians 2:14 “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” We are unable to grasp spiritual things because our minds are so effected by sin.

Our knowledge of Right and Wrong is effected

Proverbs 14:12 “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, But the end thereof are the ways of death.” What seems right to man naturally leads to death.

We are self-deceived

Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Our minds deceive us into thinking we have it handled and we know the solutions.

Our thoughts fall short of God’s thoughts

Isaiah 55:8–9 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, Neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are my ways higher than your ways, And my thoughts than your thoughts.” Man’s thinking falls short of God’s thinking

Mankind is made in the image of God and God has given common grace to all men so that they are not completely unable to grasp truth, but their grasp of truth is always tainted. It isn’t pure, complete or perfect. RC Sproul once stated that “the best pagan thinkers can still spot errors of logic without being born again. You don’t have to be regenerate in order to get a Ph.D. in mathematics.” However, man can never relate those truths to their ultimate source and significance. All truth points to God and thus their minds are limited.

Our minds become blinded by three sources:

The results of the fall

Satan 2 Corinthians 4:4 “In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.”

God sometimes grants blindness to people for His sovereign purposes Romans 11:8–10 “(According as it is written, God hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear;) unto this day. And David saith, Let their table be made a snare, and a trap, and a stumblingblock, and a recompence unto them: Let their eyes be darkened, that they may not see, and bow down their back alway.”

They became vain in their imaginations

Romans 1:21 “Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.”

The phrase literally means that their reasoning is incapable of producing results. Man has tried to understand the world and they have come up with all kinds of rationalizations for how the world operates. When it comes to the spiritual issues of man’s purpose, the origin of the world, if and what God is like, the presence of evil, morality. Mankind falls short because their best systems fail to lay hold of what god has revealed. This past year, we looked at psychology and counseling in light of theology. Every system of counseling has an inherent theology because they have to tell you:

what is wrong with mankind

what the solution is for man’s problems

they teach some view of God

they all deal with an understanding of what man is

Though they see and observe some true things they fall short of ultimate truth because their interpretations are based on a faulty theology. Man’s reasoning is hindered without God.

In scripture, there is always a connection between vain imaginations and idolatry.

Jeremiah 2:5–8 “Thus saith the Lord, What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from me, and have walked after vanity, and are become vain? Neither said they, Where is the Lord that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, that led us through the wilderness, through a land of deserts and of pits, through a land of drought, and of the shadow of death, through a land that no man passed through, and where no man dwelt? And I brought you into a plentiful country, to eat the fruit thereof and the goodness thereof; but when ye entered, ye defiled my land, and made mine heritage an abomination. The priests said not, Where is the Lord? and they that handle the law knew me not: the pastors also transgressed against me, and the prophets prophesied by Baal, and walked after things that do not profit.”

This is the same connection that Paul makes when he continues on in the passage. Because their reasoning is fruitless, they come up with absurd explanations for the existence of what they see in the world. Whether it is thunder coming from the chariots of Thor as he rides around in heaven or the waves of the sea being an act of Poseidon. If you look closely enough at the foreign religions of the world, you will notice that they try to rationally explain forces of nature. But their reasoning cannot stumble upon this truth, so they create idols.

Man today does exactly the same thing. They do not like to retain a knowledge of God in their minds, so they come up with crazy rationalizations to explain him away. We see the worst case of this in conspiracy theories. Isn’t it interesting that atheists are more willing to believe Aliens created earth than God created earth. There is an essential flaw in that logic.

Their foolish heart was darkened

Romans 1:21 “Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.”

Ephesians 4:18 “Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart:”

Mankind lives in a state of spiritual darkness. When you think of darkness, your mind automatically imagines a dark room where the lights are turned off. Darkness implies blindness, stumbling, injury. Lost man cannot come to the knowledge of the truth. It is from passages like these that we derive the truth that no one comes to God except God draws Him. Man is blind to the truth. Not only is their reasoning fruitless, but they can’t see the truth.

2 Corinthians 4:4 “In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.”

John 3:19 “And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.”

This isn’t a passive blindness. They are darkened because they love the dark. Notice in Eph 4:18, their understanding was darkened because of the blindness of their hearts. Later in Romans, God will declare that the Jews were blind to the gospel because of their unbelief. Men are darkened in their understanding and they would not have it any other way.

They became fools

Romans 1:22 “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,”

To understand foolishness it is important to understand wisdom. Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. Biblically, it is the use of knowledge in light of the fear of the Lord. When man refuses to accept God, their thinking becomes foolish. They may know truth, but the application of it falls short of God glorifying truth.

One example of this is morality- If there is no God how are we to determine moral absolutes? This has led to moral relativism in our society. It would be very arrogant to say, this is wrong because I say it is. Some might argue that society determines right and wrong. But this leads us to error pretty quickly. No one today would want to say that slavery was morally permissible, but yet American society thought slavery wasn’t wrong for quite some time.

There is an objective standard of morality among human beings even if some people want to argue that morality is subjective. I am not saying that all men agree on every moral code everywhere, but there is a basic fundamental agreement on some basics of morality:

When two people fight, they are asserting that there is an objective moral standard between them. If morality is subjective, they could not have such an argument. This would be just like arguing about a call the referee made in a basketball game if there were no rules to the game.

There is a basic understanding that things like torturing a child for fun is morally wrong. This is the basis of all our stories with bad guys and good guys. Modern TV has tried to blur that line and yet it still exists.

Our reactions when we are mistreated show that we believe in an objective standard that says I shouldn’t be treated this way.

Romans 2:15 “Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;)”

Romans 3:23 “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;”

I could keep on going with arguments for objective morality, but the point here is to show that humanity because they don’t like God and the morality He stands for have replaced his standards with foolishness.

They profess to be wise, but they have rather become foolish instead.

Conclusion

Here is the point of this message: The mind of man has been effected by sin in such a way that it leads us away from God, it blinds our hearts to him and it leads us into foolish conclusions. We will never reason our way to God.

Romans 8:7–8 “Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.”

But God can renew that mind. God can give you a new heart.

Ezekiel 36:26 “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.”

When a person accepts Christ, they receive the mind of Christ. 1 Corinthians 2:16 “For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.” This does not guarantee that a believer will always think right, but God is renewing their minds while they live. Believer Romans 7 is probably the best example of the lingering effects of the noetic effect of sin in our lives. Romans 7:15–17 “For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.” There is often this interior battle within our minds. As believers we must submit our minds to Christ. Jesus told us to love the Lord you God with all your mind.

Unbeliever, is your mind at enmity with God. It can be renewed.

Believer, in what areas are your resisting God’s thoughts in your life. Is there a decision you really want to make, but God’s word says it is wrong? Is there an attitude that you are holding on top because it feels so good? Are their choices you are making just because you want to do them? Is there a truth the bible clearly teaches that you have fought against because it doesn’t make sense or it is uncomfortable? This is a call to submit our minds to God.