Are People Basically Good?

There are two truths that every human must come to grips with; The Holiness of God and the sinfulness of man. These topics are difficult for people to face. And they go together: if we understand who God is, and catch a glimpse of His majesty, purity, and holiness, then we are instantly aware of the extent of our own corruption. When that happens, we fly to grace-because we recognize that there;s no way that we could ever stand before God apart from grace.

Last week we began to look at the Holiness of God, tonight we continue in this journey and seek to answer the question Are People Basically Good?

The Reality of Our Sin

There was a time in the history of Israel that where God was punishing Israel. The prophet Habakkuk was witness to these events and he wrote the following words in chapter 1:12-13:

English Standard Version Chapter 1

12  Are you not from everlasting,

O LORD my God, my Holy One?

We shall not die.

O LORD, you have ordained them as a judgment,

and you, O Rock, have established them for reproof.

13  You who are of purer eyes than to see evil

and cannot look at wrong,

why do you idly look at traitors

and remain silent when the wicked swallows up

the man more righteous than he?

Habakkuk was witnessing the enemies of the people of God triumphing. The book of Habakkuk was written between 640-615 BC, just before the fall of Assyria and the rise of Babylon (also called Chaldea). God used Assyria to punish Israel, and now God was beginning using Babylon to punish Assyria and Judah. From Habakkuk’s perspective it appeared as if the wicked were prospering and the righteous were suffering. In such agony he raised a lament (a passionate expression of grief or sorrow) to God. As we see in verse 12, Habakkuk wanted to affirm the holiness of God and how God could not tolerate evil in the first part of verse 13 where he says God can not tolerate looking at wrong or evil.

So the image we get of God here is that he is Holy and this purity makes it so he can not even look at wrong. If we contrast this with humanity we quickly see that this is anything but characteristic of the human condition. We can tolerate what is wrong. In fact, if we don;t tolerate what is ring, we can;t tolerate each other or even ourselves. In order to with with myself as a sinner, I have to learn to tolerate something that is evil. If my eyes were too holy to behold iniquity I’d have to shut my eyes anytime I was with someone else. Who would want to be around a person like that for long?

If we look at the last half of verse 13 we see that Habakkuk then asks, “why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?” Habakkuk couldn’t fathom how God could endure and be patient with human evil. If we stop and think about it, the real issue at hand is that we can’t tolerate the idea of God being upset about human evil; humanity really has become agnostic toward the idea of a God, who is so holy that He might turn his back so as not to look at something or someone that is sinful. I think this is best demonstrated in a conversation I was having with someone that teaches in our school district. We are both History teachers by training, and we were discussing something regarding Black Lives Matter I believe and he made the following statement: “As a christian I read the scriptures to say Jesus Christ was full of “Grace and Truth,” Mercy and Justice. And I believe Grace and Mercy will be the final word. God as Love the final word over God as Judge. The Tree of Life supreme over the Tree of Knowledge and the law.” This left me with a profound sense of sorrow as they were describing God as mutable or able to change in his nature. They were claiming that God’s Love would outweigh God’s Justice as if the two were not in perfect balance already. This is an unbiblical view of God. We must recognize that this is precisely the dilemma that Scripture sets before us: we have a holy God whose image we all bear and whose image it is our fundamental responsibility to mirror-yet we are not holy beings.

When we sin we want to describe our sinful activity in terms of mistakes, as if that softens or mitigates the guilt involved. We don’t think it’s wrong for a child to add two and two and come up with five. We don’t take the child aside and discipline them we show them the error and say they made a mistake. We think mistakes are part of the human condition. Is it not Alexander Popes famous saying that “To err is human, to forgive is divine.” To err is human-which is to say, “it’s OK, we all make mistakes.” We are so accustomed to our fallenness and corruption that, while our moral sensibilities may be offended when we see someone involved in gross our heinous criminal activity such as mass murder, but normal everyday disobedience to God doesn’t bother us. We view sin in our lives as just part who we are. What this belief also implies is that it is God’s nature to just forgive the sin. If He doesn’t forgive our sin then there is something wrong with His very deity we say. Because it is the very nature of God to forgive, and Love is the supreme attribute of God. But this is a false premise. There is nothing in the attributes of God that necessitates him forgiving humanity. In fact God’s forgiveness is an unmerited or undeserved act of grace and mercy from God. When it comes right down to it we are fallen, finite creatures that do everything we can to destroy any meaning or purpose to our existence. We transgress God’s law everyday. God will never judge us for being finite creatures, but he will justly judge us for being disobedient.

The Depth of Our Sin

I want to relay to you a story that I think many of us have had to some degree with a child. I was talking with a 6 year old once and asked him the following question, “Do you think that after you grow up, live your life, and die that you’re going to heaven?” Now I think that you could ask that same question to most people we meet on the street and you would get a similar answer, they would be sure that they were going to heaven. The little boy gave me the same answer so I probed a little bit further. “Suppose you were to stand before God, and he looked you straight in the eye and asked you ‘Why should I let you into heaven?’ what would you say. The boy thought for a moment then answered, “Because I really tried hard to be good. Well, not that good, but good.” This is the same answer we hear from others we meet if we but asked them. “I am pretty good, well I am not as bad as that guy over there.” But that sentiment is wrong, we are not compared to each other but to Christ himself who is all together lovely, all together good, and all together loving.

How do we hope to stand before God? I have never met a person who claims to be perfect, but if you drill down on that concept by asking questions that same person will not admit they are a sinner. The Bible teaches that the problem of human fallenness is not merely something on the surface of our lives; it goes deeper than that. How this condition is understood has to do with the matter of “original sin.” Nearly every Western religion has some doctrine of original sin, though how that doctrine is understood varies greatly from one group to the next and from one theologian to the next. But at least this much is agreed upon: if we’re going to be serious students of Scripture, we have to develop some concept of original sin.

Today, we are taught that man is basically good, that we have imperfections and blemishes, but underneath all the surface problems, everyone is righteous. But the Bible simply does not teach that man is basically good. In his letter to the Romans, Paul writes: “As it is written, ‘None is righteous, no, not one’” (Rom. 3:10). This idea runs contrary to everything that our culture teaches. Maybe all he meant is that no one is perfect, some might say. But then Paul goes on to say, “No one understands” (v. 11a). The structure of Paul’s writing is in an elliptical, logical progression to a comprehensive description of the human condition. “None is righteous” and “no one understands.” Part of the reason why no one ever achieves the standard of righteousness that God requires is because no one understands what the standard is. We’re blinded as to what is right and what is wrong.

Paul wrote that the reason we don’t know what is right is that we don’t understand who God is. “No one seeks for God,” Paul says (v. 11b). No natural person, outside of regeneration, searches for God. People are desperately seeking peace of mind, relief from guilt, meaning, significance, and value to their lives. All the while, they’re running as fast as they can from God. God is not hiding; it’s not that He can’t be found. It’s not our nature to seek God—it is our fallen nature to flee from Him. Paul continues: “All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one” (v. 12). We tend to see the word good as relative, meaning something is judged to be good or bad according to a standard. But sometimes we don’t agree on the standard, leading to different assessments. But, according to God’s perfect standard of goodness, no one does good.

A man once came to Jesus and asked, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Mark 10:17). Jesus understood that the man had no idea to whom he was talking, so He replied, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother’” (vv. 18–19). The man replied, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth” (v. 20). In essence what that young man was saying, right after being told that no one is good, but I am good I live by the law. But if you live by the Ten Commandments, you will perish by the Ten Commandments, for “all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law” (Rom. 2:12). I’m not saying you should ignore the Ten Commandments. But Paul wrote that “by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight” (3:20).

We may hear people say that I help the poor, I feed the homeless, I support good causes, I do all the right things. But for a deed to be good in God’s sight, not only must it conform to the law outwardly, but it also must flow out of a heart that loves God completely. If I can not say that both of those things are true in God’s sight, then my deeds are nothing more than filthy rags to God according to Isaiah 64:6. None of us is righteous, no not one according to Paul in Romans 3:10.

as it is written:

“None is righteous, no, not one;

no one understands;

no one seeks for God.

All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;

no one does good,

not even one.”

“Their throat is an open grave;

“The venom of asps is under their lips.”

“Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.”

“Their feet are swift to shed blood;

“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

The Apostle here is quoting from the book of Psalms and the language he uses makes it clear that humans are guilty, every single one of us.

God made you, and he made you in his image. In doing so, He gave you a capacity and a need for the reverence of your Creator. Remember last week we talked about the Holiness of God and his being the standard by which all things are measured. You know that God is worthy of your honor, reverence and adoration. But we’ve all been been so disobedient for so long that after a while we’re not even afraid of God. Paul tells us in Romans 5:10 that “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.”

When we talk about original sin, we don’t mean the sinful act that Adam and Eve committed, but the result of that first sin. Original sin refers to our sinful condition. In other words, we sin because we are sinners; it is not that we are sinner because we sin. Since the fall of mankind, it is the nature of human beings to be inclined and drawn toward sinfulness. We sin because we love it. Psalm 51:5 tells us, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” We were sinners in the womb.

Are people basically good? No! People are not basically good because God defines what good means and we all fall short of that mark. We can not measure up and we can not fix ourselves and become reconciled to God. We are without hope on our own, we need a savior to do that for us. Someone who can pay our debt. Someone who can reconcile us. Someone who can justify us to God. We need Grace. We need Mercy. We need Jesus Christ.