DNA – We all have it. It’s what makes us what we are, physically. It defines us. Without DNA, we would have no physical presence at all.
If we jump onto our computers and get on the Internet, we can look up what DNA is. Here is what Wikipedia has to say about this thing called “DNA”:
Deoxyribonucleic acid is a molecule composed of two chains that coil around each other to form a double helix carrying genetic instructions for the development, functioning, growth and reproduction of all known organisms and many viruses.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA) Used without permission.
This DNA is passed down to us from our parents. DNA is what determines the color of our hair, eyes, and skin. It is the foundation, if you will, of our physical selves.
I am going to use this DNA as an illustration of the human condition. I use it because it fits better than any other thing I can think of to show who we are in the eyes of our Creator, and what our standing is before Him[1].
Inherited Corruption
Now that we know what physical DNA is, let’s have some fun and look at our “spiritual DNA”. Using the same letters, and the DNA itself as a metaphor, we can talk of our innermost nature using this concept to show what we are made of spiritually. It’s the Depraved Nature of Adam. Just so that we’re all on the same page, I’ll define each word:
D = Depraved: Morally corrupt; wicked; evil; bad; having no goodness.
N = Nature: The basic or inherent features of something, or someone. The essence.
of = pertaining to; from; as.
A = Adam: The first human being created by God. A representative of the entire human race.
In Christianity, there is a doctrine called the Depravity of Man. That is pretty much the same thing as what I am putting forth here. I’ll use Wayne Grudem’s definition of it, because it is the same as my own:
“Man’s total lack of spiritual good and inability to do good before God.”
(Grudem, Wayne A. (2009-05-18). Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine. Zondervan. Kindle Edition.)
Mr. Grudem also calls it “Inherited Corruption”. To inherit something is to get it from your parents (just like the physical DNA). So the entire human race has inherited an essence of evil from the first man, Adam. Paul, the Apostle, put it this way:
When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned.
(Romans 5:12, NLT)
So, a depraved nature is something that we all get from our parents—all the way back to the first parents, Adam and Eve. And just as we have deoxyribonucleic acid in us in the womb, we also have a depraved nature from Adam (even before we are born) because we all have sinned (see Isaiah 64:6).This does not mean that God created sin, or even a sinful human race. And it doesn’t mean that we are totally depraved, being incapable of any good at all. Obviously, we can do both good and evil. But notice that it was through (or from) the first man that sin entered the world. When God created mankind, he created them “good”. They were created sinless, but with the capacity to turn from God. If we did not have the capacity to turn away from God, then our turning toward him would be meaningless. All of us have the ability to turn away; saved or unsaved (see Romans 11:19-22 as one example).
The Stakes Are High
The implication of this is huge to the entire human race. But “Why”, you may ask, “does it matter”? Well, it only matters if you want to live forever in a state of happiness and contentment with your Creator. I don’t mean that you will live forever in your mortal body; I mean that your soul—the essence of who you are—will live forever, even after your physical, mortal body dies.
Death, which was introduced after the first evil deed of mankind (disobedience), was both a curse and a blessing from God. It is a curse because we were not created for death, but for life. It is a blessing, because it is through death that we can find redemption from our evil nature (perhaps as evaporation cleans water). Just as death was introduced to our physical DNA, death is in our spiritual DNA—the Depraved Nature of Adam. Both kinds of DNA carry our evil.
Paul put it this way:
And I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature [or “flesh”]. I want to do what is right, but I can’t.
(Romans 7:18, NLT)
One of God’s early and great prophets, Isaiah, put it this way:
We are all infected and impure with sin.
(Isaiah 64:6, NLT)
When we display our righteous deeds,
they are nothing but filthy rags.
Like autumn leaves, we wither and fall,
and our sins sweep us away like the wind.
This entry in the Bible from Isaiah is one of the most significant statements on this issue. He is saying that when we try to show God how good (righteous) we are, we are really showing God how despicable we are. This is because God is absolutely perfect and good. He knows what true righteousness is. And we just don’t have it in us.
Religion is Useless To Save
So what does this do to literally every religious system in the world? What is religion, by the way? I define religion as mankind doing something to earn or gain something from a higher power. It is usually in the context of trying to please (or make us acceptable to) some higher power, or to improve ourselves to the point of reaching some higher plain of existence. I know of no religion that does not depend upon human effort to obtain some goal—except one. Judaism was instituted by the Creator in order to show mankind that we are unable to please Him by our own efforts.
Here’s a tidbit from Paul on this:
The Law of Moses was unable to save us because of the weakness of our sinful nature.
(Romans 8:3, NLT)
This means that the only religion established by God is to show us that we are unable to attain a right standing with Him through religion. There is no religion known to man that can remove man’s imperfection. Only faith in the cross of Christ can do that. Faith is not synonymous with religion; they are two different words with different meanings. I see religion as an effort, based on what I can do to please God; whereas faith is putting hope in God to be merciful, not hope in my own goodness and accomplishments.
“What about Christianity?” you may ask. The answer to that question is that Christianity is not (or should not be) a religion. Christianity is not based on human effort, but on God’s effort. It is faith-based; not works-based. Therefore, it is not religion, because religion is works-, or character-based. “Religious Christians” are like pharisees; they demand everyone follow their own set of rules in their heads. If not, they will crucify you. I do not claim fellowship with such people. I choose relationship over rules.
Okay, enough of the bad news. Are you ready for the good news?
The Creator’s Solution
This whole problem is something that God foresaw before He ever put His creative plan into action (because He alone can see into the future). I know that I didn’t ask to be created, did you? Is this whole world (and universe) an act of mankind? Did it happen by chance out of nothing? I don’t think so. Since we didn’t create it, are we responsible for the solution to this dilemma with God that we have been born into? I don’t think that we are. I believe that God had this whole problem figured out and solved long before He created us. He is just testing our character, to see if we will pursue Him or not; whether we obey or not; whether we love or not. He responded to the fall of mankind with a test: be loyal, or not; be loving, or not; be good, or evil. We didn’t know it, but He had the whole thing worked out.
But before I give you the solution, I’ll quickly spell out the dilemma from God’s perspective. You see, God has many sides to His essence: He is Perfect; Immortal (living forever); Infinite (existing without ceasing in presence); Just (fair); Loving (nurturingly responsible); Omnipotent (all-powerful); and Omniscient (all-knowing). He created us so that He could have fellowship with us and walk among us. But you should know, He holds mankind accountable for their sin-nature since He is not responsible for its existence, and no sin can exist in His infinite presence, or in His kingdom—which makes it impossible for us to commune with Him as we were created to do. This means that each and every human ever created (whether born or not), owes God a debt of penalty. There is a price on the head of every human ever conceived, because we are of the same nature as our father, Adam; and God is the Judge for us to be called in front of. “Not fair!”, you may claim? Hold that thought for a minute. To complete this thought on God’s dilemma, we need to realize that He is both Just (a good and righteous Judge, who does no wrong and can accept no wrongdoing), and He is also a loving and kind God who wants to pardon everyone. So how does (did, really) God solve this problem? Here is where the Good News comes in. Because we are all polluted with this inherited thing called sin, we cannot pay the penalty of death without it destroying us, so He became one of us (literally, a human) without losing His divine essence, to pay the death sentence for us (satisfying His need for justice). Another function of this Super Human Entity—this Fusion of God and Man—is that He protects us from Father God’s holy, infinite presence (and has been from the very beginning of the creation) which would have destroyed us as soon as we sinned. Of course, this is the man we call “Jesus”, “Jeshua”, “Yeshua”, and a bunch of other names. He is the one and only “God-Man” – the Creator in Human Flesh. And He and the Father have been One, since before the creation (along with Holy Spirit). Immanuel, God with us.
In order to not violate His essence of righteousness, which demands justice, and to not violate His desire for forgiveness, He decided to pay our debt on our behalf. He took the punishment that is due us all upon Himself, as a substitute in our place. He literally punished Himself on our behalf. This way, He is able to be true to Himself and also provide a way for us to be saved from our due punishment, that carries the death penalty.
“But if Jesus is human, doesn’t He have the sin nature too?” Good question. The answer is “no”, because His mortal body didn’t have this inherited corruption. The Holy Spirit put a human embryo that did not carry the Depraved Nature of Adam into the womb of a young lady (Mary). She was sinful, yes, but her womb did not transfer her sin into His perfect little body being formed within her. The embryo could not have come from her egg, and it was not fertilized by a sinful man. The Embryo of Jesus was implanted supernaturally—fully human, and fully perfect. No DNA from Mary, Joseph or Adam. And since He did not act sinfully, ever, He was truly without sin. He is the only human being that this can be said of. The virgin birth is real, and really important to our survival before God the Father.
Terms of the Agreement
The good news is very good, but it does not work for everyone. It is available to everyone, but many will reject it—sadly. Once again, God has allowed mankind to have free will. This is a “gimme”, that’s just hanging out there for anyone to grab; but just as the first humans had the ability to sin against Him in the beginning (Adam and Eve), we who have inherited this corruption also have the ability to reject His plan of redemption from our sinful nature. So, the solution is there, but it’s up to us to accept it on God’s terms.
Here are God’s terms for sainthood.
- Acknowledge that Jesus is God in human form and has never had the same evil that we do.
- Accept Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross to be the payment to God for your evil nature and deeds—that He paid the death-toll on your behalf, which you could not survive.
- Give yourself (body, mind, and soul) back to God, namely Jesus, for Him to be your Master. Acknowledge that He owns you because:
- He made you
- He purchased you with His life (when He died on the cross)
- You freely give yourself to Him.
If you accept God’s terms of reconciliation with Him, then you may or may not feel any different. Your life may or may not improve in any way. There’s no guarantee that any of your problems will go away (in fact, you are promised persecution for your faith in Him). But what you will be is Justified before your Creator. You will have satisfied His requirement for your evil nature and deeds to be paid for. You will be saved from your evil nature separating you from God anymore.
What’s Next?
Justification is just the beginning. The next thing in your new life with God will be what we call Sanctification. It’s a 50-cent word that is used for the doctrine of Cooperation with God, in which you work with your Creator (the Holy Spirit) to do more good deeds and fewer evil deeds. You have a working, loving, caring relationship with God for the rest of your mortal days on earth. This relationship will grow and bring you knowledge, wisdom, and other good things as you cooperate with God. He’ll probably lead you to read His Bible, and give you the ability to understand it. He might help you to heal other relationships in your life as well. He will lead you to share about His plan of salvation for all. Who knows what things will change in your life? He might lead you to a group of believers to learn from and fellowship with. And He has already said to acknowledge Him publicly, with getting publicly baptized into His salvation.
The final thing to happen—which we call the goal of our faith—is what we call Purification. This is the most amazing transformation that will occur to humanity. I call it Humanity 2.0. When Jesus returns again to Earth, He will transform His followers into a kind of super being. We will make superman look like a nobody; a regular guy. Our sinful, evil, mortal bodies will be exchanged for perfect, sinless, super bodies (incorruptible and invincible; everlasting; glowing). We call this state “Glorification”. It means that we are perfect, just as Jesus is perfect. No one knows all that we will be able to do in this new state, but it will be much better than the way we are now. But if we refuse God’s offer of reconciliation on His terms, then we will miss out on this one opportunity to live an eternal, happy life of unity with our God on a level unimaginable to us now. After all, He has only given us the one solution (His death on the cross) to our problem of inherited corruption (the Depraved Nature of Adam) if we want to be as He is (perfect).
I hope that you will acknowledge your imperfect state and accept God’s solution to your DNA pollution problem. This is the only way into a perfect union with Christ.
I have much more to say about salvation, this is just a tidbit about our condition right out of the factory, so-to-speak.
The life you are living now is not your final life condition. You will either be much better off, in the eternal state of life that is to follow on the New Earth; or, you will be destroyed in the eternal Lake of Burning Sulphur (is it a lava planet?).
As soon as Jesus comes back, life will be much better for all but those who have refused Him and hurt Him (and His followers). He has provided a just and merciful solution to our inner pollution, which will be acceptable to all and seen as fair to all. If you approach Him with love and faith according to the sacrifice on the cross, you will be one with Him in His new kingdom; if you approach Him with legalism and works, apart from the cross, you will be judged accordingly. Your outcome will depend upon your treatment of other people, regardless of your faith in, or respect of Christ. He told us that some of us can live under His absolute rule if we are kind to His people. We will not be united with Him in this fashion, but we will live. Read more about it in This Broken Planet. I hope to have a doctrinal definition (blog post) come out soon to outline this biblical discovery. I’m calling it, “Sheep to Nations”.
In His love,
Gary
[1]God (the Father) does not have a gender. Referring to God in the masculine does not make God a male; it just makes it easier to refer to God. This is the way that God is addressed in the Bible.
