3Circle Church
The more Solomon chased life under the sun, the more empty his life became.
Ecclesiastes 7:29 ESV
See, this alone I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes.
God is not to blame.
Man = Adam
It was natural for Adam and Eve to do good.
They = the rest of mankind
Adam and Eve had a sinless nature that was natural, but not unchangeable.
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.”
God gave man freedom.
Freedom demands the presence of choice.
Genesis 3:5
“For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
The problem is with mankind, but the hope is in God.
Proverbs 14:12
There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.
Real Christians understand that we are the problem.
Romans 3:23-27
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in His divine forbearance He had passed over former sins. 26 It was to show His righteousness at the present time, so that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. 27 Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith.
We are born with a natural inclination away from God.
1 Corinthians 15:45-47
45 Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46 But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. 47 The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven.
We needed someone from over the sun to come to us here under the sun.
Romans 7:25
25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
Believers are in a battle between their new and old natures.