Doctrinal Care

Doctrinal Care

Romans 3:9-18

Anthropology - the study of man. This is more of studying the doctrine of man which then implements itself into the character of man. Fallen man is utterly sinful, and by this we mean that only things done comparatively good are still filthy rags in God's eyes. Even saved man daily sins, even the holiest of man on earth has the smallest understanding of God's Law. 

We have been dipped, rolled, and saturated in the idea of man being good in this day and age with the culture we have. The culture we have is convinced that man is ultimately good. It is our environment that corrupts us, but we are good deep down inside. We are brainwashed to believe that we are not utterly sinful. Even the church has taught it and where else could we hope to find real Truth than in the church. If man was really good then why would we ever go to church at all? Why else than to meet other nice people, listen to some upbeat feel-good music, have a nice coffee bar and other cliche church activities. They might still say in abstract than man sins, but the concrete idea that is communicated is that we are basically good. 

It's not that we are sinners because we sin, but rather we sin because we are sinners. We were born that way. It is not our environment that makes us sin, but rather what is within us, our sin nature. We needs to take responsibility for our own sin and faults. The Bible speaks of us falling prey to sin because we give in to temptation. Change and renewal happens from the inner man to display the outward actions of any man. This is only done by the propitiation of the blood of Christ. 

The problem is not our environment but us apart from Christ. No man can convert the sinful heart of man. It must be Christ alone. The state pushes the idea of educating man and culture to their own ideas and this will cure any bad environment and therefore any sin. They make themselves as the god of the culture. We come to church and we need to be reminded of our sin. From there we can move on to asking for repentance and being granted forgiveness. Our church and state these days do whatever they can to convince us of our natural goodness to draw us to their agenda and away from the truth of our sin nature as taught in Scripture. 

The future idea of a general goodness of man may lead to an idea of mans' perfection. While we may laugh at that, it is the only next step to mans' goodness and if they are consistent then it really will make sense to everyone. Man does have a sin nature. It is his nature to sin continually apart from Christ. The only option for anything but sin is to look for Christ alone and to turn from all media and news and anything that wants to push the idea of man having a nature that is good. Only in Christ can we have any hope of goodness. 

"When Paul was forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the Gospel in the province of Asia, and was given the vision of a man in Europe calling across the waters, 'Come over into Macedonia, and help us,' one section of the world was sovereignly excluded from, and another section was sovereignly given, the privileges of the Gospel. Had the divinely directed call been rather from the shores of India, Europe, and America might today have been less civilized than the natives of Tibet. It was the sovereign choice of God which brought the Gospel to the people of Europe and later to America, while the people of the east, and north, and south were left in darkness. We can assign no reason, for instance, why it should have been Abraham's seed, and not the Egyptians or the Assyrians, who were chosen; or why Great Britain and America, which at the time of Christ's appearance on earth were in a state of such complete ignorance, should today possess so largely for themselves, and be disseminating so widely to others, these most important spiritual privileges. The diversities in regard to religious privileges in the different nations is to be ascribes to nothing less than the good pleasure of God."

 -Loraine Boettner

"The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination."