Who are We? (Part 2)

"...being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus."
-Romans 3:24
      My last blog post talked about the nature of human beings and the fact that we are spiritual beings. We know this because we do not treat each other simply as physical beings, and we do not treat ourselves as purely physical beings also. For example, we encourage one another not because our physical bodies need to be encouraged, but because encouragement lifts out spirit. We feel guilt when we hurt someone, we feel anger when someone hurts us, we feel sad when someone insults us. These feelings are our spiritual nature that God has given us.
      Today I want to dive a little deeper into who we are. If we all agree that we are spiritual beings, the natural next question is the nature of our spirits. Are we naturally good or evil people? Why? According to the world's standards, a "good" person is one who follows the law, helps other people, and pays taxes (silly example but you get the point). An "evil" or "bad" person is precisely the opposite; one who breaks the law, and hurts others. However, if I were to ask people whether the nature of a human is good or evil, I bet that there would be no common answer. Some people would say good, others would say evil, and still others would say both.
      The unfortunate reality is that we are evil beings. The Bible says in Romans 3:23 that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God". We are naturally evil and our inclinations are always to sin. We were created in order to have a relationship with God and to glorify Him, yet because of Adam's and consequently our sin, we broke that purpose. We no longer glorify God, but we live to glorify ourselves, and because of this our relationship with God is broken.
      An interesting thing I heard while listening to a podcast by Ravi Zacharias is that everyone knows that they are not good, yet they are so quick to reject the idea that they are evil. We all know that we are not good people, yet our nature is to believe that we are. Our sinful nature says that if we do enough good things we can be "good", yet we know that are not. Without acknowledging that we are not good people, we can never accept ourselves and we will never give ourselves the chance to know the truth. Knowing who we are is an essential step in living in the way that we were intended to live.
      Another effect of our evil nature is that we are broken and incomplete. We were never intended to rely on ourselves, but we reject the idea that we need someone to help us. If you want some evidence to this claim, just take a look a your life. How many times have you said that if you get this one thing, or this one job, or one boy/girlfriend that your life would be better? We think is this way but we know that these things can never satisfy our need for a fulfilled life. Nothing in this world can repair our broken lives.
      Of course I cannot end without discussing what we are supposed to do knowing that we are evil and incomplete. Thankfully, there is a solution to our broken lives, and yes, I am talking about Jesus. Jesus Christ came into this world not to condemn us for rejecting Him and sinning against Him, but to restore our relationship with Him. He came because He knew that we are sinful and lost people, and He came to save us from sin. We cannot accept Jesus' offer for an eternal life if we cannot accept who we are. We are not people who can live on our own; we need someone to save us from our sin. That person is waiting for us with open arms.
-Smart