Oswald Chambers – The Nature of Degeneration

Romans 5:12 – “Just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all men sinned…”

“The Bible does not say that God punished the human race for one man’s sin, but that the nature of sin, namely, my claim to my right to myself, entered into the human race through one man. But it also says another Man [Jesus] took upon Himself the sin of the human race and put it away – an infinitely more profound revelation (see Hebrews 9:26). The nature of sin is not immorality and wrongdoing, but the nature of self-realization which leads us to say, ‘I am my own god.’ This nature may exhibit itself in proper morality or in improper immorality, but it always has a common basis – my claim to my right to myself. When our Lord faced either people with all the forces of evil in them, or people who were living clean-living, moral, and upright, He paid no attention to the moral degradation of one, nor any attention to the moral attainment of the other. He looked at something we do not see, namely, the nature of man (see John 2:25)."

It is so much easier to make salvation about my moral choices of right and wrong rather than solely on Jesus’ righteousness – it is especially difficult for me, being someone who is bent much more toward moral conformity rather than moral rebellion. I am still so likely to try to prove myself, to my own self I suppose (for God does not ask this proving of me). I think I still want to believe there is righteousness in me, that is of me, instead of accepting the truth of what God’s Word says in Isaiah 64:7 that all my “righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away”. What arrogance this reveals in me!

I read recently an incredible book by Timothy Keller called “The Prodigal God” about the parable of the prodigal son. He looked at this parable in a way I have not yet heard before, narrowing in on the older brother rather than the typical emphasis on the younger brother. He exposed the equal or greater spiritual lostness of the older brother who stayed with his father and did everything “right”. In the end of the parable it’s revealed that his heart was as distant from his father’s as his younger brother’s was. His “goodness” as a son was also motivated by self-interest rather than pure love for the father. He, like his brother, was using his father for his inheritance and what he could get out of him just as much as the younger brother. His heart was exposed when in anger he ignored his father’s pleadings to come in to celebrate his brother’s return. He did not want his father to welcome his younger brother home again with such open arms because it meant a loss to him again. I cannot go into all of it in this blog, but I highly recommend the book. It’s short, but can change your life and awaken you to your heart, especially if you are like me - church-bred since birth.

Having been raised in the church and having generally lived a very moral life, my temptation is to put my faith in myself instead of Jesus. My temptation is to not examine the deeper motives of my heart beneath the “righteous acts” that will reveal that my heart too surges with a nature as bent on self-glorification and self-will as any one else’s. I can so quickly get into the mindset that God owes me because I’ve been "so good" for Him. The bottom line is: I say I love Christ with all my heart and that I surrender all to Him, but then I still tend to take back the right to myself soon after when I don’t like what He’s doing or don’t understand how it makes sense. And then, in order to get around the discomfort of that conviction, I subconsciously rest on my moral performance as being the gauge for sin - not self-idolatry.

May God continue to have mercy on me and transform my heart in order that I might throw my all upon faith in Jesus Christ and nothing else, and entrust to Him every aspect of my life, whatever it costs, for no other motive but that I love Him.