The doctrine of humankind’s sinfulness is not a popular one, one can understand this but it is important to stress that we can not understand God’s grace unless it is against this background.

The essence of sin is rebellion against God, the decision not to respect his authority but rather to set ourselves at the centre of the picture. One has only to read Genesis 3 to see how humankind’s rebellion was the start of self centered self. See the blame shifting that immediately comes about,man blames woman,woman blames Satan.  as a result of this creation is also involved in the curse. Humankind at the centre instead of God means the deterioration of humankind in every aspect of human nature. Before the fall the relationship between man and woman is ideal, whereas after the fall we see more and more problems creeping into human relationships.

The intellect of human beings is now fallen and seeks its own autonomy instead of serving God. The intellectual capabilities are now self centered  instead of God centered bringing in its wake a trail of destruction, the mind which is not submitted to God will always go in the wrong direction.

Our emotions have been also messed up by sin, emotional wholeness is to be found in a life of worship to God but as result of the fall we have become those who put ourselves in the place of God. The result of this is brokeness because of false expectations of our selves and of others. Our emotions begin to bring the fruits of sin through a loss of a sense of true identity, we tend to seek our identity in who we are, we therefore meet with many disappointments.

Our creativity is taken in wrong directions, we were born to create good things but we have learned how to create destructive things. Yes we do create good things but just think of how even good things like art and music are misused every day. We see the potential within human beings and yet so often it is misused to bring about hurt,confusion and destruction.

The whole area of our moral choices has been affected by our fall into sin, instead of making ethical choice based on God’s commandments, we choose to invent our own standards. We see the result of this every day as we hear people defend their decisions by saying, “I did’t hurt anyone”. The standard has become the happiness of the majority instead of God’s absolute standards.

Sin is destroying us, the culture we live and the very earth we live upon but we think we have all the answers. Until we realize that god is right and that he is just and holy there is no hope for us.

God is also gracious and he wants a people for himself, he therefore sent Jesus into this world to save sinners, the clearest portrayal of the awfulness of sin is the cross of Christ. That cross is also the only way that we can escape the penalty of sin.