Jeremiah 17:9

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

Man in his nature is bad, bad all the time, bad to the bone!

The Bible makes no bones about it. There is none righteous, no, not one. For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.

King David said in Psalms 51:5, “ Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.”  (Note: this does not mean that David’s conception was sin; it means that he was by nature a sinner, from the beginning, from his conception.)

And our scripture brings it home. We can’t even know how sinful we really are. We don’t even know our own evil, wicked hearts.

By our nature, there is an insurmountable wall between us and goodness. And we can’t figure out how to get there.

1 Corinthians 2:14 — But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

Before we are born of the spirit of God (born again), we cannot receive or do the things of God.

This is important for us to understand, so we can understand what is going on all around us.

In our culture, in our society, in our politics, in our government, and even in our churches.

The founding fathers of our country have always seemed like geniuses for recognizing these things, when they created our constitution and our federal government. They were geniuses, but in this, they were men of God who recognized the nature of man had to be constrained. So, they created a government with checks and balances, so that no one man or group of men could exercise too much power.

We have just witnessed this in our election. There is a balance between the two parties, between disparate ideas and policies, between the legislative (Congress), executive (President)  and judicial (Courts) branches of government. In other words, the President is limited by the Congress and Courts as to what he is allowed to do. Congress likewise is limited by the President and the Courts, etc.

These are good things. Our founding fathers did not trust man’s nature to do what is good and right. They knew that all men were subject to evil and like passions as themselves. They knew themselves. They believed what the Bible taught them about themselves.

“As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust: So there are other qualities in human nature, which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form.” — James Madison, Feb. 15, 1788 (Federalist No. 55)

“We must take human nature as we find it, perfection falls not to the share of mortals.” –George Washington, Aug. 15, 1786 (letter to John Jay)

“In reality there is perhaps no one of our natural Passions so hard to subdue as Pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will now and then peek out and show itself.” — Benjamin Franklin, 1771 (Autobiography)

“The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man.” — James Madison, Nov. 23, 1787 (Federalist No. 10)

I’m thankful for the wisdom of these men, blessed by God to create this great country, respecting the scriptural teaching of the nature of man.

Oh, that the leaders and pundits in our country today understood and would voice these same truths about man’s nature. Maybe it would help everyone to better understand the polarization and contentiousness in the public arena and cause more people to look to the holiness of God for the solutions to our problems.

May God Bless You.