How Evil Are You?

I imagine that most would balk at seeing this question. Your first inclination might be to say something like “How evil? Who’s to say I’m evil at all?” or “I’m really not that evil.”

To answer this question, we need to talk about sin and how it relates to us as mankind. There are really two ways we can look at sin.

But first of all, even if you properly view sin as a real thing – a bad thing that we all struggle with – you still may have the wrong view of sin. Let me start by asking you a question: would you define sin as “conscious, voluntary acts of transgression against known laws?” Sounds about right, doesn’t it. Well, this is true, but it’s not a complete way of looking at sin. In fact, it’s a dangerously simplistic way of looking at sin.

Inside, not Outside

The problem is that the vast majority of us view sin as something outside of us. We still cling to that idea that we are inherently good, but sometimes we make “bad choices.” But I can promise you that God does not hold this view of mankind and of sin.

It’s actually flipped around… sin is inside of us and we are inherently bad. Here’s what the Bible says about us:

The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” –Genesis 6:5 ESV

10“…as it is written: ‘None is righteous, no, not one; 11no one understands; no one seeks for God. 12All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.’” –Romans 3:10-12 ESV

“…Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood.” –Genesis 8:21 ESV

“…They are skilled in doing evil; they know not how to do good.” –Jeremiah 4:22 ESV

“9The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” –Jeremiah 17:9

So to sum up the above verses: nobody is good and we do not know how to do good… our hearts are deceitful above all things, desperately sick; in fact, we are skilled in evil and our thoughts are only evil continually. Ouch. That leaves a mark.

So in light of this Scriptural truth, we need to revisit our understanding of sin. Sin is inside of us. In fact, the Apostle Paul talks about this at length in Romans 7.

He says:

“14For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. 15For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate… 17So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. 20Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

21So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.”

So let’s refashion our understanding of sin and ourselves… that instead of good people that sometimes sin, we are bad people that are bent toward sin and sometimes do good. And to be fair, the only good that we do is by the grace of God (by the power of the Holy Spirit for the believer; by “common grace” for the unbeliever).

Damage to Christendom

This man-centered view of sin (I call it this because it presents us in a better light than is reality) has done damage to Christendom. Richard Lovelace states in his book, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal, that in the 18th and 19th centuries, the true description of sin that I am spotlighting here “was abandoned by the growing rationalist movement, which… began to define virtue in ways unrelated to worship and faith in (God), and thus to affirm the essential goodness of human nature. During the same period the church’s consciousness of sin began to erode along with its awareness of God. Gradually sin began to be defined in a way which seemed more rationally defensible: sins are conscious, voluntary acts of transgression against known laws.”

The church has undoubtedly suffered from this view of man and this view of sin. Because when we believe ourselves better than we are, we lose the urgency of the necessity of the Gospel. It becomes a lot easier to believe Satan’s lie that we are not so bad and not so in need of a Savior after all… maybe we can even save ourselves? Or maybe there really isn’t a hell to punish sinners since we’re not that actually that bad?

And one can easily see these ideas all over popular Christendom. This is sad, because the truth is that we need to recover this grave understanding of our sin, God’s holiness and the depth of the chasm that lies between us.

This is the most important thing that you will ever hear, and that the world needs to know: that you are lost without Jesus Christ. You are hopelessly destitute in your sin and unable to save yourself. He alone can save you from the wretched man or woman that you are.

So how evil are you?

Totally.

I pray that you will receive this truth that I have learned about myself, that I am totally depraved and am lost apart from the depth of God’s love shown through the extant redemption bought by the blood of our Lord Christ Jesus.

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