The Unadorned Gospel

a. Overview

The fall of man is not a happy topic. It is bad news. It does not leave a
warm, fuzzy feeling in your heart.

The fall starts with the twin sins (Step Five, Part 5), then moves on to a
couple of very poor transactions that men make. These exchanges result in
increasing godlessness and wickedness, and are responded to by God.
His response is to give men over to sexual impurity, shameful lusts, and a
depraved mind. With depraved minds, men are abandoned by God, and
fully abandon themselves to do what ought not to be done. They do this,
even though they know they deserve God's death sentence for their actions.
Finally, astonishingly, all men are included in the fall, from Hitler and
Bin-Laden, to you and I.

Scripture References and Definitions

...they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God...
Romans 1:28

..men exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and
animals and reptiles.
Romans 1:23

They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the
Creator - who is forever praised.
Romans 1:25

Exchange: to give up something for something else.

Glory: Resplendent beauty and magnificence.

Image: a physical likeness or representation of a person, animal, or thing,
photographed, painted, sculpted, or otherwise made visible.

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Men know God. But in our basic human nature, men do not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of
God. God doesn't have any relevance in our quest for gratification in the temporal world. (Indeed, He is our
enemy in the search for the satisfaction of the sinful desires of the heart.)

So men, not thinking the knowledge of God worthwhile to retain, exchange God for things of earth. What
they get in return is rather shocking.

In exchange for the resplendent beauty and magnificence of the Eternal, Immortal, Invisible God, men
accept images and representations of the things He has made. In essence, they trade in the Reality of the
Supreme Being for photographs of the temporary earth.

Even worse, they exchange God's Truth for lies!

Worse still, lost in the darkness of their hearts, and deceived in their minds by the lies, they begin to worship
and serve the images they have collected. Instead of worshiping God, the only One who could give them
the immortality they seek, they worship and serve things of earth, which will pass away along with them.

What a poor trade! It's like trading $100 US Treasury bills for $100 of Monopoly money. If you or I were
the CEO of our own corporation, we would fire ourselves!

c. God Takes Action

Next in considering the fall of man, we find that God does not leave men alone in their flight away from
Him. Because they turn from God, not thinking it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, God takes
action.

The phrase “God gave them over” implies more than simply natural consequence. If you turn your back
on the Light, you will be in the dark. That's a natural consequence. If you turn away from Truth, you will
be deceived by lies. That's a natural consequence. But when God gives men over to sexual impurity,
shameful lusts, and a depraved mind, this is more than natural consequence.

Here's an example. If a man murders his friend, he will suffer natural consequences. He will have lost a
friend, he will feel guilty, he will have earned the undying enmity of the victim's family, etc. But when he
goes in front of the judge and is sentenced, he receives punishment for his crime. The punishment
stems from the crime, but is more than natural consequence. Punishment is the response of society
against behavior that undermines it's proper functioning.

God is the ultimate Judge. In response to man's headlong flight away from Him, He responds. He
punishes men by giving men over, in the sinful desires of their hearts, to sexual impurity, shameful lusts,
and a depraved mind.

d. Sexual Impurity and Shameful Lusts

Because God has given men over to it, sexual impurity is now built into the basic nature of fallen man. It
wasn't so in the beginning. But it is now. There is a sexual expression which is pure before God. But
most of what most people experience is neither pure nor holy nor honorable.

The evidence of sexual impurity is all around us. Adultery, abortion, divorce, broken homes, child
molestation, rape, pornography. These are some of the outward manifestations of the scourge of sexual
impurity.
But here's the shocking thing. The purpose of sexual impurity is for the degrading of our bodies with one
another. That sexual experience you had with your boyfriend/girlfriend was not a beautiful thing. It
degraded you both. All forms of sexual impurity degrade the participants.

And remember, this degrading of our bodies is a punishment from God. It is His action against us. (This
fact will come into play in Step Seven when we examine God's kindness.)

A note about homosexuality. Not everyone is a homosexual. But homosexuality stands as a marker that
man has fallen. It is a low point, a most impure form of sexual deviation. It is not the worst sin on earth,
nor is it unforgivable. Yet Paul calls it shameful, unnatural, indecent, and perverse.

We do not act in love when we shy from declaring the truth about homosexuality. It is a particularly
degrading form of sin, very difficult to be freed from. We should be very saddened when we find that any
person has fallen into this particular sin.

e. A Depraved Mind

As if the degrading of our bodies was not enough, God gives men over to a morally bad, evil, and corrupt
mind!

God has given men over to do what ought not to be done. Paul tells us that men “have become filled with
every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. They are full of envy, strife, murder, deceit, and malice.
They are gossips, slanderers, God haters; insolent, arrogant, and boastful.” (Romans 1:29-30)

(As you ponder the depths of the fall, do you see now what has gone wrong with God's world? The world is
not a happy place full of essentially good people. It is an awful and desperate place, full of rotten people who
do rotten things.)

When God gave men over to a depraved mind, the fall was almost complete. The entire sad history of
mankind can be seen in this horrible catalog of sin. Men even “invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their
parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.” (Romans 1:31) How awful!

Now for the last step. Men know that those who do what ought not to be done deserve God's death penalty
(see Romans 1:32). But even though they know they deserve death, they continue in their behavior! Then,
despite continuing in behavior they know is wrong and warrants death, they approve of others who do the
same things!

When God gave men over to a depraved mind, He lowered the boom on humanity. The human race was
finished at this point. There is no hope for the betterment of human nature. There is no hope for society.
There is no hope in this temporal world at all. The only hope comes from outside this world.

f. The Final Nail

Like me, you may have been hoping, amidst this horrible revelation of the fall, that you may be somehow
exempt. Perhaps there is an exception, a spiritual “get out of jail free” card, exempting us from the terrible
and tragic effects of the fall. But Paul takes away that last hope when he says that you and I do the same
things as the rest of men.

Now that brings up a very good question. Did Paul mean to say that you and I are as bad as Hitler, who
killed 6 million Jews? Are we as bad as Stalin, who killed 30 million of his own countrymen?   Are we as bad
as serial killers like Manson or Bundy? Certainly there must be another category for terrorists, who destroy
property and lives for the sake of a political statement?

But Paul definitively states that all men have fallen. Most of us have not committed multiple murders. Most
of us have not plumbed the depths of evil as Hitler and Stalin did. But all men have fallen. All men do the
same things. How is this so?

As promised in Step Five, the twin sins now re-enter the picture to explain an important aspect of the fall of
man. For it is at the twin sins that all men do the same things and are guilty before God. You and I, along
with Stalin and Bundy, know that we owe our very existence to God, yet we turn our back on Him. Bin-
Laden, Manson, and you and I fail to give thanks to God, and do not honor Him with praise, admiration, and
worship.

Thankfully, the institutions of Family and Government work together to restrain the full outward expression
of evil. Most of us have had parents, family members, teachers, or pastors that have taught us to act
decently and not to rape, kill, pillage, and burn. Plus, there is a judicial system in place which makes us
afraid of the consequences of our behavior. We do not want to be executed or go to prison for crimes we
might otherwise commit. All men do not act out, in public behavior, the same way as the Stalins and
Mansons of the world.         Nevertheless, all men share together, at the twin sins, in the fall of man.
That means me. And that means you.

(If this teaching is difficult to accept, there is a small degree of softening coming. When we get to Romans
2:8, we will find that men are not so much born evil as they are born selfish. It's a distinction that makes the
fall of man easier to accept.

Also, concerning the fall, we cannot and must not pull our punches. It's a harsh teaching, I know. But it's
necessary. Please do not get offended. By the time we arrive at the Watershed Verse , you will
understand why we have to be so tough about the doctrine of the fall of man.)

g. Conclusion

The fall of man is a horrifying and shocking teaching. No one wins a popularity contest spreading it.
Frankly, I don't like it. The more I study it, the more it fills me with dismay and despair.   (Think about it...
senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless! Oh my!!).

But, in relation to the temporary world in which we live, despair is exactly the place God wants us to be.

Read on!