The Utter Ruin of a Man

Proverbs 5:22 "His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins. He shall die without instruction; and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray."

A person is certainly able to freely choose to follow the path of unbelief and sin. What he is not able to choose is the consequences of that choice of unbelief and sin.

G. K. Chesterton said that people never break out into a larger space, they always break out into a smaller one.

The cords of sin bind a man more and more to iniquity. This is God's decree and they cannot escape it. Sin is the judgment upon the sinner for his sin. "Because they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind," is the way Paul puts it in Romans 1.

A man may think he is master of his own mind and is free to think as he chooses, but nothing could be further from the truth. Waves of near insanity sweep over mankind from time to time, fads and customs of thought come and go; men think old, old, follies and imagine themselves very sophisticated and chic, but they are boringly dull. Solomon said years ago, Ec 1:9 "The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun."

The truth is, man was created to think God's thoughts after Him, as an image. Ps 36:9 "For with thee is the fountain of life: in thy light shall we see light." When we turn from God's light, we think we see, but we see with darkened minds.

The mind was created to see the distinction between the Creator and the creature, but this is exactly where man goes astray. He worships and serves the creature more [rather, or besides] than the Creator.

God is not idle, however when man does this, Paul says. When man does not use the gift of intelligence to see that God is to be worshipped, God darkens the man's mind. Ro 1:28 "And even as they did not like to retain God in [their] knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient [unfit]."

So the poor man, under the wrath of God, has his mind darkened so that he cannot think straight. Unwilling to make the distinction between the Creator and the creation, serving the creation, He more and more becomes unable to make other distinctions, for his mind is corrupt.

The moral and social wicked stew described at the end of Romans 1 is the result of the darkened mind of the wicked rejection of God. He is held by the cords of his sins and cannot deliver himself. Unless God saves him from the his own folly, he will more and more turn to hatred of God and foolishness, ultimately dying without instruction, hating and despising those who try to help him.

He goes astray in the "greatness of his folly."

The result is described in Romans 1:29-32. The reprobate mind is described as:

"Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenant1-breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them."

Faithful pastors and teachers, though warning again and again, can only watch with horror and tears.

What Do You Think? Or a better question: What Thinks?

My wife and I just celebrated our 45th anniversary by spending a few days in the glorious Colorado mountains near the city of Montrose. The beauties of the days and evenings led to some curious speculation on my part that have nothing--and everything--to do with such things as marriage, beauty, happiness, and heaven and hell.

The flowers in the Rocky Mountains are glorious, as are the magnificent mountain peaks surrounding Ouray and Silverton. Huge amounts of silver and gold were extracted years ago from the mines in the region, and that spurs the thought. Why did men seek after gold and silver?

The answer, of course, is easy. Gold and silver are valuable. Men and women make and wear beautiful things from the precious metals. They are fine conductors of electricity and find great value in electronic circuitry. They are durable and malleable. But a sunset is golden, too. Lead is durable and malleable, and copper conducts electricity.

What is this thing that is called "gold" in our language? When we say something is malleable, what is malleable. What makes the gold differ from the lead? What is the thing?

The thing we call gold is the same no matter its shape or size. If it be painted with blue paint, it does not change under the paint, though it looks different to our eye. What IS it. The question of what IT IS is important, and many a fool wasted his efforts in digging something out of the soil that looked very much like gold, but was indeed not gold, but iron pyrite.

The attributes cannot exist by themselves. The very science of physics depends upon the truth that substances exist. You cannot measure the length of an idea nor weigh a color. You cannnot compute the mass of an emotion.

This is the problem with modern materialism. Our science has permitted us to make very large strides in measuring things that can be measured; computing the reactions in heat, light, movement, weight, and extension.

But when a man thinks, what is it that is thinking? Just as we would think a man a fool who would seek the silver of the rain and ignore the silver in the stones under his feet, so the modern age might be called foolish for thinking that material things are all there is, without ever thinking what it is that thinks, or to borrow a bit from Descartes, what is it that KNOWS it thinks.

In the search for man's meaning, it is as foolish to deny the existence of the soul as it is for the chemist to deny the existence of what he weighs and mixes and measures. Isn't it a consumate folly for a man to think about the world and never even consider who or what it is that thinks, or who or what it is that knows it thinks?

So what does that have to do with an anniversary? A bunch. Solomon said that "he who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor of the Lord." Getting married and finding a wife are not the same thing. What is a wife? A man who doesn't know or doesn't care will probably not have one long.