Yes, Jesus Nailed It

The hard truths we refuse to accept about who we really are:

The world is filled with a lot of evil – and evil people. We certainly see it today emanating from the radical secular left, with vile, ugly diabolical rage and demonic hatred. It is so bad that it leads to action: they killed Charlie Kirk, they tried to kill Trump three times, and so many others are being targeted. They are quite happy to burn down entire cities and say the most contemptible things imaginable about those they disagree with.

All this is not just political or ideological. It is ultimately spiritual. And it shows us an absolute truth: Satan is 100 per cent real, and demons are having a field day among us. The off-the-charts level of evil cannot be explained fully in any other way.

That means real evil exists, and it means there are real evil people in the world. Just open any newspaper, watch any newscast, or surf any social media site: A lot of the utterly horrible stuff that we see happening all around us can in good measure be put down to satanic rage and demonic possession or influence.

Examples of this evil are never-ending. I just saw this posted by someone online: “Jeremy Williams, Oregon high school principal, celebrated Charlie Kirk’s murder. Now locked up 5 years for child porn, including infants. Radical left keeps producing the same type: the ones who cheer political assassinations are the ones hiding the most disgusting crimes. Not a fluke. A feature.”

Far too true. So much horrific hate and uncontrollable anger, too often taken out on others. When I saw that post, I immediately thought of a key biblical passage that explains all these matters. But a real problem is this. One of the most important passages in the entire New Testament tends to be overlooked or forgotten because of another equally important passage that immediately precedes it.  

I refer to John 3:17-21. The trouble is, EVERYONE knows John 3:16, but sadly too many folks simply stop there. But all these verses MUST be read together, otherwise the passage is stripped of its real import. It goes like this:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.

Jesus nails it here. People love darkness! But we don’t believe it. We make all sorts of excuses. We blame it on their upbringing – troubles with potty training or whatever. Anything than admitting that genuine evil exists, and people in their natural (fallen) state hate God!

Indeed, Jesus spoke about this all the time, yet so many – including so many Christians – just cannot get their heads around it. And he warned us that as his followers we too would be hated. Consider just three texts:

“You will be hated by all for my name’s sake.” (Matthew 10:22)

“Blessed are you when men hate you, and ostracize you, and insult you, and scorn your name as evil for the sake of the Son of Man. Be glad in that day and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven. For in the same way their fathers used to treat the prophets.” (Luke 6:22-23)

“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the one who sent me.” (John 15:18-21)

The real reason for atheism

John 3 explains to us perfectly why people reject Christ. But plenty of other portions of Scripture also speak to this. Paul in Romans 1 explains unbelief and the rejection of God. As we find in verses 18-23:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Moral evil suppresses divine truth. In his 1978 book If There’s a God, Why Are There Atheists?, R. C. Sproul said this: “The New Testament maintains that unbelief is generated not so much by intellectual causes as by moral and psychological ones. The problem is not that there is insufficient evidence to convince rational beings that there is a God, but that rational beings have a natural hostility to the being of God.”

And just the other day on the social media, Becket Cook also appealed to Romans 1 when he said this:

The progressive left’s breathless embrace of Islam is a direct result of their hatred for Christianity because deep down they know it to be true but can’t bear the implications of that truth. “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” Romans 1:19-20. They reject it because they hate Christ and his followers. They instinctively know Islam is a false religion but coddle and respect it as an act of rebellion against the one true God.

People trapped in their own sin and selfishness hate God and the very idea of God. Not only do they love their own wickedness, but the idea that they are not the centre of the universe, and there is a God who is, rattles them to the core. They want to be their own boss and do NOT want someone else telling them the right way to live. They want to be in control, and hate anything and anyone that prevents that from happening.

And this especially comes out in ideologies. Since I began this piece by mentioning the secular left, and since I have already referred to the strange coupling of the Left and Islam, let me point you to a brand-new article by Doug Wilson. In his “The Rise of the Islamo-Commies” he says this:

Now what do communism and Islam have in common? How did this odd bedfellow thing come about? There are two commonalities that I would like to mention here. First, if there is one thing we should have learned from the postmodern theoreticians, it is that all postmodern theories are power plays, and so here we are. This is a power play, and as a power play, it does not have to make any logical sense. All you need is a set of fingers willing to grab. Communism and Islam both provide a rationale and framework for doing so. They each provide justification for total control. So that is the name of the game right now—total control. The only thing standing in between them and that total control is the New Jerusalem and all its suburbs, which would be the second thing. They both hate the Christian faith and they both hate anything that reminds them of the Christian faith. https://dougwils.com/books-and-culture/s7-engaging-the-culture/why-we-fight-the-islamo-commies.html

Wilson, a Christian pastor in the US, takes us back again to just what Jesus had said. It really is time that we take Jesus at his word. He assured us, promised us, that the world would hate us like it hated him – and that is because their deeds are evil. They ARE evil.

No one can get right with God until first admitting that their very lives are at enmity with God. That is why the first step in reconciliation with God is all about repentance. And that simply means that we agree with God. The Greek word for the verb ‘repent’ is metanoeo – it means a change of mind.

Until we agree with the truth that we are all rebels and God-haters, we will never get right with him. We need to see things as the former atheist C. S. Lewis saw them. As he put it in Mere Christianity: “Fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms.”

Or as he said in an interview with Sherwin Wirt in God in the Dock:

Wirt: In your book Surprised by Joy you remark that you were brought into the faith kicking and struggling and resentful, with eyes darting in every direction looking for an escape. You suggest that you were compelled, as it were, to become a Christian. Do you feel that you made a decision at the time of your conversion?

 

Lewis: I would not put it that way. What I wrote in Surprised by Joy was that ‘before God closed in on me, I was offered what now appears a moment of wholly free choice.’ But I feel my decision was not so important. I was the object rather than the subject in this affair. I was decided upon. I was glad afterwards at the way it came out, but at the moment what I heard was God saying, ‘Put down your gun and we’ll talk.’

I repeat the words of Jesus: “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.”

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