Understanding Evangelism: Step 2

Apologies: I was supposed to have this up three weeks ago, and utterly failed. Forgive me?

If you need to recap the first part of this series on evangelism, or if you're just joining us, check out Step 1 here.  This is where we discussed the importance of understanding God's holiness; it's foundational in understanding why we need salvation in the first place.

Ok, so you've thought through God's holiness, and now it's time to consider what that means for us. The second step in our line up is:

The Sinfulness of Man

Here's something that was mentioned during our Sunday school lesson on this topic: as humans, we don't just do sinful things, we are sinful! It's part of our makeup as people, not something we avoid until we physically "do" our first sin. Psalm 51:5 says this:

"Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me." Psalm 51:5 (NIV 2011, Zondervan).

Romans 5 does a great job of explaining the inherited nature of sin. Look at verse 12:

"Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned"— Romans 5:12 (NIV 2011, Zondervan).

And if you need something a bit more personal, try Romans 3:23:

"for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God," Romans 3:23 (NIV 2011, Zondervan)

Or 1 John 1:18:

"If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." 1 John 1:8 (NIV 2011, Zondervan).

No matter who you are, you're a sinner. It doesn't matter how or where you grew up, what kind of advantages you had or didn't have, or what you were taught. All are sinners. All have sinned.

And that's not even the worst part. We learned last week that God is holy and doesn't look on sin favorably. In fact, he punishes sin.

"For the wages of sin is death..." Romans 6:23a (NIV 2011, Zondervan).

Well...what can we do? We're sinners, no doubt about that, but how do we fix it? How do we appease a holy God?

Turns out, we can't.

"All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away." Isaiah 64:6 (NIV 2011, Zondervan).

This might sound poetic, but in reality it's our death sentence. Our best efforts at righteousness are as good as filthy rags before God. It would seem that as sinners, every action we do is sinful at its core. What hope do we have?

In the Old Testament, animal sacrifices were made to atone for sin, but at their best they only offered temporary satisfaction before a holy God. Sacrifices were repeated as necessary.

"It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins." Hebrews 10:4 (NIV 2011, Zondervan).

This eliminates the possibility of laying a dead cow before God today and hoping it will do the trick. His word has already told us it won't. So will anything? Is there anything righteous enough to get us out of this predicament?

Now it's time for some good news: yes!