Lesson 2 – The Noetic Effects of the Fall
By John Fast
Since the period known as The Enlightenment, modern man’s conception of himself has undergone a major revitalization, culminating in the present consensus that man is basically good. Therefore any expression of behavior that contradicts this narrative must be attributed to some external cause. Perhaps it is some failure on the part of society, or a lack of economic opportunities, or a failed education system, or an underprivileged background, or maybe the person has been “radicalized”. Whatever the cause, the fact remains that there must be some external cause if we are to explain how someone went from being basically good to a perpetrator of evil.
The problem is this optimistic view of man totally contradicts the biblical view of mankind’s natural state since their fall into sin. The fall was much more than just a temporary lapse in judgment by Adam and Eve. It involved more than simply taking a bite from a piece of fruit. At its core it was the willful rebellion of the creature against the Creator, and a rejection of God’s authority and an assertion of their own. Their declaration of independence from God had a profound impact on the nature and mind of man. A real systemic change occurred. The Bible gives ample testimony to the nature of this change and the true condition of fallen man.
Even after God had destroyed all the wicked from the earth with a global flood, and all that was left was Noah and his family, God still declared, “…for the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Gn 8:21). Here are a few more examples which validate this charge:
- “What is man, that he should be pure, or he who is born of a woman, that he should be righteous? Behold, He puts no trust in His holy ones, and the heavens are not pure in His sight; how much less one who is detestable and corrupt, man, who drinks iniquity like water” (Job 15:14-16)?
- “Furthermore, the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil, and insanity is in their hearts throughout their lives” (Eccl 9:3).
- “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it” (Jer 17:9)?
- “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children…” (Mt 7:11).
- “because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so; and those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rm 8:7, 8).
Many similar texts could be cited, but these speak for themselves. Since the fall man has lost the ability to think and reason biblically, and to understand spiritual truth. This is what is meant by the “noetic” effects of sin (from the Greek word noeo “to perceive with the mind; to understand); it is the effect which sin has had on the mind. Man in his natural state is “futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened”; he lives “in the futility of their mind” (Rm 1:21; Eph 4:17).
The consequence of sin is two-fold. Sin involves both guilt and pollution. Guilt deserves both the sentence and actual execution of judgment, “the wages of sin is death” (Rm 6:23). Guilt is the consequence of sin, not the sin itself. Any infraction of God’s law incurs guilt for violating the entire law (Jm 2:10), “and the Lord will by no means leave the guilty unpunished” (Nahum 1:3). Every sin deserves eternal death. No finite mind can comprehend, much less exaggerate, the guilt which a single sin incurs or the punishment which it deserves. In a futile attempt to avoid this guilt and its punishment people will invent respectable names for their sins. They deceive themselves that they are not guilty of a sin and deserving of its punishment if they call their sin by another name and deny or mitigate its sinfulness, as if merely changing its name absolves them from its guilt.
Pollution involves the nature of man. Sin renders man totally unholy in every way – in his understanding, will, affections, conscience, reasoning – all are polluted by sin, thereby corrupting all of man’s faculties, even his mind. The doctrine of original sin deals with the effect and consequence of no longer being holy and of the extent of sin’s pollution. Because the Bible declares the extent of sin’s pollution to be total, as a result man is in every way opposed to God, and he is opposed to God because he is under God’s justice and His sentence of condemnation. The world hates God because God testifies that its deeds are evil (Jn 7:7)
Because sin’s pollution is total, corrupting man’s ability to think and reason biblically, man is incapable of coming to a true knowledge and understanding of God. Both history and experience prove this. No one has ever, on their own, come to a true knowledge of God. Whether they worship one god as does Islam, or a multitude of gods as do Hindus, or are atheists, no one has ever come to a true knowledge of the true God apart from His revelation of Himself in the Bible. But because of his opposition to God in every way, fallen man even rejects God’s revelation of Himself and instead conceives God to be other than who He has revealed Himself to be, a god that is remarkably like themselves, “you thought I was just like you” (Ps 51:21). Is it not irrational to argue with God’s self-revelation, to insist that God is not as He has revealed Himself to be, and to in essence call God a liar?
This is a fundamental difference between a true and a false Christian, and between true and false religion. A true Christian’s knowledge of God is consistent with God’s self-revelation found only in the Bible, and they grow in and conform their life and thinking to this self-revelation (Rm 12:2; Col 2:8). The false professor, however, will reject any part of God’s self-revelation that is inconsistent with their own conception of God. They reserve the right to define God on their terms and to dictate to God what He must be like. When God’s ways conflict with their ways they complain, “ ‘The way of the Lord is not right’, when it is their own way that is not right” (Ezk 33:17, 20). They would condemn God and annul His word just so they can be justified (Job 40:8).
If they embrace any biblical truth it is by accident, not because they see it as divine truth, but because it has become customary. And when this truth is no longer in vogue with the majority, when public opinion is against it, they then follow the crowd without hesitation. Popular opinion and majority consensus, not the authority of God’s word, is their only test of truth. Let their thinking and conduct be irrational, let it be wicked, immoral, and deviant, let it even be self-destructive, just so long as it is fashionable. No matter if it can’t stand the test of Scripture, or even common sense. The only test of truth is whether it is said and affirmed by the great, the influential, and the many.
It is by popular opinion that they determine which of God’s commands are proper to obey, and which, for the sake of decency and respectability should be set aside. They are not afraid to violate God’s law, but then they dislike and fear the unavoidable consequences. They hate the effect, but refuse to give up the cause. They disdain and scorn virtue, and practice, justify, and glorify vice and deviancy, yet bemoan the dissolution of society and complain of lawlessness, as though the two had nothing to do with each other. They think they can live as they please, gratify all their lusts, trample on God’s word, burst all His boundaries, throw off all His restraints, cast His law behind their backs, and then expect to go to heaven when they die, as if God should reward their sin. They walk according to the stubbornness of their own evil heart without listening to God, yet are offended and incensed when accused of living in sin (Jer 16:10). They consider it shameful to make a sinner ashamed of their sin, and try to shame into submission any who might. They embrace, practice, and defend the very things, philosophies, and people which will ultimately destroy them. They think they can end hate by hating and annulling God’s law. How irrational and absurd it is to try and separate misery and judgment from sin.
One person thinks salvation consists in observing man-made rules and forms, another thinks it lies in being basically moral and honest. One person thinks it is of complete indifference how one lives and what one believes, while another places all their stress on holding to certain principles. One is a libertine who thinks they serve God while gratifying their lusts, while another is superstitious and thinks they please God by an austere asceticism. One thinks God is all love, and another thinks God is all justice and wrath. Error and heresy spoken by someone prominent, engaging, and articulate is more esteemed than truth from someone who is obscure, plain, and ordinary.
This inability to grasp a true knowledge of God and spiritual truth is often exposed by the views and opinions most people have of God and how they think of God. For instance, we have heard people say, “My God would never send anyone to hell.” Well, their god wouldn’t, but the God of the Bible will and does. Today we hear, “God loves everybody; God just wants you to be happy; Don’t use my Jesus to justify your hate” (with “hate” being defined as calling sin, sin); “God made me this way”, thereby implicating God in their sin. The number of gods and Jesus’ is only limited by the imagination of man to invent them. All, however, are inconsistent with God’s self-revelation in Scripture. The love they espouse and practice is not the love which the Bible commands.
Man’s total pollution by sin is humanly irreversible. Man has no ability to change his nature any more than a leopard has to change its spots or an Ethiopian to change his skin (Jer 13:23). He has no ability to think, act, and live in a way different than his nature. “Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor figs from thistles, are they” (Mt 7:16), because it would be against their nature. In the same way fallen man has no ability to know and understand spiritual truth. “But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised” (1 Cor 2:14). The word “cannot” in this verse translates the Greek word dunatai, and means “having no ability; no capacity.” Fallen, natural man has no ability to understand and obey truly spiritual things.
This lack of ability was not a part of man’s original condition. Before the fall, Adam and Eve had the ability to obey God, to glorify God, to communion with God, and to know God, but because of sin’s pollution this ability was lost. This does not mean that man lost his liberty or freedom. To the contrary, man is free to think and act according to and within the confines of his nature. But since man’s nature is totally polluted by sin, all that springs from a sin nature can only be sinful, “A bad tree cannot bear good fruit” (Mt 7:18). The action cannot be higher than the one producing the action. As is the fountain, so is the stream. The effect cannot be greater than the cause.
Neither does this suggest that man has lost the ability to do relative good. He can be compassionate, philanthropic, benevolent, charitable, courageous, generous, kind, humanitarian, and self-sacrificial. He can invent, produce, and discover all sorts of helpful and useful things. He can find cures, solve problems, and alleviate human suffering. He can do all these things by virtue of the fact he was created a moral and rational creature, not a brute beast. But he cannot do anything that is contrary to his nature, he cannot be anything other than he is, and he is by nature a sinner and entirely under the dominion of sin. Except so far as people are restrained by God’s common grace – the influence of conscience, social constraints, human government, fear of consequences, expectations of family and friends – they are entirely governed by indwelling sin so that, as soon as any restraint is removed, are fully given over to do evil to the point they are ready to sacrifice the universe in order to fulfill their lusts.
Because his mind is polluted by sin man has no ability to know and understand the things of God, instead his mind is at enmity and hostile to the things of God (Rm 8:7; Col 1:21). Because his will is corrupted by sin he has no ability to choose to obey God or to be subject to the law of God. Because his affections are contaminated by sin he has no desire to love God and do the things that are pleasing to Him.
Because fallen man has no ability to understand the things of the Spirit of God, he redefines the things of the Spirit in a way that he can comprehend. Spiritual attributes like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Gal 5:22, 23) are redefined in natural terms. Grace becomes a cloak for sin. God’s patience is an indulgence of sin. Mercy becomes ambivalence to sin. Faith is reduced to mental assent and presumption. Salvation is humanitarian, not redemptive. Spirituality is substituted for the truly spiritual. Holiness is optional and relative. Christianity is just another religion, and a Christian is someone who professes to be one.
God’s greatest commandment and man’s highest obligation is to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mt 22:36, 37). The Bible requires what we have no ability to do. It is at this point where many will complain that “the way of the Lord is not right” (Ezk 18:25, 29). Two specific objections are raised to the Bible’s teaching of fallen man’s inability. The first objection is that this doctrine is a “counsel of despair”. The complaint is, “If this is true, what encouragement does a person have to respond to the gospel? What hope do they have that God will accept them?” In reality, just the opposite is true. Nothing is so appealing to a proud heart and fallen nature, nothing is so prone to produce false Christians, and nothing is more dangerous and diabolical than for a sinner to think or to be told that they have the ability to assist in and facilitate their own salvation, and that the determinative ingredient lies with them.
Only when a person feels the guilt of their sin, sees themselves under the deserved condemnation of an offended God, and despairs of any hope of helping themselves, will they flee to Christ and cast themselves on the mercy and grace of the only One who can save them. The more a person feels their own helplessness and inability, the more reason they have to rely on Christ alone and cry out, “God save me, a sinner.” Anyone who does not practice this reliance does not fully feel their own inability, and this objection is simply an excuse not to come to God on His terms. To encourage the idea that someone can come to saving faith in Jesus Christ whenever they desire, and that they have the native ability to choose what is pleasing to God, is to instill a false security and self-sufficiency which is indeed a counsel of despair.
The second objection to man’s inability due to the pollution of sin is that it is inconsistent with God’s commands. How can God command what we have no ability to do? Doesn’t the command imply the ability to obey? If this is true, then “Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will” (Rm 9:19)? God’s commands are in no way inconsistent with man’s inability. God’s commands reflect His holiness, His will, and His moral perfection, as well as what He requires of us as creatures created in His image. While man has lost the ability to love, know, and obey God, he did not lose his responsibility to love God with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength. God does not reduce His commands to accommodate our inability. As a reflection of His character and nature any change or reduction in God’s commands would require God to deny Himself. He would have to cease being God. Nowhere does the Bible ever attribute to man the ability to keep and perform his responsibility to God. Just the opposite is true.
This is why God’s moral law is not abrogated by love. Love fulfills the law (Rm 13:10), but love is not the law. The law regulates love and defines love, “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and observe His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome” (1 Jn 5:2, 3). “If you love Me, you will keep my commandments …. If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word” (Jn 14:15, 23). Biblical love is always defined as loving and grateful obedience to God’s word, something which the majority opinion today labels as unloving, thereby revealing the corruption of their mind by sin. Today it is considered loving to annul, contradict, and even outlaw God’s law in order to affirm, encourage, sponsor, normalize, and safeguard sin.
When people do away with God’s law, then they do away with sin, “I would not have come to know sin except through the law”(Rm 7:7). When people dispense with God’s law then right and wrong, good and evil become a matter of personal preference and majority opinion. When God’s law is annulled then love becomes a mere emotion separated from its expression and meaning, which then becomes defined by the majority opinion. Love becomes what the polluted mind of fallen man defines it to be.
“Those who hate the Lord would pretend obedience to Him;” (Ps 81:15). A pretended obedience is the product of a bogus and counterfeit love; a love divorced from obedience to God’s word. It is the worst kind of false love, one that is in reality the worst form of “hate crime”, and that is hatred of God and His word. This is the crime of which all of fallen mankind stands guilty before God. This is why all of mankind is by nature objects of God’s wrath (Eph 2:3).
The fundamental command of the gospel is repentance of sin and faith in Jesus Christ (Ac 18:30, 31; 1 Jn 3:23). But Jesus declared that this is a moral, psychological, and spiritual impossibility apart from a divine work of God, “No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent Me draws Him….For this reason I have said to you, that no one can come to Me, unless it has been granted him from the Father….Why do you not understand what I am saying? It is because you cannot hear (i.e. hear with understanding and obedience) My word….But because I speak the truth you do not believe Me” (Jn 6:44, 65; 8:43, 45). No one has the ability to change their own nature, and a Christian is by definition a person who has been given a new nature through the miracle of the new birth (Jn 3:3, 6). No one was ever born by an act of their own will.
Those who find this doctrine offensive need only do one thing to prove it wrong. Prove it false by changing your own heart and nature and begin at once to love God, His law, His government, and His word. Deny yourself; forsake the world, your sin, and your self-righteousness now if you are able. God commands you to love Him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, so do it now if you possess the natural ability, will, and desire to do so. Prove our mistake by coming to Him now without His enablement. No one will discourage you. God will not stop you, so why delay?
You must first be something before you can think, act, and live like something. The bulk of mankind thinks, acts, and lives like unregenerate sinners because that is what they are. To think, act, and live like a Christian you must first be a Christian, one who has been renewed in the spirit of their mind (Eph 4:23). No one has the ability to make themselves a Christian. People can make themselves Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Catholic, Baptist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Mormon, Jehovah’s Witness, etc. simply by professing to be one, affirming their tenets, and adopting their customs. You can make a profession of faith in Christ, get baptized, study and memorize your Bible, be a Bible scholar, learn Greek and Hebrew, do good works, use Christian terminology, teach others the facts of Christianity, live a moral life, but you cannot make yourself a Christian, and this is something the fallen mind of natural man cannot comprehend and absolutely rejects. Therefore people invent a god, a Jesus, and a Christianity which the natural mind can understand and the polluted nature can comfortably coexist.
Only God can change the heart, renew the mind, and create a new nature. Here is the only remedy for poor, polluted sinners under the power and dominion of indwelling sin. Here is the only hope for those who know and feel their total inability. Forsake your false hope of self-salvation, self-improvement, and superficial morality and cast yourself on the mercy of the only One who can change you from an object of wrath to His beloved child.
In our next study we will begin looking at the nature of indwelling sin in believers.