Sermonette: Who I Am Series #4

Who am I? In a world that puts stock in how we identify, we must ignore the temptation to allow us to identify ourselves, and turn to the Bible. The answer to the question “who am I?” isn’t on social media, and the politicians certainly don’t have it; it is only found in our creator and in our creator’s words. Over the past two weeks, we’ve seen the first two ways to identify ourselves. First, we are created by God. We’re not accidents, experiments, or the result of random chance. We are intelligently designed. Second, we’re designed in God’s image. Deep in our core, we echo aspects and attributes of the Almighty. So, if we’re designed by God to echo God, what changed? Clearly humans don’t consistently reflect the beauty and love of our creator well. What happened? In a word, sin.

Adam and Eve ate the fruit. It is such an inauspicious act, and yet it introduced something into humanity that wasn’t there in the beginning. God created us with free will (similar to God’s own free will, as opposed to the always-obedient angels), with the purpose that we would choose to worship and love Him back of our own volition. This makes sense. Unexpected affection is far more powerful than affection given out of requirement. God’s plan was for us to choose to worship Him because we wanted to. Instead, Adam and Eve used that free will to go against God’s wishes. Eating fruit isn’t a big deal. Knowing what God wants and choosing to go the other direction, however, is huge. This act introduced sin, which affects us in two different ways.

First, as we follow in Adam and Eve’s example, and choose to work against God’s plan and His wishes, it hurts us. We’re built in God’s image, not to work against Him. We work against our nature when we choose sin. It is the same thing if I used my guitar to beat in nails, or used my hands to remove hot pans from the oven, or used grandma’s sewing scissors to cut pizza. Using things improperly breaks them. Similarly, we break ourselves with our selfishness, greed, arrogance, hypocrisy, sexual impropriety, and addictions. Each time breaks us more and more.

Second, being born to generations of treasonous rebels also has an effect on humanity. We’ve warped and misused God’s creation (humans) for so many thousands of years that now, even babies are born broken. Hence, diseases, cancers, genetic deformities and all sorts of things pop up. What should we expect? If I threw paint on the Mona Lisa, do you expect it to improve or break? If I went mudding in a corvette, would the car be improved by the experience? How should I expect my heirloom deer rifle to shoot after I’ve used it to pry bricks out? Now, imagine a perfect, flawless creation being used for even more despicable things.

Who am I? I’m broken. I was created lovingly by God, created in God’s image, but my ancestors and I have ruined it. The beautiful fingerprints of God are all but buried under years of corrosive sin. I am a treasonous rebel. I am rotten to the core. I may have been designed perfect, but you couldn’t tell it by my actions. Each day, I bear the punishment for my rebellion, and some day, I’ll be tried for my desire for divine anarchy against my creator. I don’t like my odds. I’ll be found guilty. Who am I? I am evil and I am guilty.