Part III – What Man did to Deserve Eternal Destruction and Hell
Now here is where we come in. I talked about in Part II that God loves Himself more than anything and what I am going to talk about is how man offended (lack of a better term) God’s God-centerness and His glory. The list in Romans 3:9-23 is probably one of the grimmest pictures of mankind in the Bible, and in verse 23 Paul sums the list up with “…all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” So, when Adam and Eve sinned in the garden of Eden (they were perfect before God and glorified Him in whole), they made themselves the center of glory instead of God, therefore God , not receiving the glory due to His holy name condemns all mankind to an infinite debt of glory that needs to be paid and that cannot be paid by humans themselves. So, unless another way of paying the debt is supplied, every human being that will ever live on the earth will have to pay that debt eternally by being in hell when they die.
To see how serious God is about His glory we must look at Romans 1. In Romans 1:23 we see that God starts the judgment here on earth. “And [wicked men] change the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made corruptible by man – and the birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.” (NKJV) The word “change” could be translated “exchange” so read it in that sense, “and [wicked men] exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.”(ESV) I put the English Standard Version (ESV) in here because it better explains what is happening in the verse. So let’s review to make sure we’re on the same page, the ungodly and the unrighteous men (vs. 18) exchange the infinite glory of God for a finite image made with hands. Let’s read on in verse 24 an see how God reacts (so to speak). “Therefore [Paul’s building off the last verse] God gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor they’re bodies among themselves.”(NKJV) John Piper puts it in perspective that God gives them up to the swamp of their choice to drown in.
I understand that this part is very grim, but I’m going to talk about the one and only hope in Part IV – “What Christ did to Restore God’s Glory”
