“Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”  We watch the commercial and wince when a challenged person falls and cannot get up from the fall.  They lie helpless until they are rescued.  If they only had “live alert” hanging around their neck, the advertisement promotes.  But what if our fallen state is spiritual which leads more importantly to our mental, emotional, and intelligent condition of health and well-being?

An uninfected computer can be bought—but an uninfected person? Impossible. Trace a computer virus back to a hacker. Trace our mental viruses back to the fall of the first man, Adam. Because of sin, our minds are full of dark thoughts. Paul’s draws an accurate picture of humans then and now: “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools.” (Romans 1:21-22, NIV).

We must admit; Sin messes with the mind. But what if the virus never entered? Suppose a person never opened Satan’s emails? What would that person be like?  Don’t spend much time on that thought because the deed has already been done. However, Our Rescuer provided Way to rise up and out of our fallen state of mind, heart, and soul!

Romans 1, The Message

Ignoring God Leads to a Downward Spiral

^18-23 But God’s angry displeasure erupts as acts of human mistrust and wrongdoing and lying accumulate, as people try to put a shroud over truth. But the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can’t see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being. So nobody has a good excuse. What happened was this: People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn’t treat him like God, refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives. They pretended to know it all, but were illiterate regarding life. They traded the glory of God who holds the whole world in his hands for cheap figurines you can buy at any roadside stand.

^24-25 So God said, in effect, “If that’s what you want, that’s what you get.” It wasn’t long before they were living in a pigpen, smeared with filth, filthy inside and out. And all this because they traded the true God for a fake god, and worshiped the god they made instead of the God who made them—the God we bless, the God who blesses us. Oh, yes!

^26-27 Worse followed. Refusing to know God, they soon didn’t know how to be human either—women didn’t know how to be women, men didn’t know how to be men. Sexually confused, they abused and defiled one another, women with women, men with men—all lust, no love. And then they paid for it, oh, how they paid for it—emptied of God and love, godless and loveless wretches.

^28-32 Since they didn’t bother to acknowledge God, God quit bothering them and let them run loose. And then all hell broke loose: rampant evil, grabbing and grasping, vicious backstabbing. They made life hell on earth with their envy, wanton killing, bickering, and cheating. Look at them: mean-spirited, venomous, fork-tongued God-bashers. Bullies, swaggerers, insufferable windbags! They keep inventing new ways of wrecking lives. They ditch their parents when they get in the way. Stupid, slimy, cruel, cold-blooded. And it’s not as if they don’t know better. They know perfectly well they’re spitting in God’s face. And they don’t care—worse, they hand out prizes to those who do the worst things best!

WHAT DO WE LEARN—HOW DO WE RESPOND?

Jesus often said, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.” (Mark 2:17, NLT) Read that statement of Truth again—as many times as needed—daily.  This knowing might keep the lid on our arrogance!

Paul reminds us, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 8:28) Those who think they “know it all” are falling for Satan’s schemes to trip them up.  They become as Paul described, “mean-spirited, venomous, fork-tongued God-bashers. Bullies, swaggerers, insufferable windbags!”  (Tell us how you really feel, Paul!)  Yes, Paul does not hold back! It sounds like he has debated this issue more than once—and he has!  But we need to realize that Paul’s passionate preaching comes from his gratefulness to Jesus who changed his life from being a wretched bully to preaching Jesus who came to rescue us from our falling for sin!

Paul wrote this letter to teach the Christian faith to the first believers in Rome. He taught that no one deserves God’s love.  “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8, NIV 

LIFE ALERT:  Yes, we’ve fallen but we can get up!  Look up to God, reach up for the hand of Jesus and believe what He has done for us and we are saved!  We rise up with Jesus in God’s resurrection power that is incomparable to anything or anyone on or below earth!  Jesus is our Hope.  Jesus is Truth.  Jesus is Savior and Lord.

Sin paints an ugly picture in people and in a culture. Without God’s intervention, we have no way to deal with sin.  I am grateful for the Way to Truth who give Life forever, how about you? (John 14:6)

Paul’s writings will later encourage us with practical ways to live for God along with the power and wisdom of God’s Holy Spirit helping us.  Keep reading, the best is yet to come!

Lord,

We live as a the fallen until you pull us up, dust us off, heal our broken places, and remove all our sins as far as the east is from the west!  You cleanse our hearts, renew our minds, refresh our souls, while continually restoring the peace and joy of you in us and us in you.  Oh, what a Savior!  Lead us, Lord, today.  You are our eternal, inexhaustible Hope—all because of your great love for us.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

In Jesus Name, Amen