Are we basically good people who occasionally make bad choices? Or does the problem of sin go much deeper? Today, Michael Reeves presents the biblical view of sin, which drives us to rely on Christ alone for salvation. Get Michael Reeves’ teaching series Reformation Truths on DVD, plus lifetime digital access to the messages and study guide, for your donation of any amount: https://gift.renewingyourmind.org/3660/reformation-truths Meet Today’s Teacher: Michael Reeves is president and professor of theology at Union School of Theology in the United Kingdom. He is the featured teacher for the Ligonier teaching series The English Reformation and the Puritans. He is author of many books, including The Unquenchable Flame, Delighting in the Trinity, and Rejoice and Tremble. Meet the Host: Nathan W. Bingham is vice president of ministry engagement for Ligonier Ministries, executive producer and host of Renewing Your Mind, host of the Ask Ligonier podcast, and a graduate of Presbyterian Theological College in Melbourne, Australia. Nathan joined Ligonier in 2012 and lives in Central Florida with his wife and four children. Renewing Your Mind is a donor-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. Explore all of our podcasts: https://www.ligonier.org/podcasts
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God saving people out of his sheer loving kindness sounds wonderful, but people needing to be saved because they are otherwise helpless in their sin sounds less pleasing, and we don't like hearing bad news.
We don't like hearing bad news, and we don't like giving bad news. But when it comes to explaining the wonderful news of what Christ has done for sinners, it requires that we explain that we are, in fact, sinners. Hi, I'm Nathan W. Bingham, and you're listening to the Tuesday edition of Renewing Your Mind. Next week, we'll celebrate what is often called Reformation Day.
And so we are featuring teaching series that were recorded to unpack the truths that were rediscovered and reaffirmed during the 16th century Reformation. And not so we can merely be more knowledgeable about church history, but so we may give thanks to God for the clarity of the gospel and the abundance of trusted teaching that we enjoy today.
Michael Reeves is today's teacher, and he will clarify what the Bible says about sin and how many in the 16th century and even the 21st century get it wrong. Here's Dr. Reeves.
We're going to look now at the question of sin. and see how differently sin can be understood and how different views of sin have profound practical consequences. Now, Martin Luther grew up with a little view of sin. It wasn't that he refused to take sin seriously, quite the opposite. Sin, he knew, is the weight that will drag us to hell. It is the cause of all misery. Its wages are death.
Yet while he knew that sin is a severe problem, he didn't think it was a very deep problem. It was a view that chimes well with today's cheery optimism about ourselves and our culture. For today... In our culture, we know we do wrong things, but the suggestion that we might be rotten deep down strikes our society today as utterly repellent nonsense.
Most believe today we are good people muddling through. And, of course, we slip up every now and again. Sin is seen as a small problem, easy to fix. And what Luther came to see, surprisingly, is that such sunny stories of how basically good we are, so attractive in their cheeriness, are actually terrible, enslaving lies.
Now, in Luther's day, it was the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle who summed it up and whose message was so widespread. Aristotle said, "'We become righteous by doing righteous deeds.'" "'We become righteous by doing righteous deeds.'" or we become just by doing just acts. It was a self-help, fake it till you make it message.
So if you work at outward righteous acts and keep doing them, it claimed you will actually become a righteous person. And for years, Luther lived by the maxim, we become righteous by doing righteous deeds. As a monk, he desperately did all the righteous deeds he could imagine, fasting, praying, pilgriming, monkery.
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