Now one of the many unique things about the Christian faith is this —unlike most of the religions of the world, Christianity is essentially and fundamentally A SINNER'S RELIGION.
When the angel announced to Joseph he approaching birth of Jesus Christ, he did so in these words, ‘You shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins’ [Matt 1.21]. The apostle Paul wrote in I Timothy 1.15, ‘This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners’. He came into the world to save sinners.
1) WE HAVE A BAD RECORD
It is human guilt because of sin.
We obtained a bad record long before we had any personal existence here upon the earth: ‘Wherefore, as by one man (Adam's) sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned’ [Rom 5.12].
After we come into being at our own conception and subsequent birth additional guilt accrues to us for our own personal, individual transgressions.
Almighty God measures the totality of our human experience from the moment of our birth by a standard which is absolutely inflexible; a standard that touches not only our external deeds but also our thoughts and the very motions and intentions of our heart; so much so, that the Lord Jesus said that the stirring of unjust anger is the very essence of murder, the look with intention to lust as adultery.
Almighty God judged you guilty when our first father sinned, and holds you guilty for every single word you have spoken contrary to perfect holiness and justice and purity
Almighty God has every right to summon you into his presence and to require you to give an account of every single deed contrary to His law, which has brought guilt upon your soul.
2) WE HAVE A BAD HEART
The problem of our sin is one that arises not only from what we have done, but from what WE ARE. When Adam sinned he not only became guilty before God, but defiled and polluted in his own nature. The Scripture describes it in Jeremiah 17.9, ‘The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it?’
It is the condition of the human heart. For from within, out of the heart, proceed these things — lies, selfishness, self-centredness, total pre-occupation with my feelings and my desires and my plans and my perspectives.
The disposition of every human heart by nature can be visually pictured as a clenched fist raised against the living God. This is the inward problem of a bad heart — a heart that loves sin, a heart that is a fountain of sin, a heart that is at enmity with God. And such is the problem that every one of us has by nature.
Human sinfulness is not in theory. YOU MUST FACE REALISTICALLY THE PROBLEM OF YOUR OWN PERSONAL SIN.
Your bad record and your bad heart must become a matter of deep, inward, personal, pressing concern to you!
You must know something of real, personal, inward consciousness of the awfulness of your guilt in the presence of a holy God!
If not, Jesus Christ as the Great Physician never brought his healing virtue to any who did not know themselves to be sinners. He said, ‘I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance’ [Matt 9.13].
Extract from What is Biblical Christian?
