Romans Chapter 3 - Universal CorruptionMan's Corrupt Deeds - Part 2

Paths are ruin and misery

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Romans 3:15-16 “Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery..."


Do you hold your life here lightly? Or do you grasp it tightly? Is life in this world “not so bad” or is it a time of sorrow and mourning? Is heaven more appealing to you than this world? Are you living for the day when He will call you home? Is your treasure in heaven or where moth and rust corrupt?

If you think this life is something wonderful then you are in for a surprise when you get to heaven. This life is short and full of woe. Misery and suffering are all around, and are never far from touching any one of us. Societies rise and fall, powers come and go. Politicians and Hollywood stars shine for a season and tumble at the fickle whim of the populace.

Wherever man has reached upon the earth there is waste, crime, oppression and perversion. There is unpitied poverty, untended sickness, uncaring domination, unmerciful dealing. From Sodom to San Francisco, from Gath to Guelph, from Moab to Montreal ruin and misery follow man because man is their cause. It is like the quip, “Wherever you go, there you are.”


We can’t escape what we are. If we populate the solar system or even the galaxy we will take with us the misery and ruin that our sin produces. The Star-Trek idea of a humanity that has finally dispensed with war and has learned to get along, exporting its high morality to the far reaches of space, is a farcical myth. It is just one more deception foisted off on our children and ourselves from the spawning ground of evolution theory ingrained into our culture.

Things aren’t getting better, they are getting worse and worse. Even the Church is falling apart at the seams piece by piece. Jesus asks the ironic question…

… when the Son of man comes, will he find (the) faith on earth? {Luke 18:8b}

And His Apostle, Paul asserts strongly to his pupil, Timothy that…

… evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived. {2timothy 3:13}

and

… understand this, that in the last days there will come times of stress. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, fierce, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding the form of religion but denying the power of it. Avoid such people. {2Timothy 3:1-5}

…just as they have always been, but more so on account of the gradual removal of the salt and light of the Spirit in the saints.

All of these things produce ruin and misery, just as Adam’s single sin of disobedience did in producing the world we see now. There is no hope to be found in man. None. There is no cause to be optimistic about man solving his problems. He can’t. Only God can undo the interminable snaggle of our sins.