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The sermon presents the natural human mind as actively hostile to God, not morally neutral or merely deficient. This enmity is universal, rooted in humanity’s fallen nature, and constitutes genuine guilt before the Creator. Therefore salvation cannot be earned through works; it requires grace, Christ’s atoning sacrifice, and the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. Sinners are urgently invited to confess their guilt and look to Christ in faith for peace, forgiveness, and eternal life.
Theological center: Because humanity is universally and culpably depraved, salvation must be entirely by God’s grace through Christ’s atoning work and received by faith, with regeneration made necessary by the Holy Spirit.
Applications: Confess your guilt · Turn to Jesus Christ · Look to Christ in faith · Consider human depravity
Primary texts: Romans 8:7 · John 3:14-15
“The carnal mind is enmity against God.” Romans 8:7 THIS is a very solemn indictment which the apostle Paul here speaks against the carnal mind. He declares it to be enmity against God. When we consider what man once was, only second to the angels, the companion of God, who walked with Him in the garden of Eden in the cool of the day, when we think of him as being made in the very image of his Creator, pure, spotless, and unblemished, we cannot but feel bitterly grieved to find such an accusation as this preferred against us as a race. We may well hang our harps upon the willows while we listen to the voice of JEHOVAH, solemnly speaking to His rebellious creature, “How art thou fallen from heaven, thou son of the morning!” “Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty. Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering—the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou was created. Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee, and thou hast sinned; therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.” There is much to sadden us in a view of the ruins of our race. As the Carthaginian who might tread the desolate site of his much-loved city would shed many tears when he saw it laid in heaps by the Romans. Or as the Jew, wandering through the deserted streets of Jerusalem, would lament that the ploughshare had marred the beauty and the glory of that city which was the joy of the whole earth. So ought we to mourn for ourselves and our race, when we behold the ruins of that goodly structure which God has piled, that creature, matchless in symmetry, second only to angelic intellect, that mighty being, man—when we behold how he is “fallen, fallen, fallen, from his high estate” and lies in a mass of destruction. A few years ago a star was seen blazing out with considerable brilliance, but soon disappeared. It has since been affirmed that it was a world on fire, thousands of millions of miles from us, and yet the rays of the conflagration reached us. The noiseless messenger of light gave to the distant dwellers on this globe the alarm of, “A world on fire!” But what is the conflagration of a distant planet, what is the destruction of the mere material of the most…