Depravity’s War on the Image of God (Lent 20, 2023)

Sin gave us a broken Image and resulted in our being broken people, acting upon our now depraved nature (our sin nature) to varying degrees. Sometimes people call this “Total Depravity.” It doesn’t mean that our humanity is 100% corrupted (as bad as we could possibly be without any ability to exhibit virtue), but it does mean that if you were to sample any portion of a human being, you’ll find sin in that sample, brokenness, and yes, depravity is there too. Depravity being that we’ve fallen and can’t get up…on our own. It has infected every part of our being.

Sin affects our minds, and we think wrong thoughts, harbor ill will against our fellow man, and even plot evil. Sin affects our bodies, and we experience illness and death. Sin affects our will, and it traps us into impulses and desires that do not reflect God’s Image.

In fact, if someone were to ask me the definition of sin, I’d argue that it is exerting our will and forcing the Image of God, this beautiful relic in us, to do something that God in His true Image would never do.

In my view, it all goes back to the Image of God. Lies? God wouldn’t do it. Think hateful thoughts? Nope. Murder, cheat, be unfaithful? No, no, and no. In the sexual realm, would Jesus have gone outside of the way He created us or the holiness of the marriage relationship He designed? No and no. So, adultery, homosexuality, lust? You answer whether Jesus would have done these things knowing how He created us.

Focus for Lent: Sin resides in the brokenness, not in the wholeness of man. God’s Image resides in the wholeness.

Questions for further thought:

What areas of your life can you redirect to reside in the wholeness instead of the brokenness?

There are those who don’t want to talk about sin. Do they want to acknowledge the Image of God in themselves?

Joseph understood the connection between sin and the Image of God. In Genesis 39:6-9, Potiphar’s wife “took notice of Joseph and said, ‘Come to bed with me!’ But he refused. ‘With me in charge,’ he told her, ‘my master does not concern himself with anything in the house; everything he owns he has entrusted to my care. No one is greater in this house than I am. My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?’”

How might it change people’s attitudes about sin if they took the Image of God more seriously in their lives? Is it scarier to know you’re sinning against God and His Image than it is to feel like you’re just sinning against another person or it’s a private sin/victimless crime?

Prayer: Lord Jesus, please help me to take sin seriously and to know that every sin is ultimately against You. Forgive us, Father, for all the sins we commit and times we choose to dwell in and on the brokenness. Thank You that our Lord Jesus died on a cross and paid for our sin to restore Your beautiful Image to Yourself, to redeem us, to save us, and to allow us to spend eternity with You. We are so grateful, Lord. Amen.

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If you’re already signed up on my Home Page sidebar to receive posts, you’ll get the 2023 Lent Devotionals automatically. Or you can “Like” Seminary Gal on Facebook and they’ll be delivered to your Facebook news feed. If you haven’t signed up, today is a great day to do so. Advent and Lenten devotionals remain among my most popular offerings. You don’t want to miss this encounter with God to prepare your heart for Easter! Understanding that prior years’ devotionals continue to minister, you may want to have access to a full series ahead of time:

Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014.
Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations. We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17.
ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ. It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.
Lent 2018, we explored the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We asked and answered the questions “Why?” from the movie Life of Pi as we discovered the uniqueness of Jesus Christ in a world of many faiths.
Lent 2019 gave us a deeper window into Easter “More to the Easter Story” since we miss so much when we rely only on a superficial understanding of the work of Christ. These devotionals are archived beginning March 6, 2019.
Our Lent 2020 devotional series offered prayer points surrounding “Be Thou My Vision” and were aimed at helping us to see God for who He is. The full set of devotionals are archived beginning February 26, 2020.
The theme for 2021 Lent Devotionals was how to live between two worlds while waiting for Christ’s return. Into the gap between the City of Man and its fixation upon sin and the City of God with its demand for holiness, two words minister peace: But God. Praise God for His intervention! They are archived beginning February 17, 2021.
Last year’s devotionals, Revelation in 40 offered 40 vignettes, scenes, concepts, and thoughts to inspire us to read the Book of Revelation as it is written and to go deeper. They are archived beginning March 2, 2022.