Humanity Rebelled Against God

BY Erin Davis

From the time my pigtails bounced, and my skirt twirled, I’ve always been a “good girl”—just ask my mama. I was a straight A student who rarely got in trouble. I picked the right college, the right fella, the right outfit. You get the idea. 

Turning my life over to Jesus ripped my story into two distinct halves: life before Him and life after Him. Still, there isn’t a lot of drama in the “before” part. No skeletons in the closet. No criminal record. No massive public failures. It’s tempting to think that Jesus died to make me just a new and improved version of myself: Erin 2.0. 

I’ve been walking with the Lord for more than two decades now, and the strangest thing has happened. The longer I know Him, and the more familiar I become with His Word, the uglier my heart looks. It’s like one of those optical illusion pictures that just looks like a bunch of squiggles at first. But the longer you stare, the more the edges of a hidden image emerge, and you see it’s not a pretty picture.

Sure, my behavior screams “good girl,” but my deceitful heart whispers thoughts of jealousy, pride, envy, hate, anger, bitterness, greed—the list goes on and on. Because here’s the truth: the Bible tells us no one is good except God alone (Romans 3:10). The achievements, accomplishments, and attitudes we attempt to polish up with a high shine are destined to look like filthy rags next to His blinding holiness (Isaiah 64:6).

Our sin—and the sin of our first parents, Adam and Eve—is a reality the Bible doesn’t bother to sugarcoat (Genesis 3). We are the children of sinners who produce children who sin. We are not a people defined by our goodness, but rather all of humanity is “weighed down with iniquity” (Isaiah 1:4). We, all of us, have turned our backs on our Creator. 

When it comes to holiness, there is no bell curve. The Bible warns that everything, every single thing in our world is cursed by our sin and rebellion against God: our civilizations and our agriculture, our food and our children, our crops and our herds, our coming in and going out (Deuteronomy 28:17–19).

It has taken my entire life, but my good girl facade has cracked. Praise God. Following the rules doesn’t make me righteous, but the good news of the gospel keeps picking me up and dusting me off. “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23). 

Facing up to the reality of my sin hurts. But when I wrestle with the gospel, the gospel always wins. Being good is not enough, but the thoroughly sufficient grace of a good and loving God is.