“As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.” (Romans 3:10–11)

From the moment Adam and Eve disobeyed their Creator in the Garden, humanity has attempted to deflect conscious acceptance of guilt. Adam blamed God because “the woman” was given to him by the Creator. Eve blamed the serpent—and you and I have continued that reaction ever since.

That is precisely why repentance is a requirement for salvation. When Adam rebelled, the relationship between man and God was destroyed: “By the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation,” and “by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners” (Romans 5:18–19). All men have “no hope, and [are] without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12).

The death that entered the world because of Adam (Romans 5:12) not only introduced physical death into the entire creation (Romans 8:22) but a spiritual separation from the life of God, as well. “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14). For millennia God bore man’s ignorance of what God was going to do through Christ Jesus at Calvary by faith in the promise of the coming “Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). “And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent” (Acts 17:30).

Each of us must change our mind and admit we are sinful and desperately need God’s gracious forgiveness, praying, “God be merciful to me a sinner” (Luke 18:13). HMM III