Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale Daily DevotionalSample

6-What is Man? Like a succession of waves that continually lap at the shoreline, the human heart is constantly offering protest after protest: "I'm a good person-really!" No, we're not! And now, in Chapter 3 of Romans, Paul peels back the curtain to reveal just how rotten and wretched man is. We can summarize this in three statements. The first statement is this: When we think we're right, we're really wrong. That's the scenario posed by the Apostle in the fifth verse: "Well if my sin means God is glorified, then I'll just sin more!" That's an example of man thinking he's right about something when actually he's dead wrong. Sinning more isn't the right thing to do; it's something very wrong according to God's heart. Paul then points out that when we think we're good, we're really bad. Verses 10-12 tell us no one is righteous, that no one is good, that no one seeks after God, nor does the right thing on their own. But we resist that because our flesh doesn't like the light. It likes to hide in the darkness. And when we try to hide or portray ourselves as being good, it's all the more evidence of how bad we are! Lastly, when we think we're better, we're really worse. The rest of the chapter describes the tendency in us to compare ourselves to others and even go so far as to think we're better than them. We don't like to think of ourselves as being just as bad as the person next to us. But here's the kicker, when we do that, not only are we not better than others, but we're actually worse because our attitude is so far from what it should be (Philippians 2:3)! In Psalm 8:4, David asked the question, "What is man?" Paul answers the question for us here, and it isn't something to be proud of. Like a succession of waves that continually lap at the shoreline, the human heart is constantly offering protest after protest: "I'm a good person-really!" No, we're not! What does this passage reveal to me about God? What does this passage reveal to me about myself? Based on this, what changes do I need to make? What is my prayer for today?