“The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God." They are corrupt, They have done abominable works, There is none who does good” (Psalm 14:1).
Stephen Charnock: [continuing from the last post on January 26th 2010] “The text then is a description of man’s corruption.
1. Of his mind. ‘The fool has said in his heart.’ No better title than that of a fool is afforded to the atheist.
2. Of the other faculties, 1. In sins of commission expressed by the loathsomeness (corrupt, abominable), 2. In sins of omission (there is none that doeth good) he lays down the corruption of the mind as the cause, the corruption of the other faculties as the effect.”
We are fools because we do not see the obvious…there is a God. This can come, as noted in preceding posts, that this can be displayed by denying God’s existence altogether or by imagining God to be something other than He is. Both are the result and the cause of corruption. We are corrupt in our nature and this leads to two types of sinning: sins of commission and of omission. Sins of commission are sins we commit. It is when we do things against God’s law and perceptive will. Sins of omission are things we do not do that we are prescribed and commanded to do by God. We are guilty of both. We have done abominable works and we have not done good. We need mercy, grace and forgiveness for this. That is what God provides in sending His Son Jesus Christ. God carries out justice against our sins by imputing them to His Son on the cross. God treated His Son on the cross as if He had committed every sin of every person who would ever believe, even though Jesus never sinned, nor became a sinner in and of Himself. The other side of the transaction is also amazing, God treats the believer as if he/she lived the perfect righteous, sinless acceptable life of Jesus Christ, even though they are not righteous in and of themselves. Christ’s righteousness is credited to the believer’s account. This is what Paul was saying when he wrote in Philippians 3:8-9—“Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith” (Emphasis
