What's Wrong With Me? Series

An assistant principal at an elementary school was recently accused of accessing the school district’s internal system in order to cast fraudulent votes for her daughter. Her 17-year-old daughter was elected homecoming queen at Tate High School in Pensacola, Florida. But school district computer experts could tell that the votes came from the same IP address. They knew something was wrong. It turns out that her mother, the assistant principal, was arrested along with the daughter for the scheme. Authorities were not exactly sure who cast the fraudulent votes. I imagine those two sat in jail at some point with wildly running emotions wondering, “What’s wrong with me?”

All of us have asked that question at one time or another, “What’s wrong with me?” I am not speaking about, “What’s wrong with you.” No, the title of the message is “What’s wrong with me?”

Ephesians 2 is the classic text on the Bible’s teaching on sin. But it’s also the classic teaching on the Bible’s view of salvation. In fact, if God had commissioned a website about heaven and who gets in and who’s prevented, the home page would be Ephesians 2. For the next few minutes, I want to explore how the Bible addresses what is wrong with us in order for us to understand how God fixes us.

1. What’s Wrong with Me?

When you ask the Bible, “What’s wrong with me?” the Bible is blunt – really blunt. Like a doctor giving you your diagnosis, it points to your underlying spiritual condition.

1.1 Spiritually Dead

Paul says you were dead in sins twice: “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins … 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses…” (Ephesians 2:1, 5a).

The thought is so important the Bible repeats itself. The Bible isn’t describing your condition as you are physically dead. Instead, it is describing your spiritual condition as spiritually dead. What does it mean to be spiritually dead? It means you are unable to respond to God.

Now, these first three verses have almost everything you need to know about the biblical doctrine of sin. And it’s easy to see that the Bible is drawing a tight connection between your spiritual life (or your lack of one) to your moral life. Sin is when you fail to conform to God’s law. The Bible says the human race is in rebellion against God and His ways. The Bible says, “sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4b).

Again, Paul is incredibly blunt here in his diagnosis of humanity. You ask Paul, “What’s wrong with me?” and he says, “You’re spiritually dead. You’re morally dead.” The Bible doesn’t say you are sick in your sins, but you are dead in your sins. It’s not as if you have the equivalent of a “moral cold.” No, instead, you are dead in your sins. The Bible’s views on what’s wrong with us haven’t been popular for decades now.

1.2 The Imposter Syndrome

I recently came across an article entitled “Why Highly Successful People Seek Therapy.” I was amazed to discover that of the five most common reasons highly successful people go to counseling and seek therapy - the number one reason is what is called the “Imposter Syndrome.” Imposter Syndrome is the persistent feeling that you are just not good enough - that you are inadequate, that you are a fraud and a fake. In other words, it is a struggle with self-esteem. And this impacts everybody - even the richest, the most successful, and the most famous. One in four young adults between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four tell us they’ve considered suicide, according to a CDC report from this past summer. The number of people adults who are experiencing depression has tripled in the United States in the past year. We know there’s something wrong with us emotionally and psychologically.

1.3 Unions and Labor Management

We know something’s wrong with us socially as well. You read the history, for example, of labor and management. It’s interesting if you know anything about this kind of thing. When unions don’t have enough power, the management takes advantage of them. The workers are sent into dangerous settings where their very lives are risked simply trying to put bread on the table. Then the pendulum eventually swings. When the unions get too much power, then there’s no accountability. Soon, productivity plummets, and they essentially “cook the goose that laid their golden egg” until the company is not competitive. The company goes down the drain. Yes, there’s something wrong with all of us, no matter if we are white-collar, blue-collar, or even no-collar.

1.4 Checks and Balances

Again, the Bible’s teaching can be empirically verified here. Our nation’s founders divided our government into three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial. This decision was to ensure that no one specific branch would exercise too much power. So the founders created a separation of powers. These wise men knew there was something wrong with us – we don’t handle power well. There’s something wrong with us emotionally, socially, and inherently. The founders knew by experience that future generations couldn’t be trusted to govern the people. What did we learn in school but … “Power corrupts, but absolute power corrupts absolutely.”