The Bible on Corruption and God’s Only Remedy

Summary

Human corruption is universal, deeply rooted, and often unrecognized. It affects thoughts, actions, and speech, drawing people toward evil and away from God. Scripture shows that corruption has existed since early humanity and continues through rebellion against God’s ways. Left alone, people cannot change. However, God offers mercy and the only escape through Jesus Christ, who delivers us from our corrupted condition and restores us to His ways.

The Reality of Human Corruption

We live in a world where corruption is as common as dirt. Like weeds, our sins sprout from corruption’s soil. We wear our corruption unknowingly, like a badly ketchup-stained white blouse or shirt to a formal event. We are not conscious of it because, like our name, it is all we have ever known.

Blindness to Our Sinful Condition

We don’t recognize our own corruption even though we continually demonstrate it through actions, words, and thoughts contrary to God’s character, values, and will. Our minds and consciences are corrupted (Titus 1:15).

The Power of Sinful Attraction

Because of our corruption, evil and wickedness attract us like a magnet does a nail (Job 15:16, Hosea 9:9). Because of it, we are vile and do not and cannot do good as God defines it (Psalm 14:1, Psalm 14:3).

Inability Without Divine Help

Without divine intervention, we are as incapable of aligning ourselves with God’s ways as a paraplegic is of running a world record time in the Olympic Games.

Corruption in Behavior and Speech

Instead of living in a way that pleases God, evil, deceitful desires (Ephesians 4:22, 2 Peter 1:4), evil practices, and stubborn ways ( Judges 2:19) pollute our warped and crooked moral paths (Deuteronomy 32:5). We enjoy our independence from God and our tainted paths. We resist His correction (Zephaniah 3:7). We pay no attention when He tells us how to live.

Our trouble-making mouths spout lies, perverse, unedifying speech (Proverbs 4:24, Proverbs 17:20), and slander (Jeremiah 6:28). They corrupt our entire body (James 3:6). Our corruption renders us untrustworthy and negligent (Daniel 6:4).

God’s Definition of Corruption

God defines corruption. Corrupt living is un-Godly living, with God’s will and ways as the standard that we fall short of. Because fools do not like God’s definition, they deny His existence (Psalm 53:1).

The Bible on Corruption

Consider the Bible on corruption. In God’s sight, relatively soon after He created mankind, the earth was corrupt and violence-packed (Genesis 6:11), and everyone demonstrated it (Genesis 6:12). Notice that Jotham’s doing what was right in God’s eyes (the standard), contrasted with the people continuing to behave corruptly (2 Chronicles 27:2). God’s people became a corrupt vine that did not bear fruit for Him (Jeremiah 2:21).

While Moses received the Ten Commandments from God, the people he brought out of Egypt took a moral U-turn away from Him by worshipping a golden calf (Exodus 32:7). No one had to teach them how to switch their devotion from the true God to a substitute (Isaiah 1:4). It was a natural corruption-generated response. The prophet Hosea likened it to spiritual prostitution ( Hosea 5:3 ).

Repeatedly, turning away from God and the way of life He commanded and making substitutes for Him is defined as being corrupt (Deuteronomy 4:16, Deuteronomy 4:25, Deuteronomy 9:12). Modern idolatry does just that. We pollute our place of residence with our corruption and fill it with impurity (Ezra 9:11).

The Only Escape Through Christ

The good news is that for God’s name's sake, He mercifully doesn’t deal with us according to our evil ways and corrupt practices (Ezekiel 20:44). We escape the corruption of the world and break free from sin by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2 Peter 2:20). There is no other exit from our corrupted state of being. 

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