Sin conquered the sphere of the soul and laid hold of man’s intellectual, emotional, and volitional life.

Man’s mind was blinded.

2 Corinthians 4:3-4

But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.

Titus 1:15

Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled.”

Colossians 1:21

And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works yet now hath he reconciled.

Man was made by God with the capacity for knowing God.  If Adam had continued to live his life entirely within the circle of God’s will, his capacity for knowing God would have been expanded and enriched. But instead, he sought knowledge that God had willed he should not have. By this one act of self-will, he placed his intellect outside the circle of God’s will. Although he had the knowledge of evil, he neither had the wisdom nor the power to resist it. As a result, sin produced such ruin in the mind that God was forced to say “that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” (Genesis 6:5)  He even calls evil, good and good, evil. (Isaiah 5:20)

Being separated from God, man’s mind became so darkened that his thinking is materialistic. “God is a spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” (John 4:24) God is eternal and spiritual and can never be apprehended by what is temporal and natural. The operation of the human intellect is entirely within the realm of material things. This results from a life without a living union and communion with God.

Not only was man’s thinking materialistic, but his mind became so darkened that his thinking is sensual. The soul, in its struggle with sin, is open to continuous and terrible temptation through the body since it is not aided by the spirit.

In addition, being separated from God, man’s mind became so darkened that his thinking is rationalistic. Being outside of God’s will, his thinking is certainly outside of God’s thought. Man’s wisdom is not God’s wisdom: God draws a clean-cut line between His wisdom and that of the natural man.

1 Corinthians 1:20-21

²⁰ Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? ²¹ For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.

The wisdom of the natural man has its source in himself. The natural man rejects anything and everything which cannot be understood and explained by his own unaided reason.

1 Corinthians 2:14

But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

Sin has damaged and distorted the intellect of the natural man. Satan has blinded his mind that he often thinks he knows more than God. Pride leads him to exalt his own mentality to such an extent that, if God says anything which his tiny intellect and feeble reason cannot comprehend, he then declares God’s saying “foolishness.” The natural man boldly declares God’s sacred truth to be fable; God’s eternal Word to be a myth. His attempts to measure God’s ocean of truth with his little teacup of a mind is pathetic, and his egotistical method of tossing aside God’s supernatural revelation when it goes contrary to his sin-saturated reason is truly pathetic.

Source: “Life on the Highest Plane” by Ruth Paxson

Oh Lord, this is man’s life without You.

In Him,

Marion