A Nail In The Coffin of Reason

God is inescapable. It doesn’t matter what you think, say, or do, you are forever locked into God’s creation. The greatest proof of God’s existence a person can have is when God gives new life to his dead soul (1 John 5:9, 11). Next to this experience of life in Christ, the greatest testimony to God’s existence is the inescapable fact that without God you cannot prove anything, or even construct a logically consistent argument apart from Him.

Sin is destructive; not only to relationships and health and culture, but to how you think. Sin is the nail in the coffin of reason. When sin is embraced, you lose the foundations of good sense and logic. If you deny that, you are only proving my point. How so? To deny that, you are saying that the foundation for logic and reason has no connection to a God who commands that we love Him with all of our mind. And by saying that, you are left with asserting reason as the foundation for reason. That is viciously circular. You have just pounded another nail into reason’s coffin, and the funeral hearse is waiting at the curb with the engine running.

While I could continue to argue this, I thought it might be helpful to devote a blog post to examples from Scripture. How do people think and reason when they fail to live in daily repentance, and instead protect and nurture their sin? God’s word is full of people who did that very thing.

The Pharisees provide many examples. That could be because they had to deal with Jesus, and He could expose a heart like none other. The first 5 examples will come from them. After those will come examples from other Scriptures.

An Unreasonable Accusation

Matthew 12:24–25 But when the Pharisees heard this, they said, “This man casts out demons only by Beelzebul the ruler of the demons.” 25 And knowing their thoughts Jesus said to them, “Any kingdom divided against itself is laid waste; and any city or house divided against itself will not stand.

An Unreasonable Self-defense

Matthew 21:25–27 “The baptism of John was from what source, from heaven or from men?” And they began reasoning among themselves, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ He will say to us, ‘Then why did you not believe him?’ 26 “But if we say, ‘From men,’ we fear the people; for they all regard John as a prophet.” 27 And answering Jesus, they said, “We do not know.”

An Unreasonable Request – after seeing and rejecting countless other miracles we read…

Matthew 12:38–39 Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to Him, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from You.” 39 But He answered and said to them, “An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign; and yet no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet;

An Unreasonable Plan

John 12:9–10 The large crowd of the Jews then learned that He was there; and they came, not for Jesus’ sake only, but that they might also see Lazarus, whom He raised from the dead. 10 But the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death also;

An Unreasonable Response

Matthew 28:11–13 Now while they were on their way, some of the guard came into the city and reported to the chief priests all that had happened. 12 And when they had assembled with the elders and consulted together, they gave a large sum of money to the soldiers, 13 and said, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came by night and stole Him away while we were asleep.’

An Unreasonable Hypocrisy

Romans 2:1 Therefore you have no excuse, everyone of you who passes judgment, for in that which you judge another, you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things.

An Unreasonable worship

Isaiah 44:14–15 Surely he cuts cedars for himself, and takes a cypress or an oak and raises it for himself among the trees of the forest. He plants a fir, and the rain makes it grow. 15 Then it becomes something for a man to burn, so he takes one of them and warms himself; he also makes a fire to bake bread. He also makes a god and worships it; he makes it a graven image and falls down before it.

An Unreasonable Approval

Romans 1:32 and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.

An Unreasonable Cause and Effect

Romans 3:8 (NASB95) — 8 And why not say (as we are slanderously reported and as some claim that we say), “Let us do evil that good may come”? Their condemnation is just.

An unreasonable Resistance

Revelation 19:19 And I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies assembled to make war against Him [The Glorified Christ] who sat on the horse and against His army.

We could undoubtedly mine out many more examples like this, not only from scripture, but also from our own lives.

This means at least two things for God’s people.

You need to be vitally plugged into a local church. There will be times when sin has crept into your life, and you are not going to see it clearly. Sin has clouded your mind, and you have found some unreasonable and unjustifiable way to excuse it. It makes no sense, but that is what sin is and does. While you won’t see it clearly, your brothers and sisters in Christ will. They can gently confront and restore you to a place of sound mind and sound faith.

You need to be faithful as you engage the world. It should be clear now that you can’t reason with an unreasonable person. So what hope does a Christian have in talking with a sin-enslaved person? The hope is that God is in the business of creating ears to hear. Romans 10:17 says, “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ.” We must be faithful to speak the word of God, highlighting sin-induced contradictions, and praying for the Spirit to work. Proverbs 26:5 calls us to “Answer a fool as his folly deserves, that he not be wise in his own eyes.” When self-professed wisdom is cast down (2 Cor.10:3-5) there is a large space opened up for the Spirit to go to work. In that moment, pray that Satan won’t snatch up the seed of the Word (Matt. 13:19).

When we are redeemed in Christ, it is not only our destiny that is rescued from hopeless futility, our mind is also redeemed and rescued. Christ alone has “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:3) and now we can now have the “mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16) in a blessed creaturely way.