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Be The Way God Created You To Be: Upright
Bible study on creation and man.

Our task on earth is to be the way God made us. We don't have to become someone or something other than what God made us to be.

God Made You Upright
Many in the religious world believe God made us sinners, and we're in sin while in our mother's womb. That's why men began baptizing babies a few hundred years after Christ, and why Calvin came up with his doctrine of total hereditary depravity.

But God tells us we're born upright. We are not sinners at birth.

  • "Behold, I have found only this, that God made men upright, but they have sought out many devices" (Ec. 7:29).

Understanding that we were born upright, and that God created us to be holy and righteous rather than sinners, leads us to think about ourselves in a way that's different from the world.

Repentance
Knowing God made us upright, changes the way we think about repentance.

From a Calvinist's view, that we're born sinners, repentance is changing from the way we were made to something different. Repentance, then, is changing into something we've never been before, and becoming something we've never experienced before.

But understanding that God made us upright, and that we were upright at our birth, helps us have a better view of repentance. And, it helps us understand that repentance is something we're very capable of doing.

Repentance is merely a turning back to the person God made us to be. It's not that we have to become someone foreign to our being, or different than we've ever been.

Repentance is a turning away from the person we became through sin after our birth, to the person we were at birth -- an upright person.

Thus, Jesus commands us to be converted and become like little children to enter the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 18:3).

Be The Person God Made You To Be
So we can view life as simply being the person God made us to be -- upright.

"Upright" is translated from the Hebrew word yashar which means straight, correct, upright, right.

At our birth we are in a right relationship with God, holy and sinless and righteous in His sight. Thus, we can view our mission in life to be the person God made us to be.

This is important, because it's easier to be what we were made to be than to be something different.

For example, it's easier for a car to be a car, than to be a horse. As a matter of fact, it's impossible for a car to be a horse or a horse to be a car, because of the way they were made.

The same is true for us. If God made us sinners, it would be difficult to become upright, if not impossible.

But since we were made upright, to repent and become a child of God is natural, and simply a returning to our roots to be the people God made us to be from the beginning.

With this attitude, repentance becomes easier by knowing we're doing what God made us to do.

It's Natural To Be A Christian
So then, being a Christian is in complete harmony with our nature; it's what God created us to do.

Of course, Calvinists disagree. They believe we were born with a sinful nature, and that sinning is natural. Their favored translation, the New International Version, reflects this doctrine by incorporating the phrase "sinful nature" more than twenty times in the New Testament.

From a Calvinist's view, being a child of God is unnatural, and being a child of the devil is natural (1 Jn. 3:10). Thus sin is something we do because God made us sinners, and uprightness is only achievable if God predestined us to be saved, and the Holy Spirit personally comes upon us and makes us get saved.

Doctrines like Calvinism make repentance and an upright life seems unnatural and difficult, exactly what the devil wants us to think.

But the truth is that repentance and an upright life are natural, because God made us upright from our birth (Ec. 7:29).

Conclusion
Our task on earth is to be the way God made us. We don't have to become someone or something other than what God made us to be.

When we sin, we stray from the path God set us on at our birth, so we must repent and once again become right with God.

Then we'll again be the way God created us to be: upright.