This is so true. If one can come to an understanding of man's nature (bent towards evil) and understand the nature of God (perfect in all things), then the scriptures are a very easy read. Where it gets complicated is when we try to make God out to be less than what He is or us more perfect that what we are.
The gospel can not be heard or understood.. even in it simplicity, without God opening ears and eyes to see it and hear it..
The natural man refuse the gospel because it "does not make sense" .. how can one be saved if he does not do it himself??
The natural man wants to be the captain of his own ship..he wants the credit for being saved.. only seeing our sin as God does makes us understand we could NEVER save ourselves or even contribute to our salvation
Pride.. caused the fall and keeps unregenerate man in it
WELL PUT.
Cyprian of Carthage [200-270 AD]
The Epistles of Cyprian
Epistle 39
forsaken, a new tradition of a sacrilegious appointment should arise, contrary to the evangelical discipline...Read More[Read More]
The Lord warns us in His Gospel, saying, "Ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may establish your own tradition...Read More[Read More]
Epistle 41
But since the obstinate and inflexible pertinacity of the adverse party has not only rejected the bosom and the embrace of its root and Mother, but even, with a discord spreading and reviving itself worse and worse, has appointed a bishop for itself, and, contrary to the sacrament once delivered of the divine appointment and of Catholic Unity, has made an adulterous and opposed head outside the Church; having received your letters as well as those of our colleagues, at the coining also of our colleagues Pompeius and Stephanus, good men and very dear to us, by whom all these things were undoubtedly alleged and proved to us with general gladness, in conformity with the requirements alike of the sanctity and the truth of the divine tradition and ecclesiastical institution, we have directed our letters to you...Read More[Read More]
Epistle 43
I entreat that in you, at all events, that unlawful rending of our brotherhood may not continue; but remembering both your confession and the divine tradition, you may return to the Mother whence you have gone forth; whence you came to the glory of confession with the rejoicing of the same Mother...Read More[Read More]
Epistle 51
Unless he seems to you to be a bishop, who--when a bishop has been made in the Church by sixteen co-bishops--strives by bribery to be made an adulterous and extraneous bishop by the hands of deserters; and although there is one Church, divided by Christ throughout the whole world into many members, and also one episcopate diffused through a harmonious multitude of many bishops; in spite of God's tradition, in spite of the combined and everywhere compacted unity of the Catholic Church, is endeavouring to make a human church, and is sending his new apostles through very many cities, that he may establish some new foundations of his own appointment...Read More[Read More]
And oh, mockery of a deceived fraternity! Oh, vain deception of miserable and senseless mourners! Oh, ineffectual and profitless tradition of heretical institution! to exhort to the repentance of atonement, and to take away the healing from the atonement; to say to our brethren, "Mourn and shed tears, and groan day and night, and labour largely and frequently for the washing away and cleansing of your sin; but, after all these things, you shall die without the pale of the Church...Read More[Read More]
Epistle 54
Undoubtedly there are bishops made, not by the will of God, but they are such as are made outside of the Church--such as are made contrary to the ordinance and tradition of the Gospel, as the Lord Himself in the twelve prophets asserts, saying, "They have set up a king for themselves, and not by me...Read More[Read More]
" For because a few rash and wicked men forsake the heavenly and wholesome ways of the Lord, and not doing holy things are deserted by the Holy Spirit, we also ought not therefore to be unmindful of the divine tradition, so as to think that the crimes of madmen are greater than the judgments of priests; or conceive that human endeavours can do more to attack, than divine protection avails to defend...Read More[Read More]
Epistle 61
Concerning which matters, since you have desired our advice, know that we do not depart from the traditions of the Gospel and of the apostles, but with constancy and firmness take counsel for our brethren and sisters, and maintain the discipline of the Church by all the ways of usefulness and safety, since the Lord speaks, saying, "And I will give you pastors according to...Read More[Read More]
Epistle 62
Although I know, dearest brother, that very many of the bishops who are set over the churches of the Lord by divine condescension, throughout the whole world, maintain the plan of evangelical truth, and of the tradition of the Lord, and do not by human and novel institution depart from that which Christ our Master both prescribed and did; yet since some, either by ignorance or simplicity in sanctifying the cup of the Lord, and in ministering to the people, do not do that which Jesus Christ, our Lord and God, the founder and teacher of this sacrifice, did and taught, I have thought it as well a religious as a necessary thing to write to you this letter, that, if any one is still kept in this error, he may behold the light of truth, and return to the root and origin of the tradition of the Lord...Read More[Read More]
Know then that I have been admonished that, in offering the cup, the tradition of the Lord must be observed, and that nothing must be done by us but what the Lord first did on our behalf, as that the cup which is offered in remembrance of Him should be offered mingled with wine...Read More[Read More]
But how shall we drink the new wine of the fruit of the vine with Christ in the kingdom of His Father, if in the sacrifice of God the Father and of Christ we do not offer wine, nor mix the cup of the Lord by the Lord's own...Read More[Read More]
" And again the Lord in the Gospel repeals this same saying, and says, "Ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition...Read More[Read More]
But we cannot be pardoned who are now admonished and instructed by the Lord to offer the cup of the Lord mingled with wine according to what the Lord offered, and to direct letters to our colleagues also about this, so that the evangelical law and the Lord's tradition may be everywhere kept, and there be no departure from what Christ both taught and did...Read More[Read More]
Therefore it befits our religion, and our fear, and the place itself, and the office of our priesthood, dearest brother, in mixing and offering the cup of the Lord, to keep the truth of the Lord's tradition, and, on the warning of the Lord, to correct that which seems with some to have been erroneous; so that when He shall begin to come in His brightness and heavenly majesty, He may find that we keep what He admonished us; that we observe what He taught; that we do what He did...Read More[Read More]
Epistle 67
" This also the Lord repeats in the Gospel, and says, "Ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may establish your own tradition...Read More[Read More] For which reason you must diligently observe and keep the practice delivered from divine tradition and apostolic observance, which is also maintained among us, and almost throughout all the provinces; that for the proper celebration of ordinations all the neighbouring bishops of the same province should assemble with that people for which a prelate is ordained...Read More[Read More]
Epistle 72
For when they say that "their word creeps as a canker," how is such a word as that able to give remission of sins, which creeps like a canker to the ears of the hearers? And when they say that there can be no fellowship between righteousness and un-righteousness, no communion between light and darkness, how can either darkness illuminate, or unrighteousness justify? And when they say that "they are not of God, but are of the spirit of Antichrist," how can they transact spiritual and divine matters, who are the enemies of God, and whose hearts the spirit of Antichrist has possessed? Wherefore, if, laying aside the errors of human dispute, we return with a sincere and religious faith to the evangelical authority and to the apostolical tradition, we shall perceive that they may do nothing towards conferring the ecclesiastical and saving grace, who, scattering and attacking the Church of Christ, are called adversaries by Christ Himself, but by His apostles, Antichrists...Read More[Read More]
Epistle 73
Whence is that tradition? Whether does it descend from the authority of the Lord and of the Gospel, or does it come from the commands and the epistles of the apostles? For that those things which are written must be done, God witnesses and admonishes, saying to Joshua the son of Nun: "The book of this law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate in it day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein...Read More[Read More]
But if it is evident that subsequently heresies became more numerous and worse; and if, in time past, it was never at all prescribed nor written that only hands should be laid upon a heretic for repentance, and that so he might be communicated with; and if there is only one baptism, which is with us, and is within, and is granted of the divine condescension to the Church alone, what obstinacy is that, or what presumption, to prefer human tradition to divine ordinance, and not to observe that God is indignant and angry as often as human tradition relaxes and passes by the divine precepts, as He cries out, and says by Isaiah the prophet, "This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me...Read More[Read More]
Certainly an excellent and lawful tradition is set before us by the teaching of our brother Stephen, which may afford us a suitable authority! For in the same place of his epistle he has added and continued: "Since those who are specially heretics do not baptize those who come to them from one another, but only receive them to communion...Read More[Read More]
For if we return to the head and source of divine tradition, human error ceases; and having seen the reason of the heavenly sacraments, whatever lay hid in obscurity under the gloom and cloud of darkness, is opened into the light of the truth...Read More[Read More]
For it has been delivered to us, that there is one God, and one Christ, and one hope, and one faith, and one Church, and one baptism ordained only in the one Church, from which unity whosoever will depart must needs be found with heretics; and while he upholds them against the Church, he impugns the sacrament of the divine tradition...Read More[Read More]
Epistle 74
And indeed, as respects what Stephen has said, as though the apostles forbade those who come from heresy to be baptized, and delivered this also to be observed by their successors, you have replied most abundantly, that no one is so foolish as to believe that the apostles delivered this, when it is even well known that these heresies themselves, execrable and detestable as they are, arose subsequently; when even Marcion the disciple of Cerdo is found to have introduced his sacrilegious tradition against God long after the apostles, and after long lapse of time from them...Read More[Read More]
Whence it appears that this tradition is of men which maintains heretics, and asserts that they have baptism, which belongs to the Church alone...Read More[Read More]
Epistle 75
But if she was with Cornelius, who succeeded the bishop Fabian by lawful ordination, and whom, beside the honour of the priesthood, the Lord glorified also with martyrdom, Novatian is not in the Church; nor can he be reckoned as a bishop, who, succeeding to no one, and despising the evangelical and apostolic tradition, sprang from himself...Read More[Read More]
The Treatises of Cyprian
Treatise 1
These, doubtless, they imitate and follow, who, despising God's tradition, seek after strange doctrines, and bring in teachings of human appointment, whom the Lord rebukes and reproves in His Gospel, saying, "Ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition...Read More[Read More]
The word of the witnessing apostle is: "We command you," says he, "in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from all brethren that walk disorderly, and not after the tradition that they have received from us...Read More[Read More]
Treatise 3
Resting on the unshaken roots of the heavenly precepts, and strengthened by the evangelical traditions, the prescribed banishment, the destined tortures, the loss of property, the bodily punishments, have not terrified them...Read More[Read More]
Treatise 4
For what can be a more spiritual prayer than that which was given to us by Christ, by whom also the Holy Spirit was given to us? What praying to the Father can be more truthful than that which was delivered to us by the Son who is the Truth, out of His own mouth? So that to pray otherwise than He taught is not ignorance alone, but also sin; since He Himself has established, and said, "Ye reject the commandments of God, that ye may keep your own traditions...Read More[Read More]
Treatise 9
" Moreover, the blessed Apostle Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, and sent forth for the calling and training of the heathen, bears witness and instructs us, saying, "See that no man despoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the elements of the world, and not after Christ, because in Him dwelleth all the fulness of divinity...Read More[Read More]
Treatise 12
That a schism must not be made, even although he who withdraws should remain in one faith and in the same tradition...Read More[Read More]
Paul to the Thessalonians: "But we have commanded you, in the name of Jesus Christ, that ye depart from all brethren who walk disorderly, and not according to the tradition which they have received from us...Read More[Read More]
That a schism must not be made, even although he who withdraws should remain in one faith, and in the same tradition...Read More[Read More]
You see the product of this in a sacramental system in which God is made a debtor and subject to the control of an elevated priesthood. In this system Grace is "infused" if the person does all the "right" things and remains subservient to their church.
If one can come to an understanding of man's nature (bent towards evil) and understand the nature of God (perfect in all things), then the scriptures are a very easy read.
I think that God deals with our depravity in different ways during different dispensations/economies. I totally agree that our "default setting" since the fall is towards evil. It seems to me that there are periods (dispensations) in which God leaves us to our base instincts (free will) and other periods in which God intervenes to save us (predestination).
For example, during the time of Noah the entire world embraced the evil the Nephilum brought and it was only Noah who sought God and trusted Him. Also, during the Tribulation and then later at the end of the millennial reign man is given a free choice and we see the results, rebellion. However, during the Church Age God sends us the Holy Spirit to guide us and God actively draws us to Him.