Why We Do Not Naturally Love God

If God is supremely worthy, why do human beings resist, replace, and forget him?

Key passages

Genesis 3; Jeremiah 2:9–13; Romans 1:18–32; Romans 3:9–26; Ephesians 2:1–10.

Chapter thesis

Sin is not merely breaking isolated rules. It is the disordered refusal to honor, trust, thank, and love God as God, replacing him with created goods and self-rule.

The first disorder

Genesis 3 depicts temptation as a contest over God’s character and authority. The serpent suggests that God withholds good, that his word is unreliable, and that human beings can define wisdom independently. The first sin therefore includes unbelief, ingratitude, grasping, and rebellion. The fruit is desired not simply as food but as a path to autonomy.

Every later sin contains something of this pattern. We question God’s goodness, detach gifts from the Giver, and choose a created good on terms God has forbidden. Sin is fundamentally theological before it is merely behavioral.

Broken cisterns

Jeremiah describes Israel abandoning the fountain of living waters and digging cracked cisterns that cannot hold water. Idolatry is irrational exchange: the living God is traded for powerless substitutes. Yet the substitute often promises something genuinely desirable - security, pleasure, belonging, control, significance. The evil lies in making a created means carry ultimate weight and in pursuing it against God.

This explains why direct commands alone do not cure the heart. Telling an anxious person not to worship control does not reveal why control feels necessary. Telling an approval-seeker to stop caring what people think does not disclose the feared loss underneath. Repentance must expose both the idol and the false promise it offers, then redirect trust toward God.

Suppression and exchange

Romans 1 says humanity knows enough of God through creation to owe him honor and thanks, yet suppresses the truth and exchanges divine glory for created images. The result is not neutral freedom but darkened thinking and disordered desire. Worship is unavoidable; the question is whom or what we will treat as ultimate.

This teaching should not be used to deny common grace. Unbelievers can display courage, affection, skill, civic virtue, and natural compassion. The theological claim is that none of us naturally gives the true God his rightful place or comes to saving faith by unaided moral capacity. Even good acts can be separated from worship, performed for self-glory, or used to avoid dependence on grace.

Religious resistance

Sin can appear irreligious or intensely religious. The prodigal son seeks life away from the father; the elder brother remains near while treating obedience as leverage. One breaks rules to obtain freedom, the other keeps rules to establish superiority and control. Both avoid loving fellowship with the father.

Religious activity can therefore become a strategy of self-salvation. Bible reading, doctrinal precision, ministry, moral discipline, and sacrifice are good gifts. They become corrupt when used to make God indebted, prove superiority, or avoid confession.

Voice from the church: Augustine

Augustine’s famous image of the restless heart captures the human search for rest in created things. His deeper contribution is the idea of disordered loves: evil often consists not in loving a created good at all, but in loving it above God or in the wrong manner. The biblical qualification is that Scripture, not philosophical introspection, defines the Creator-creature order and the gospel remedy.

Important distinction

Human inability is moral and spiritual, not mechanical. People choose what they desire, but fallen desire is hostile to God’s rule and cannot regenerate itself. Grace does not drag a willing lover away from God; it awakens the dead, opens the blind, and renews the will.

Why self-improvement is insufficient

The problem is not lack of technique. More information can make a sinner more capable without making him worshipful. Stronger discipline can restrain behavior without reconciling him to God. Emotional experiences can produce temporary zeal without a new heart. What is required is forgiveness, new birth, union with Christ, the indwelling Spirit, and the reformation of desire.

This diagnosis is severe but hopeful. If the problem were merely weak effort, spiritually exhausted people would need harsher pressure. Because the problem is sin and death, the gospel announces divine action.

Chapter summary

We do not naturally love God because sin disorders worship, trust, gratitude, and desire. It exchanges the Creator for creation and can hide in rebellion or religion. The answer must be more than improved behavior: God must forgive and renew the heart.

Reflect and discuss

1. Which false promise - control, approval, comfort, pleasure, or significance - most often competes with trust in God?

2. Are you more tempted by obvious rebellion or by using religious performance to establish worth?

3. What does your recurring sin imply about what you are believing about God?

Practice for this week

For one repeated temptation, write four lines: the desired good, the false promise, the biblical truth about God, and one act of repentant trust.

Prayer

Righteous God, I have exchanged your glory for lesser things and tried to rule myself. Expose both obvious sin and religious pride. Show me the false promises I trust, and lead me to the fountain of living water through Christ. Amen.