15 Bible Verses about People's Inability To Serve God

But Joshua said to the people, "You are not able to serve the LORD, for he is a holy God. He is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions or your sins.

"You know that David my father could not build a house for the name of the LORD his God because of the warfare with which his enemies surrounded him, until the LORD put them under the soles of his feet.

so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the LORD filled the house of the LORD.

For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot.

Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh,

"Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.

Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.

I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

"'I know your works. Behold, I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut. I know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.

For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.