|
Man
This
only have I found: God made mankind upright, but
men have gone in search of many schemes. Ecclesiastes
7.29
Someone
once said, "If you're wrong on the fall, you're
wrong on it all." This is true, for if one
does not know what happened when man fell, and what
sort of creature the fall made him to be, one will
not likely understand the nature of the gospel that
God designed for the salvation of His people.
"God
made man upright," say the Scriptures. There
was nothing evil to be found in man when God made
him. In his created state, man was wise, righteous,
holy and free from condemnation. But, Adam's rebellion
against God utterly destroyed man with regard to these
things: he became foolish, wicked, defiled, and condemned.
So far reaching was this destruction, that it became
impossible that man could have any fellowship with
God in that condition. God is of purer eyes than to
behold iniquity, and man had become nothing but iniquity.
The
doctrine of natural man's condition is often referred
to as "Total Depravity." This causes some
confusion among people for they see others who appear
to be decent folk. They are honest, hard-working people
who pay their bills, help the weak and poor, and go
to church regularly. How can they be called totally
depraved? Is there not some good in them?
While
such people appear to us to have some goodness in
them, they do not appear so to God; and it is in His
eyes that men are determined to be good or evil. Such
men may be highly esteemed among men, but:
Ye
are they which justify yourselves before men; but
God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly
esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of
God. Luke 16.15
The
Lord said this to the Pharisees, a group of upright,
conservative, religious men who, as touching that
righteousness in the law, were blameless. So a good
reputation with men is no evidence of righteousness
before God.
In
our Lord's words to the Pharisees we find the key
to understanding the issue: It is in the heart
that man is depraved!
The
heart is deceitful above all things and desperately
wicked, who can know it? (Jeremiah 17.9)
The
heart is the very core of the man, yea it is
the man; and in heart, all men are deceitful and desperately
wicked. Like it or not, that is the Scriptures' view
of man. Since we live by faith and not by sight, we
must then judge man, not by what we see, but by what
the Word of God says.
Man's
depravity begins at conception and continues from
there,
Behold,
I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother
conceive me." (Psalm 51.5)
Little babies, as innocent as they may appear to us,
are, nonetheless, sinners in the eyes of God. Man's
depravity begins at conception because it is a matter
of his nature. By Adam's sin, "many were made
sinners" (Romans 5.19) every descendent of Adam
is a sinner like Adam.
So
sinful is man that his very righteousness is filthy
rags (Isaiah 64:6). The very acts by which men think
to make themselves righteous and somehow worthy of
a blessing from God are nothing but filthy, unclean
rags in God's sight. Now, if our righteousnesses
appear as filthy rags in God's sight, what
does this say of those things even we
acknowledge to be sinful!
This
sinful principle so permeates our being, that we are
rendered incapable of doing anything to improve our
condition before God. The understanding is darkened
to the point that we cannot perceive the things of
God:
But
the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit
of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither
can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
(2 Corinthians 2.14)
No
amount of education and instruction in the things
of God can make a man understand the things of God.
The
will of man is so perverse that He cannot choose to
love God and follow Him,
The
carnal mind is enmity [hostility] against God. (Romans
8:7)
The
Lord, Himself, said:
No
man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent
me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.
(John 6.44)
This
should settle once for all the issue of the free will
of man. Man's will is not free. He is able to choose
only what his nature allows, and his nature will not
allow him to love, submit to, and believe the Lord
Jesus Christ. He may invent a false version of Christ
and love him, but He cannot love the true Christ.
So
we find that man, in his natural state is unable to
understand the things of God and unable to want to
come to the true God for grace. This is total depravity
and spiritual insanity. If man is ever to be saved,
it must be by a salvation that does not in any way
depend on him, for there is nothing good in man.
At
Grace Community Church, we confess ourselves to be
exactly what the Scriptures declare us to be: TOTALLY
DEPRAVED, yet we do not despair in this, for by God's
grace, we have learned a gospel suitable to the totally
depraved: the gospel of God's free and sovereign grace.
|
