And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

It is interesting to note here that Adam did not apply any of the evidentialist, cosmological approaches to God’s command. Adam did not say, “OK, God, hold on just one moment here. I need to study the evidence and conduct a few experiments to see if what You are telling me about this tree is really true.” Adam knew, without being told, that God’s Word was true. The evidence of this is in Eve’s reply to the serpent in Genesis 3. Eve repeated God’s command back to Satan nearly word for word, indicating Adam’s complete understanding and acceptance of God’s Word. As previously noted, Gordon Clark observed that “Morality, therefore, is based on God’s sovereignty. His command alone makes an action right or wrong.” Adam’s a priori moral equipment enabled him to understand and believe that God’s Word is truth.

In giving Adam the command to abstain from eating of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, God was putting Adam to a test. This is called the covenant of works. We see this covenant referred to throughout Scripture. Hosea 6:7 reports “But like men they transgressed the covenant; There they dealt treacherously with Me.” In the New Testament, we read that God “‘will render to each one according to his deeds’: eternal life to those who by patient continuance in doing good seek for glory, honor, and immortality; but to those who are self‑seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness‑‑indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, on every soul of man who does evil.” A covenant is a formal, binding agreement between two or more persons. God formed a conditional covenant with Adam in the garden of Eden. A “conditional” covenant meant that Adam had to uphold a certain condition in order to keep the covenant in force. That condition, of course, was that Adam must not eat of the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

In the same way, God offers mankind a conditional covenant of works, as we see in Romans 2. This conditional covenant delivers some good news... and some very bad news. The good news is that if a man, by patient continuance in doing good, manages to obey each and every law that God decrees he will receive eternal life. The bad news is this: “All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.’” Anyone who tries to earn eternal life through personal obedience to the Law is cursed and subject to “indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish” if they fail to obey each and every stipulation of God’s law. This is the covenant of works: blessings for obedience; cursing for disobedience.

Adam, The First Man: The Federal Head of All Humanity

God gave Adam the innate moral intelligence to understand the conditional agreement; now God tested Adam to see if he would keep his half of the covenant. In agreeing to this covenant and undertaking this test, Adam was the representative for all mankind. In legal terms, Adam  was the federal head for all humanity. Humanity, in essence, was on probation pending the outcome of Adam’s obedience to the covenant of works. Adam’s performance on this test would determine the status for the rest of humanity. From that time on, every human being throughout history would be regarded as if they themselves had taken this test, not Adam. If Adam failed the test, every man, woman and child would be viewed by God as if they had failed the test. If Adam succeeded, all humanity would receive glory, honor, and immortality.

Think of the role of your United States Congressman. He or she is your federal representative, whom the people of your district elected to represent them in the House of Representatives. A bill is brought before the floor and your representative votes “Yes” on that bill. It is just as if every resident of your district approved of that bill, even though none of you actually cast a vote on it. Another way of understanding Adam’s federal headship is to think of the power of attorney. You might give your lawyer the power of attorney, which allows that individual to sign contracts or other legal documents in your place. Although you, personally, never put pen to paper to sign that contract, you are still legally bound by that contract. It is just as if you had signed the contract yourself.

Guilt and Death By Imputation

We all know that Adam failed the test. He chose to follow Eve rather than God, and sin and death entered the world through that one act of disobedience. At the very moment of Adam’s sin--at the instant Adam bit into the forbidden fruit--God performed a legal, sovereign act. He took the one public sin of Adam and sovereignly imputed that one act of disobedience to all of humanity. The word impute (“im pyoot”) is a term that was a Greek accounting term which means to legally credit. Suppose you receive a check in the mail for $200. You go to your bank and deposit that check in your account. Even though there is no locked drawer somewhere with all your money in it, to which $200 in cash is now added, a clerk at the bank makes an entry in the bank’s electronic ledger which legally credits your personal account with $200. You are now legally $200 richer, even though you do not have that money in your hand. We see the same Greek word used in Scripture when Paul urges Philemon to be merciful to Onesimus, saying, “If he has wronged you or owes anything, put that on [impute it to] my account.”

The imputation of Adam’s sin to all humanity means that although you and I did not eat of the fruit of the tree, Adam’s sin has been imputed, or legally credited, to our personal account with God. In the very instant of biting into the fruit, all of humanity died just as surely as Adam did, as the result of our representative’s action. The death that God had warned Adam about was not an immediate physical death--Adam lived on for more than 900 years after his expulsion from the garden. This death, which is visited on all of humanity because of Adam’s one action, is spiritual death--eternal separation from God; and the outliving of that spiritual separation is the eventual physical death of the body.

It is important to understand that Adam’s one sin meant condemnation for all. Humanity is not charged with the cumulative sins of all of Adam’s life, or of all the sins of Adam and Eve combined. All humanity has been imputed with the guilt of the one, public act of disobedience committed by their federal representative.  Romans 5:16 makes it very clear that it was the one sin--not many--which results in our condemnation: “For the judgment which came from one offense resulted in condemnation, but the free gift which came from many offenses resulted in justification.” The ground of condemnation for all humanity is that one act--an act which took place outside of me, and an act in which I, personally took no part.

Suppose the President of the United States decides to launch missile strikes against the imaginary nation of Zinzonzo, because the CIA has informed him that the Zinzonzian government is arming and equipping terrorists that have been attacking our nation. Tragically, the missiles miss their intended targets and slam into a crowded hospital, killing scores of innocent civilians. Predictably, the Zinzonzian people react with a blind, implacable fury--not against the President alone but against all the American people! They march in the streets carrying signs that read “Death to Americans,” and so on. Although it is the President who ordered the attack, the Zinzonzians have imputed his perceived guilt onto each and every American citizen. In their minds, although we citizens had nothing to do with the attack and were nowhere near the spot where it occurred, they have condemned us all for that one sin. In a similar manner, Adam’s one sin has been judicially imputed to every single man, woman, and child who will ever draw breath throughout history. The ground of your condemnation is not that you, personally and subjectively, sinned. Rather, you and I are condemned because of the one act of our federal representative.

Adam’s one sin is the legal ground for the condemnation of humanity. It is essential to understand this concept because it is so rarely taught in churches throughout the world. The one place where we find this doctrine clearly asserted is in Scripture:

“Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.”

Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned‑‑(For until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.
But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man's offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many. And the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned. For the judgment which came from one offense resulted in condemnation, but the free gift which came from many offenses resulted in justification. For if by the one man's offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.)
Therefore, as through one man's offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man's righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man's obedience many will be made righteous. Moreover the law entered that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more, so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The stark parallels drawn between Adam and Christ in these ten verses are compelling:

For if by the one man's offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many (Verse 15).
By the one man's offense death reigned through the one, much more... the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.) (Verse 17.)

As through one man's offense judgment came to all men,... through one Man's righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification (Verse 18).

By one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man's obedience many will be made righteous (Verse 19).

As sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord (Verse 21).

The following chapter is devoted entirely to the subject of the legal justification that we receive freely through faith in Jesus Christ, so I will not develop that thought here. But it is important for you to understand that Adam and Christ are mirror images, bearing the same inverse relationship that a film negative has to the positive print. Just as through Adam’s sin mankind was legally condemned, through the righteousness of Christ all who will trust in Him are declared legally righteous.

Three Views of the Relationship Between Adam and Christ Held Throughout History

A. A. Hodge, in his marvelous Outlines of Theology, eloquently warned that we must not take one particular aspect or doctrine of Scripture and embrace it alone, while ignoring the balancing factors contained in the rest of the Bible. He wrote:

Since the revelation given in the Scriptures embraces a complete system of truth, every single department must sustain many obvious relations, logical and otherwise, to every other as the several parts of one whole. The imperfect development, and the defective or exaggerated conception of any one doctrine, must inevitably lead to confusion and error throughout the entire system.

There are two views of the relationship between Adam and Jesus Christ that have led to a great deal of confusion and error throughout the last several centuries. The reasoning that provides the foundation for these views is flawed by the very error that Dr. Hodge warned of--and has created confusion that has plagued the Church for nearly sixteen centuries! Much of that confusion can be traced back to the teaching of one man: the British monk, Pelagius. The teachings of Pelagius--known as Pelagianism--were roundly condemned by the church in the early fifth century. However a diluted form of Pelagianism, appropriately called semi-Pelagianism, provides much of the theology for today’s Roman state church and, sadly, a great many so-called Protestant churches as well.

The Pelagian view was in direct opposition to the teaching of one of the great theologians of the early church: Augustine, the bishop of Hippo. Although Augustine was a Catholic bishop, he is frequently quoted by many Protestant theologians, and is viewed as one of the greatest Christian scholars who ever lived. There is no question that Augustine was the man whom God used, more than any other, to establish and defend the correct doctrine of the nature of man. Martin Luther and the other Reformers drew heavily from Augustine’s teaching in this area.

The teachings of both Pelagius and Augustine were hotly debated during the early decades of the fifth century. One of the very few things Augustine and Pelagius agreed on was that Adam was created morally neutral. He was not the same “slave to sin” that all humanity after him is. Adam freely chose to disobey God. However Pelagius and his followers never came to any understanding of the Bible’s teaching about the sinful nature of man. In fact, they completely ignored it! Pelagius asserted that Adam, far from being humanity’s representative, merely set a bad example for the rest of us. Accordingly, Jesus Christ, in the Pelagian view, did no more than to set a good example for mankind.  Therefore, Pelagius taught, Adam’s fall injured himself alone, not the human race. There was no imputation of any kind in the Pelagian view. Pelagius was thoroughly convinced of the self-righteousness of man. In the same way that Adam’s sin did nothing to condemn humanity, Pelagius taught that Christ’s death did nothing to acquit it.

Children, Pelagius believed, are born morally neutral, in much the same way as Adam was. They did not inherit a sin nature from Adam. Therefore it is possible for a man to live a perfect, sinless life and enter heaven based on the merits of that moral perfection. In other words, man could earn his way to heaven by obeying God’s law. Indeed, Pelagius believed that there were men who had done just that before the time of Christ. God’s grace was expressed to man by giving him the ability to live a perfect life. As I said, Pelagius’ outrageous heresies were condemned by several church councils during the years of 407 to 431 A. D.

The teaching of Augustine stood in stark contrast to that of Pelagius. According to Augustine, man, far from being able to choose to live a perfect life, is completely incapable of living in obedience to the law of God. He is like the man that I described in chapter eight. After leaping off a building he hurtles downward, and no amount of human effort can safely restore him to the top of the building. Only God’s grace is capable of that.

The personality of Augustine, the man, was the perfect opposite of that of Pelagius. Pelagius, the monk, was rigidly self-disciplined and the very picture of self-righteousness. Augustine, on the other hand, had lived a life of utter debauchery before God used Ambrose to teach him the truth of salvation through Jesus Christ. Augustine, therefore, had no difficulty comprehending the biblical teaching that mankind “is vile and corrupt, [and] drinks up evil like water!” As they say today, Augustine had “been there, done that”! Augustine knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, both from the teaching of the Scriptures and from his own experience, that man is completely incapable of living in obedience to every point of God’s law. We are commanded to--but we are incapable. Therefore Augustine correctly taught that it is only by God’s grace, and not by good deeds, that man can ever hope to stand righteous before the perfect, holy God of the universe. Augustine labored tirelessly to rebut the teaching of Pelagius, which he correctly regarded as vile heresy.

While the gaping flaws in Pelagius’ theology were easily spotted and refuted, a second theory grew out of his teaching which haunts the church to this day, namely the Middle, or semi-Pelagian view. This view correctly held that the sin nature with which you and I wrestle was inherited from Adam. Because our federal head failed to pass the test, we all must bear the consequences for that sin. Children, then, are not born as morally neutral innocents, as Pelagius taught, but rather come into the world with a sinful nature that has been inherited from Adam.

To this point, the semi-Pelagian view is perfectly accurate. But where this theology parts company with biblical truth is at the point of correctly identifying the ground of man’s condemnation. We have seen from Paul’s teaching in Romans that Adam’s one act of disobedience is the legal ground for the condemnation of all humanity. The semi-Pelagian view, however, asserts that man’s personal sin, not the imputation of Adam’s sin, is the ground for his condemnation. Rather than the entire human race being pronounced guilty for one, single, specific crime--“He ate”--semi-Pelagianism posits that we are each guilty for our individual sins--Joe is a liar, John is a thief, Sally is a gossip, etc. Our personal, moral depravity is the cause for our guilt. The ground for our condemnation is subjective and moral rather than objective and legal.

While the semi-Pelagian view is nowhere near as reprehensible on the surface as is the Pelagian teaching, it is critically important for you to understand that there is not one shred of forensic, legal truth in either system of thought. Pelagianism and semi-Pelagianism are entirely subjective. The ground for both my condemnation and my justification are personal, subjective, and inside of me, based upon what I have done and what I will do. It is only when you come to the third view, the biblical view, that you are exposed to the objective, legal truths that accurately reflect God’s perfect plan of salvation.

According to the biblical view, as Gordon Clark wrote, “We are not guilty because we are depraved, we are depraved because we are guilty.” Children are born under the condemnation of Adam’s imputed sin. In other words, we are not born and then proceed to dig a hole to bury ourselves in; we are born at the bottom of the pit, a pit that was dug for us by Adam! We are born under a legal sentence of spiritual death. Our depravity is not the ground of our condemnation, but rather it is God’s punishment for the act (Adam’s sin) which became the sole legal ground for our condemnation. You and I are held legally responsible for what Adam, our federal representative, did. That one act of disobedience has been charged (imputed) to the personal account of every man, woman, and child who has ever lived, past, present, and future. It is important to note that my personal sins will certainly add to my eternal punishment (assuming that I am not redeemed from that punishment by faith in Christ). Scripture plainly teaches that every man and woman will be judged according to their deeds. My personal sins may cause me to be “beaten with many blows.” But my personal, subjective guilt has absolutely nothing-- zero --to do with the objective, legal ground for my condemnation. Here is a chart that provides a quick comparison of the three views.

The Three Views of Mankind’s Standing Before God

Pelagian Children are born sinless; They inherit no sin nature from their parents. The lives of Adam and Christ had no direct effect on the rest of humanity. There is no imputed guilt or imputed righteousness. The life of Adam provided a bad example for man. The life of Christ merely provided a good example for man. Together, the man and the God-Man allow us to choose how to live, based on their respective examples.   Man’s will is free. He is completely free to choose to do good or to do evil; man is equally able to choose between two opposite courses of action. The ground of man’s condemnation is his sinful choices.

Semi-Pelagian Children are born with an inherited sin nature. Inherited sin is the root cause of the sinful nature.     Man commits sin because of his inherited sin nature. His sins are the fruit of his inherited sin. The ground of man’s condemnation is his actions, i.e., his personal sins.   Man is morally guilty; He is not legally or forensically guilty. He is guilty because he is depraved.

Biblical Children are under the condem-nation of Adam’s one sin, even before their birth. The ground of man’s condemnation is imputed, legal guilt.   Man inherits a sinful nature as a result of God’s judgment (penalty) for the legal, imputed guilt of Adam’s sin. Man is depraved because he is guilty; he is not guilty because he is depraved.   Unsaved man is a slave to sin. He is incapable of choosing to do divine good and living a holy life before God. However, his guilt is based upon imputed guilt, not moral guilt for his sinful actions. Man’s sinful actions are the ground for additional punishment, not for condemnation.

 

Let me point out some similarities and contrasts between these three views. The most important similarity to note between the two views which bear the name of Pelagius is that there is absolutely no forensic, legal, objective foundation for man’s condemnation in either the Pelagian or semi-Pelagian theories. There is no imputed guilt charged against man in either theory. Man is condemned because of his own actions. He earns his condemnation, and, as we shall see in the next chapter, man also earns his salvation! Under that Pelagian plan, man is eternally saved through humanistic monergism. Monergism literally means “the work or energy of one.” Pelagius believed that man is condemned by his choices, choices which he freely makes, and he is also capable of working out his own salvation, completely unaided by God.

The semi-Pelagian view differs from its monergistic cousin in that it attributes salvation to divine synergism. Synergism literally means “together work” or “together energy.” In the semi-Pelagian view man works out his salvation with a great deal of help from God. Man can’t save himself, but he contributes to the plan of salvation. We will discuss this in much greater detail in chapter ten.

It is only when you examine the biblical view that you find a system of guilt and justification that is completely legal, historical, and objective. Man is saved entirely because of the work of God: Divine monergism. God does all the work of salvation, completely unaided by man. Likewise, man’s legal, imputed condemnation has nothing to do with the personal sin in his life. Rather, he is legally condemned because--and only because--of the one, public sin of Adam, the federal representative of the human race.

Some of you are thinking, “Wait a minute! That isn’t fair! Why would God punish me for Adam’s crime?” (At this point, it is hard to forget Paul’s words: “Who are you, O man, to talk back to God?”) Dear Reader, do you really believe you could have devised a better plan than the plan created by the perfectly wise, holy, Sovereign God of the universe? Let me ask you a second question: What if Adam had passed the test? What if Adam had met his responsibility for the covenant of works and abstained from eating the forbidden fruit? Had that been the case, then you, Dear Reader, and I, and all of humanity would have received glory, honor, and immortality! Would we then offer up the same objection--“That’s not fair! Why should God reward me for Adam’s success”? I doubt it very much! However, it was not God’s sovereign plan to do this. He foreordained a different way for us to receive His righteousness, through the atoning work of Jesus Christ, the last Adam. As you will see, God’s plan for us to receive eternal life has nothing to do with our personal success or failure, either!

The idea of legal imputation is rarely taught from most American pulpits today. If we hear of imputation at all, we are told--incorrectly--that it is Adam’s sinful character that was imputed to us. Once again, we wallow in a sea of subjectivism, in which we are taught that the ground of our condemnation--and, all too often, the ground of our justification--is inside of us. We do not hear the truth from pulpits across this land, which is that our condemnation is legal, it is historical, and it is outside of us.

The Punishment

Some of you have been very patient. You have been reading faithfully, patiently, but wondering when we would come to the sin that we do hear about so often from the pulpit: the sinful nature of man. “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth,” Moses wrote, “and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Jeremiah, if anything, was more blunt than Moses: “The heart is deceitful above all things,” he wrote, “and desperately wicked; who can know it?”

“At last,” you think to yourself, “now we’re standing on familiar ground! I’ve heard these verses before! What about them?” Where does the sinful nature of man fit into the picture? Well, I hope you truly understand now that the ground for your condemnation is not a moral act! Rather our condemnation is legal, immediate, and historical. You and I were legally condemned thousands of years before we were born! Normally when the subject of man’s sin is addressed, the writer or speaker will immediately launch into a recitation of some of the many verses that assert the wickedness of the heart of man. What so many Bible teachers fail to explain is that our personal depravity is not the cause of our guilt; our depravity is the punishment for our legally imputed guilt. Because Adam failed the test, God gave each and every one of us over to a depraved, sinful mind. Our sin nature is the consequence of our legal guilt.

Total Depravity

This is a phrase we’ll sometimes hear used--“the total depravity of man”--but rarely is it explained. What does it mean when we say that in our human nature, we are totally depraved? I think when we hear the phrase, there is a tendency to imagine some kind of crazed monster or psychotic killer, running amok and terrorizing the population. But when we walk into our neighborhood bank and smile a greeting at the neat, collegiate-looking young teller behind the counter, would we think of that individual as “totally depraved”? Most of us would not, yet this is precisely what Scripture teaches that each and every unsaved man, woman, and child is! Let’s see what the phrase means and what it does not mean.

Total depravity means that sin has affected the entirety of man’s being. We don’t reason properly; our emotions and affections are not what they were created to be; our will is in bondage to sin; we are incapable of choosing good at all. “The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there are any who understand, who seek God. They have all turned aside, they have together become corrupt; there is none who does good, no, not one.” No human being has the capability of doing good. Not one. Not only is our morality poisoned, but sin affects the body also, causing it to wither and die. So the word total in “total depravity” means that everything about us--mentally, volitionally, physically, and emotionally--is distorted and corrupted by sin. This all adds up to mean that we are dead spiritually. We do not seek God. Our minds are at enmity with Him. Man is completely separated from the things of God. Man, by nature, hates God and loves sin.

Total depravity also means that man suffers from a guilty inability. Man has been pronounced legally guilty because of Adam’s one public sinful act of disobedience, but on top of that, man possesses an inability to do the things he ought to. Man is incapable of seeking after God; of understanding the things of God; of loving God; of ceasing from sin; of doing divine good (man can do good deeds, such as giving money to charity, etc., but apart from the prompting of the Holy Spirit they are not motivated by a desire to bring glory to God, and therefore are not for divine good); of coming to Jesus; of believing in the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ; and of submitting to the righteousness of God. Man has no ability to do these things, just as he has no ability to fly without the aid of machinery. It is a guilty inability to do the things of God.

What the phrase “total depravity” does not mean

Total depravity does not mean that we are as bad as we could be. One of the most evil men who ever lived, Joseph Stalin, who is personally responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of his countrymen, a man who makes Adolph Hitler look like a demented child by comparison, was not as bad as he could have been. He might have dreamed up an even more vicious plan of extermination. The deranged killer who walks into a crowded restaurant and opens fire on a roomful of strangers is not as bad as he could have been. He might have dropped a deadly poison into the water supply for the entire city.

No one reaches their fullest potential for evil. Even Stalin, I’m sure, was capable of an occasional act of kindness or courtesy. In fact, I recently alluded to the fact that there are a great many unsaved men and women, who live and die in total depravity, whom you and I might consider very “good” people. They are faithful to their spouses, kind to their children and others, never lie, steal, or cheat, give of their money and time to good causes, are unfailingly kind to animals, and so on. They live lives which are morally good. What about them? How can they be referred to as totally depraved?

Dr. Robert Reymond offers a succinct definition for works of divine good. They  are:

Works (1) done by persons accepted by God through Christ, (2) which proceed from his Spirit, (3) and which are done in faith, (4) from the motive of love to God, (5) in obedience to God’s revealed will, and (6) for his glory — only Christians will manifest such works.

These, then, are works of divine good, and as you can see, even the most highly moral man or woman who does not know the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior suffers from the guilty inability to do acts of divine good.

Total depravity does not mean that man is as wicked as he could possibly be. In fact, God’s common grace allows many men and women to live lives that appear to be very beneficent ones. However, total depravity does mean that the unsaved man or woman is completely incapable of seeking after--or doing--the things of God. It means that every aspect of the unsaved man’s being is poisoned by sin. Most significantly, as Psalm 14 reveals, man--without the work of the Holy Spirit within--has absolutely no desire to inquire or seek after God. Charles Spurgeon, “the Prince of Preachers,” expressed man’s utter sinfulness in highly personal terms:

There are some professing Christians who can speak of themselves in terms of admiration; but, from my inmost heart, I loathe such speeches more and more every day that I live. Those who talk in such a boastful fashion must be constituted very differently from me. While they are congratulating themselves, I have to lie humbly at the foot of Christ’s Cross, and marvel that I am saved at all, for I know that I am saved. I have to wonder that I do not believe Christ more, and equally wonder that I am privileged to believe in Him at all--to wonder that I am not holier, and equally to wonder that I love Him at all--to wonder that I am not holier, and equally to wonder that I have any desire to be holy at all considering what a polluted, debased, depraved nature I find still within my soul, notwithstanding all that Divine grace has done in me. If God were ever to allow the fountains of the great deeps of depravity to break up in the best man that lives, he would make as bad a devil as the Devil himself is. I care nothing for what these boasters say concerning their own perfections; I feel sure that they do not know themselves, or they could not talk as they often do. There is tinder enough in the saint who is nearest to heaven to kindle another hell if God should but permit a spark to fall upon it. In the very best of men, there is an infernal and well nigh infinite depth of depravity. Some Christians never seem to find this out. I almost wish that they might not do so, for it is a painful discovery for any one to make; but it has the beneficial effect of making us cease from trusting in ourselves, and causing us to glory only in the Lord.

Conclusion

One objection that I often hear to the biblical doctrine of man is this: “But Jack, it all sounds so grim. You make it sound as though man’s situation is totally hopeless!” Let me first point out to you that I do not intend to make anything “sound” either hopeless or hopeful. My desire is to accurately relate what the Bible teaches about man. My daily prayer is that I would be a servant of the biblical text, exposing the truth of God’s Word as clearly and as faithfully as I possibly can. I have spent countless hours researching everything you have read in this book, searching through scores of scholarly works written by the most respected theologians who have ever lived. What I present to you in these pages is not an offering of my opinions, but rather, as accurately as I can possibly make it, an honest and open exposition of the great doctrines of the Christian faith.

Having said that, let me respond to the original question by saying, “Yes!” Man’s situation is grim! In fact, it is worse than grim. Man’s situation is hopeless. If you remain unconvinced, if you think that perhaps Pelagius was right and that man may be able to earn eternal life by his good deeds, then look at the Scripture references at the end of this chapter. These verses will give you the full picture of precisely where sinful man stands before a Holy God. There is absolutely nothing about man that would enable him to come to the pure and holy and perfect God and proclaim him worthy to enter into His presence. “What is man, that he could be pure?” Scripture asks, rhetorically. “And he who is born of a woman, that he could be righteous? If God puts no trust in His saints, and the heavens are not pure in His sight, how much less man, who is abominable and filthy, who drinks iniquity like water!” Yes, Dear Reader, man is abominable and filthy in the sight of the living God! Worse yet, before we were ever born we were already condemned by the imputed guilt of Adam’s sin, which means that we are born under a sentence of death, a sentence passed by the righteous Judge of all the universe. Although we had absolutely nothing to do with the action that earned that sentence of death, that sin has been imputed to us. We are regarded by God as filthy, worthy only of eternal punishment. To say that man’s situation is “grim” is to indulge in the most tragic of understatements!

But now, Dear Reader, I urge you to read on and prepare to rejoice in the glory and grace of God! For God, in His infinite, sovereign grace, foreordained our situation to be utterly hopeless in order that we would have only one place to turn for hope: to Him. God’s perfect wisdom established that the problem would originate outside of us, so that the solution could only be found outside of us, as well. And in that solution, the love and the mercy and wisdom  and, yes, the justice and righteousness of God, is perhaps most fully revealed. Oh, yes, Dear Reader, please continue, and learn how “the righteousness of God is revealed.”

 

Scriptures That Testify to the True Nature of Fallen Humanity

Genesis                 1 Kings                  Job                         Psalms                   Proverbs Ecclesiastes
2:16-17                    8:46                         15:14-16                 14:1-3                      15:8                         7:20
6:5-6                                                                                       51:5                          21:4                         9:3
8:21                                                                                        53:1-3                      20:9
                                                                                               58:3                          30:12
                                                                                               103:3
                                                                                               143:2

 

Isaiah                     Jeremiah               Matthew Mark                      Luke                        John
1:6                           17:9                         6:23                        7:21-23                    11:13                       3:19
53:6                                                                                                                                                         5:24
64:6                                                                                                                                                         8:34

Romans                 2 Corinthians       Ephesians             Colossians             Titus                      James
1:29-32                    1:9                           2:1-3                       2:13                          1:15                         3:2, 8
3:9-23                                                      4:17-19
5:12                                                         5:8

1 John
1:8, 10

 

Scriptures That Testify to Man’s “Guilty Inability”

Job          Jeremiah               Matthew John                      Romans                  1 Corinthians       2 Peter
14:4         13:23                       7:16, 18                   3:3, 5                       8:7-8                         2:14                        2:14
                                                12:33                       6:44, 65                                                    12:3
                                                13:13-15                  8:43
                                                                                14:17

Man Is Held in Captivity to Satan

                                John                       2 Corinthians                       2 Timothy                              1 John
                                8:44                         4:4                                           2:25-26                                    3:10
                                                                                                                                                                5:19

Man is a Slave to Sin

                                                Romans                                 Titus                                        2 Peter
                                                6:20                                        3:3                                             2:19