Depravity is a word that describes the state or disposition of man
considered as a moral being. A moral being is one who is accountable to God for
his thoughts, speech, and conduct. Depravity means the moral corruption of
human nature; it refers to the state of sinfulness natural to the unregenerate.
Depravity is the opposite to what is required by the law of God. The sum
of the divine law is love to God and our neighbor. "Jesus said unto him,
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and
with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is
like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" (#Mt 22:37-39). Paul says that love is the fulfilling of the
law. "Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth
another hath fulfilled the law. For
this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not
steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be
any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou
shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling
of the law" (#Ro 13:8-10). Depravity must consist then of the lack
of love required by God, and the setting up of some other object or objects in
the human affections. And all the objects set up in competition with God may be
reduced to one, and that is self. Private
self-love, to the exclusion of supreme love to God and equal love to men, is
the very root of depravity. Self-will, self-admiration and self-righteousness
are but different manifestations of depravity.
Depravity is that state of nature that causes man to put self in the
place of God, and to seek his own gratification, honor, and interest as the
ultimate end of all his actions. Every moral being ought to live and act for
the highest good, and the highest good is the glory of God. Depravity is the
corruption of nature that leads men to act for self glory. The very essence of
sin is selfishness. Take the first and last letters off the word SIN and you
have the letter "I". Take the word self and spell it backwards,
adding the letter "H" and you have the word "flesh". And
the Bible often employs the word flesh to denote the corrupt nature of man.
"For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for
to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find
not" (#Ro 7:18); There is therefore now no condemnation to
them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the
Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of
life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it
was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful
flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who
walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the
flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to
be spiritually minded is life and peace.
Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to
the law of God, neither indeed can be.
So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the
Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not
the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.
And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit
is life because of righteousness. But
if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that
raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his
Spirit that dwelleth in you. Therefore,
brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall
die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall
live" (#Ro 8:1-13); "For we are the circumcision, which
worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence
in the flesh" (#Php 3:3); "Which were born, not of blood, nor
of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (#Joh 1:13); "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the
flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and
they are life" (#Joh 6:63).
When Paul describes men under a variety of wicked characters, the first
link in the chain is: "lovers of their own selves" (#2Ti 3:2). This exclusive love of self is the fountain of
depravity from which all- evil thoughts and actions flow; it is the womb from
which all sinful expedients are born; it is the incubator in which all evil
inventions are hatched.
Depravity is total, reaching to all the facilities of the soul; it is
universal; taking in all men by nature; and it is inherent, by which we mean
that it is the result of original sin, transmitted by natural generation or physical
birth.
TOTAL DEPRAVITY
Total depravity means that man is depraved or corrupted in all the
faculties of his being. It is not a question of degree but of extent. It does
not mean that any man is as bad as he may become, or that he is as wicked
as the devil. However, the potential
evil is about the same in every man.
The Bible says "there is no difference for all have sinned and come
short of the glory of God." If we have not sinned as much as others, it is
due to restraining grace and not to anything good in our nature. When Jesus
Christ said, "Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries,
fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. He was not describing any particular heart but the heart of every
man. John Bradford, a martyr, once watched the officers leading a criminal to
the place of execution, and remarked, "there goes John Bradford but for
the grace of God." The act of transgression is only a small part of sin.
Eight ninths of an iceberg is below the surface of the sea. And potentially there
is far more sin in everyone of us than every appears on the surface in actual
transgression.
There are degrees in depravity. All men are not the same in the degree
or amount of sin. Drop a grain of
arsenic into a glass of water, and the water is totally affected. Every drop of the water is poisoned. Put in
another grain of arsenic and the poison is not extended, but it is intensified.
It is not poisoned in more of its parts, but each part to a greater degree. So
man, a child of wrath by nature "Among whom also we all had our
conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of
the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as
others" (#Eph 2:3), may become more depraved.
The natural man is not depraved in spots, but the whole of his being is
depraved. The "carnal mind is enmity against God" (#Ro 8:7); "and the heart is deceitful above all
things and desperately wicked" (#Jer 17:9); "For out of the heart proceed evil
thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness,
blasphemies" (#Mt 15:19); the will is in bondage to sin "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" (#Joh 6:44), "And ye will not come to me, that ye might
have life" (#Joh 5:40); "For it is God which worketh in you both to
will and to do of his good pleasure" (#Php 2:13). The human will is no better than the mind and
the heart that controls it. Men choose what they do because of the state of
their minds and hearts.
Total depravity means that man, as the result of original sin, is
morally or spiritually dead. And dead as an adjective does not admit of
comparison. There are no degrees of death, but there are degrees in death. Here
is a physical corpse. The man has been dead one day. He is totally dead—dead in
all the physical parts. Here is another corpse. The man has been dead one week.
He is no more dead than the other man, but the corpse is in worse condition.
Now the Bible presents the natural man under the figure of a moral or spiritual
corpse. Here is a young girl of sixteen summers, beautiful, vivacious, and
outwardly charming. She knows nothing of the life of the brothel. But that girl, if an unbeliever in Christ,
is morally or spiritually dead. She is lacking in love to God and to her
neighbor. Her depraved nature is manifested in pride of apparel, pride of
beauty, disobedient to parents, lack of interest in the word of God, and
rejection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Here is another moral corpse. She is a
woman of the brothel; her virtue is gone, and she is abandoned to a life of sin
and shame. She drinks, and swears, and
smokes, and lies, and steals, and breaks up homes. She is no more dead than the
girl of sweet sixteen, but she is in a worse condition in moral death.
Moral death does not mean that man does not exist as a moral being.
Death never means extinction of being, but a state or condition of being. The
unregenerate man performs actions, but they are wicked. Theft, and murder, and
lying are all acts of moral being, but they are wicked acts.
UNIVERSAL DEPRAVITY
Universal depravity means that all men are depraved. Every man, apart
from inwrought grace, is lacking in that which the law of God requires. He does
not love God, neither does he love his neighbor as he loves himself. It is only
the born again ones who love God: "Beloved, let us love one another: for
love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God"
(#1Jo 4:7); who understand 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" (#1Co 2:14); "Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily,
verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom
of God" (#Joh 3:3); "In whom the god of this world hath
blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious
gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them" (#2Co 4:4); who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
"Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: and every
one that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him" (#1Jo 5:1); or who practice righteousness "If ye know
that he is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born
of him" (#1Jo 2:29).
In
Noah’s day it is said that "the wickedness of man was great in the earth,
and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil
continually" (#Ge 6:5). Of David’s day it was written:
"There is none that doeth good, no, not one" (#Ps 14:3). And Paul quotes this verse from David and
applies it to the people of his day "As it is written, There is none
righteous, no, not one" (#Ro 3:10). The only
men free from corruption of nature since the first Adam sinned and fell was the
Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, and his birth was not
according to the law of natural generation. To deny the virgin birth of Jesus
of Nazareth is to make him a sinner. And who wants to trust a sinner as
Saviour?
INHERENT DEPRAVITY
Depravity of nature is transmitted to all men by natural generation.
Like begets like; that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and the carnal or
fleshly mind hates God.
The early appearance of sin in the child is proof that depravity of
nature is inherited. The very first act that discovers reason in the child has
sin in it. Watch the child when reason begins to dawn, and it will express
itself by doing harm to others, or by lying, or by pride of apparel, or by
natural inclination to revenge. Have not all parents quieted the baby by
beating that which had hurt or offended it? The small child at the very dawn of
reason manifests a spirit of revenge towards others and a dislike for God.
In
Andrew Fuller’s diary, under date of January 8, 1785, are these lines:
"Much affected today in hearing my little girl say, ‘How soon sabbath day
comes again!’ Felt grieved to see the
native aversion of the carnal heart to God so early discovering itself."
Inherent depravity is seen in the fact that the child will sin without
being taught to sin. "A child left to himself bringeth his mother to
shame" (#Pr 29:15). Only leave the child to act naturally and
freely, and it will shame its mother. But we must be taught to do the things
that are not natural. Take a person who has never been taught to swim and throw
him into deep water he will drown. But take a horse or some other beast and
plunge it into the stream and it will swim because nature hath taught him. Man
sins naturally, but he has to be taught to do good.
Inherent depravity is directly taught in many Scriptures. "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity and
in sin did my mother conceive me" (#Ps 51:5). David is not casting reflection upon his mother’s
virtue; he is confessing to a sinful nature received in birth. "The wicked are estranged from the
womb: they go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies" (#Ps 58:3). In #Eph 2:3, we read that we "were by nature the children
of wrath." In "That is, They
which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the
children of the promise are counted for the seed" (#Ro 9:8), we are told that the children of the flesh are
not the children of God-and if not the children of God, they are the children
of wrath, children of disobedience; yea, children of the devil.
The Scriptures which teach the necessity of the new birth prove that
depravity is total, universal, and inherent. Regeneration is not of parts but
of Persons, the whole psychic being is born again. And every man needs the new
birth, for except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. If
depravity were not hereditary, the new birth would not be necessary; training
and education would bring one into the kingdom of God. If there were a spark of
goodness it could be fanned into a flame, and a birth from above would not be
essential to salvation.
ILLUSTRATION
The following supposed incident will illustrate the truth of depravity.
A ship’s crew mutiny put their officers in chains, and take command of the
ship. They sail to a distant port, dispose of the cargo, and divide the money.
But while they are on the voyage, they find it necessary, for
self-preservation, to establish some kind of laws to govern them in their
relation to one another. To these laws
they adhere punctually, act with a degree of fairness with one another, and
agree to an impartial distribution of their plunder. But before they reach port, one of the crew relents and becomes
very unhappy. He insists that they are engaged in a wicked scheme. He urges
that they release their officers, implore their forgiveness, and resume their
duties under their command. But they plead their justice, honor, and respect
for one another. They remind him that they are keeping the laws they had agreed
upon, and that there is peace and harmony among them. But he tells them there
is no virtue in it; that all their equity while exercised in pursuit of a
scheme which violates the great law of justice, is itself, a species of
iniquity. He shows them that they are running the ship for their own selfish
interests and glory, and not in the interest of the owner. He urges them to
repent of their wicked design. He pleads with them to release their officers,
and plead for mercy.
The application of this parable is easy. As sailors on the ship of life
the human race mutinied in the very beginning, and every one born upon the ship
has joined in the rebellion. While there has been a semblance of law and order,
and some respect for one another, every man, apart from the grace of God
working in him, has lived for self rather than for God, the Creator and Owner
of all. The need of every one is to repent of his sin towards God, surrendering
to Him and hoping for mercy through the blood of His Son. May both writer and
reader abhor themselves for what they were by nature and rejoice in what they
are by God’s amazing grace.