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, on 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, (Ecc. 7:29). 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." The Lord said this to the Pharisees, a group of upright, conservative, religious men who, as touching that righteousness in the law were blameless."
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 evil, who can know it?" 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, the many were made sinners: 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 declare themselves to be righteous and somehow worthy of a blessing from God are 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 unable to do 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 perverse so that He cannot choose to love God and follow Him, "Because the carnal mind is enmity against God." (Romans 8:7) The Lord, Himself, said, "No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him." 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.
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