Total Inability - Part 1
Tom Shrader opens the second session of a seven-week series on the five points of Calvinism, laying the historical groundwork of the Synod of Dort and the Arminian controversy before focusing on the 'T' of TULIP: Total Inability. Drawing from Genesis 3, Romans 3 and 5, and Ephesians 2, he argues that as a result of Adam's sin all humanity enters the world spiritually dead—not merely inclined toward sin or 'mostly dead,' but wholly unable to comprehend or desire spiritual truth. The lesson closes with the pastoral implication that a dead man needs life, setting up the following week's discussion on whether natural man possesses any free will to respond to the gospel.
“We're not sinners because we sin, but we sin because we're sinners.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: God's Plan for Salvation (2004)
Recorded: 2004 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 56 min
Themes: sin, salvation, human nature, depravity, free will, spiritual death, redemption, grace, new believer, questioning salvation, struggling with doubt, theology student, small group leader, seeker, young adult, searching for truth
Scripture: Ephesians 1:4-5, Ephesians 1:11, 2 Thessalonians 2:13, Genesis 2:16-17, Genesis 3:6, Romans 5:12, Romans 3:23, Romans 6:23, 2 Chronicles 6:36, Ecclesiastes 7:20, Ephesians 2:1-3
Theological Themes: total depravity, total inability, TULIP, Calvinism, Arminianism, original sin, federal headship, soteriology
Full Transcript
Introduction and Series Ground Rules
We are in week two of a series called God's Plan for Salvation. It is a series that generates all sorts of discussion and passion — some of that discussion is heated, some becomes argumentative, some becomes debate. What we want to do throughout this process is provide you resources. As you go out into the lobby and straight to your right, you will see stacks of books and somebody there to help you. We have identified seven or eight books that deal with this subject.
The one we are featuring is called *The Five Points of Calvinism*. If you were only going to buy one of those books, this would be the one I would recommend. It will give you an overview, and from roughly the middle back it is appendix, documentation, and further reading, so it is not a huge read. It is, however, an important read on this topic. We ordered 120 of them, and I am told there are 29 left, so grab one afterwards if you get the chance. Each week all the books are out there, so take some time and work your way through them.
Ground Rules for the Series
When we talk about God's plan for salvation and the heat and debate it generates, we need some ground rules. We will keep them in front of you every week. Number one: the Bible is our final authority. We will talk tonight about Calvin and Luther, and we will quote Steele and Thomas from that book, John MacArthur, and others — but it is not their opinion that is important to us. What settles our discussion is what does the Bible say? The Bible serves as our final authority.
Here is the second ground rule. I have never been around a topic that lends itself more to rabbit trails — to people wanting to run down a side path and ask, "If that's true, what about this?" We are going to resist, at least from the front, the temptation to do that. We are going to proceed in a very logical sequence and stay on track, moving slowly, deliberately, and repetitively.
I mentioned last week that there is a burden I carry, and it is the burden to communicate — not merely to be understood, but to communicate so that I cannot possibly be misunderstood. I know that is an impossible task, but that is the burden I have. You have a burden too: the burden to listen. That is your responsibility — to pay attention, to not get distracted. As your mind wanders, make a note and get back on track. Anything that will appear on the screen is on the website by Friday every week, so you can download the notes and come in with them in your hands. That will save you a lot of distraction.
You need to pay attention, and you need to be here for all seven of these sessions. You cannot say, "I'm an even-numbered person — I'll be here for two, four, and six." That will not work, because there is a building process. If you missed last week, it was an introduction, so you can still pick up this week, but go back and listen to it. This series is seven weeks long, so chances are you may have a scheduling conflict at some point. You cannot afford to miss what is being said. Get on the website and listen. If you miss any part of this, because it all hangs together, you could easily find yourself down a path that leads to mistakes. We will progress logically and carefully.
Patience and Honesty on the Journey
You have legitimate questions, and legitimate questions deserve legitimate answers — and you will get them. Most of your questions are going to get answered from here in the balance of this series, so I ask you to be patient and work your way through. When we are all done, we will have a forum discussion night. I may not be there to lead it, but the men who teach the classes on the doctrines of grace and a couple of the elders will be there, and you will have an opportunity to ask your questions, go back and forth, and get answers.
This process may mean that you set aside your background for a time. A man came up after the last service and said that he had been here for a year, grappling with this material for a year, and that he had been in church all his life and had never heard any of this. He found it very hard to listen without wondering why he had never heard it before. I do not know why you may never have heard this before. It may be because it is not taught in very many places anymore, which is sad.
I will give you the flip side of that as well. I have talked to people who had never heard this, suddenly grasped it, and then wanted to load a machine gun and blast every friend they had ever had with this truth — to take the doctrines of grace and beat people to death with them. This is not a license to do that. Let me speak autobiographically: it took me three years to navigate my way through this. I am not the sharpest person in the world, but it took me three years to see it. Now I cannot see how anyone could miss it, but I do know it took me three years. So you need to be patient with people.
I admire the honesty of the man who said that from the very first time he began hearing this, it had just been hard for him. It may pit you against some of your past, and that is okay. For most of you for whom this is new, and perhaps even a struggle, I honestly think — though I do not have the gift of prophecy — that if you hang in there, there is a moment in your future when it will all come together. I say that simply based on the people I have watched who honestly and intellectually worked their way through this.
agree with your theory of salvation. I would encourage you to consider that this isn't a theory of salvation. It's the doctrine of salvation as revealed in Scripture. Theories are optional. This isn't. I hope you'll study it further. God bless you.
Now, we called this series "Foundations," and we subtitled it "Understanding the Five Points of Calvinism." What are the five points? They are Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, and the Perseverance of the Saints. And when you take the first letter of each one of those, you get the acrostic TULIP. So these five points are sometimes referred to as the TULIP of Calvinism. That's just a way to remember them. Today we are going to look at the first petal of the TULIP, which is Total Depravity. And because there is so much here, we're going to make this a two-part study. So today is Part 1 of Total Depravity, and next week will be Part 2.
What Total Depravity Does Not Mean
Let me start by telling you what Total Depravity does not mean, because there are some common misunderstandings. Total Depravity does not mean that every person is as bad as they could possibly be. It does not mean that unsaved people are incapable of doing good things, kind things, or moral things. You know people who are not believers who are wonderful, generous, kind people. Total Depravity does not mean they are incapable of that.
What it does mean is this: every part of the human being — the mind, the will, the emotions, the body — has been affected and corrupted by sin. It means that sin has infected every faculty of the human person. No part of us has escaped the reach of sin's corruption. That is what we mean by "total" — not that we are all as wicked as we could be, but that sin has touched and tainted every dimension of who we are.
The Doctrine of Total Inability
Now, connected to this, and really the emphasis of what we want to look at, is what some theologians call Total Inability. This is the idea that, because sin has corrupted every faculty of the human person, the unregenerate man — the man who has not been born again — is unable to respond to God, unable to seek God, and unable to choose God on his own. He is, spiritually speaking, dead. And dead men cannot do anything to bring themselves to life. They need someone to act upon them from the outside.
This is not a popular teaching. In fact, this is probably the point that generates the most pushback of all five. The reason it generates so much pushback is that it strikes at something we hold very dear, which is our sense of human autonomy and free will. We like to think that we are the ones who, at the end of the day, make the final call. We like to think that salvation is ultimately something we reach up and take hold of. And what Total Inability says is that, left to ourselves, we would never reach for it at all.
What the Scripture Says About the Natural Man
Let's look at what the Scripture says. Turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 2. Paul writes in verse 14: "But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised." Notice the language Paul uses. He does not say the natural man will not accept the things of the Spirit of God. He says he cannot understand them. This is not a statement about willingness. It is a statement about ability. The natural man — the man without the Spirit — simply does not have the capacity to receive spiritual truth.
Now turn to Romans chapter 3. This is one of the most concentrated passages in all of Scripture on the condition of natural man. Beginning in verse 10, Paul writes: "There is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God; all have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who does good, there is not even one." Read that carefully. Paul is not saying that most people don't seek God. He is not saying that the majority of people have turned aside. He says none. There is none who seeks for God. That is a sweeping, absolute statement, and it needs to be reckoned with.
This is where the doctrine becomes uncomfortable, because it means that when a person comes to faith, they are not the one who initiated that process. They did not seek God out of their own natural inclination. Something happened to them first — something from the outside — that enabled them to respond. And that something is the work of the Holy Spirit.
The Image of Spiritual Death
The Scripture uses the language of death to describe the condition of the unregenerate person. Turn to Ephesians chapter 2. Paul writes in verses 1 through 3: "And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest."
Notice Paul does not say we were sick. He does not say we were weak. He does not say we were in need of a little help. He says we were dead. And this is crucial, because death is not a condition that admits of degrees in the same way that sickness does. A sick man can, in some sense, cooperate with the doctor who comes to help him. A dead man cannot cooperate with anything. A dead man needs to be made alive before he can do anything at all.
This is the picture the Scripture paints of the natural man before God. He is not a drowning man who just needs a rope thrown to him so he can grab it. He is a dead man at the bottom of the ocean who needs to be brought up, given life, and then he will breathe. The initiative is entirely God's.
The Illustration of Lazarus
Jesus gave us what I think is one of the most powerful illustrations of this truth, and He gave it to us not as a parable but as an actual event. Turn to John chapter 11. This is the account of the raising of Lazarus. Lazarus has been dead for four days when Jesus arrives at the tomb. And what does Jesus do? Verse 43: "He cried out with a loud voice, 'Lazarus, come forth.'" And Lazarus came out.
Now think about what happened there from a human standpoint. Lazarus did not hear Jesus calling and decide he wanted to come back to life. Lazarus did not weigh his options and choose to respond. Lazarus was dead. He had no capacity to hear, to decide, or to act. What Jesus did was speak life into a dead man, and that word of life was so powerful that it accomplished what it said. Lazarus came forth because Jesus called him.
That is a picture of what happens in salvation. God speaks. His word goes out. And the dead man lives — not because the dead man contributed something, but because God's word is that powerful. This is what Jesus means when He says in John 6:44, "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him." The drawing is prior to the coming. God acts first.
Objections and the Question of Responsibility
Now here is the objection that almost always comes at this point, and it is a fair objection. If man is unable to respond to God on his own, then how can God hold him responsible for not responding? If the natural man cannot seek God, cannot accept the things of the Spirit, cannot come to Christ unless the Father draws him, then isn't it unjust for God to condemn him for failing to do what he was incapable of doing?
This is a serious question, and it deserves a serious answer. And the answer the Scripture gives us is this: man's inability is not an innocent inability. It is a culpable inability. It is an inability that is the direct result of sin. Man cannot seek God, not because God made him that way, but because man chose sin in Adam, and that choice corrupted his nature. The inability is real, but it is a self-incurred inability. And so the condemnation is just, because man is not condemned for failing to do something God prevented him from doing. He is condemned for the sin that produced the inability in the first place.
Paul addresses this very objection in Romans chapter 9. He anticipates someone saying exactly this, and he writes in verse 19: "You will say to me then, 'Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?'" And Paul does not answer by saying, "Well, actually, man does have enough free will to respond." He answers in verse 20: "On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, 'Why did you make me like this,' will it?" Paul's answer is to point us back to the sovereignty of God and the creature's place before the Creator.
The Good News Within the Doctrine
Now I want to make sure we don't end here without seeing the glory that is buried inside this doctrine. Because if Total Inability is true, and if the Scripture teaches it as plainly as I believe it does, then salvation is entirely of God. Every part of it. God chose you before the foundation of the world, as we read in Ephesians 1. God drew you, as Jesus said in John 6. God made you alive, as Paul said in Ephesians 2. And if God did all of that, then your salvation does not rest on the shakiness of your own will or your own decision or your own faithfulness. It rests on God. And God does not change His mind.
This is not a doctrine designed to make you feel small, though it will do that. It is a doctrine designed to make God look great. And when God looks great, and when you understand that your salvation is rooted in His sovereign choice and not in your own wisdom or goodness, you can have a confidence and a peace that you simply cannot manufacture any other way. That is where this doctrine is meant to take us. Next week we will continue in Part 2, and we will press further into what the Scripture says about the nature of this inability and how it connects to the rest of the five points.
The Origins of the Five Points
This is not my theory. My theories aren't worth much. This is what the Bible teaches, and it is nothing new. This is as old as Scripture itself.
When we talk about the five points of Calvinism, far from being new, they were actually a response to some new doctrine. What we identify as the five points of Calvinism has, for the vast majority of church history, been the mainstream position, though it is not anymore, and I acknowledge that.
It was in the early 1600s that Jacob Arminius began teaching and gaining popularity in the Netherlands. In 1610, he issued the Remonstrance document, in which he argued that God elects based on His foreknowledge — in other words, He looks down the corridors of time, sees those who will choose Him, and elects those people. Arminius also taught that God intended that everybody would be saved through Jesus' death, that man is incapable of good but the Holy Spirit intervenes in everyone's life, and that this intervention can be resisted.
The Synod of Dort convened in 1618, as churches came together to deal with these five points. They committed to study them not based on what Arminius said, and not based on what Calvin or Luther might say — Calvin would have been dead about fifty years by then — but based solely on what Scripture teaches. When they examined these five points, they concluded that they were incompatible with Scripture.
The church determined it was not enough merely to reach that conclusion; they had to respond to it. That response became the five points of Calvinism. The Synod of Dort issued these points on May 9th, 1619, and when they did, this was not their own thinking or their own theory. They were responding biblically to the five-point teaching of Jacob Arminius.
The TULIP Acrostic
The five points are known by the acrostic TULIP: Total Inability or Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, and Preservation of the Saints. There are probably better ways to express some of these, as even the terms themselves can lend themselves to confusion. For example, Total Depravity could easily be called Radical Depravity, or Total Inability. Limited Atonement would be much easier to understand if we used the term Particular Redemption. Irresistible Grace might be better expressed as Efficacious Grace, and Persevering Grace in place of Preservation of the Saints.
The problem with those alternatives is that RUPEP doesn't work. So we are going back to the five points, we are going back to the TULIP, and we are going to define each one of them carefully.
We are going to spend this week and next on the T — the only point we will spend two weeks on. We could probably spend more time on each of these, but I firmly believe that this first point is the key, the foundation. What we are trying to understand is the condition of natural man, fallen man. When we use those terms, we are speaking of man in his spiritual condition as he comes into this world.
Why the Condition of Man Matters
This question is critical, and it turns out others agree. Steele and Thomas, in the little book I mentioned earlier, write this: "The view one takes concerning salvation will be determined to a large extent by the view one takes concerning sin and its effect on human nature." When I examine the whole process of God saving people, of man responding, and of how I respond, my view of man's natural condition is going to be a determining factor in all of it.
So what is the condition of man? This morning we had a baby dedication at the 8:30 service. The parents came up with little Ryan — a six-month-old, about twenty-five inches, and he looked to be about one hundred and forty-eight pounds, a little round mound of rebound who hasn't missed many meals. Mom, dad, and grandpa were there, happy as can be, and little Ryan was drooling away while everyone said, "Isn't he cute?"
But let me tell you something about Ryan. It won't be long before his eye-hand coordination develops to the point where he can grab things, and he'll learn to move and to talk. And his first word is not going to be "dada" or "mama." His first word is going to be "no" or "mine." By the time he is three, his parents are going to have to teach him to tell the truth, not to steal, not to lie, to be good, and to do what is right.
Why? Because naturally, he is going to say the check's in the mail. Naturally, he is going to say tell them I'm not home. That is our nature, because we come into the world lost and separated from God. It is masked in the form of a cute little baby, but it is important to understand: this baby is a sinner, and therefore he will sin. It is not the other way around. It is not that he sins and that makes him a sinner. He is a sinner, and then he manifests that all through his life.
This is a critical issue. When you come to grips with what the Bible teaches about our spiritual condition, it becomes obvious that if God didn't do something in our lives, we could never — or would never — respond to any spiritual truth. J.M. Stifler says it this way: it cannot be said too —
The Condition of Man: Four Views
It is often the case that a false theology finds its source in an inadequate view of depravity — the condition of man. As I see it, there are basically four options, four views that we have of man.
The first is *tabula rasa* — that is a Latin term. What it means is "blank slate." In other words, man comes into the world stuck in neutral. He is a blank slate, and then experience and other things write on that slate. That is the condition of man, according to this view.
The second view, and it is probably the most popular view in our pagan worldview, is that man is basically good. We look around and say, "I understand that he has killed five people and raped four women, but he is a good guy. I have known him for a long time. I would have never suspected he would do this." Well, apparently you did not know him very well.
This produces a very important cultural consequence: we are always a victim, but never a villain. When something goes wrong, it had to be my mother's fault, my father's fault, the environment's fault. "I am a victim of my socioeconomic background." That is why I feel sorry for Adam. When God said, "Where are you, Adam?" — Adam could not blame his social circumstances. He was in paradise. He was out of excuses. Though he did come up with a very clever one, if you remember: "It is the woman that You gave me."
The third view is a variation of the second, except it leans to the negative side. It says we are basically very sinful, but we can still do some good. And then the fourth view — the biblical view, the right view, our view — is that man is spiritually dead and unable to do anything good.
Total Inability Defined
When we talk about total depravity, or total inability, here is what we mean. As a result of Adam's sin, all mankind is spiritually dead and unable to either comprehend or believe spiritual truth. Man is blind and deaf to the message of salvation. That is the condition of man. That is what the Bible teaches about man.
It may run contrary to what you think, what you feel, your instincts, or even what you have been taught. I understand that. I am sympathetic to that. I can identify with that. But I think it is clearly the teaching of Scripture.
John MacArthur says it this way: men apart from God are spiritual zombies — the walking dead who do not know they are dead. They go through the motions of life, but they do not possess it. This can be very, very deceiving.
I could illustrate it simply by pulling one of you up here who did not take communion — someone who would say, "I am not a Christian." You could be healthy as can be: body fat down around five or six percent, training for a marathon, ideal weight, blood pressure under control. You look very much alive. But you are dead spiritually.
And when we talk about dead, we mean dead. Those of you who have been around will understand how to finish this: we mean dead. We do not mean mostly dead.
Mostly Dead and All Dead
In the scene from *The Princess Bride*, Miracle Max examines the hero and delivers his verdict: "It just so happens that your friend here is only mostly dead. There is a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead, he is slightly alive. Now, all dead — well, with all dead, there is usually only one thing you can do." When asked what that is, the answer is: "Go through his clothes and look for loose change."
The point is this: the Bible does not describe man as mostly dead. Scripture describes man as all dead — not slightly alive, not leaning in the right direction, not capable of finding his own way if given the right conditions. Spiritually dead. That is the teaching we are examining.
Mostly Dead or All Dead?
There is a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. In *The Princess Bride*, Miracle Max puts it plainly: all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do — go through his clothes and look for loose change. That distinction sitting in the middle of that joke is actually critically important. If I'm mostly dead, I'm slightly alive. We have that figured out physically, but we need to get our arms around it spiritually.
There is a big difference between man being mostly dead spiritually and man being dead spiritually. Scripture does not stutter there. Scripture does not say you were mostly dead in your sins and trespasses and slightly alive — no, you were dead in your sins and trespasses. And this is crucial, because we are about to begin the conversation about how man responds to salvation, what role man plays in it. Man's ability to respond depends entirely on whether he is dead or merely mostly dead.
Two Broken Illustrations
You hear illustrations like this: salvation is like a man at the bottom of the ocean holding one last breath in his lungs. He cannot let it out. God lets a rope down, and the man grabs it. He was helpless and hopeless, but he grabbed that rope. Here is the problem. For a man to grab that rope, he must be mostly dead — slightly alive. Otherwise he does not have the ability to grab anything. The illustration fails because man is not lying at the bottom of the ocean holding one last breath. Man is at the bottom of the ocean with the sharks eating his body, picking the bones clean. He is dead.
Or consider the other illustration: man has sinned, he is sick, lying in bed, unable to move. Along comes the serum — the serum is like salvation — and we pour it into his throat. When man simply swallows, he will be saved. Here is the problem again. For him to swallow, he must be slightly alive, mostly dead. But he is not mostly dead. He is dead. And if he were alive, he would spit the serum out, because he does not want anything spiritually good. He does not want to respond. He cannot respond. That is the condition of man.
What Original Sin Actually Means
That condition is known as original sin. When we talk about original sin, we are not talking about a specific action. We are talking about the effect of the sin of Adam and Eve on our lives, the effect on humanity and the human race. Christians may disagree on the details, and even those who acknowledge original sin can disagree about its depth.
I was born and raised Catholic — Catholic grade school, high school, college. The Baltimore Catechism was, in a sense, our Bible, and it addressed original sin this way: "Original sin is our inherited condition from the sin of Adam and Eve by which we are born without grace and inclined to love ourselves more than God." There is a word in there that should present a problem. Do you see it? *Inclined.* Torn in two directions. Perhaps the vast majority of the time we want to love ourselves more than we love God, but we are inclined that way — persuaded that way — though it could go either way, and at times we might love God more than ourselves. According to that definition, man is mostly dead.
The Westminster Confession of Faith says something quite different: "Man, by his fall into a state of sin, has wholly lost all ability of will to do any spiritual good that is accompanying salvation. So as a natural man, being altogether adverse from good and dead in sin, he is unable by his own strength to convert himself or prepare himself for conversion." In other words, man is not mostly dead. Man is dead. We are not talking about man being inclined. We are saying man has lost his ability. Man is adverse to good. Man hates good. Man has no ability and no desire to respond to the gospel.
How Did We Get This Way?
Now, how did we get this way? We are going to take a fast-paced look at Genesis 2 and 3, then Romans 5 and Romans 3, and then Ephesians 2. Genesis 3 is the explanation for the world's condition — and more importantly, it is the explanation of man's heart.
Here is a great exercise. Read Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, skip Genesis 3, and then read Genesis 4. If you did that, you would say to yourself: what happened? Genesis 2 ends with Adam and Eve in the garden — naked, happy, in harmony and peace. Genesis 4 begins with murder, strife, suffering, pain, war, and conflict. How do we go from naked and happy to clothed and warring, suffering in pain? Genesis 3. I preached a message once titled "The Most Important Chapter in the Bible." We can all debate that, but when I understood Genesis 3, I began to understand the world around me and the condition of man's heart.
Because you have to wonder: how can an athlete making ten, fifteen, twenty million dollars a year just flush it all away for drugs? How can a man or a woman in a great marriage with young children just turn their back and walk away from all of it? And if you want to zoom out from those individual examples to the macro view, how did the world get the way it is? Your friends have said it to you: if God is such a loving God, why would He create a world where babies die, where —
The World God Made — And What We Did to It
People ask, why do people get sick? Where is there suffering? Where is there pain? Why would a loving God create a world that way? Those of you who have been here for any length of time know the answer: He didn't create a world that way. He created a place called paradise. What your ancestors said was, paradise isn't good enough for us. We have a better way — our way. Look at how that came about.
Here is the warning God gives. Genesis chapter 2, verse 16 and 17: "The Lord God commanded man saying, 'From any tree of the garden you may eat freely, but from the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day you eat it, you shall surely die.'" This is not about food. It is not as though there is a barren land with one tree, their stomachs are growling, and God says don't touch that. In the garden there is fruit everywhere. This is not about food. This is not about nourishment. This is about who is in control — God or me.
That is why I laugh when people say, "She's a control freak, he's a control freak." Everybody is a control freak. Everybody wants to be in control. Some of you mask it better than others, some hide it a little better, but don't you want your own way? We all want our own way. That is what is at issue here.
Eve is tempted, and now the rebellion comes. Genesis 3:6: "When the woman saw that the tree was good for food and it was a delight to the eye and the tree was desirable to make her wise, she took its fruit and ate it, and she gave it to her husband and he ate it." Direct disobedience. God said don't eat it, and they ate it. Direct sin. It is exactly what we do every time we sin. What Adam said, in effect, was: not Your way, God, but my way be done. That is what we do every time we sin — we want it our way.
The Punishment and Its Reach
There is a punishment. At the end of chapter 3, verse 24, they are banned from the garden. A warning was given, they ate, and the punishment followed. God had said, "The day you eat from this, you shall surely die." And yet we see them live for hundreds of years afterward. What does that mean?
Fast forward to Romans 5. The warning was given, the rebellion took place, the punishment was handed down. Now here is the result — not just on Adam and Eve's lives, but on all of mankind. It is the explanation for the world you live in. Romans 5:12: "Just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men because all sinned." God said the day you eat from this you are going to die. Our representative there — chosen by God — Adam did what apparently we would have done. He ate, and he died spiritually. And we all died spiritually with him.
The word death means separation. Adam was separated from God spiritually at that moment, and the process of dying physically began there as well. If you are wondering whether anyone is exempt from sin, all you have to do is look around. Everybody dies physically because they are dead spiritually. That is the world you live in.
Sinners by Nature
Let me say this to you again, because we need to understand it. We are not sinners because we sin — we sin because we are sinners. That is who we are. When you get in touch with your own self and understand who you really are, you recognize you are a sinner. Romans 3:23: "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." And as Romans 6:23 begins, "The wages of sin is death."
So let us stop for a moment. Suppose you are here and you are not a Christian, and your attitude toward God is: all I want is what I deserve. Nobody ever gave me anything. I earned my own way — in business, in school, in relationships. I am a self-starter, self-motivator, self-made. And when I come to God, I want to bring that same attitude. I want what I have earned. I want my wage. Well, the wage — what you have earned — is death. Separation from God. And in that condition, you are helpless and hopeless.
Bad News Before Good News
Now you may be sitting there thinking this is not a very positive, uplifting message. But here is the thing: you need to embrace the bad news before you are ready for the good news. And the good news is right there in the second part of that same verse, Romans 6:23: "But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."
You may be sitting here tonight beginning to see it. You are a sinner. Of all the doctrines we hold, is that not the one for which we have the most empirical evidence? You are a sinner. And you have tried everything — your own religion, whether that be a religion of sex, or drugs, or work, or business, or success, or whatever. You have tried it, and it is empty. And now you are beginning to understand that Jesus is the only way. You are sensing something stirring within you. Let me tell you what that is — that is the Holy Spirit opening your eyes.
This week's cover story in Time Magazine is titled "The God Gene," with the subtitle: "Does Our DNA Compel Us to Seek a Higher Power?" And then there is this article...
The Condition of Fallen Man
Here are a couple of pretty interesting questions. If some people are more spiritual than others, is it nature or nurture that made them this way? If science has nothing to do with spirituality, and it all flows from God, why do some people hear the divine word easily while others remain spiritually tone deaf? Think it through. If a person remains spiritually tone deaf, that is exactly what we have been saying in different words. We are dead. But how is it that some dead people can hear? How is it that some people who are blind spiritually can see? God opens those eyes.
My point to those of you who may, for the first time, be hearing this and wanting to respond — that is God working in your life. When the service is done, you need to come up here or talk to the one who invited you here tonight. Talk to the people who will be in the front of the worship center after the service. That is God opening your eyes to see.
Scripture's View of Humanity
Here is the condition of man. 2 Chronicles 6:36 says there is no man who does not sin. Ecclesiastes 7:20 says there is not a just man on earth. Paul states it this way — and this is God's view of man: there is none who is righteous, not one. There is none who understands. There is none who seeks after God. All have turned aside. This is the result of sin. They do not do good. They do not desire good. That is God's view of man.
Now, you may be sitting there fighting with this a little and saying, "That's contrary to my experience." You might say, "Tom, at our office, we had a coworker who was very sick and had no insurance. Everybody got together, raised money, did car washes, and paid for her surgery. Are you telling me that's not a good act?" From a human perspective, that looks like a pretty good thing. But God is not stumped by the action. He looks at your heart.
Every year we get a great illustration of this, and we are only about six weeks away from it — Thanksgiving. On Thanksgiving morning, the local news stations will be out looking for something to cover, and they will interview someone at the rescue mission who is down there feeding hungry people. That is a good thing to do. And the reporter will ask, "What brings you out at six o'clock on Thanksgiving morning?" The person will say the people are hungry and they came to feed them. But then the reporter asks why they really do it — and I am telling you, they will look right into the camera and say, "It makes me feel good." There is the glimpse into the heart. It was not about the hungry person. It was about them feeling good. As natural men and women, we cannot do good in the way God defines it. We do not understand.
Dead at Various Levels
We are at various levels of this, by the way. If you walk the battlefields of the Civil War and think about what it looked like after a battle that lasted a day or two, you see all sorts of dead men at various levels of decay. Some bodies are still warm. Some are already beginning to decay. But they are all dead. In the same way, some natural men will still hold a car wash for a needy cause. Others will commit the most horrific acts imaginable. But they are all dead, and they are all guilty. That is what Scripture says.
Ephesians 2 and Our Natural State
One more passage. Turn to Ephesians chapter 2 — just to the right of Romans. Paul writes to this church, a church he has already spoken to about election and predestination, a people who have moved from sinners to saints. He says in Ephesians 2:1, "You were made alive who were dead" — not mostly dead, not slightly dead, but dead — "in your sins and trespasses, in which you once walked according to the course of the world, according to the prince of the air. The Spirit was now working in those who were sons of disobedience. Among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lust of the flesh" — and that word lust is now so associated with sexual sin, but it really refers to any strong inclination toward evil — "fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and we were by nature children of wrath."
Look at the descriptions in those verses. Verse 2: sons of disobedience. Verse 3: children of wrath. That is our natural condition. That is how we come into the world.
Dead Men Need Life
When you run into somebody tomorrow and they say they stayed home from church, here is what I am saying to you: if you do not grasp this, you have major issues. Man is spiritually dead. That is it in a nutshell. Man is unable to do anything truly good. What is the condition of fallen man? Is he dead, or is he mostly dead? He is dead. And there is a big difference. Fallen man is dead. What does a dead man need? Life. That is what Jesus says — you must be born again. Why? Because you are dead.
A Visit to Beardsley Funeral Home
When I was twelve, I went to Sheraton, Iowa, to Beardsley Funeral Home. My grandfather had died. I did not know him all that well growing up — he lived about 150 miles away, which might as well have been around the world. We saw him about twice a year. But after my grandmother died, my grandfather came up and stayed with us for a couple of weeks, and he and I really hit it off. So when he died, that was significant to me. We arrived at Beardsley Funeral Home, which was a house that had been converted into a funeral parlor. We came in, and there was a little plaque there —
The Only Thing a Dead Man Needs
The first time I ever saw a dead person was at my grandfather's funeral. My mom and I were the only two in the room, and we walked in and looked at him in the casket, then walked out onto the porch. My aunt said to my mom, "Didn't dad look good?" I thought, I better go back in there again.
So I went back in. His suit was perfectly pressed, his tie was all squared up, the knot was right, and his glasses were dead straight on his face. I'm 54 — 55 next month — and this was however many years ago, but it had a real impact on me. I stood there looking at him and said to myself: he looks good, but he has one overriding problem. He's dead.
I remember thinking there was nothing I could do for him. Our family never had much money — we weren't dirt poor, but they didn't have much — so I imagine there were times in his life when he really wanted things. I could have gone into that casket and filled it with hundred-dollar bills, and it wouldn't have made any difference to him. I could have lifted his arm and put a bottle of Jack Daniels under there and put it back down, and it wasn't going to help him any. I could have paraded the McGuire Sisters by him, and it wouldn't have mattered. He was dead. And the only thing a dead man needs is life.
Your Problem Is Spiritual
That may be exactly what some of you need to understand. Your problems are not sociological, economic, political, or psychological. Your problem is spiritual. And you are out there looking for answers to spiritual problems in a world that cannot give you spiritual answers.
Jesus says, "You must be born again." Well, that raises some questions. How can a dead man come back to life? Can he do it on his own? Does natural man even have the ability to come to Christ, to respond to this? Can natural man understand anything that is spiritually profitable to him? We are going to answer those questions next week.
Assignment and Schedule
I will give you a little assignment, because we are also going to deal with this question I often get: what about free will? Do this for me this week — get your concordance out and write down every place you see a reference to free will in Scripture. Just make a list of all of them, and then we will talk through all of those next week.
Here is the schedule, just as a reminder. Part two of this series on depravity is next week. Then we have a week off for Anniversary Sunday, which is a special time for us. We will finish the series by December 5th, and then I will schedule the open forum right after that so we can come together and get some questions answered.
Closing Prayer
Father, thank You for these truths. We acknowledge that we live in a world — and I mean a church world — where unfortunately this is not the doctrine that is taught all the time, in every place. But God, it is what Scripture teaches, so we will declare it boldly in our lives. Make certain in our lives that we have a spirit of humility and gentleness as we begin to talk to others about this.
Father, I pray that I would be able to keep the burden I have to communicate what Scripture says clearly, that You would help eyes be opened, that we would be attentive, and that we would listen. Thank You for this Word. Thank You for the truth that we find in it. Thank You for Jesus Christ. It is in His name we pray. Amen.