The Legacy of Adam, Part 2

Chapter five. I’ll double down
on a statement that I made last Lord’s Day. But the things that I began to share
last week and certainly intend to complete this week. You won’t hear in a lot of places.
I imagine there’s perhaps one church in a hundred that you’re
going to hear some of the things that I share with you today,
but it’s absolutely crucial that we hear them. As I shared with
you last time, it is absolutely crucial that we study the nature
of man and that we get it right, that we have an accurate understanding
of the nature of man, because, as J.C. Ryle pointed out, that
is where error begins. No wonder Martin Lloyd-Jones
called this twelfth verse of Romans, chapter five, one of
the most important verses in the whole Bible. In fact, Those
verses, 12 through 19, form a contrast between Adam and Christ that
is so poignant, so meaningful. That to miss it would be really
to miss the heart and the message of Scripture itself. The contrast
is simple. And as what I did last Lord’s
Day was spell out for you in explicit terms what the contrast
is, but If you remember, the contrast is begun in verse 12,
and it never really is completed. You can piece together where
Paul’s going through the rest of Romans chapter five, but he
leaves it for us to conclude. Verse 12 reads like this, therefore,
justice through one man’s sin entered into the world and death
through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sin. That
is the first part of the contrast. But what it prefigures is the
second part of the contrast, which would go like this and
does in our mind, as we piece things together, go like this. So also through one man’s righteousness. Contrasting through that one
man’s sin, through one man’s righteousness entered into the
world and life as opposed to death through righteousness. And so life spreads to all men,
and certainly I would, you know that I would put that in the
context of faith. Life spreads to all those who
place their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s the contrast
that is set up. Let’s go back to Romans, chapter
five, verse 12. We’ll look at just the first
portion of that this morning, verses 12 through 17. Where Paul wrote, therefore,
just as through one man sin entered into the world and death through
sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. For until
the law, sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed where
there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from
Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness
of the offense of Adam, who is a type of him who was to come.
But the free gift is not like the transgression, for if by
the transgression of the one, the many died, much more by the
grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus
Christ, abound to the many. And the gift is not like that
which came through the one who sinned. For on the one hand,
the judgment arose from one transgression, resulting in condemnation. But
on the other hand, the free gift arose from many transgressions,
resulting in justification. For if by the transgression of
the one death reigned through the one, much more those who
receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness
will reign in life through the one Jesus Christ. We began to
consider this passage last week. that it’s absolutely crucial
to get a grasp, to have a good working understanding of the
nature of man. And the first thing that we considered
as we looked back to the very opening words of the Bible itself
to Genesis chapter one is that man was created in God’s image. It is what Thomas Boston referred
to in his fourfold state of man as that state of innocence or
primitive integrity, as he would call it. After the counsel of
God’s will, God purposed to create humanity by saying, let us make
man in our image according to our likeness. God created man
and subsequently he created out of man woman and God created
humanity and he created them to have dominion over all the
earth. God said, let us create man in
our image, and that is exactly what God did. God created humanity
free of sin and free of a sin nature, as we began to consider
last week the purpose of His creation was to exercise dominion
over all of God’s creation, to glorify God and to come to enjoy
God in that. God created humanity free of
sin, free of a sin nature. But we know it didn’t last long.
We begin to consider that last week as we look to Genesis chapter
three. That’s what Paul alludes to here
in that first phrase. That through one man, sin entered
into the world. That one man was Adam. We saw
that plainly in Genesis chapter three. Through that one man’s
sin, sin as a principle, as a force entered the entire human race
and it was here to stay. Adam’s sin brought the whole
world sin. And lest we misunderstand, Paul’s
point here, we even looked at the little word sin, maybe it
didn’t mean what it tends to mean to us, but the meaning is
very plain. The sin began to commence its
course so that every person was touched by it. We call it depravity
or corruption of nature, and it literally invaded the world
to where every person became corrupt. We’ll look further at
that this morning. The thought that one man’s sin
entered into the world. And through that one man, that
sin began to pervade all of humanity. It was this kind of sin. Ralph
Wardlaw, a Puritan, spoke of sin in this term. He said, when evil desire is
admitted into the mind and instead of being resisted, prayed against
and driven out, it is retained, fostered, indulged and through
dwelling upon the object of it grows in strength and at length
is fully matured. It will come forth in action.
You see, Adam’s sin didn’t just begin with biting a piece of
fruit. It was already at work in his
heart, that sinful tendency. That is, it gives birth to sin,
it produces an actual transgression, sin in the life, a departure
from the way of God’s commandments. Sin did not begin with the act.
It is finished in the act, and the evil of the act concentrates
in it all of the previous evil of the thoughts, desires, and
motives from which it arose. This deed by Adam, was not just
innocently biting a piece of fruit. It was rebellion against
God. It was a taking up of arms against
the Holy One. It was a disdain for all that
God stood for. A desire to run his own life. Through one man’s sin entered
into the world. We looked at that word. It’s
a bursting in. It’s an invasion, really. It’s an unholy and an unpleasant
thing to think of sin, but it literally burst into the world
with that one sin of Adam. We pondered the entire phrase
through one man’s sin entered the world, that is an articulation
of the doctrine of original sin. We saw it last week. Adam presented
there as our representative to which the conclusion can only
be that Adam’s fall was our fall. His sin was our sin. His guilt
is our guilt. His sentence is our sentence. Nothing else makes sense. If
we die, if we suffer in this world, either God is a cruel
world, a cruel God inflicting upon the entire world the punishment
that was really, in feeble human mind, justly due only to Adam. Unless you take that position
that Adam was our representative, we hold God to be cruel. But
God is not cruel. Adam was our representative.
His fall was our fall. And since he was completely representative
of us, the sin nature of Adam and Eve was passed to all along
with its deadness. And it left us completely unable
to commend ourselves, to work ourselves, to please ourselves
into God’s presence, to earn our salvation. And it left us
without hope in this world. We left off last week with the
second little clause, we introduced it. I had already shown you that
the sin of Adam opened the tragic door first of sin, but it also
opened another tragic element. It opened the tragic door to
death. What Paul says is death through
sin. Sin preceded it, no doubt. But
the ultimate effect was sin and sinfulness. And through Adam’s
sin, that death gained entrance to all the world. Death was the
curse. Death was the sentence. Death
came right along with sin. The two were inseparable, as
they often are in scripture. Death, speaking of the dissolution
of the human body that essentially results in a separation of the
body and the spirit and a return of the body to dust death. In
plain and graphic terms. One faithful commentator said
it this way, the death entered the world, men became subject
to death by means of sin. Sin was the cause of death, the
ground or reason for its infliction. Had Adam never sinned, he never
would have died. The penal character of death,
which is so prominently presented in scripture, or that death in
the case of every moral creature is assumed to be the evidence
of sin. I don’t mean to be insensitive.
We lost a child. But every child ever born into
the world is born in sin, and the very fact that infants Or
even children before they even greet the world die is proof
that this penalty, the penalty of sin, the penalty of death
because of sin has spread to all men. It is plain, he goes on to say,
that the death here includes the natural death, as it does
in the original threatening made to our first parents. He says,
look back to Genesis. What did God mean when he said
in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die? Adam took that, as he must have,
to mean physical death. We’ll consider that again in
a moment. But he says, in neither case, however, is this the whole
meaning the death here spoken of includes all penal, evil,
death, spiritual and eternal, as well as the dissolution of
the body. Physical death is minor in comparison
to the second that we’ll consider momentarily. I told you a moment
ago that death and sin are linked together in Scripture all the
time. It ought not surprise us that Paul does so here. Ezekiel
18 for behold, the souls are mine, the soul of the father
as well of the soul, as well as the soul of the son. Those
the soul who sins will die. Romans 623, the wages of sin
is death. Romans 132, although they know
the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are
worthy of death. They not only do the same, but
also give hearty approval to those who practice them. Romans
7, 25, while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were
aroused by the law were at work in the members of our body to
bear fruit for death. Proverbs eleven, nineteen, he
who is steadfast in righteousness will attain to life and he who
pursues evil will bring about his own death. The wages of sin
is death. Adam brought it about first and
foremost, but that’s not where it stopped. That’s not at all
where it stopped. There’s a third phrase, if you
consider in Romans five, twelve. A third difficulty that was open
to us in the sin of Adam opened the tragic door, not only of
sin and death because of that sin, but it opened the tragic
door of utter devastation. I was watching a news channel
some time ago, and I don’t even remember what particular disaster
it was. I think it was one of the tornadoes
in the Midwest. And the reporter just came on
the TV and spoke of seeing utter devastation. And she stood against
the backdrop, and it was indeed bad. But during the course of
the newscast, I saw trees standing. I saw people walking. I saw a
bird flying in the sky. I saw the sun out and blue sky,
ironically, in the background. And yet this was deemed utter
devastation. People, the sin of Adam brought
with it utter devastation, utter devastation to the soul of man,
utter devastation to our relationship with God that goes so far beyond
any quote unquote natural disaster. Look at the passage. Through
one man, sin entered into the world and death through sin,
and so death spread to all men. What Paul points to here is the
universality of death. It was initiated by one sin,
but it spread like a mighty virus to everyone. Everyone, every
born on the earth has been tainted and touched and ruined by the
sin of Adam. Sin was passed, as one said,
the disease was communicated to the whole race. And as a result,
death is the universal result of that sin. As one said, just
as Adam brought sin on men, he brought death on all. Adam having
defiled his own nature by sin, that depraved nature was transmitted
to all his prosperity. And therefore, all die because
they are inherently corrupt. There’s a little clause at the
end that causes people much problem with this little passage. Some
people called it the most troubling passage in all of Scripture. Not to me. For one man entered
into the world and death through sin, and so death spread to all
men because all sin. One commentator taking the common
troubled path said these words must be taken strictly. In the range of death included
all men because all sinned. What he’s saying is, in essence,
if I can unpack it for you, is that the only reason that any
of us still die is that we too sin. It’s not the case. Even if we
never actually sinned like an infant. Like one in the womb,
never actually sinning so far as human perception goes. We
are tainted by the sin, the sin nature of Adam, and the proof
of that is we are still subject to death, as I’ve already pointed
out. The problem with those words, is that if that is so, if the
only reason we die is because we sin, then there is no such
thing really, even as a sin nature. We kind of start in neutral ground,
don’t we? Every person starts in some kind
of a neutral ground and his or her fate is in his or her hands. All he has to do is keep his
nose clean, walk circumspectly before others, Before God. It’s not so. Neither is it the
case that Adam nearly set things in motion. And mankind perpetuates
that like some kind of a gyroscope. In a tendency to sin, it’s not
the case of all. What is the issue, of course,
in this particular so-called trouble? What is at issue is
the nature of man and the nature of sin, the very thing that we
were tasked with by J.C. Ryle to consider our anthropology,
to consider the nature of man and the nature of sin and the
relationship of the two to each other. Summarizing these three perspectives
in simple terms. One person summarized saying
that Pelagius, the one time heretic of the church, said man as well. All of us would disagree with
that statement. All of us would say, no way are we born good
like so many of our worldly friends believe. But that was only one
short view. Pelagius’ view was condemned
as heresy in the 400s. But then along came a man named
Arminius, and Arminius said, man is sick and that prevails
to our day. Arminius merely said, you know
what? You need to get to the hospital. You need to get to
the spiritual hospital and you can ambulate yourself to the
hospital and walk in and tell the doctor what your need is
and explain to him your desperate condition. And he can give you
the medicine and you can open your mouth and take it and be
well. That’s what Arminius said. But Augustine, Pelagius said
man is well, Arminius said man is sick, Augustine said man is
dead. And that’s exactly what Scripture
says in more lengthy terms. Charles Hodge spoke of Arminianism
by putting it this way, its leading idea is that divine grace and
human will jointly accomplish the work of conversion and sanctification
and that man has the sovereign right of either accepting or
rejecting God’s help. That idea, as I mentioned, still
prevails Not only in our evangelism, but in our preaching. It is our
approach, our remedy to the need of humanity. J.C. Rye was right. If you start with
a bad diagnosis, you’re going to come up with a bad cure. Consider
the translation once again, because there’s great help in just pondering
the translation itself. Some translate that little phrase,
all have sinned. And to say such is theologically
accurate. We know that every person ever
born ultimately ends up sinning. But it means that really, that
all men actually and in truth have committed sin, but that’s
not Paul’s intent here. That’s not the case that Paul
is building. Some suggest that this phrase
indicates that all have sinned simply because they have a sin
nature. It’s true that we have a sinful
nature. And that the natural product of our lives is to sin. But that isn’t what Paul is saying
here. Not ultimately. As one said,
the apostle here used the Aorist tense, which conveys the idea
of an act completed once and forever. It is a historical event
or fact, not a description of the general state. Paul is referring
to a specific action which took place at a specific and particular
point of time, one definite completed action. It should be translated
like this, not. Because all have sinned, but
because all sinned, Simply that, all sinned. When Adam sinned,
all sinned. Any other explanation destroys
the plain contrast that Paul has laid out. Contrasting Adam
and Jesus. Just as through one man, sin
entered into the world, so also through one man, righteousness
entered into the world. And death through sin and life
through righteousness. And so death spread to all men
because all sin, and so life spread to all men. That’s the
contrast. As one said, if the all have
sinned of verse 12 means that all have actually sinned, you
would have to say that all die because they have actually sinned.
But if you say that the parallel on the other side would be that
those who are saved are saved because they have done good. We know that’s not the case.
And he concludes by saying the doctrine of justification by
faith would have to be thrown out. Paul points to the fact
here, his main thrust, his whole point. is that we are constituted
in the fall of Adam as sinners, not as merely having a sin nature. Not just that we have a sin nature,
but that we are regarded by God as being thoroughgoing sinners. Adam’s sin was our sin. Adam’s disobedience and sin has
put us all into that position of being regarded by God as sinners. All sinned in Adam. His act was
their act. No wonder Paul said it to the
Corinthians in first Corinthians 1522. In Adam, all died because
in Adam all sinned. As one other pastor tried to
clarify, this cannot possibly be understood to mean that all
men expired when Adam died. Obviously, the great portion
of humanity wasn’t even born yet. It can only mean that when
Adam incurred the sentence of death for himself, he incurred
it also for us. Therefore, Paul’s own interpretation
of what he meant when he said all sinned is that they sinned
in Adam. All sin in Adam. His sin is regarded
as theirs. They sinned in Adam and they
sinned in such a way to make everyone ever born liable unto
death. Now, I tell you, most people
wouldn’t consider that good news, but that is a great place to
start the gospel. That is a great place to begin
to understand our standing before God. That is the place. It is the best place because
this is Scripture’s position, not mine. This is what the Bible
says of you and I is that we are walking dead men. As my seminary
professor used to call it, animated cadavers. Adam sinned, and in his sin,
the whole of mankind was viewed as falling. And you say, well,
that’s not fair. And believe me, if you’re thinking
that in your heart, Adam sinned. Now I get to reap his punishment. That’s not fair. You’re not the
first one to ever utter that complaint. One commentator put it in. Bold
relief when playing off Second Corinthians two fourteen, the
love of Christ controls us, having concluded us that one died for
all, therefore all died. In other words, he says, when
we bear in mind that this very chapter teaches not only the
inclusion of all those who belong to Adam, the entire human race
in Adam’s guilt But also the inclusion of all who belong to
Christ in the salvation purchased by his blood and that this salvation
is the free gift to all who by faith are willing to accept it.
We shall have nothing to complain about. In other words, if you
want to complain about Adam, reaping consequences for you
that you didn’t even participate in, then you could hardly lay
hold to the righteousness of Christ that you had absolutely
nothing to contribute. Now, that whole thing, that whole
phrase is a sad, but very true tale of discontent, unbelief,
unfaithfulness, pride, rebellion. Genesis three unfolded in three
simple lines. The cursing of humanity is what
followed. If you would, take your Bibles
and turn back to Genesis 3. In Genesis 3, we have the results
of the fall, the cursing of humanity because of their fall into sin.
And it did touch both. It did touch both the man and
the woman. It’s not that God let Eve off
scot free. In fact, God begins with her. In
verse 16 of Genesis, chapter three to the woman, he said. I will greatly multiply your
pain in childbirth. In pain you shall bring forth
children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall
rule over you. Then to Adam, he said, Because
you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten from
the tree about which I commanded you, saying, You shall not eat
from it. Cursed is the ground because
of you. In toil you shall eat of it all
the days of your life. both thorns and thistles it shall
grow for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the
sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to
the ground, because from it you were taken, for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.” When Adam sinned against God
and His clearly revealed command, he lost his innocence. And having
lost their perfect righteousness, Adam and Eve lost precious communion
with God. And they acquired instead a sentence
of death. But further, every part of man’s
being was affected by the fall, his nature, his affections, his
understanding, his will. As a result, men are naturally
God’s enemies and naturally incapable of any God-pleasing act. And
as such, they are not only sinners by nature, but also sinners by
choice. Now, I shared with you last Lord’s
Day that ultimately this would culminate, I want to show you
the dreadful effects of the fall, and I want to answer for you
that conundrum. Was God bluffing when he said
the day that you eat of this fruit, you shall surely die? Let’s answer that, shall we?
There were four dreadful effects of the fall. The implications
of Adam’s sin were profound. There are four dreadful effects
woven in here in Genesis three, first of all, we are inherently
sinful from that moment forward, we have a sin nature, a tendency
to sin. Lorraine Vetner, to whom I’m
most indebted, Not most in the superlative sense,
but to a great extent indebted for my understanding of soteriology,
said this of the fall of man. He said, natural men are apostates
from the womb. And as soon as they are born,
they go astray, speaking lies. They are even shapen in iniquity
and conceived in sin, Psalm 51.5. The propensity of their heart
is evil from their youth. Genesis 8 21. It is out of the
heart that the issues of life proceed. Proverbs 4 23 acts of
sin are therefore, but the expression of the natural heart, which is
deceitful above all things and exceedingly corrupt. Jeremiah
17 9. The summary of. of man and his nature was spelled
out just mere chapters later. The sin of man was so great by
Genesis chapter six that God’s assessment of it was. Superlative,
listen carefully, then the Lord pardon me, then the Lord saw
that the wickedness of man was great. on the earth and that
every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. That’s how bad it had gotten. Man walked out of the nature
with a walk out of the garden, rather with a sin nature and
a sin nature that prevails at every turn. They all have turned
aside, Psalm 14, 3. Together they have become corrupt.
There is no one who does good, not even one. There isn’t anybody
that lives a good life. There isn’t anybody that lives
a God-commendable life. There isn’t anyone that could
earn his way into heaven by his goodness of life. But we’re only
just beginning. That’s only the first effect.
That’s only the first dreadful effect of the fall of our garden
representatives. What else did we earn by them?
Temporally vexed. Second, temporarily vexed, not
only inherently sinful, but temporarily vexed. By temporarily, I mean
with regards to time in the here and now, as long as we’re on
the earth. Cursing of humanity for their
fall into sin. I mean, some of you will get
this is playing for so many of us. To the woman, he said, I will
greatly multiply your pain and childbirth and pain, you should
bring forth children. Your desire should be for your
husband and he shall rule over you. To the man, because you
have listened to the voice of your wife, have eaten from the
tree about which I commanded you, you shall not eat from it.
Curse it is the ground because of you. You know what? I knew,
I knew the curse before I even really, really understood God
and the Savior. I knew the curse. Young men,
go get a job and you will know the curse. Folks, plant a garden
and you will know the curse, right? For the last three years,
too busy to plant a garden, too caught up in other things. The
weather didn’t cooperate. And for three years, my garden
lied fallow. And this year, all I grew, not
intentionally mind you, all I grew was weeds. And it was a battle
all year long. You take your eye off for one
second and the thorns and the thistles are going to come. And
I knew I’ll tell you how I knew. I’ll tell you how I knew that
we were temporarily vexed. I’ll never forget in California,
La Crescenta, cleaning a swimming pool and the Santa Ana winds
had come and this pool was up on a hill surrounded with trees.
And I began working in the cold and the wind and the rain. And
I had this little tool that collected leaves and bag after bag after
bag, hour after hour, I labored. And I’m not even ashamed to tell
you, I labored in tears. I cried. I worked so hard. I pulled ten trash bags, big
trash bags of leaves and weeds. And I knew the whole time that
we’re temporally vexed. This is all part of the curse.
There aren’t going to be leaves in the pool in heaven. But it wasn’t until I went into
the hospital to be with the wife when she gave birth that I realized
how great is this curse. I will greatly multiply your
pain in childbirth. My wife couldn’t sit down for
a month after she gave birth. I told the kids when they were
old enough to speak that every Mother’s Day will be a special
day. We’re temporally vexed. In fact,
God says in Romans 8 that that’s part of the reason that he’s
cursed humanity is to get them to look up and to plead with
him and to realize his existence and to come to him. There’s a third and they get
worse. Not only are we inherently sinful
and temporally vexed, but we’re physically dying. From the moment
we’re born, we have a death sentence. I don’t advise it, but you could
go to your friends tomorrow and say, you know, I’m dying. Great
entrance into the gospel. It’s true, I mean, it is true.
In fact, I always I always bristle when I read in the newspaper
so-and-so’s obituary that he died of natural causes. No, he
didn’t. It isn’t natural. It is now,
it’s inevitable, it’s inevitable, but it’s not natural, this isn’t
God’s design. But we are from the point of
the garden physically dying. God threatened death to Adam
in Genesis 2, 17, when he said from the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil, you shall not eat for in the day that you eat
from it, you shall surely die. God hinted at death beyond that
in Genesis 3, 17, he said, cursed is the ground because of you
in toil, you shall eat from it. All the days of your life, which
meant for the first time Adam’s days were numbered. He had never
looked at it in those terms. His days had never been numbered.
And now they are. But God pronounced death. Explicitly,
just two verses later. In Genesis 319, God said again,
by the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread till you return
to the ground, because from it you were taken for you are dust
and to dust you shall return. No equivocation, no lack of clarity. God told Adam that he was destined
for death. He was already, as God spoke,
physically dying. That’s the testimony of Scripture,
isn’t it? David said it this way. Behold, I am going the way
of all the earth. It seems like it’s natural. It
seems natural now. Ecclesiastes 7.2, which verse
I use at almost every funeral. It is better to go into the house
of mourning than to go into the house of feasting, because that
death is the end of every man and the living takes it to heart.
A funeral isn’t for Joe, Uncle Joe who died on the slab. A funeral
is for those in the audience. A funeral is for those to consider
that they too are physically dying and they too will one day
be in the box. But there’s a fourth tragic element
that came from the fall The implications of Adam’s sin are not only that
we are inherently sinful, temporally vexed, physically dying, but
fourthly, we are spiritually dead. I mentioned it several
days ago or last Lord’s Day. This refers to total depravity,
total inability. So where does this come from?
All you have to do is look at the text. Think back in your
mind, Genesis to seventeen from the tree of knowledge, good and
evil, you shall not eat for in the day that you eat from it.
He shall surely die. Was God bluffing? Did God not
mean what he said? We’ve already acknowledged that
he gave him a death sentence, but that doesn’t measure up.
He said in the day. You know the truth of it? Adam
lived another nine hundred and thirty years. Genesis chapter
five. This is the book of the generations
of Adam in the day when God created man. He made him in the likeness
of God. He created the male and female.
He blessed them and named a man in the day when they were created.
When Adam had lived one hundred and thirty years, he became the
father of a son of his own likeness, according to his image. He named
him Seth. Then in the days of Adam, after
he became father of Seth, were 800 years and he had other sons
and daughters. So all the days of Adam lived
were 930 years. Was God bluffing? In the day
that you eat from it, you shall surely die. What did God mean
by that curse in Genesis three? What did God mean by his threat
in Genesis two? What is it? Was it an empty,
unfulfilled threat? The bottom line is that Adam’s
fall severed our communion with God. We spiritually died that
day. It destroyed our innate ability
to please God. It left us completely desperate
and in absolute need of reconciliation with God, Adam died spiritually
the day that he sinned. I’ll never forget when I preached
Ephesians chapter two, verse one through five. I labeled it
the hideous carcass of sin. It won’t win any awards. It didn’t
gain a whole lot of accolades. But it’s accurate. The hideous
carcass of sin, once sin came into the world, that’s all that
was left was a. A rotting corpse. A shell of
what once was and what God designed. Ephesians 2 says it this way,
you are dead in your trespasses and sins in which you formerly
walked according to the course of the world, according to the
prince of the power of the air, you were dead. But God. Verse four, but God brings us
to life. It’s for another day. A total
depravity. Sometimes it’s so misunderstood,
it doesn’t mean that every person is as absolutely evil as he could
possibly be. As one said, nor does it mean
that he’s unable to recognize the will of God or to do anything
good towards his fellow man. There are lots of good people
out there doing good things, lots of good things that are
absolutely dead towards God. Total depravity doesn’t mean
The human nature was as thoroughly depraved as it could ever possibly
get. Doesn’t the news even prove that
to us as week after week? It just constantly seems to get
worse. It is getting worse. It’s exactly
what the Bible said it would do. Evil men will proceed from
bad to worse. We’re not there yet. Charles Spurgeon had a good grasp
On the nature of humanity. Preaching on John six forty four,
which first reads that no one can come to me unless the father
who sent me draws him and I will raise him up on the last day.
Charles Spurgeon preaching on that verse that this. Through
the fall and through our own sin, the nature of man has become
so debased. and so depraved and so corrupt
that it is impossible for him to come to Christ without the
assistance of God and the Holy Spirit. That’s why total depravity
is so often referred to as total inability. We can’t go to God.
We can’t come to God on our own. We can’t please him enough. His
nature is so corrupt that he neither has the will nor the
power to come to Christ unless drawn by the spirit. We declare
upon scriptural authority that the human will is so desperately
set on mischief, so depraved and so inclined to everything
that is evil, and so disinclined to everything that is good, that
without the powerful, supernatural, irresistible influence of the
Holy Spirit, no human would ever be constrained to come to Christ.
That’s the truth. It is precisely this condition
with which Jesus was dealing when a man named Nicodemus came
to him. Good religious child of Israel,
Nicodemus came stalking to Jesus at night under the cover of darkness
because of his shame. And Jesus said to him, you must
be born again. No effort will ever suffice.
No list of good deeds will ever be enough, Nicodemus. No religious
fervor, no great religious accomplishment will ever be enough, Nicodemus.
You must be born again because currently you’re a dead man.
You’re a walking cadaver. That’s Paul’s point. That’s Paul’s
point in all of this. is that we have a good working
understanding of where we stand. Because once we see our sinful
condition, if we are already in Christ, we cannot help but
to fall on our knees and thank God all anew, even as my brother
Dan urged, for what Christ has accomplished for us. It’s what Christ has done for
us. He took us, He brought us to life and He showed to us the
great sacrifice made on our behalf. And He breathes life into us.
We see the Savior for who He is. The condition is bad, very bad.
One Puritan put it like this, we distinctly affirm. That spiritual
death and in consequences eternal death is the chief and appalling
feature of the fall of man. That every man born into the
world is by nature as impotent for real good, as incapable of
doing an acceptable work for God, as thoroughly incapable
and dead to all truthful impressions as a stock or a stone. And he
will ever remain in that condition, going down to the lake beneath,
unless God in His might rescue and regenerate him. Adam literally
squandered away our ability and left us without strength, and
though ten thousand hells were threatened, and we are so corrupted
and ruined by the fall that we could not keep one of God’s commandments
perfectly for a single hour. It’s bad. It’s bad, but Christ
is good. Christ has offered to us that
through one man’s righteousness, that one man’s death can be overcome.
Through the sin that entered into the world through one man
and the death that came following in the shadows after. Life can
follow the righteousness of Christ’s life, not just Live for this
day in the here and now, but eternal life. Examine your hearts
before the Lord. Our merciful King, we humble
ourselves before you. And we thank you for those of
us who know Christ, that whereas we were dead, now we are alive
together with Christ. Father, we thank you for painting
it so explicitly and so clearly and so understandably that even
the youth of our body could understand that sin brings death. And that
it’s only by the power of the Holy Spirit that we are rescued
from that by the application of the righteousness of our Lord
Jesus Christ. We thank you, Father. We pray
that you would examine every heart in here. to see if there
is life, the life of Christ. There is life in no other. We
thank You and we praise You. It’s in Jesus’ name that we pray. Amen. We have some family matters to
attend to. John Caroline has an announcement
that he wants to…