Human Moral Inability and the Gospel

 "I know, O Lord, that the way of man is not in himself, that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps" (Jeremiah 10:23). 

I have written many times about the doctrine of total depravity. This is the doctrine of total inability, which is closely related, but distinct. Total depravity is the condition, while total inability is the result. That is, sin has affected every faculty of our humanity, the result of which is that there REMAINS no native ability in us to perform any moral good. The two things are often equated, but I am treating them separately, because I think that Scripture addresses them separately. 

It is a common error of supporters of free will that the doctrine of total inability is an invention of John Calvin, based on a misreading of the writings of Paul. I deliberately chose the verse above from Jeremiah to show that both aspects of that accusation are wrong. Total inability is an invention of neither Paul nor John Calvin. 

Rather, we see in the prophet his concern that men are unable to obey God from any ability in ourselves. As he faced the coming prospect of the exile of Judah in Babylon, he lamented that Judah could not reform himself. So, he pleaded, "correct me" (verse 24), because I cannot correct myself. That is, speaking on behalf of his people. 

As theologian John Frame has said, "Although fallen persons are capable of externally-good acts (acts that are good for society), they cannot do anything really good, I. e., pleasing to God (Romans 8:8). God, however, looks on the heart. And from His ultimate standpoint, fallen man has no goodness, in thought, word, or deed. He is, therefore, incapable of contributing anything to his salvation."

That is the connection of this doctrine to the gospel. The inability of men to display the righteous nature that God requires would naturally doom all men to eternal judgment (Hebrews 12:14), would display, not injustice on God's part, but rather hopelessness on the part of men. Instead, God established a righteousness which is by faith alone, the imputation of the perfect righteousness of a surety, an alien righteousness, granted to every sinner for whom He died on the cross, Jesus of Nazareth (Isaiah 26:12, John 6:37-39, II Corinthians 5:21). 

King David and the Biblical Doctrine of Total Depravity

When praying to God, King David included this plea: "Enter not into judgment with Your servant, for no one living is righteous before You" (Psalm 143:2). David, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, includes a lot of good theology in these two lines of poetry. First, he indicates that he understands that he

Fear of Judgment

deserves the wrath of God. However, as God's servant, i. e., a true believer, he has the right to plead, not God's justice, but rather God's mercy, in not imputing his sin to him. And the second line is, again, the acknowledgement that he deserves the wrath of God, with the additional acknowledgement that this is the natural condition of every human being (compare Ephesians 2:3). 

In theology, we would say that David is describing the doctrine of total depravity. This is the biblical teaching that every descendant of Adam (excepting Jesus alone) is a sinner from conception, with no natural ability to do spiritual good. 

David's profession is distressing to the human heart, because we all naturally want to believe in our worthiness and value. However, from God's perspective, which is that of perfect holiness, we all fall short of His standard (Romans 3:23). And, as David says, that shortfall earns us the judgment of God (Romans 6:23). There is no innocence, no age of accountability, no excuse because of ignorance. 

This is the knowledge that the unbeliever seeks to suppress (Romans 1:18). However, it is only as a person recognizes and acknowledges that he deserves the wrath of God that he can seek the only refuge from that wrath, under the blood of Jesus on the cross, applied to the believer by faith alone. 

The Imputation Alone of Righteousness Required by the Nature of Men

"To the one who does not work but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works: 'Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.'" 

- Romans 4:5-8.

Referring to the passage above, Rev. Davis Engelsma wrote, "[T]his is truly the state of the justified sinner when God justifies him: he is only, wholly, and truly 'ungodly,' not only devoid of any working of faith,  of any works of faith, of any love of God and of the neighbor, but also guilty of unbelief, of the working of unbelief, of hatred of God, and of hatred of the neighbor. He is only, wholly, and truly 'ungodly' regarding the means of his justification and regarding his righteousness before God that is the content of his justification" ("Gospel Truth of Justification," p. 204).

The contrast in both Romans and in Engelsma's response is between the prior condition of the unbeliever which is changed upon true faith. Paul speaks negatively of lawless deeds forgiven and sins covered, to describe what is done by the imputation of righteousness. Engelsma describes the condition of the unbeliever for which he needs the imputation of righteousness. 

In theology, we call the unbeliever's condition "total depravity." "Total" here is used for extent not for depth. That, the unbeliever's condition is that sin has corrupted all of his faculties, spiritual, mental, emotional, rational, emotional, not that he is as wicked as is possible. Even an exemplar of evil such as Hitler could have done even more evil than he did. And since ever faculty has been corrupted by sin, there can be no contribution from the sinner to his own salvation. It is possible only by grace alone through faith alone in the person and work of Jesus Christ alone. 

Know the Bad News, then Recognize the Good News

"The law must be applied with power to the conscience, or the preciousness of grace will be very inadequately known. The superficial piety of the present day is owing, in a large degree, to feeble impressions of the malignity of sin" (James Henley Thornwell, "The necessity and Nature of Christianity").

The comment above was part of a long article in the Southern Presbyterian Review in 1849, but would be even more properly written in our current days. If anything, American evangelicalism has degenerated far past that described by Thornwell in his own time. What would he say about "churches" with female ministers, gay marriages, and that serve as laughingstocks to the world.

His diagnosis is correct. As the church has come to despise God's law, she has lost sight of the sinfulness of sin and its insult to the God she claims to serve. If the word is used at all, "sin" is left undefined, and only in occasions of unfortunate poverty and ignorance. Never is any person called a "sinner," because that is harsh and unloving.

A false Gospel that says only that "God loves you" to everyone leaves everyone satisfied with sin. God loves everyone unconditionally, so there is no need to repent. Church discipline is unheard of in our day.

The result is to use Thornwell's words, a feeble church, and people with a superficial piety.

That wasn't the way Jesus lived: "I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance" (Luke 15:7). And His cousin and favorite Apostle tells us: "Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil" (I John 3:8). When was the last time a minister called out sin as being the influence of the devil, rather than ignorance or poor economic conditions? And what does the Bible say about that silence? "If I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die,’ and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, in order to save his life, that wicked person shall die for his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand" (Ezekiel 3:18).

Rather, this is how the Bible defines sin: "Sin is lawlessness" (I John 3:4). And this brings us back to the problem identified by Thornwell. If minsters do not preach on the Law, then their congregants never learn God's standard of right and wrong. And if Christians have no standard, then we have no standard to present to our world: "Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine" (I Timothy 1:8-10).

Paul the Apostle

Infant Rebellion, Sin, and the Judgment of God

I continually run into folks who deny that children are sinners, or that they are accountable for their sins. Most of those people claim that there is an "age of accountability," below which there is no judgment for sin. Yet, when I challenge them to show where the Scriptures say any such thing, the response generally boils down to, "Well, I just know it!"

The amazing thing is that these people will hold on to their assertions, even when confronted with the biblical evidence to the contrary, such as Psalm 51:5 or Psalm 58:3. See here and here. Yet, I will continue my fight with yet one more Bible verse.

"I knew that you would surely deal treacherously, and that from before birth you were called a rebel. [Yet] for My name’s sake I [God] defer My anger; for the sake of My praise I restrain it for you, that I may not cut you off" (Isaiah 48:8-9).

This passage is God's speaking to Israel, represented as a collective person. That person, God says, was a rebel from birth. Furthermore, that rebellion, He says, was properly subject to His wrath, though He has chosen to defer it. This deferment is an act of grace, for the sake of His covenantal reputation.

Some will say that, since God is speaking to the whole nation of Israel, this passage doesn't apply to the matter at hand. However, since He is speaking to the nation by analogy to a single person, does not logic require that His analogy also means that what He says would apply to a single person? There could be no analogy if the application didn't go both ways.

This would seem to completely obliterate any case for an age of accountability, because it both calls a newborn a rebel, a form of sin (I Samuel 15:23), and says that the rebellious newborn is properly subject to His wrath. Thus, both assertions of the supporters of infant innocence and the age of accountability are refuted.

The Sinfulness of Sins: Are They All Worthy of Death?

The subject often comes up of whether some sins are worse than others. And the answer must be, "It depends." Depends on what? Are you talking about God's justice or man's? For example, God's law condemns theft in the Eighth Commandment and coveting in the Tenth Commandment. We would say that coveting my neighbor's car is not as bad as stealing his car.

And that is because we are talking about sin here as the actions of one sinful creature against another.

However, when we consider that question from God's perspective, it takes on a very different character. Then we are talking about the sins of a creature against his perfectly holy Creator. From that perspective, every sin becomes not merely an act of theft or coveting, etc., but rather an act of treason.

And that consideration makes every sin equally one act, the act of treason. And what is the judgment for treason against our rightful King? "Since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them" (Romans 1:28-32). Look at some of the sins listed here. We see murder, and nod in agreement. Yeah, capital punishment is appropriate for murder. But what about gossips? What about those who disobey their parents? The foolish? Most people would be backing off now.

Yet, what does God say? "Those who practice such things deserve to die" (verse 32). Paul doesn't even say, "God says that they should die," though that would be sufficient reason. Rather, Paul says just that they deserve to die. That is, Paul recognized this fact, and believed that every spiritually-aware person would also believe so.

How far we have fallen from Paul's time that we question the justice of God, which consigns every sin, no matter how small in the sinner's eye, to final death, which is Hell (Revelation 20:14-15).

Free Grace Justification versus the Cults

The Pelagian cults - by which I mean primarily the Church of Rome, the Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Oneness Pentecostals - hate the doctrine of salvation by free grace, apart from works. They hate it because it liberates the believer from dependency on their organizational hierarchy. However, their stated reason for opposing it is that it supposedly results in antinomianism, a freedom to sin without the expectation of spiritual consequences.

They will always cite in this regard James 2:24: "You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone." I have addressed their perversion of that verse here. Mormonism even makes it more explicit in their own scriptures (Doctrine and Covenants 76:52): "That by keeping the commandments they might be washed and cleansed from all their sins, and receive the Holy Spirit by the laying on of the hands of him who is ordained and sealed unto this power."

However, the truth is the opposite of their assertion. True good works can only be the result of free grace. That is because the natural man is incapable of doing meritorious works: "No one does good, not even one" (Romans 3:12). The Pelagian puts the effect for the cause, and thus puts the supposed righteousness of the sinner in the place of the real righteousness of Christ (Mark 10:18), which is imputed to the repentant sinner by grace through faith alone, to make him righteous (II Corinthians 5:21). In other words, by teaching a doctrine of salvation that is impossible, the Pelagian blocks men from knowing true salvation! Surely there can be no greater sin (Matthew 23:13).

Nineteenth-Century Presbyterian theologian James Henley Thornwell explains the difference: "A penitent sinner is one who has been a transgressor, but is now just; the laws of God are now put within his mind and written on his heart, and his moral condition is evidently one which renders the supposition of punishment incongruous and contradictory. Such a man is as unfit for the atmosphere of Hell as an impenitent transgressor is unfit for the atmosphere of Heaven. There is obviously, therefore, no principle of reason or nature, as there is, unquestionably, none of revelation, which teaches that a man may be penitent and [yet] perish - that he may be driven into final punishment with the love of God in his heart and the praise of God upon his tongue" ("The Necessity and Nature of Christianity").

He is expressing the same idea that God does in Ezekiel 33:12: "The righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him when he transgresses, and as for the wickedness of the wicked, he shall not fall by it when he turns from his wickedness, and the righteous shall not be able to live by his righteousness when he sins."

The Salvation of Men: Impossible for Us, but Certain by Jesus

I have been having a lot of interactions with Arminians recently. They all want to hold on to some natural ability in men to bring themselves to Jesus, a form of Pelagianism. And this in spite of what we are told in Scripture: "No one seeks for God" (Romans 3:11). They just can't let go of some modicum of sovereignty for the human will. 

Jesus addressed this same attitude in His disciples. The Bible tells us the story of the interaction between Jesus and a rich man (Mark 10:17-31). To show where the man's true loyalties lay (as addressed in the First Commandment), He commanded him to give all of his wealth to the poor, and then to come follow Him. However, the man chose his possession rather than Jesus.

In response, Jesus told His disciples, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God" (verse 25). Shocked, His disciples despaired, "Then who can be saved?" (verse 26). 

The response of Jesus is the climax of the story: "With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God" (verse 27). The disciples thought what many today still think, that it is easier to trust God when you're wealthy. Yet, Jesus tells them that it is impossible for a rich man to come to Jesus on his own. And if it is impossible for the rich man, who would have the least reason to resist, then how much harder it must be for anyone else. With man, it is impossible. Or, as Paul put it, "No one seeks for God."

Yet, Jesus did not leave His disciples in their despair. Rather, He told them, "Not with God, for all things are possible with God" (verse 27). God does not leave men in our natural, unsalvable condition. Rather, He announces, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion" (Romans 9:14). Where men are naturally unsalvable, hardened and lost in our sin, impossible to save, He presents Himself in His mercy, which overcomes our resistance, and saves us by giving us faith in the finished redeeming work of Jesus. 

This is the marvel of what Calvinism has over Arminianism. The Arminian defends that which is impossible, leaving sinners with no hope of salvation.  The Calvinist looks to Jesus alone, and trusts Him to break through our resistance, causing us to love and obey Him, and to turn to Jesus alone for our eternal life.

 

The Flood and the Sinfulness of Those of Any Age

I often hear people claim that children are not accountable for sin. Some people say that there is an age of accountability, not because Scriptures say so, but just because it just must be. Others state it in a more-sophisticated way, saying that a person can only be held accountable for what he understands to be sin, on the supposed basis of Romans 4:15 (while ignoring Romans 2:15). And others claim that children are innocent (not comparatively, but absolutely).

However, not only does Scripture not exempt any class of people from accountability for sin, from conception until death, but rather it makes explicit statements regarding the universality of sin.

The first such statement is in Genesis 8:21: "I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth." This is the statement by God after the Flood that He will never again judge the world in that way. Why? Was it because sin had been eliminated? No, it was because the elimination of sin would require the elimination of mankind, "from his youth." God here explicitly states His perfect judgment that there is no such exemption on the basis of age or mental sophistication.

God says one thing but human sentiment insists on the opposite. Why? Because human sentiment is part of that very sin nature!

Can Kids Sin? The Age of Accountability

There are things in the Bible that can make a man uncomfortable. That is no criticism. It represents historical situations without modern parallel. We simply have no comparable experiences in our lives. We no longer live on farms, where we face the daily reality of, for example, the butchering of animals for our food. Meat is something we get in plastic wrap from the grocery store. We are completely separated from how that meat was prepared before that point.

One issue in particular is the Conquest, the period of time in which the nation of Israel, after having been rescued from bondage in Egypt, is called by God to take the Promised Land from its inhabitants. And not just to impose their rule over those inhabitants, as we think of a conquest, but rather to eliminate them: "We captured all his cities at that time and devoted to destruction every city, men, women, and children. We left no survivors" (Deuteronomy 2:34; cp. 3:6, etc.). However, that action was only as God had commanded them: "But in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall devote them to complete destruction" (Deuteronomy 20:16-17).

This offends our sense of justice, because God judges even the children to destruction. How can God do such a thing and remain just?

The problem is that we think of children as innocent. And, comparably speaking, that is true. Children haven't committed murder, for example (and even that is no absolute). We are justified in saying that, for example, abortion is evil, because it is exactly that, a genocide of the innocent. The relatively innocent. This has led to a manmade doctrine called "the age of accountability," according to which there is some age under which God does not hold a person accountable for sin.

The problem with applying that to God is that He doesn't judge on the basis of relativity. In His omniscience, He knows what is in the heart of every person, whether it is expressed in action or not. We cannot do the same because we are not omniscient. In addition, we judge as one sinner looking upon on another. That is why we are able to think only in terms of relative innocence. But God's commands to Israel show that He holds all humans to His holy standards, regardless of age, gender, or social status.

God, however, in His absolute knowledge and holiness says that even infants have wicked hearts (Psalms 51:5, 58:3). Therefore, He alone is just in determining to destroy the wicked, even children, in pursuit of His purposes. The doctrine of an age of accountability accuses God of injustice for the inclusion of children in His judgment on the Canaanites.

What the modern mind rarely grasps is that what Israel did to Og and his people or Sihon and his people is what He could properly do to every human in existence. Is it unjust that He exercised His justice in those cases but does not in our modern world? Of course not. That isn't injustice; it is mercy.

Are Children Culpable for Sin?

I run into a lot of people who deny the sinfulness of children. Some of them claim that there is an age of accountability, below which children are not accountable for their actions. When asked for the biblical evidence for that, such people merely turn purple and claim that I am wicked for questioning them. Others claim that sin is only recognized in those with the mental capacity to recognize the nature of the child's actions. Again, where does the Bible say any such thing? The answer is usually something to the effect of, "Well, it just has to be that way."

On the contrary, there are several Scriptures which teach the exact opposite, such as Psalm 51:5 and Psalm 58:3.

The one I want to look at now is Proverbs 20:11: "Even a child makes himself known by his acts, by whether his conduct is pure and upright."

Notice that Solomon here doesn't even say that we see the nature of the child, but rather that his nature is revealed by his actions. That is exactly the same as the words of Jesus in Matthew 15:18-20: "What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person." Both passages tell us that external actions are not what makes the sinner, but rather the heart that produces those actions. We are not sinners because we sin; rather, we sin because we are sinners.

And Solomon tells us that the heart of the child, whether it is upright or sinful, is also revealed in his actions. That necessarily precludes any supposed sinlessness in children. That doctrine is manmade sentimentality, not a biblical principle.

This is my question to anyone who holds that children aren't sinful, or are not culpable for their sin: Why don't you kill your children before your age of accountability? After all, if they are truly held to be sinless, then killing them now would guarantee that they would go to heaven, wouldn't it? The fact that you don't do so demonstrates to me that you don't really believe what you're saying. And that is often the case. A person's theology of the heart is often better than is his theology of profession.

Is There Injustice in God?

A lot of people, both among professing believers and among unbelievers, express moral objections to the commands of God to the Israelites to exterminate the Canaanites - man, woman, and child - during their conquest of the Promised Land. For example, we read in Deuteronomy 7:1-2 God's commandment: "When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you, and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them."

And we have the record of Israel's partial obedience to the commandment: "We captured all his [i. e., King Sihon of Heshbon] cities at that time and devoted to destruction every city, men, women, and children. We left no survivors" (Deuteronomy 2:34). The same thing happened in the defeat of King Og of Bashan: "We devoted them to destruction, as we did to Sihon the king of Heshbon, devoting to destruction every city, men, women, and children" (Deuteronomy 3:6).

Is that harsh? I think any sane person would say so. But does that mean that it was unjust? That I must deny!

The problem with the objections to the Canaanite pogrom is that these objectors have an unbiblical view of man.

According to the Bible, all human beings (excluding only Adam and Eve before the Fall, and Jesus) are sinners, rebels in our hearts against our Lord and Creator, the triune God in Heaven (Romans 3:23). And the consequence of sin is death: "Behold, all souls are Mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is Mine: the soul who sins shall die" (Ezekiel 18:4). This is the point of error in the argument of those who accuse God of immorality; they fail to understand the wickedness of men or its consequence.

However, we notice that, though all are sinners, not all die at any particular time. That is certainly true. God restrains His justice for a time - for most. And that is the issue. After giving them 400 years to change their ways (Genesis 15:16), God chose to apply His justice to the pagan residents of Canaan through the Israelites at that time. If He chose to carry out His justice on those people at that time, but restrains it for a time for the rest of the world, is that injustice? No, it's mercy. When the false believer or the unbeliever accuses God of immorality in ancient Canaan, he is really denying the mercy of God to the rest of the world in the rest of history.

And that error is deliberate. Unrighteous men are not ignorant of God. Rather, they "suppress the truth through unrighteousness" (Romans 1:18). They throw up this smokescreen in their minds, so that they can avoid their innate knowledge of the reality of God and our accountability to Him. This is the moral equivalent of the child who sticks his fingers in his ears and sing-songs, "La-la-la I can't hear you," when his parents are chastising him for misbehavior. Does that exempt him from the consequences? Of course not! Nor does this smokescreen from unbelievers protect them from the justice of God.

Sin and Guiding Principles

"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death" (Proverbs 16:25). 

Our society has become very mystical. Just listen to how we express ourselves. It is rarely "I think" now. Everything is prefaced with "I feel," instead. Movies advise us to "follow your heart." The heroes in the Star Wars movies - of which, I admit, I am a fan - are told not to think, but to let "The Force" guide their actions. 

I think that is a very dangerous way to live.

Look at the Proverb that I quoted above. Doesn't it address exactly that kind of subjectivist mentality? It warns that following feelings will lead to a deadly consequence. Why is that? "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick" (Jeremiah 17:9). 

Subjectivism, the feelings-based worldview, is based on a false, unbiblical supposition, that the heart is necessarily and naturally good. Therefore, in a confused and disturbed world, we are supposed to be able to rely on that internal compass, just as we can rely on a physical compass in a wilderness where every direction seems the same.

However, as Jeremiah tells us, the heart is not good. It isn't even neutral. Rather, it is given over to wickedness. Jesus explained this to the Pharisees in Matthew 15:18-20: "What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone." Rather than as a source of guidance, it is our heart which produces every error and wicked act that we commit. To follow your heart is, just as Solomon said in the Proverb, to follow a path to death.

Picture it this way, to return to my compass analogy. If a hiker were trying to find his way through the wilderness with a compass that was broken somehow, such that it always pointed the wrong way, what would be his fate? Lost, starved, probably dead. The same is true for any man who follows his heart.

Only the Regenerate Have Free Will

Arminians have enshrined their doctrine of free will, making it the concept that trumps all others. Yet, it has no biblical basis. Ask them! They will hem and haw about why it should be true, but they will offer zero biblical justification.

I suggest, instead, that Scripture is against their doctrine of free will (not that I deny the reality of free will, as I have said before). Rather, I deny their use of it, to mean that men have a will that can choose to seek and obey God. "Free" merely means without coercion. No one, including God, coerces the unregenerate to hate God and to rebel against Him. That is their nature, and they freely, even gladly, choose to act according to it, just as a bird freely wills to fly or a fish to breathe water. But the Arminian would never claim that a man is free to will either of those, since both are contrary to the nature of a man. However, the Arminian blanks out the logical parallel between that and a choice by the unregenerate to act regenerate.

Paul says, "God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will" (II Timothy 2:25-26). Whose will does the sinner freely follow? Not his own. Rather, he wills the will of Satan. The coercion isn't by God, or predestination, but rather by Satan. Yet the Arminian never criticizes Satan for ignoring man's free will! That misdirection is very telling!

What breaks that bondage? It is only by the prevenient act of the Holy Spirit in regenerating the elect sinner. It is by this intervention that Jesus, in His kingly office, overthrows the power of Satan and brings that man to repentance and faith: "When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace, his goods are safe; but when one stronger than he attacks him and overcomes him, He takes away his armor in which he trusted and divides his spoil" (Luke 11:21-22).

Turning to Paul again, he summarizes this in Romans 9:16: "So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy."

Total Depravity: Can the Leopard Change His Spots?

I expect unbelievers to deny that they are sinners. That is the nature of unbelief. If they understood sin, then they would understand the holiness of God and their need for a Savior. However, I am always bewildered by Christians, claiming to believe in the Bible, who deny the wickedness of men. Not that they phrase it that way, of course, but rather that they deny the logical consequences of that wickedness.

Paul tells us that the unregenerate are "dead in trespasses and sins" (Ephesians 2:1). Yet, such Christians unconsciously change that to "sick in trespasses and sins." And, as a sick person can act to make himself well, they believe that the natural man has the ability to treat his own spiritual condition.

Nicodemus

However, Scripture deals with that belief in other places, too. For example, we read, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil" (Jeremiah 13:23). The Prophet asks a rhetorical question, Can a man change his skin color? Or can a leopard wish away his spots? And the implied answer to both questions is "no." In the same way, he says, the wicked cannot choose to change to good. Jesus makes the same point: "What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person" (Matthew 15:18-20).

How, then, can anyone be changed? Are we doomed to the natural condition in which we were born? The Bible answers those questions, too: "I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes and be careful to obey My rules" (Ezekiel 35:26-27).

The answer is not to gloss over the sin of man. Rather, we depend on the divine Cardiologist to perform radical surgery, removing our dead spiritual hearts, to replace them with new living hearts, rendered thereby able to love God and to obey Him. This is what Jesus calls being born again (John 3:3-8). It is the new birth which changes dead sinners to living saints.

The False Fantasy of Moral Autonomy

There is a time in the Bible, where the Scripture repeats this mantra: "In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes" (Judges 17:6, 21:25). The Bible says that is a bad thing, an indication of moral anarchy. However, in our own day it has become a fashionable lifestyle: "Do your own thing. Just follow your heart."

However, underlying that concept is an assumption of autonomy, the assertion that man rules himself and his destiny, and need not acknowledge any standard of judgment over his life other than his own pleasure. Even Christians fail to connect that mentality to the words of Satan in the Garden (Genesis 3:5): "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." In this case, "knowing" means "deciding." Our popular hedonism has come full circle, to demonstrate its satanic origin, yet that doesn't check the promotion of it.

However, God is neither impressed with our moral sophistication nor our alliance with Satan. "You have wearied the LORD with your words. But you say, 'How have we wearied Him?' By saying, 'Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the LORD, and he delights in them.' Or by asking, 'Where is the God of justice?'" (Malachi 2:17). He finds it tedious to listen to us declare our autonomy and right to decide our own morality. After all, He is God, our creator, and we are merely His creatures. Therefore, such a claim of autonomy is an act of rebellion and treason, the exact sin for which Adam was judged, and he and eve were cast out of the garden.

Who Are the Children of God? Satan's Attack on the Plan of Salvation

This issue comes up in discussions with two groups of people: Mormons, who claim that every person is the child of God by creation; and liberals, who hold to a universal salvation, claiming that the fatherhood of God goes with the brotherhood of man. While the two groups are different in many ways, they share this humanistic view of the goodness of man in the eyes of God.

However, Scripture is God-centered, not man-centered, and, therefore, makes determinations on the basis of His perspective, not ours. And what is that perspective?

"It is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring" (Romans 9:8). God, in His word, always makes a distinction among men. We see it first in Genesis 3:15: "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel." Immediately after the fall of Adam and Eve to sin, God announces His plan for salvation, which shall distinguish between the seed of Eve and the seed of the serpent (see also John 8:44). And what Moses describes in poetic terms, Paul describe prosaically.

The efforts of Mormons and liberals to take down the dividing wall between the godly and the wicked is very popular in today's spiritual environment. However, it is an effort to erase a division which God has determined. That puts their effort in opposition to the salvation plan of God. In essence, they seek to undermine God's plan of salvation, the same purpose as the serpent on Genesis 2.

Total Depravity: The Hostility of Men to the Gifts of God

"Those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God."
- Romans 8:5-8

Paul says something that seems very clear to me: "You were dead in trespasses and sins" (Ephesians 2:1). Theologically, we refer to that as spiritual death. Since the fall of Adam, every man, woman, and child (except Jesus) has entered physical life with a dead spirit. And just as a corpse cannot bring itself back to life, neither can the dead spirit. It is only the Holy Spirit that can bring new spiritual life (John 3:6, Ezekiel 36:26-27).

However, even among professing Christians, this biblical teaching is very unpopular. There remains a part of our spirit that wants to take credit for our salvation. Therefore, while professing Paul's words here, most Christians otherwise teach that men aren't dead in sin, but merely sick. And, just as a physically-sick man can treat himself for his disease, they believe that the spiritually-sick man can cooperate with God in his own salvation.

However, as Paul says in the Romans passage quoted above, unbelievers don't feebly strive for salvation. Rather, it is their natural spiritual condition to hate God, reject His authority, and to turn away from any concept of salvation. Men aren't naturally able to be saved; they are, instead, naturally inclined to remain dead in sin!

Regeneration: No Zombies Allowed!

I have been confronting a lot of professed Christians recently who deny the doctrine of total depravity. That is, they deny that the human spirit has been so marred by the Fall that it has become unable to do any spiritual good from itself, but is, instead, dead (Ephesians 2:1), and fated to remain that way, apart from the regenerating intervention of the Holy Spirit. The alternative is that the spirit is merely sick, able to choose, out of its free will, to throw off its sickness and grope its way to God, maybe with a little assistance from grace. That is called semi-Pelagianism, a heresy, and shows how far even professing Evangelicals have fallen from the biblical Protestant faith.

Frankly, I am stunned by that, considering what the Scriptures say about the heart of the natural man: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick" (Jeremiah 17:9).

But let's look at another verse, one that rarely comes up in these discussions: "The hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead" (Ecclesiastes 9:3). How anyone, who claims to believe in the authority of the Bible, can read that and believe that man is basically good, capable of coming to salvation, I cannot conceive!

I understand that such people usually do not use the terminology of "basically good." They proclaim a belief that all men are sinners. But then there is a disconnect between that profession and the rest of their spiritual lives, especially in evangelism. They treat the sinful state that they profess like a difficulty that one must (and can) overcome, not a fatal condition.

But the Bible tells us that only God can change a man from a dead sinner to a living believer through regeneration: "Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord" (Ezekiel 37:5-6). While it is impossible for a dead man to rescue himself, it is a simple effort for the God of the universe to make him alive! That alone is the hope of the sinner.

Agriculture and the Curse of Sin

"How long will the land mourn
     and the grass of every field wither?
For the evil of those who dwell in it
     the beasts and the birds are swept away,
because they said, 'He will not see our latter end.'
     They have made it a desolation;
desolate, it mourns to Me.
     The whole land is made desolate,
but no man lays it to heart.
     Upon all the bare heights in the desert
destroyers have come,
     for the sword of the Lord devours
from one end of the land to the other;
     no flesh has peace.
They have sown wheat and have reaped thorns;
     they have tired themselves out but profit nothing.
They shall be ashamed of their harvests 
     because of the fierce anger of the Lord."
- Jeremiah 12:4, 11-13 

These verses describe the curse on the land of Israel for the apostasy of the people that lived in it (see also Isaiah 26:5-6 and Hosea 4:3). But notice the parallels to other portions of Scripture. For example, the original curse resulting from the sin of Adam: "Cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field" (Genesis 3:17-18, compare 5:29). Part of the curse applies to the agricultural efforts of the people. Instead of productive crops, the land would produce thorns. 

Jeremiah also contains a theme that is picked up by the Apostle Paul in the New Testament: "The creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now" (Romans 8:19-22). The Apostle personifies the physical creation as longing for the full conversion of the sons of God, be then, and not until then, the creation will be released from that curse of futility that was brought upon it by the sin of its head, Adam. 

We have Christians who seek to help less-developed countries improve their agriculture, as populations grow and need increasing amounts of quality food. And I am grateful that God has called people to that ministry. However, improved agriculture is not the ultimate answer to the problem. Rather, spreading the Gospel and teaching the nations to obey everything God commands rolls back the effect of sin, and the creation is progressively freed to be the rich and productive thing it was created to be.