For several years I participated fairly actively in some
forums on the Internet where biblical and theological issues
were being discussed and debated. My favorite forums were
not the ones where doctors of divinity and seminary
professors were discussing theoretical and philosophical
issues. I referred the forums where serious lay-people were
talking about theological issues that intersect with real life.
I've been active on the Internet since 1995, and one thing I
have noticed is that certain issues keep coming up again and
again. Participating in these forums gave me a pretty good
grasp of which doctrines confuse or intrigue the most people.
And over the years in my teaching, I have tried to deal with
as many of those troublesome issues as possible.
One thing I have noticed is that the doctrines that pertain
to human sin are some of the hardest doctrines for people to
understand and embraceCparticularly the doctrines of
original sin and universal depravity. The average person
loves to hear that people are fundamentally good, that God is
in love with us just the way we are; that no matter who you
are or what you do you are going to be OK because God
values you and His love and forgiveness are unconditional.
Ephesians 2:1-6 2
That's not quite true, of course. First John 4:8 and 1 John
4:16 both say, "God is love." No one would dispute that. "The
LORD . . . is good, [and] his steadfast love endures forever."
That's Psalm 106:1. Psalm 136 repeats the refrain ("his
steadfast love endures forever") twenty-six timesConce for
every verse.
But there's another side to this truth as well. Psalm 112:9
adds that "his righteousness endures forever"; Psalm 119:160
says, "every one of your righteous rules endures forever."
Deuteronomy 4:24 and Hebrews 12:29 say, "our God is a
consuming fire." And Hebrews 10:31 says, "It is a fearful thing
to fall into the hands of the living God." Furthermore,
forgiveness is not unconditional. Hebrews 9:22 says, "without
the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins." Jesus
Himself said in Matthew 25:41 that at the final judgment,
many will hear him say, "Depart from me, you cursed, into the
eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels." Our guilt
simply cannot be swept aside with an appeal to the love and
mercy of God. We can't atone for our own sins or make our
own transgressions right. We need a Savior.
Of all the doctrines taught in Scripture, the one doctrine
that comes under attack more than any other is the Bible's
teaching that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of
God, that we inherited a sinful nature from Adam, and that it
means we are helpless to redeem ourselves from the
I 'm Fallen, and I Can't Get Up! 3
condemnation of God. Those ideas run counter to every other
religion man has ever devised.
People want to believe the gospel according to Joel
OsteenCthat they are noble and good; that God is pleased
with them, and that if they just set their hearts and minds to
do a bit of good, or perform a few acts of random kindness,
they will be welcomed into heaven in spite of whatever
wrong they have done.
People don't want to believe that Adam's sin put the
whole human race in a spiritually hopeless state. They don't
want to admit that they are sinful to the very core of their
beings. They don't want to admit that their most basic
desires, and even the private imaginations of their hearts are
utterly and hopelessly sinful, and they are powerless to
change themselves. By any standard, these are hard truths.
And yet every bit of evidence we examine confirms all
these things. Scripture clearly teaches that "None is righteous,
no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have
turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does
good, not even one." Human experience confirms this. G.K.
Chesterton once wrote that the doctrine of original sin is the
easiest of all the doctrines of Scripture to prove. Evidence of
it is all around us. No one in all our acquaintance is sin-free.
Proof that the whole human race is fallen is everywhere,
smeared all over the Drudge Report, it's on the evening news,
and clearly evident in every life we encounter, right? Even
Ephesians 2:1-6 4
on FaceBook, where most people try to put the best possible
face on their character, it's clear that we are fallen. Most of
all, if we're honest with ourselves, the most persuasive proof
that the human race is hopelessly depraved is inside our own
hearts. And Chesterton said if we don't believe this doctrine,
which we have abundant empirical evidence to support, how
can we possibly believe the truths of the Bible we're required
to accept by faith?
The Bible's teaching on original sin and human depravity
is vital to orthodox Christianity. Every movement in
Christianity that has rejected these truths has gone badly
astray. Some of you will remember when we studied history
of the major heresies. The arch-heretic was Pelagius, whose
error was the worst of all the major heresies, because he
essentially eliminated the need for divine grace. His
fundamental error lay in his rejection of the doctrine of
original sin. The liberalism of the Socinians grew out of the
same error. And those today who reject original sin or total
depravity are generally liberals and cultists. This is a vital
doctrine, and those who reject it place themselves in eternal
peril and make shipwreck of the faith.
One significant fact that should strike you as you study
Scripture is that the most godly men on the pages of
Scripture all had a deep sense of their own sinfulness. David
was a man after God's own heart, yet in Psalm 52:5 he
confessed that he was sinful from the moment of his
I 'm Fallen, and I Can't Get Up! 5
conception. Isaiah was perhaps the greatest prophet in all the
Old Testament, and yet in Isaiah 6:5, he wrote, "Woe is me!
For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the
midst of a people of unclean lips." The apostle Paul, the figure
who towers over the early church, representing perhaps the
ultimate example of godly scholarship, wrote in Romans
7:18: "I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my
flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability
to carry it out." In verse 24 he wrote, "Wretched man that I am!
Who will deliver me from this body of death?" Again and again
in Scripture, we see that the people who are the prime
examples of godliness had the keenest perception of their
own sinfulness.
This is true throughout Church history, too. Augustine,
perhaps the greatest post-Apostolic defender of the doctrines
of God's grace, spent years in frustration, coming to grips
with the reality of his own sin. Martin Luther, whose
teaching launched the reformation, was so obsessed with his
own sin that before his conversion he used to spend hours in
the confessional booth, confessing long laundry lists of
things that made him feel guilty. Charles Spurgeon spent
several years of his childhood secretly wrestling with the
terrifying realization that sin had so infected his heart that he
was worthy of nothing but divine wrath.
Again and again we see that those who have embraced
these truths of original sin and human depravity have been
Ephesians 2:1-6 6
used by God in tremendous ways, while those who have
resisted or rejected those truths invariably make shipwreck of
the faith.
So this is a very crucial issue. And since I know that so
many struggle with it, what I want to do today is examine it
biblically, and try to help you unravel the toughest questions
about original sin and its impact on our souls.
Let me start by saying that Scripture is very clear and
consistent in its teaching that everyone is born into a state of
spiritual death, and from a human perspective, their situation
is utterly hopeless.
Look at Ephesians 2:1-3. What Paul said was universally
true of the Ephesian believers is equally true of every one of
us: He told them: "You were dead in the trespasses and sins in
which you once walked, following the course of this world,
following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now
at work in the sons of disobedience--among whom we all once
lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the
body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the
rest of mankind." That's applicable to everyone: "you [and] the
rest of mankind." He is describing the state of every person
who comes into this world. This is a description of fallen
human nature: "dead in . . . trespasses and sins"
The apostle is teaching that every unregenerate person is
spiritually dead, walking in accord with Satan, by nature a
I 'm Fallen, and I Can't Get Up! 7
child of wrath and a son of disobedience. No one escapes
this verdict; evil is the native expression of our fallen, sinful
human nature.
Someone might be tempted to ask, like the disciples did in
Matthew 19:25: "Who then can be saved?"
What was Jesus' answer? "With men it is impossible, but
with God all things are possible." Jesus was affirming that only
God's grace can accomplish the salvation of a sinner.
When Adam fell, it was as if he had committed moral and
spiritual suicide. He forfeited his moral freedom. He placed
himself in a bondage to evil from which he was helpless to
extricate himself. He was helpless to undo the damage he had
done. He had fallenCand he couldn't get up.
I've noticed recently that they resurrected and remade that
classic television ad where an old lady lies crumpled at the
foot of the stairs, while she shrieks into a transmitter that she
wears around her neck that she has fallen she can't get up.
The new version is a little bit terrifying. (Or maybe I'm just
closer to that reality so I have more empathy.) The classic
version thirty years ago was kind of funny. It was such an
obnoxious commercial that it soon became the punch line for
every joke.
But there's some good theology in that line: "I've fallen,
and I can't get up." And spiritually, this is no joke. We are
fallen and we can't get up. We are helpless to help ourselves.
Our only hope is the grace of God. And that is as true of you
Ephesians 2:1-6 8
and me in our natural state (apart from the grace of God) as it
is of the vilest, most wretched derelict who was ever in
bondage to Satan.
What we are really talking about here is the doctrine
known as "total depravity." Now someone will accuse me of
simply regurgitating Calvinist doctrine, because "total
depravity" is the T in the "tulip" acronym. But this doctrine
was not invented by Calvin. It is a biblical doctrine. It was
standard orthodox Christian theology for more than a
thousand years before the Protestant Reformation.
I will say this, however: When you understand the
doctrine of depravity, you will see the truth at the heart of
Calvinism's emphasis. This is why we stress divine grace
rather human free will as the prime factor in our salvation.
And I won't apologize for being emphatic about this:
Scripture clearly teaches that God is utterly sovereign, and
sinners are totally powerless to save themselves. Once you
grasp those truths the way Scripture presents them, you will
have embraced the very heart of what is commonly labeled
Calvinism. This dual emphasis on human depravity and the
necessity of God's sovereign grace in the salvation of sinners
is the basis of all truth that can legitimately be called
"evangelical." I yield no ground to those who want God's
sovereignty or the sinner's inability to be watered down. To
do so is to corrupt the gospel itself.
I 'm Fallen, and I Can't Get Up! 9
So let's look at this doctrine of total depravity. This
morning I want to try to answer four of the hardest questions
about the doctrine of depravity with clear, biblical answers:
1. In what sense is depravity total?
2. How can we be held responsible for our own inability?
3. How did we inherit Adam's sinfulness?
4. Is there an antidote for human depravity?
First,
1. IN WHAT SENSE IS DEPRAVITY "TOTAL"?
Look again at Ephesians 2. Verse 1 says sinners are dead
in trespasses and sinsCspiritually dead. They walk in
worldliness and disobedience (v. 2). They live in the lusts of
their flesh, "carrying out the desires of the body and the mind,
and [are] by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind"
(v. 3). According to verse 12, they are "separated from Christ,
alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the
covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the
world."
That describes the state of every unbeliever as alienation
from God and bondage to evil. In Romans 6, Paul calls it
slavery to sin. He furthermore says in Romans 6:20 that
people who are slaves of sin are utterly devoid of true
righteousness. Those in this state of sin and unbelief are
God's enemies (Rom. 5:8, 10). Colossians 1:21 says they are
"alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds." That is what
Ephesians 2:1-6 10
it means to be totally depraved. That is what it means to be
spiritually dead.
Spiritual death is a total inability to love God, a total
inability to obey Him, and a total inability to please Him.
Paul says in Romans 8:6-8, "For to set the mind on the flesh is
death. [This, then, is the state of spiritual death:] 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."
Now, lots of non-Christians will deny that they are hostile
toward God. But they are self-deceived. In fact, many who
invoke the name of Christ and claim to love God actually do
not love the God of the Bible. They love a god who exists
only in their imaginationCa tolerant, unholy, passive, feeble,
weakling god. That is not the God of Scripture. The God of
the Bible is too holy for the sinner's tastes. He is too wrathful
against sinners. His standards are too high. His laws are not
to their liking. So though they profess to love God, they do
not love the one true God who has revealed Himself in
Scripture. They are not able to love Him.
That inability to love God is the essence of total
depravity. It leaves us unable to fulfill the first and great
commandment: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your
heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all
your strength" (Mark 12:30). So everything the sinner ever
I 'm Fallen, and I Can't Get Up! 11
does is permeated with sin, because he's living life in
violation of the First and Great Commandment.
"Total depravity" does not mean that unbelievers are as
bad as they could be. It does not mean that every sinner will
live out his or her depravity the fullest. It doesn't mean all
non-Christians are like brute beasts or people like Charles
Manson. It doesn't mean that unbelievers are incapable of
acts of kindness or goodwill to fellow humans. In fact, Jesus
Himself stated that unbelievers do good to people in return
for good that is done to them (Luke 6:33). The human race
was created in the image of God. Though sin has spoiled that
image, even non-Christians are capable of rising to great
heights of human goodness, honesty, decency, and
excellence. "Total" depravity does not mean that every
unredeemed woman must be a raging, malicious, ugly old
hag, or that every unbelieving man is a twisted, degenerate
psychopath. It does mean that unbelievers, those who are in
the flesh, cannot please God.
The word total in "total depravity" refers to the extent of
our sinfulness, not the degree to which we manifest it. It
means that evil has contaminated every aspect of our
beingCour wills, our intellect, our emotions, our conscience,
our personality, and our desires. Let's put it in biblical
terminology: sin has corrupted the human heart, Jeremiah
17:9: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately
Ephesians 2:1-6 12
sick; who can understand it?" If the heart is corrupt, the whole
person is defiled.
Our depravity is a heart corruption. In other words, it goes
to the very core of who we are. We are infected by sin in
every part of our souls. We are profane, sinful, thoroughly
debased before God, no matter how good we appear in
human terms.
This is as true of someone like Mahatma Ghandi as it is of
someone like Adolph Hitler. The relative goodness of the
world's best people is never enough to please God, whose
only standard is absolute perfection. The best of sinners do
not come close to His holy criteria. Let me illustrate.
Suppose we lined up all the men in Grace Life and
demanded that they swim to Singapore. We drive them down
to Malibu, line them up at Point Dume, and send them off.
Some of them would drown before they even reached
Catalina. I would undoubtedly be the first to go under, about
a hundred yards offshore. Others, the really athletic ones,
might make it as far as Catalina, though that's unlikely. But
one thing is certain; no one would make it to Singapore. All
of them would be dead long before the goal was met. No one
would even get as far as Hawaii, less than halfway.
Now, would those who died before swimming five miles
be any worse off than those who died forty miles offshore?
No, all would be equally dead. The goal was just as hopeless
I 'm Fallen, and I Can't Get Up! 13
for the trained, expert swimmer as it was for the fat guy who
did his training by sitting in front of a computer all day.
That is how it is with sin. All sinners stand condemned
before God. Even the best of Adam's offspring are
thoroughly sinful at heart. They are in exactly the same
hopeless state as the lowest degenerateCmaybe even in a
worse state, because it is harder for them to acknowledge
their sin. So they compound their sin with self-righteousness.
People are prepared to be called sinners in their sin, but
they do not want to be labeled sinners in their religion. But
this is crucial: Human religion does not contradict depravity;
it only proves it. Human religion substitutes other gods in the
rightful place of the true God. That is the very essence of
God-hating. It is false worshipCnothing but an attempt to
depose God. It is the very worst kind of depravity.
Remember, it was the Pharisees whom Jesus condemned
with the harshest invective He ever uttered. Why? After all,
they believed the Scriptures were literally true. They tried to
obey the law rigidly. They weren't like the Sadducees,
religious liberals who denied the supernatural. They were the
theological fundamentalists of their day.
But they refused to recognize the bankruptcy of their own
hearts. They trusted in themselves that they were righteous
and went about trying to establish their own righteousness,
instead of submitting to the righteousness of God. (That's
Paul's verdict on them in Romans 10:3). Remember what
Ephesians 2:1-6 14
they told the man born blind in John 9:34? "You were born in
utter sin"Cas if they weren't.
In other words, they rejected the doctrine of total
depravity, and it led to their utter condemnation. Jesus said,
"Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who
are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners" (Mark
2:17). "the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost" (Luke
19:10).
They thought all their good works made them righteous.
But religion and good works do not cancel out depravity.
Depravity corrupts even the highest forms of religion and
good works. George Whitefield said that God could damn us
for the very best prayer we ever put up. John Bunyan agreed.
He said he thought the best prayer he ever prayed still had
enough sin in it to damn the whole world. Isaiah wrote, "We
have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous
deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our
iniquities, like the wind, take us away" (Isaiah 64:6).
Unredeemed sinners are therefore incapable of doing
anything to please God. They cannot love the God who
reveals Himself in Scripture. They cannot obey His law from
the heart, with pure motives. They cannot even grasp the
essentials of spiritual truth. First Corinthians 2:14 says, "The
natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God,
for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them
because they are spiritually discerned." Unbelievers are
I 'm Fallen, and I Can't Get Up! 15
therefore incapable of faith. And "without faith it is impossible
to please [God]" (Hebrews 11:6).
The key word in all of that is inability. We are unable to
respond to God. Listen to what John MacArthur wrote in one
of his books: "Unregenerate sinners have no life by which
they can respond to spiritual stimuli. No amount of love,
beseeching, or spiritual truth can summon a response. People
apart from God are the ungrateful dead, spiritual zombies,
death-walkers, unable even to understand the gravity of their
situation. They are lifeless. They may go through the
motions of life, but they do not possess it. They are dead
even while they live (1 Tim. 5:6). They dwell in utter
darknessCthe eternal night of the living dead."
That brings us to our second question:
2. HOW CAN WE BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR OUR OWN
INABILITY?
The Westminster confession states the doctrine of total
depravity in these terms: "Man, by his fall into a state of sin,
hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good
accompanying salvation; so as a natural man, being
altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, is not able,
by his own strength, to convert himself, or to prepare himself
thereunto" (Chap. IX, sect. iii).
Every element of that statement is crucial. Note exactly
what kind of inability is described here. It is not an inability
Ephesians 2:1-6 16
to do good things. It is an inability for "any spiritual good
accompanying salvation." In other words, sinners have no
ability to do spiritual good that merits salvation from sin.
They are completely antagonistic to real righteousness. They
are hopelessly in thrall to sin. They cannot save themselves
or even make themselves fit for God's salvation. They have
no appetite for spiritual truth, no ability to understand it.
Therefore, they cannot possibly believe the truth or
appropriate salvation for themselves by any means.
In John 8:44, Jesus told the Pharisees, "You are of your
father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires."
Their desires were corrupt, and it was a corruption that
emanated from the nucleus of their very nature. Jesus said
they were like the devil. He went on to say, "[The Devil] has
nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him.
When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar
and the father of lies." The implication is, You are in the same
boat. It is your nature to be evil. There is no way you could
do otherwise. There is no way you can make yourself other
than what you are. "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the
leopard his spots? [Nether can you] do good who are
accustomed to do evil" (Jeremiah 13:23).
At this point, some of you must be asking, "If this is soCif
we are sinful by nature, totally unable to be any other
wayChow can a just God hold us responsible for that? It
I 'm Fallen, and I Can't Get Up! 17
wouldn't be fair to command a paraplegic to run a marathon
and then punish him because he was unable, would it?
But our inability isn't like the physical inability of a
paraplegic; it is more like the inability of a drug addict to
walk away from his addiction. It is the inability of a will in
bondage to sin. Our inability does not arise from a lack of
physical, rational, or cognitive faculties. It arises from a
wrong moral inclination.
All our facultiesCour minds, emotions, and willsCwork
just fine. That is, we can think and act and choose freely
according to whatever our own desires and motives are. But
that is precisely the problem: our desires and motives are
corrupted by our addiction to sin. Our desires are defective.
So the will itself is therefore bent against righteousness. Our
corruption is therefore a willful depravity. It is a moral
defect. It is not the kind of inability that keeps a paraplegic
from running a foot race.
Or to put it another way, our depravity so inclines our will
to love sin that God's righteousness becomes morally
repugnant to us. We are left unable to love Him, unable to
choose obedience to His law. It is a moral defect, and
therefore we are morally culpable.
Doe that mean we have no free will? People always ask
this. What about free will? Here's the problem: Our will is
free to choose according to our desires, but it has no power
to alter our desires so that we suddenly desire something that
Ephesians 2:1-6 18
is contrary to our nature. The will is therefore free in the
sense that it is not constrained by any external force, but it is
not sovereign over our moral nature. We cannot by an act of
will change our character for the better. "Can the Ethiopian
change his skin, or the leopard his spots? [The sinner has
exactly that much ability to turn his own heart to do good.]
[Neither can you] do good, [who] are accustomed to do evil"
(Jeremiah 13:23).
In other words, our depravity corrupts our heart and
perverts all our appetites. It so inclines our nature that we
love sin. Evil desires therefore govern the choices we make.
Since we make those choices freely and with great delight,
we are guilty for them.
So our inability is no excuse for our sinfulness. It is
precisely the opposite. It is the very reason we are
condemned. Sin flows from the very core of our souls. The
heart of who we are is evil. We are "by nature children of
wrath" (Ephesians 2:3). That is why we do evil things. Jesus
said, "For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil
thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting,
wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.
All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person"
(Mark 7:21-23).
Follow this carefully: We are not sinners because we sin;
we sin because we are sinners. We were born sinful, and all
I 'm Fallen, and I Can't Get Up! 19
our acts of sin proceed from that. We are born sinners, and
therefore we sin.
That brings us to a third question:
3. HOW DID WE INHERIT ADAM'S SINFULNESS?
How did we get in this state? Scripture lays the blame at
Adam's feet. Roman's 5:12 says, "Sin came into the world
through one man, [Adam,] and death through sin, and so death
spread to all men because all sinned." Sin entered the world
through Adam, then passed to all men. Adam's sin brought
spiritual deathCtotal depravityCupon the entire race. First
Corinthians 15:22 says, "In Adam all die."
Remember, we are sinners before we ever commit one
overt act of sin. We are born with the taint of sin. In fact, it is
appropriate to say, as David did, that we are sinful from the
moment of our conception (Ps. 51:5). Theologians refer to
this as "original sin."
The question is, how does Adam's guilt get passed on to
you and me? As we saw in our study of Romans 5, we are
partakers of both the guilt and the corruption of his sin,
because when he ate that forbidden fruit, he was acting as
our representative. If you want to delve into the question
more deeply, I recommend John Murray's book, The
Imputation of Adam's Sin.
But it is not necessary for us this morning to go into great
detail on the how sin was transmitted to us from Adam. We
Ephesians 2:1-6 20
don't have to delve deeply into the mysteries that surround
this question. It is sufficient for our purposes simply to
declare what God's Word has to say on the matter: "Many
died through one man's trespass" (Romans 5:15). "The
judgment following [that] one trespass brought condemnation"
on all Adam's offspring (v. 16). "By the transgression of the
one, death reigned" (v. 17). "One trespass led to condemnation
for all men" (v. 18). "By the one man's disobedience the many
were made sinners" (v. 19).
Five verses in a row all state in different ways that Adam's
sin corrupted the entire race. Adam, as the representative
head of the human race, plunged us all into sin.
But we cannot stand aside and point the finger of blame at
Adam in an attempt to exonerate ourselves. We inherit his
guilt as well as his sinfulness. We are as blameworthy as
Adam. The question of how his guilt was passed on to us is
ultimately not as important as the reality that it happened. No
fact in all of philosophy or religion is attested to with so
much empirical evidence. All Adam's offspringCwith one
significant, divine ExceptionCall Adam's offspring have
been sinners. We are born morally corrupt.
I do want to call your attention to a couple of corollaries
to this doctrine. First, it suggests Adam was a historical
person. Those who want to treat the early chapters of Genesis
as symbolism or myth destroy the doctrine of original sin. If
Adam was not a historical individual, none of this makes
I 'm Fallen, and I Can't Get Up! 21
sense. There's no reasonable explanation for how our race
became sinful, unless the account of the fall in Genesis 3 is
literally true. So the sinfulness of all humanity bears witness
to the truth of Scripture's account of the fall.
Second, those who deny that human nature is sinful are
guilty of willful ignorance. The universality of human
sinfulness is irrefutable. It is self-evident. Everyone we know
is sinful. There's no evidence whatsoever for the myth that
people are basically and fundamentally good.
Original sin is not a minor blemish on the human soul. It
corrupts every aspect of our character. Listen to these words
from Romans 3, where Paul summarized the doctrine of
universal depravity. These verses come after two chapters of
argument showing that pagans, moral Gentiles, and even
religious Jews are all hopeless sinners. In Romans 3:9-19,
Paul sums up and makes the point so that no one can miss it:
We have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks,
are under sin,
10 as it is written:"None is righteous, no, not one;
11 no one understands; no one seeks for God.
12 All have turned aside; together they have become
worthless; no one does good, not even one."
13 "Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues
to deceive." "The venom of asps is under their lips."
14 "Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness."
15 "Their feet are swift to shed blood;
Ephesians 2:1-6 22
16 in their paths are ruin and misery,
17 and the way of peace they have not known."
18 "There is no fear of God before their eyes."
19 Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to
those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be
stopped, and the whole world may be [become guilty
before] God.
That brings us to the final question we want to consider:
4. IS THERE AN ANTIDOTE FOR HUMAN DEPRAVITY?
I want you to turn back to the passage where we began at
the very outset, Ephesians 2. Let me read the first three
verses of that chapter again:
[You] were dead in trespasses and sins,
2 in which you once walked according to the course of
this world, according to the prince of the power of the air,
the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience,
3 among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in
the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and
of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as
the others. But God . . .
Stop right there. I want you to notice those two words: "But
God." Martyn Lloyd-Jones once preached an entire message
on those words. "But God." Those two little words are the
crucial turning point of this entire chapter. Paul is writing to
I 'm Fallen, and I Can't Get Up! 23
remind the Ephesians that salvation is entirely God's work.
You can read all the Calvinistic theologians in the world and
you won't find any more explicit statement of the sovereignty
of God in salvation than right here in Scripture, in the second
chapter of Paul's epistle to the Ephesians. Paul's main point
here is to demonstrate that God is entirely sovereign in every
step of the process of salvation.
Beginning in chapter 1, he says God chose us (4),
predestined us (5), guaranteed our adoption (5), bestowed on
us his grace (6), redeemed us (7), forgave us (7), lavished
riches of grace on us (8), made known to us His will (9),
obtained an inheritance for us (11), guaranteed that we would
glorify Him (11-12), saved us (13), and sealed us with the
Spirit (13-14). In short, He "has blessed us with every spiritual
blessing in the heavenly places in Christ" (3). All of this was
the work of His sovereign grace, performed not because of
any good in us, but simply "according to the good pleasure of
His will" (5, 9) and "according to the purpose of Him who works
all things according to the counsel of His will" (11).
In Ephesians 2, Paul begins with the utter inability of
those who are spiritually dead, and works his way to this
truth in verse 10: Even the good works of believers were
prepared by God beforehand! There is no way Paul could
have emphasized his message any more or stated it more
clearly: salvation is entirely God's work. There is no human
work that can be contributed. That is the whole point of
Ephesians 2:1-6 24
verses 8 and 9: "For by grace you have been saved through
faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of
works, lest anyone should boast" (8-9).
And right in the middle of this passage about the
hopelessness of the human condition, we find these two
simple, profound, doctrinally-laden words, "BUT GOD."
I once counseled a woman who was desperately trying to
reform her life so that she could become a Christian. I told
her no amount of effort on her part would ever result in her
salvation from sin; no amount of determination on her part
could ever free her from her own sinful desires. And then I
showed her the truth of Ephesians 2:1, that she was "dead in
trespasses and sins." When I showed her that verse, she let
out an audible gasp. and you know what? That is a fitting
response to the truth of human depravity. We ought to gasp
at the utter, hopeless, futility of our lostness. It is a
frightening and horrifying thought.
"But God!"Cand here we see the only possible cure for
human depravity, the grace of a loving God (verse 4)::
But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love
with which He loved us,
5 even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive
together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),
6 and raised us up together, and made us sit together in
the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
I 'm Fallen, and I Can't Get Up! 25
7 that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding
riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ
Jesus.
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and
that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God,
9 not of works, lest anyone should boast.
Perhaps there is someone here who does not know Christ.
Perhaps you are someone who has been coming to GraceLife
a long time, knowing you are without Christ. You know the
sinfulness of your own heart. You have no doubt that your
own depravity is total. You know you are by nature a child
of wrath, an enemy of God. You feel the hopelessness of
your lost condition. You are burdened by the weight of your
guilt.
If that describes you, Christ issued an open call to people
just like you. He said, "Come to Me, all who are weary and
heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you,
and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you
shall find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My load is
light" (Matthew 11:28-30).
Did you know that Christ died for people who were
utterly, totally depravedCenemies of God? Scripture says,
"God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we
were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8). "While we
were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of
His Son" (v. 10). No matter how fully your depravity has
Ephesians 2:1-6 26
played itself out, no matter how weary and heavily laden
with sin you may feel you are, you are not out of reach of
divine grace.
"But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with
which He loved us, even when we were dead in our
transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you
have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with
Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus."
If you are a Christian, your heart ought to be moved with
gladness and gratitude at the mercy and grace of God.
If you are someone who is burdened with a sense of sin,
those verses ought to give you hope and send you fleeing to
Christ for salvation.
But if you can hear these things and not be moved,
something is seriously wrong with you spiritually, and you
ought to fear for your soul.
If the Lord has moved your heart to turn to Christ and
seek freedom from the bondage of your sin, please seek out
one of us in leadership here in GraceLife and talk to us about
the state of your soul. We can give you counsel and prayer
and explain to you more from the Word of God what it
means to repent and believe in Christ.