“The gap between God and man is not only infinite regarding size and sovereignty but also holiness. Jonathan Edwards said, ‘Fallen man is infinitely different from God in both respects; both as little and as filthy.” God is infinitely and transcendently holy. Man is abysmally depraved. In this chapter we will explore the depths of his depravity but will not touch the bottom. It is beyond exaggeration or comprehension. But praise the Lord, there is a cure.”
This chapter is divided into 10 subsections.
Man Is Spiritually Dead. Seven paragraphs. “Pelagianism says man is alive and well. Arminianism says man is sick. Calvinism says man is dead. The first to agree that man is alive, which is one reason why Arminianism can easily lead to liberalism and Pelagianism. Reformed theology emphatically states that fallen man has no spiritual life: ‘If thou art a bad man, certainly thou art a dead man.’ There may be degrees of health for the living, but there are no degrees of death for the dead. One corpse cannot be deader than another. There is a world of difference between a person who is barely alive and one who is recently deceased.” “The Arminian Dave Hunt fails to see the point that the Bible regularly makes regarding spiritual death. He says that if we are dead, then we could not only believe and obey God, but we could not even disbelieve and disobey God, for a dead man cannot do anything at all. He thereby casually brushes aside the Bible’s whole teaching on spiritual death. But according to the Bible, spiritual death does not mean nonexistence or non-activity. It is unbelief, disobedience, and unrighteousness, while spiritual life is faith, obedience, and righteousness. When God says we are spiritually dead, He does not mean we cannot do anything at all – He means that we cannot do anything spiritually good at all. A corpse cannot sing, but it can putrefy. A sinner cannot get better, but he can get worse (2 Timothy 3:13). As Spurgeon said, ‘You will remember while the sinner is dead in sin, he is our lives so far as any opposition to God may be concerned.’ Conversely, a spiritually alive person is dead toward sin (Romans 6:4 – 13).”
Earthy Bible Descriptions. Three paragraphs. “Scripture uses a number of earthy and blunt pictures to describe fallen man – none of them are complementary!” Several dozen descriptions and Scripture references are provided.
Man Is Worse than Animals. Five paragraphs. In addition to Scripture citations, quotes from Thomas Watson, John Calvin, George Whitfield, Charles Spurgeon, Jonathan Edwards, and Abraham Kuyper are cited.
Children of the Devil. Three paragraphs.
Lovers of Sin, Haters of God. Eight paragraphs. Many Scripture references, and comments by Jonathan Edwards, Robert Murray M’Cheyne, Rousas Rushdoony, John Calvin.
Calvin’s Analysis. “In all theological literature, no writer has examined the depths of human depravity deeper or more accurately than John Calvin. Here are excerpts from just one book, Sermons on Genesis, 1:1–11:4 with page numbers in parentheses.
·
“For man is only a mass of filth and villainy, a sinking vessel,
until he is renewed.” (146)
·
“As many desires and lusts as are in us, that is how many raging
beasts there are still chained up within us, growling and gnashing their teeth
or pawing the ground.” (162)
·
“We are submerged in total stench, for if we were not just on a
dung heap, but in the deepest and foulest smelling privity in the world, we
would not be in a more horrendous pit than we are, in this confusion in which
we now find ourselves.” (239)
·
“Subsequently, all our desires and appetites are perverse and
filled with iniquity.” (244)
·
“Everything that comes out of us will be putrid and filthy and can
only increase his wrath.” (363)
·
“We will always find a subtle infection which grows in our hearts.”
(378)
·
“Satan […] drags them about where he wishes and makes them like
animals so they fall into such a state of madness they have no scruples about
fighting against the living God.” (389)
·
“If they could spit on God’s Majesty, they would do it, so carried
away are they in their madness.” (468)
·
“Now a different image followed that one original image of God,
for Adam disfigured himself, as if someone had thrown mud on outstanding image
in the world and the world had spat upon it and had become covered with filth
and contagion.” (489)
·
“There is no vermin in the world that is not worth more than we
are.” (490)
·
“We are born as Satan’s slaves under the tyranny of sin, sold into
evil, like an animal that one sells and loads and drives where he wishes.” (495)
·
“But if we are recalcitrant and act like untamable animals, shall
not such ingratitude have to be punished more grievously?” (526)
·
“There will be enough to condemn hundreds of worlds.” (548)
·
“It would be like spitting at heaven, but it would not reach God,
and we would be splattered with our own spittle.” (552)
·
“That we have defaced God’s image in us and remain contemptuous of
him surpasses all the world’s murders.” (565)
·
“The devil takes possession of us and puts us through our paces
and makes us trot, not only like wild animals, but like monsters.” (634)
·
“It is certain that we deserve to be eaten by wild animals, indeed
by vermin.” (744)
·
“All our imaginations are rebellious and perverse, and that all
the compartments of man’s soul, his reason, his thoughts, all his desires, and
all his affections, are workshops for forging weapons to battle against God.
That, I say, is what we are by nature.” (846)
Further Descriptions. Five paragraphs.
Miscellaneous Observations. Five paragraphs.
Extreme Evil. Three paragraphs.
Conclusion. Four paragraphs. “Those who oppose the Reformed view of total depravity would do well to heed the exhortation of Anselm as he rebuked Boso’s rejection of the Anselmian theory of atonement: ‘You have not yet considered the exceeding gravity of sin.’ Calvin echoed this in a rebuke to those who minimize the evil of sin and think they can satisfy God themselves: ‘I say that those who talk such nonsense did not realize what an execrable thing sin is in God’s sight.’ It is not a matter of objectively studying the subject like a high school biology student dissecting a frog. We are the sinners and hence both the subject and object of self-examination.”
