Chapter 3 – Nature
Such is the ruined condition of the fallen creature. No human power is able to effect any alteration in the moral perceptions of sinful men. “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may you also do good, that are accustomed to do evil” (Jeremiah 13:23). Nothing short of the miracle-working, new-creating power of God’s all-mighty Spirit can enable the mentally and morally blind sinner to see Divine light clearly. Here, then, lies the moral inability of the natural man: it consists in the lack of adequate powers of moral perception. His moral sense is prostrated, his mind unable to properly discern between good and evil, truth and falsehood, God and mammon, Christ and Belial. Not that he can perceive no difference, but that he cannot appreciate in any tolerable degree the excellence of Truth or the glory of its Author. He cannot discern the real baseness of falsehood or the degradation of vice.
It is a great mistake to suppose that fallen man possesses adequate faculties for such moral perception, and lacks only the necessary moral light. The very opposite is the actual case. Moral light shines all around him, but his powers of vision are gone. He walks in darkness while the midday splendors of the sun of righteousness shine all around him. Fables are regarded as truth, but the Truth itself is rejected. Shadows are chased, but the Substance is ignored. The Gospel is “hid to them that are lost” (2 Corinthians 4:3). When the Lord of glory is presented to sinners they “see in Him no beauty that they should desire Him.” So blind is the natural man that he gropes in the noonday and stumbles over the Rock of ages. And unless a sovereign God is pleased to have mercy upon him, his moral blindness continues until he passes out into the “blackness of darkness forever.”
The deprivation of our nature consists not in the absence of intelligence, but of ability to use our reason in a wise and fit manner. That which man lost at the Fall was not a faculty, but a principle. He still retains everything which is requisite to constitute him a rational, moral, and responsible being; but he threw away that uprightness which secured the approbation of God. He lost the principle of holiness, and with it, all power to keep the Moral Law. Nor is this all: a foreign element entered into man, corrupting his whole being: an element diametrically opposed to God. The principle of holiness was supplanted by the principle of sin, and this has rendered man utterly unable to act in a spiritual manner. True, he may mechanically, or by way of imitation, perform spiritual acts (such as pray), yet he cannot perform them in a spiritual manner-from spiritual motives and for spiritual ends. He has no moral ability to do so. True, he can do many things, but none rightly-in a way pleasing unto God.
Spiritual good is holiness, and holiness consists of supreme love of God and equal love of men. Fallen man, alone and of himself, is utterly unable to love God with all his soul and strength and his neighbor as himself. This principle of holy love is completely absent from his heart, nor can he by any effort beget such an affection within himself. He is utterly unable to originate within his will any inclination or disposition that is spiritually good: he has not the moral power to do so. Moral power is nothing more nor less than a holy nature with holy dispositions; it is the perception of the beauty and the response of the heart to the excellence and glory of God, and the consequent subjection of the will to His royal law of liberty. “Spiritual perceptions, spiritual delight, spiritual choice, these and these alone, constitute ability to good” (J. Thornwell).
In our efforts to carefully define and describe the precise character of fallen man’s inability to do anything which is pleasing to God, we have shown, first, that the impotency under which he now labors is a penal one, judicially inflicted upon him by the righteous Judge of all the earth, because of his misuse of the faculties and strength with which he was originally endowed in Adam. Second, that his spiritual helplessness is a moral one, having its seat in the soul or moral nature. The principle of holiness was lost by man when he apostatized from his Maker and Governor, and the principle of sin entered his soul, corrupting the whole of his being, so that he is no longer capable of rendering any spiritual obedience to the Moral Law: that is, obeying it from spiritual motives and with spiritual designs.
We pass on now to show, third, that fallen man’s inability is a voluntary one. Some of our readers who have had no difficulty in following us thus far, are likely to demur here-though the great majority, we feel, will apprehend this more easily than not. We refer to hyper-Calvinists who have such a one-sided conception of man’s spiritual helplessness that, really, they have lapsed into serious error. They look upon the condition and case of the sinner much as they do those people who have suffered a stroke which has paralyzed their limbs-as a calamity and not the result of a crime-as something which necessitates a state of inertia and inactivity, as something which annuls their responsibility. They fail to see that the moral impotency of the natural man is a deliberate one, and therefore one which is highly culpable.
Before appealing to the Scriptures for proofs of this third point, we must explain the sense in which we use our term. In affirming that the moral and sinful inability of fallen man is a voluntary one, we mean that he acts freely and spontaneously, unforced either from within or without. This is an essential element of an accountable being, everywhere recognized and acknowledged among men. Human law (much less Divine) does not hold a person to be guilty if he has been compelled by others to do wrong against his own will and protests. In all moral action the human will is self-inclined, acting freely according to the dictates of the mind, which are in turn regulated by the inclinations of the heart. Though the mind be darkened and the heart corrupted, nevertheless, the will acts freely and the individual remains a voluntary agent.
Some of the best theologians have drawn a distinction between the “liberty” and “ability” of the sinner’s will, affirming the former but denying the latter. We believe this distinction to be an accurate and helpful one. Unless a person be free to exercise volitions as he pleases, he would not be an accountable being. Nevertheless, fallen man cannot, by any exercise of will, change his nature or make any choice contrary to the governing tendencies of indwelling sin: he is totally lacking any disposition to meet the requirements of the Moral Law, and therefore he cannot make himself willing to so do. The affections of the heart and the perceptions of the mind regulate our volitions and the will has no inherent power to change our affections: we cannot by any resolution however strong or prolonged, make ourselves love what we hate or hate what we love.
Because the sinner acts without any external compulsion, acts according to his own inclinations, his mind is free to consider and weigh the various motives which come before it, making its own preferences or choices. By “motives” we mean those reasons or inducements which are presented to the mind tending to lead to choice and action. The power or force of these “inducements” lie not in themselves (abstractedly considered), but in the state of the person who is the subject of them. Consequently, that which would be a powerful motive in the view of one mind, would have no weight at all in the view of another. For example the offer of a bribe would be a sufficient motive to induce one judge to decide a case contrary to law and against the evidence; whereas to another such an offer, so far from being a motive to such an evil course, would be highly repulsive.
Let this be clearly grasped by the reader: those external inducements which are presented to the mind affect a person according to the state of his or her heart. The temptation presented by Potiphar’s wife, which was firmly refused by Joseph, would have been a motive of sufficient power to have ruined many a youth of less purity of heart. External motives can have no influence over the choice and conduct of men except as they make an appeal to desires already existing in the mind. Throw a lighted match into a barrel of gunpowder and there is at once an explosion; but throw that match into a barrel of water and no harm is done. “The Prince of this world comes and has nothing in Me” (John 14:30) said the Holy One of God-none among the children of men can make such a claim.
All the affections of the human heart are, in their very nature, free. The idea of compelling a man to love or hate any object is manifestly absurd. The same holds good of all his faculties: conscience may be enlightened and made more sensitive, or it may be resisted and hardened, but no man can be compelled to act contrary to its dictates without depriving him of his freedom, and at the same time of his responsibility. So of his will or volition: two or more alternatives confront a man, conflicting motives are presented to his mind, and his will is quite free in making a preference or choice between them. Nevertheless, it is the very nature of his will to choose that which is preferable, that which is most agreeable to his heart. Consequently, though the will acts freely, it is biased by the corruptions of the heart, and therefore is unable to choose spiritual good. The heart must be changed before the will chooses God.
Against our assertion that the spiritual impotency of fallen man is a voluntary one, it may be objected that the sinner is so strongly tempted, so powerfully influenced by Satan, and is so thoroughly under his control, that (in many instances, at least) he cannot help himself, being irresistibly drawn into sinning. That there is some force in this objection is readily granted, but the length to which it is carried we can by no means allow. However subtle the craft, however influential the sophistry, however great be the power of the Devil, yet these must not be used so as to repudiate our personal responsibility and criminality in sinning, nor must we construe ourselves into being Satan’s innocent dupes or unwilling victims. Never does Scripture so represent the matter: rather are we there told “resist the Devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7), and if we seek grace to meet the conditions (specified in 1 Peter 5:8, 9), then God will assuredly make good His promise.
Satan’s power is not physical, but moral. He has an intimate access to the faculties of our souls, and though he cannot (like the Holy Spirit) work at their roots so as to change and transform their tendencies, he can ply them with representations and delusions which effectually incline them to will and do according to his good pleasure. He can cheat the understanding with appearances of truth, fascinate he fancy with pictures of beauty, and mock the heart with semblances of good. By a secret suggestion he can give an impulse to our thoughts and turn them into channels which subserve the purposes of his malignity. But in all of this he does no violence to the laws of our nature. He disturbs neither the spontaneity of the understanding nor the freedom of the will. He cannot make us do a thing without our own consent, and in consenting to his evil suggestions lies our guilt.
That sinners act freely and voluntarily in all their wrong-doing is everywhere taught in the Scriptures. Take first of all the horrible state of the heathen, a dark picture of which is painted for us in the first chapter of Romans. There we behold the consummation of human depravity. Heathenism, be it stated, is the full development of the principle of sin in its workings upon the intellectual, moral, and religious nature of man. In Romans 1 we are shown that the dreadful condition in which the heathen now lie (and missionaries bear clear witness that what comes before their notice accurately corresponds to what is here stated) is the consequence of their own voluntary choice. “When they knew God, they glorified Him not as God” (v. 21). They changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man” etc. (v. 23). They “changed the Truth of God into a lie” (v. 25). They “did not like to retain God in their knowledge” (v. 28).
Nor was it any different with the favored people of Israel. So averse were they to God and His ways that they hated, persecuted, and slew those messengers which He sent to reclaim them from their wickedness. “They kept not the covenant of God, and refused to walk in His law” (Psalm 78:10). They said, “I have loved strangers, and after them will I go” (Jeremiah 2:25). “Thus says the LORD, Stand you in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and you shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein. Also I set watchmen over you, saying, Hearken to the sound of the trumpet. But they said, We will not hearken” (Jeremiah 6:16, 17). The Lord called unto them, but they “refused.” He stretched forth His hand, but “no man regarded.” They set at nothing all His counsel, and would none of His reproofs (Proverbs 1:24, 25). “The LORD God of their fathers sent to them by His messengers, rising up early and sending . . . But they mocked the messengers of God, and despised His words, and misused His Prophets, until the wrath of the LORD rose against His people, until there was no remedy” (2 Chronicles 36:15, 16).
Nor did God’s blessed Son receive any better treatment at their hands. Though He appeared before them in “the form of a servant.” He suited not their proud hearts. Though He was “full of grace and truth,” they despised and rejected Him. Though He sought only their good, they returned Him nothing but evil. Though He proclaimed glad tidings unto them, they refused to hearken thereto. Though He wrought the most wonderful miracles before them, yet they would not believe Him. “He came unto His own, and His own received Him not” (John 1:11). Their language was, “We will not have this Man to reign over us” (Luke 19:14). It was a voluntary and deliberate refusal of Him. It is this very voluntariness of their sin which shall be charged against them in the day of judgment, for then shall He give orders, “But those Mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay before Me” (Luke 19:27).
And from whence did such wicked treatment of the Son of God proceed? Why, from the vile corruptions of their own hearts. “They hated Me without a cause” (John 15:25) declared the incarnate Son of God. There was absolutely nothing whatever either in His character or conduct which merited their wicked contempt and enmity. Did anyone force them to be of such an abominable disposition? Surely not: they were hearty in it. Were they forced to such vileness against their wills? No indeed. They were voluntary in their wicked hatred of Christ. They loved darkness. They were infatuated by their corruptions and delighted in gratifying the same. They were highly pleased with false prophets, because they preached in their favor, flattering them and gratifying their evil hearts. And they hated whatever was disagreeable to their depraved tastes and which condemned their evil ways.
It was the same with those who heard the ambassadors of Christ-except for those in whom a sovereign God wrought a miracle of grace. Jews and Gentiles alike willfully opposed and rejected the Gospel. In some cases their hatred of the Truth was less openly manifested than in others, nevertheless it was just as real. And their disrelish of and opposition to the Gospel was entirely voluntary on the part of its enemies. Did not the Jewish leaders act freely when they threw Peter and John into prison? Did not the murderers of Stephen act freely when they “stopped their ears and ran upon him with one accord?” (Acts 7:57). Did not the Philippians act freely when they “rose up together” against Paul and Silas, beat, and cast them into prison?
The same thing obtains everywhere today. If the Gospel of Christ is preached in its purity and all its glory, it gains not the regard of the masses who hear it: instead, as soon as the sermon is over, like the generality of the Jews in our Lord’s day, they “make light of it and go their ways, one to his farm and another to his merchandise” (Matthew 22:5). They are too indifferent to seek after obtaining even a doctrinal knowledge of the Truth. There are many who regard this sottishness of the unsaved as mere indifference, but it is actually something far worse: it is dislike of the heart for God, deliberate opposition to Him. “They are like the deaf adder that stops her ear; which will not hearken to the voice of charmers, charming never so wisely” (Psalm 58:4, 5). As Paul declared in his day, “The heart of this people is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed; lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and should be converted” (Acts 28:27).
“They say unto God, Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of Your ways” (Job 21:14). Such is the desperately wicked state of man’s heart: diametrically opposite to the Divine excellence. Yet when this solemn truth is pressed upon the unregenerate, many of them will strongly object, denying that there is any such obstinacy in their hearts, saying, I have never hated God, but have always loved Him. Thus do they flatter themselves and seek to make themselves out to be far otherwise than they are. Nor are they wittingly lying when they make such a claim: rather are they utterly misled by their deceitful hearts. The scribes and Pharisees truly thought that they loved God, and that had they lived in the days of their forefathers, they had not put the Prophets to death (Matthew 23:29, 30). They were altogether insensible to their fearful and inveterate enmity against God; nevertheless it was there, and later unmistakably displayed itself, when they hounded the Son of God to death.
And why was it that the scribes and Pharisees were quite unconscious of the opposition of their hearts to the Divine nature? It was because they had erroneous notions of the Divine Being, and loved only that false image which they had framed in their own imaginations; and therefore they had false conceptions of the Prophets which their fathers hated and murdered, and hence supposed they would have loved them. But when God was manifested in Christ they hated Him with bitter hatred. In like manner there are multitudes of sinners at ease in Zion today, millions in Christendom who persuade themselves that they truly love God, when in reality they hate Him; and the hardest of all tasks confronting the ministers of Christ is to shatter this cherished delusion and bring their unsaved hearers face to face with the horrible reality of their unspeakably vile condition.
Loudly as our deluded fellow-creatures may now boast of their loving of the Divine nature, as soon as they pass out of time into eternity and discover what God is, their spurious love immediately vanishes and their enmity bursts forth in full force. Sinners today perceive not their contrariness to the Divine nature, because they are utterly ignorant of the true God. It must be so, for a sinful nature and holy nature are diametrically opposite. Christendom has invented a false “God”: a “God” without any sovereign choice, a “God” who loves all mankind, a “God” whose justice is swallowed up in His mercy.
Were they acquainted with the God of Holy Writ-who “hate all workers of iniquity” (Psalm 5:5), who will one day appear “in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not Himself and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord” (2 Thessalonians 1:8, 9)-they, if they honestly examined their hearts, would be conscious of the hatred they bear Him.
We now come to our fourth point: The spiritual inability of the natural man is a criminal one. This follows inevitably from the fact that his impotency is a moral and voluntary one. Highly important it is that we should be brought to see, feel, and own that our spiritual helplessness is a culpable one, for until we do so we shall never truly justify God nor condemn ourselves. To realize one’s self to be equally “without strength” and “without excuse” is deeply humiliating, and fallen man will strive with all his might to stifle such a conviction and deny the truth of it. Yet until we place the blame of our sinfulness where it really belongs, we shall not, we cannot, either vindicate the righteousness of the Divine Law or appreciate the marvelous grace made known in the Gospel. To condemn ourselves as God condemns us is the one prerequisite to establish our title to salvation in Christ.
“We cannot ascribe too much to the grace of God; but we should be careful that, under a semblance of exalting His grace, we do not furnish the slothful and unfaithful with excuses for their willfulness and wickedness. God is gracious; but let men be justly responsible for his own evil and not presume to state his case so as would, by just consequence, represent the holy God as being the cause of the sin which He hates and forbids” wrote that prince in Israel, John Newton. That was indeed a timely word. Alas that some who claim to be great admirers of his works have sadly failed to uphold the responsibility of the sinner, and have so expressed his spiritual inability as to furnish him with much excuse for his sloth and infidelity. Only by insisting on the criminality of fallen man’s impotency can such a deplorable snare be avoided.
Inexorably as man’s criminality attaches to his free agency in the committing of sin, yet as said above, the sinner will strive with might and main to avoid such a conclusion and seek to throw the blame upon someone else other than himself. He will haughtily ask, Would any right-minded person blame a man whose arms had been broken because he could no longer perform manual labor? or condemn a blind man because he did not read? then why should I be held guilty for not performing spiritual duties which are altogether beyond my powers? To this difficulty several replies may be made. (1) There is no analogy in the cases you have advanced. Broken arms and sightless eyes are incompetent members, but the intellectual and moral faculties have not been destroyed, and it is because of your misuse of the same that you are justly held culpable.
(2) Not only do you fail to use your moral faculties in the performing of spiritual good, but you employ them in the doing of moral evil, and the excuse that you cannot help yourself is an idle one. Apply that principle to the commercial transactions of society, and what would be the result? A man contracts a debt within the compass of his present financial ability to meet. He then perversely and wickedly squanders his money, and gambles away his property so that he is no longer able to pay what he owes: is he therefore not bound to pay? Has his reckless prodigality freed him from all moral obligation to discharge his debts? Must justice now break her scales and no more hold an equal balance because he chooses to be a villain? No indeed: unregenerate men would not allow such reasoning.
To this it may be objected, I did not bring this depravity upon myself, but was born with it. If my heart be altogether evil and I did not make it so, if such a heart was given me without my choice and consent, then how can I be to blame for its inevitable issues and actions? Such a question betrays the fact that a wicked heart is regarded as a calamity which man did not choose, but which must be endured. It is contemplated as a thing not at all faulty in its own nature, so that if there be any blame attached to it, it must be for something previous to it and of quite another kind: as a man born diseased is not personally to blame, but if it be the result of his own follies it is a just retribution. But to reason so about sin is utterly erroneous: as if it were no sin merely to be a sinner or to commit sin when one has an inclination so to do, but that only the bringing of a sinful disposition upon ourselves would be a wicked thing.
Stripped of all disguise and ambiguity, the above objection amounts to this: Adam was in reality the only sinner, and we his miserable offspring being by nature depraved, are under a necessity of sinning, and therefore cannot be to blame for it. The fact that sin itself is sinful is lost sight of. Scripture traces all our evil acts back to a sinful heart, and teaches that this is a blamable thing in itself. A depraved heart is a moral thing, being something quite different from a weak head, a bad memory, or an infirm constitution. A man is not to blame for these physical infirmities, providing he has not brought them upon himself. To say that I cannot help hating God and opposing my neighbor, and that therefore I am not to blame for the same, certainly makes me out to be a most vile and insensible wretch.
It is not necessary in order to a fallen creature’s being to blame for his evil dispositions, that he should first be virtuous or free from moral corruption. If a person now finds himself a sinner, and that from the heart he approves and chooses rebellion against God and His Law, he is not the less a sinner because he has been of the same disposition for many years and has always sinned from his birth. His having sinned from the beginning, and done nothing else cannot be a legitimate excuse for sinning now. Nor is man’s guilt the less because sin is so deeply and so thoroughly fixed in his heart: the stronger the enmity against God, the greater its heinousness. Disinclination Godwards is the very essence of depravity. When we rightly define the nature of man’s inability unto good-namely, a moral and a voluntary one: not the absence of faculties, but the misuse of them-then this excuse of blamelessness is at once exposed.
But the carnal mind will still object-“We are naturally as God has made us. And if therefore we are born sinful and God has created us thus, then He and not ourselves is the Author of sin.” To such awful lengths is the enmity of the carnal mind capable of going: shifting the onus from his own guilty shoulders and throwing the blame upon the thrice holy God! But this objection was obviated earlier. God made man upright, but he apostatized. Man ruined himself. God endowed each of us with rationality, with a conscience, with a will to refuse the evil and choose the good; and it is by the free exercise of our faculties that we sin, and we have no more justification for transferring the guilt from ourselves to someone else than Adam had to blame Eve or Eve the Serpent.
It is replied, But it is not consistent with the Divine perfections to bring mankind into the world under such handicapped and wretched circumstances. “Nay but, O man, who are you that replies against God? Shall the thing formed say to Him that formed it, Why have You made me thus?” (Romans 9:20). It is blasphemous to say that it is not consistent with the Divine perfections for God to do what in fact He does. It is a matter of fact that we are born into the world destitute of the moral image of God, ignorant of Him, insensible of His infinite glory. It is a plain matter of fact that in consequence of this deprivation we are disposed to love ourselves supremely, live to ourselves ultimately, and wholly delight in what is not of God. And it is plain to demonstration that this tendency is in direct contrariety to God’s Holy Law and is exceedingly sinful. Whether or not we can see the justice and wisdom of this Divine providence, yet we must remember that God is “holy in all His ways, and righteous in all His works.”
It may still be objected, How can I possibly be to blame for my evil disposition when it was Adam who corrupted human nature? Answer: You are an enemy to the infinitely glorious God, and that voluntarily, and therefore you are infinitely to blame and without excuse, for nothing can make it right for a creature to be deliberately hostile to his Creator or possibly extenuate such a crime. It is in its own nature infinitely wrong, and therefore you stand guilty before God. The very fact that in the Day of judgment “every mouth will be stopped” (Romans 3:19) shows there is no validity or force to this objection. It is for the acting out of his nature-instead of the mortifying thereof-for which the sinner is held accountable. The fact that we are born traitors to God cannot cancel our obligation to render Him allegiance: no man can escape from the righteous requirements of law by a voluntary opposition to it.
That man’s sinful nature is the direct consequence of Adam’s transgression does not to the slightest degree make it any less his own sin, or render him any less blameworthy. This is clear not only from the justice of the principle of representation (Adam’s acting as our federal head), but also from the fact that each of us approves of Adam’s transgression by emulating his example, joining ourselves with him in rebellion against God. That we go on to break the Covenant of Works and disobey the Divine Law demonstrates that we are righteously condemned with Adam. Because each descendant of Adam voluntarily prolongs and perpetuates in himself the evil inclination originated by his first parents, renders us doubly guilty. If not, why do we not repudiate Adam and refuse to sin-stand out in opposition to him, and be holy! If we resent our being corrupted through Adam, why not break the entail of sin?
But let us now turn from these objections to the positive side of our subject. The Scriptures uniformly teach that fallen man’s moral and voluntary inability is a criminal one, that God justly holds him guilty both for his depraved state and all his sinful actions. So plain is this, so abundantly evidenced, there is little need for us to labor the point. The first three chapters of Romans are expressly devoted to this solemn theme. There it is declared, “The wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness” (1:18). The reason for this is given in verses 19, 20, ending with the inexorable sentence, “So that they are without excuse.” The second chapter opens with, “Therefore you are inexcusable, O man,” and in 3:19 the Apostle shows the ruling of the Divine Law is such that, in the Day to come, “every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.”
The criminality of the sinner’s depravity and moral impotency is clearly brought out in Matthew 25:14-30. The general design of that parable is easily perceived. By the “Lord” of the servants is signified the Creator as the Owner and Governor of this world. By the “servants” mankind in general is represented. By the different “talents” is meant the faculties and powers with which God has endowed us, the privileges and advantages by which He distinguishes one person from another. By the two servants who faithfully improved their talents, is meant the righteous who serve God with fidelity. By the slothful and unfaithful servant, the sinner, who entirely neglects the service of God and blames Him rather than himself for his negligence. His complaint in verses 24 and 25 expresses the feelings of every impenitent sinner, complaining that God requires from him (holiness) and what He has not given to him (a holy heart). God’s condemnation is on the ground that he improves not what he did have (v. 27)-his rational faculties and moral powers. “Cast you the unprofitable servant into outer darkness” (v. 30) shows the justice of his condemnation.
The excuse that I cannot help being so perverse is further ruled out of court by Christ’s declarations to the scribes and Pharisees. They had no heart either for Christ or His doctrine: He told them plainly, “Why do you not understand My speech? even because you cannot hear My word” (John 8:43). But their inability was no excuse for them in His account, for He affirmed that all their impotency arose from their evil hearts, their lack of a holy disposition: “You are of your father the Devil, and the lusts of your father you will (desire to) do” (v. 44). Yet though they had no more power to help themselves than we have, and were no more able to transform their hearts than we are, nevertheless our Lord judged them to be wholly to blame and altogether inexcusable, saying to them, “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloak (excuse) for their sin” (John 15:22).
Let it be specifically pointed out that when Scripture affirms the inability of a man unto good, it never does so by way of extenuation. Thus, when Jehovah asked Israel of old, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may you also do good, that are accustomed to do evil” (Jeremiah 13:23) It was not for the purpose of mitigating their guilt, but with the object of showing how it aggravated their obstinacy of heart and to evince that no external means could be effectual unto their recovery. Just as likely was an Ethiopian to be moved by exhortation or expostulation to seek and change the color of his skin, as any appeals would induce rebels against God to renounce those iniquities to which they had so long been addicted.
“Because I tell you the truth, you believe Me not. Which of you convinces Me of sin? And if I say the truth, why do you not believe Me? He who is of God hears God’s word: you therefore hear them not, because you are not of God” (John 8:45-47). Those cutting interrogations of our Lord proceeded on the supposition that they could have received the teaching of Christ if it had been agreeable to their corrupt nature, and its being otherwise was the only reason why they could not understand or receive it. In like manner, when He affirmed, “No man can come to Me, except the Father which has sent Me draw him,” Christ did not intimate that any natural man honestly desired to come unto Him, and was deterred from so doing against his will-He meant that man is incapable of freely doing that which is inconsistent with his corruptions. They were averse to come unto the holy Redeemer because they were in love with sin.
The excuse that I cannot help doing wrong is worthless. To plead my inability unto good simply because I lack the heart so to do would be laughed out of court even among men. Does anyone suppose that only the want of a will to earn his living excuses a man from doing so, just as bodily infirmity does? Does anyone imagine that the covetous miser, who with all his useless hoards, has no heart to give a penny to the poor, is for that reason excused from deeds of charity as one who has nothing to give? Nor does a man’s heart being fully set in him to evil render his wicked actions the less evil. If they did, then it would necessarily follow that the worse any sinner grows the less to blame is he-and nothing could be more absurd.
Let us show yet further the utter worthlessness of those evasions by which the sinner seeks to deny the criminality of his moral impotency. Men never resort to such silly reasonings when they are wronged by others. When treated with disrespect and ill-nature by their fellows, they never offer the excuses for them behind which they seek to cloak their own sins. If someone deliberately robbed me, would I say, Poor fellow, he could not help himself: Adam is to blame! It someone wickedly slandered me, would I say, Such a person is to be pitied, for he was born into the world with this evil disposition? If someone whom I had always treated honorably and generously returned my kindness by doing all he could to injure me, and then replied, I could not help hating you, so far from accepting that as a valid extenuation, I would rightly consider his vile enmity only rendered him the more to blame.
Finally, let it be pointed out that when a sinner is truly awakened, humbled, and broken down before God, he realizes that he deserves to be damned for his vile rebellion against God, and freely acknowledges that he is what he is voluntarily and not by compulsion. He now realizes that he has had no love for God, nor any desire to love Him: that he was an enemy to Him in his very heart, and voluntarily so. By His grace he comes to realize that all his fair pretenses and promises, prayers, and religious performances, were mere hypocrisy, arising only from self-love, guilty fears, and mercenary hopes. He feels himself to be without excuse and owns that eternal judgment is his just due. When truly convicted of sin by the Holy Spirit the sinner is driven out of all his false refuges, and admits that his inability is a criminal one, that he is guilty.
