Part I

On the other hand these studies do not descend low enough. Man is more corrupt than they imagine. Their darkest thoughts of man's inherent moral turpitude are still too bright. "The heart of man is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it?" Jeremiah's question remains unanswered by men. It is God who declares, "I the Lord, search the hearts...."

But that conclusion, it is said can no longer be held. Christ taught that man is inherently good; has been more sinned against than he has sinned; that he is a child of God and merely requires instruction to correct his misconceptions of God and ensure his return to the Father. That the teaching of Christ as recorded in the Gospels confirms the Reformed doctrine of original sin is hotly denied by Modernists. Such a doctrine, they declare, may perhaps be inferred from the teaching of the prophets such as Jeremiah, or of Apostles such as Paul - but the one has been outmoded and the other is but a later perversion of Christ's teaching.

This article is an attempt to consider, rather sketchily I fear, our Lord's teaching on this subject; not because we believe His recorded utterances conflict with the rest of Scripture as many unfortunately suppose, but to counter the suggestion that the doctrine has no basis in the Gospels. In His person and work, Old and New Testaments are linked. He came to "fulfil the law and the prophets," of which He said, "The Scripture cannot be broken." Moreover, He qualified and authorised the disciples to complete the New Testament by promising them the Holy Spirit to lead them "into all the truth," and by assuring them, "ye shall be witnesses unto me." We have some basis then, for believing that the Epistles are a God-breathed exposition of the facts of Christ's life, death and resurrection and an expansion of His teaching.

It must be stated at the outset that right views of God form the basis of right views of man. God's holiness which shines through His laws demonstrates the sinfulness (Scripture knows no stronger term) of sin. For sin is essentially related to law, God's law. John defines it as anomia - lawlessness. It is, therefore, not merely transgression of but also lack of conformity to His law. It must be regarded, not merely as an act or series of acts, but also as a state or condition. The term original sin has been used in a wide sense, summarised by Reformed standards as consisting in: (a) the guilt of Adam's first transgression and (b) the loss of original righteousness and (c) the corruption of the whole nature. It is this last which is commonly called original sin. It forms an essential background to the glorious act of redemption by the Lord Jesus Christ. Pascal has said that the Christian faith has mainly two things to establish - the corruption of human nature and its redemption by Jesus Christ.

MAN'S EXTREMITY, GOD'S REMEDY

The tragic plight of the human race is implicit in the Gospel record. It is very important to realise that man's condition as "lost and ruined by the fall" is taken for granted. Our Lord's very coming into the world presupposed the urgent need of man.

In the fulness of time man's extremity became God's opportunity, man's sin and helplessness the occasion for the display of God's grace and power in Salvation.

The Lord's public ministry opened with a call to repentance. We have not yet fully grasped the significance of that call to a change of mind and heart. It surely suggests that man's sin is not so much an act of transgression as a state of heart and mind, a disposition alienated from God. The call to repent reaches deep into our being, gets beneath our conduct to our character, uncovers the very fountain from which streams the overt acts of our disobedience. The sin which is the curse of our race is essentially a state of soul which, apart from God's grace, directs the course of our lives in channels of evil. The man with whom God deals in grace bewails his sin rather than his sins, the state of his heart more than the works of his hands. "O, wretched man that I am!" Moral acts reveal moral character, and if a man is universally sinful only one conclusion can be drawn. The tree is known by its fruit. "A good tree bringeth forth good fruit, a corrupt tree bringeth forth corrupt fruit." There our Lord enunciated a homely and general principle which applied to the facts of life and experience demonstrates clearly the corruption of man's nature. Hence the change demanded is radical. First make the tree good. There must be a new birth. So deep is the seat of this disorder that a new creation by an act of: divine power is needed. Conversion requires that. The mighty power by which Christ rose from the dead must quicken us into newness of life.

 "They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." And the very righteous to whom almost ironic reference was thus made, He elsewhere described in strong language as "whited sepulchres" because they sought to hide their inward corruption by outward show of piety. "The Son of man is come to seek and to save the lost." The lost! How lost? Why lost? And can nothing less than His coming save them? "The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many." A ransom from what? And why so costly a ransom? "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness even so must the Son of man be lifted up...." Must! The must, the constraint of divine love and mercy. But might not some less costly device have been found? Had the best blood of heaven to flow for our salvation? These and other verses imply, do they not, that man's need was seated in his sin. That sin, it appears, can only be measured by the depths of Christ's condescension, by the distance from the throne of the majesty of high to the gibbet raised on the hill of death, beyond the city wall.

We speak of the corruption of the whole nature yet we are unable perhaps to fathom the depth of Peter's thought and feeling when, confronted with evidence of the glory of Christ, he cried, "Depart from me for I am a sinful man, O Lord." Yet even Peter saw but dimly the very abyss of human sin and need. To plumb these depths required the piercing vision of the Lord of glory. Was it not this that, as someone has suggested, so moved Him that into the eternal calm of his blessed being He permitted this thought to enter, "I will die for men"? Was it not this that stirred His compassion for the multitude when He moved a Man among men, that wrung from His heart the bitter lament over unrepentant Jerusalem, that drew from His lips in the hour of His greatest agony a cry of tender intercession for those who in slaying Him unconsciously betrayed the depths to which our race had sunk?

Part II

IN the preceding section of this paper an attempt has been made to show that the corruption of human nature is a doctrine implicit in the gospel record. In not a few passages, however, it is as explicitly taught. Mark 7: 21 comes to mind: "...out of the heart of man proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness..." The denial of that love which is the fulfilment of the law is here obvious. The context relates to defilement. Christ meets the objection of the Pharisees to the disciples' eating with unwashed hands, and He does so by showing that defilement is not from without but from within, "out of the heart." Here with direct faithfulness yet real tenderness our Lord exposes the core of man's corruption, the seat of defilement. The foul stream which contaminates the individual and society is traced to its source. Character underlies conduct. Because the heart is wrong, the life is wrong. As the fruit shows the nature of the tree and the stream of the fountain, so the actions of a man betray the state of his heart. We cannot know the heart of man as Christ knows it; yet we are appalled often, are we not, when we introspect, analyse our thoughts, ponder our motives. Only as the Holy Spirit, under the light of God's holiness uncovers to us the well-springs of all our thoughts and words and actions, will our judgment conform to Christ's. Perhaps it is everywhere admitted that no man is perfect, but John abhors himself and repents, Isaiah shrinks with sense of uncleanness, Daniel's comeliness turns to corruption, Peter in self-loathing would banish himself from the presence of the Lord, Paul writhes with inner conflict and groans beneath a body of death, and the devotions of the saints among men in all ages abound with mournful confessions, not only of actual transgressions, but also of the sinful disposition, the ungodly bias from which the transgressions proceed.

Moreover, further study reveals in some measure the extent of this corruption of nature. It seems that every faculty is affected. Consequently there has arisen the term "total depravity," a term much maligned, because much misunderstood. It really means that every part and faculty of man has been affected by the fall. We instance but three.

The intellect or understanding is impaired. Spiritual truths revealed unto (not merely discovered by) the children of the kingdom are hidden from the wise and prudent. That fact is quite evident today. Some of the keenest intellects of our age are in a state of spiritual idiocy. The fundamental premise of much of the vast bulk of organized knowledge today is that there is no God, or if that be conceded as a remote possibility, there is no true revelation of God. The Bible is irrelevant, the cross foolishness. The Apostle's clear statement, "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God" is but a reiteration of the truth uttered by our Lord following His condemnation of the cities of Galilee (Matt. 9: 25). And, as we shall see later, it is evident from other statements made by our Lord that this rejection of knowledge is wilful. The universe coheres in Christ. All things are delivered unto Him by the Father. In all our thinking then Christ must be considered as central and all things, being, processes and events related to Him. Only thus shall true and balanced knowledge in all spheres be reached. Failure to recognise this is, even today, hindering advance in knowledge. So long as the scientist disregards God, of Whom, through Whom and to Whom are all things, his understanding of the universe will be defective. So long as moralists deny the objective standard of the moral law given by God through Moses there will be no finality in ethics. So long as economists neglect the stewardship suggested by Christ, and apparently recognised by the disciples, social and political creeds will wage bitter warfare. So long as social reformers neglect the necessity for a new birth, and for salvation through the sacrifice and grace of Christ, sin and social evils will abound. "The light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not." That is manifestly true today. He, Who made the world, in Whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, was in the world, "and the world knew Him not." The Pharisees He addressed as blind guides. The blind lead the blind when such men lead in the Church and State. There are few more :self righteous and intellectually conceited than many of our present spokesmen of public opinion. Witness the pompous utterances made from many platforms and in many publications by men who regard themselves as leaders in philosophy, science, economics, politics, art, and even theology. Yet so many of them speak and write without true knowledge of Him Who is "the fountain of light of all our day and the master light of all our seeing." It was necessary for our Lord to chide the disciples after three years' instruction, "O, fools and slow of heart to understand," and to rebuke Phillip, "Have I been so long time with you and yet hast thou not known me, Phillip?" That such words can be still addressed with pointed reference to the world and even to the Church after 2,000 years is sad testimony of our darkened understanding.

The affections are also involved. Positively stated, the law of God for the conduct of men runs, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and mind and strength and thy neighbour as thyself." Such love was not much in evidence in our Lord's day. The world, the spirit of antagonism to God and His will for man, the world hated Christ the infinitely lovable One, the Effulgence of the Father's glory, hated Him without a cause. Indeed, the unreasonable hatred of the Pharisees evoked from lips in which grace flowed those words of terrible denunciation and portent, "Ye are of your father the devil." "Men loved darkness rather than light." Our Lord's indictment embraced not only the men of that far off day. Our foolish hearts are still darkened, our affections alienated from God and estranged from His law which ever insists on our two-fold duty to God and man. Has that law ever been kept, save by Him Who blameless trod the path of obedience from Bethlehem to Calvary, from the cradle to the cross?

As a consequence of darkened minds and estranged hearts we experience moral weakness. The enemy has struck another vital centre with consequent spiritual paralysis.

Thought, feeling, will, how intricately these are linked and how delicately they are balanced in the functions of the human mind! Yet in our experience how grossly they can be disordered by sin! Our wills are impaired, "Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin," our Lord said. He also charged the Jews, "Ye will not come to Me that ye might have life." Note well the peculiar moral perversity in this fact that the religious of His day, the students of Scripture, the men who confessedly sought eternal life, yet rejected Christ. If instruction were sufficient these men had it, if knowledge saved, these men were safe. It would seem that they failed or refused to act on the knowledge they had attained. The disobedience was wilful. The rejection of the truth which must have been laying siege to the mind and heart was deliberate. To know is not to do. Mental assent to truth must be linked with willing acceptance ere the truth makes us free. As sin has affected the whole man, God's gracious work in salvation must touch man in every part and faculty. Into the benighted mind He shines, "to give the light of the knowledge of His glory in the face of Jesus Christ." Amidst the disordered affections of darkened hearts, the love of God is shed abroad by His Holy Spirit. To the palsied will comes the power of His resurrection, quickening the dead into newness of life so that a willing people come to Him in the day of His power. Without God we can do nothing. That our spiritual paralysis is complete Christ expressly taught when He said, "No man can come to Me except the Father which hath sent Me draw him."

In medical practice, as a preliminary to inspection and treatment, it is often necessary to remove coverings applied by the sufferer to the sore or deformity he fain would hide from his fellows. Often it is necessary to explore some of the unpleasant mental experiences which have wounded the mind as certainly as a knife may wound the flesh. Such a task is never pleasant, but always necessary. And so in the realm of the spirit we are often faced with the task of exposing and probing and analysing until the process hurts. Let no one feel that this is an attempt to degrade human nature. Our Lord's teaching also indicates the possibilities of men who are redeemed. He refers to them as children of God, lights of the world, the salt of the earth, heirs of such glory that they will shine forth like the sun in the kingdom of the Father. The sanctified genius of Dr. John Duncan crystallised the thoughts I would fain convey. "...There is no such thing as a corrupt nature - only a corruption of nature. The nature is one thing, the corruption thereof another." It is the glory of' the Gospel of Christ that it shows that human nature may be freed from that corruption.

Some centuries ago, a Puritan divine, John Howe, stated the matter in a passage of rare yet poignant beauty. ("The Living Temple.") "That God has withdrawn Himself and left His temple desolate, we have many sad and plain proofs before us, the stately ruins visible to every eye that bear in their front (yet extant) this doleful inscription, 'Here God once dwelt'. Enough appears of the admirable frame and structure of the soul of man to show the divine presence did sometime reside in it, more than enough to proclaim He has retired and gone... There is not now a system, and entire table of coherent truth, a frame of holiness, but some shivered parcels, and if any, with great toil and labour, set themselves to draw out here one piece and there another and set them together, they seem rather to show how exquisite was the workmanship in the original composition than for the present use for which the whole was designed.... Should there be any pretence to the Divine Presence it might be said, 'If God be here, why is it thus?' The faded glory, the darkness, the disorder, the impiety, the decayed state in all respects of this temple too plainly show how the Great Inhabitant is gone."

Yes, but the Lord may return to His temple. Christ came to make that possible. What man once was he may, by God's grace, be again. "Oh, what a solemn thing it is to be a man. Made so exalted, fallen so low, capable of being raised again so high." (Dr. John Duncan.)