The Nature Of Sinfulness
Before focusing on the primary point of disa Gospelgreement regarding sin between those in the Arminian and those in the Reformed camp, we will note the points of agreement.
The main point of agreement can be stated quite simply: Human beings are sinners.
Moreover, all who accept the testimony of Scripture would agree that sinfulness has been the lot of human beings since the time of the origin of the human race.
Although Adam and Eve were originally created without sin, they disobeyed the one command that God had explicitly given them.
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However, tempted by Satan in the form of a serpent, Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate the forbidden fruit. They sinned.
There has been ample speculation as to the nature of the first sin. Some would argue that it was pride, others that it was doubt. But this has never been the point that has separated Arminians from Calvinists.
Nor has the speculation that has taken place about just why the tree was called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil been a bone of contention between these two camps.
For that matter, the two parties in the dispute regarding salvation and the sovereignty of God are in agreement that Adam’s sin affected all his posterity.
As they would endorse the comments of Paul and John that we have already quoted, they would also heartily agree with what Paul writes in Romans 5:17
Once again, there has been speculation and disagreement as to the way in which sin gets passed down from generation to generation. Some would argue that sin is passed to the next generation through the act of conception. This view is known as “traducianism.”
Others argue that Adam functioned as the “federal head” of the human race. By his act of disobedience, he chose sin not only for himself but for all his posterity. As with the question of the nature of the first sin, this issue is also not what separates Arminians from the Reformed when it comes to sin.
Finally, the two parties are seemingly in agreement on what they believe about “original sin.”
Both the Reformed and Arminians would agree with King David, when, after the prophet Nathan confronted him on his sin of adultery with Bathsheba and his attempt to cover it up through the murder of her lawful husband, Uriah the Hittite, he penned these words of true repentance
Human sinfulness is more than that which manifests itself in thoughts, words, and actions. It is a condition that is inherent in us, one with which we are born.
So, where lies the disagreement? The crux of the matter is whether we are merely exceedingly sick or dead in our trespasses and sins. A person who is ill can initiate various remedies.
A dead person can do nothing. Arminians would claim that our sinfulness, though great, has not caused us to be so comatose that we can do nothing to rectify the situation. The Reformed argues that we are not just comatose. We are dead.
This disagreement is not one of minor importance. If Arminians are correct in their assessment of the human condition, then human beings, of their own free will, apart from the antecedent work of God in making them alive, can initiate the work of salvation.
They can hear the call of the Gospel and respond to that call prior to the intervention of God in their lives.
However, if the Reformed are right, and apart from the work of God, we are dead in our sins, then we cannot choose to turn to Christ on our own. God must first of all work in us through His Holy Spirit. Only then can we respond to the call of the Gospel?
To put this another way, if the Arminian view is correct, then human beings are not totally depraved. If the Reformed view is correct, they are. (As to what “total depravity” does and does not mean is an issue that we will investigate shortly.)
As we will see, this belief has implications for the remaining issues of disagreement between Calvinists and Arminians. If we are by nature totally depraved, then God does not elect His chosen ones to salvation based on foreseen free choice on their part.
Rather, He elects them according to His sovereign good pleasure and will. If the election is unconditional, then Christ’s death need not be designed to make salvation possible for everyone, but rather it accomplishes the redemption of the elect.
If Christ died for the elect, then saving grace will always be effective and will not be and cannot be resisted. And if Christ’s atoning work accomplishes the salvation of the elect, then most assuredly God will preserve them in that salvation.
If, on the other hand, we have the capacity to initiate the process of salvation, the election is conditioned on our choice, and God elects us on the basis of foreseen free choice.
Christ’s atoning work, then, is designed to make salvation available to everyone to freely choose. God’s grace can be resisted simply by refusing to make that choice.
And, since we have the innate ability to choose to accept the Gospel apart from the regenerative work of the Holy Spirit, presumably we can freely choose to reject it at any time along the way.
As we will see in greater detail as we look at these disputed areas one by one, all these consequences follow from what we believe concerning our fallen state apart from Christ.
Are we merely extremely ill or are we dead in sin and totally depraved? We will now turn to this question.
What does the Bible tell us?
When our first parents ate of the tree they did not die immediately or soon thereafter. In fact, according to Genesis 5:5, Adam lived a total of 930 years.
In what sense, then, did they die when they ate the fruit of the tree? They died to their original goodness and to their intimate fellowship with God. In a word, they died spiritually. Physical death followed many years later as a consequence of spiritual death.
Adam’s sin did not just affect himself. It affected all of his posterity.
We are all born as sinners. And we are born not with spiritual life but spiritually dead. Our natural state is not fellowship with God but enmity toward Him.
As Paul reminds us a couple of verses earlier, our natural state is that of being God’s enemies (v. 10).
Paul speaks of this inborn condition of spiritual death in Ephesians 2:1-3
The death whereof Paul speaks is not physical death, for he says that we used to live in this condition. It is obvious that he is speaking of the state of spiritual death.
The prophet Isaiah says the following
(In Hebrew the term “filthy rags” is especially graphic. It refers to menstrual clothes.)
Although Isaiah does not specifically call our condition one of spiritual death, what he says makes it clear that our sinful condition is such as to make it quite unlikely that we possess the ability to turn to God apart from His enabling work.
The magnitude and all-pervasiveness of our sin is also portrayed in Romans 3:10-18, a passage in which Paul strings together several quotes from the Old Testament:
All have turned away, they have together become worthless;
There is no one who does good, not even one.
Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.
The poison of vipers is on their lips.
Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.
Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know.
There is no fear of God before their eyes.
But what about those passages that indicate that human beings have the ability to respond to the Gospel? Don’t they teach that humans have an inborn ability to freely choose to follow God?
Perhaps the most-quoted of all passages that seemingly support the Arminian contention at this point is Revelation 22:17
This is one of the “whosoever will” passages, so called because, in the King James Version, such passages contain the injunction, “Whosoever wills.” (Another such passage is Mark 8:34, which records Jesus as saying.
Arminians also quote Philippians 2:12
This passage also seems to indicate that we possess the ability to respond to the Gospel and follow Christ.)
If Paul so commands us, doesn’t this mean that we possess the ability to obey this command?
And so, on the one hand, the Bible tells us that we are dead in sin and apparently do not have the ability to respond to God’s call on our own. Yet, on the other hand, it commands us to do so. Does the Bible contradict itself?
Those who reject the idea that the Bible is the infallible Word of God have no trouble with the idea of contradictions within its pages.
But if we believe that the Bible is what it claims to be, the very Word of God, we cannot accept this conclusion. We must find a way to resolve the apparent contradiction.
The incontrovertible fact in all of this is that according to Scripture we are by nature dead in our trespasses and sins.
However, if we read on in Ephesians 2, we find that Paul writes, “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions” (vv. 4-5). The sequence is clear: We were dead. God made us alive.
And having been made alive by the antecedent work of God through His Holy Spirit, we are now given the ability to respond.
The “whosoever will” passages rest on the assumption that God will give spiritual life to those whom He has chosen for salvation and that, having been made alive by the Spirit of God, they will have the ability to respond to God’s call on their lives.
Having been made willing, they will follow Christ and will drink the waters of life that He offers them.
Similarly what Paul says regarding our working out our salvation with fear and trembling. In fact, the next verse makes it clear that our ability to do this is the work of God.
That without God’s antecedent work we cannot respond to the Gospel is confirmed by the words of Jesus recorded in John 6:44
If we were not dead in our trespasses and sins, we could initiate the process of responding to the call of the Gospel. But if our natural state is that of spiritual death, then God must initiate the work of drawing us to the Son.
Total depravity and inability
Those who reject the doctrine of our total depravity apart from the regenerating work of the Spirit in our lives and our total inability to respond freely to the Gospel are quick to point out that this does not seem to correspond to what we know about human beings.
Many unbelievers lead moral, upright lives. Assuredly they are not totally depraved.
Moreover, when we respond to the Gospel, it certainly seems that we do so freely, which indicates that we have within us the ability to initiate the process of salvation.
In response to this, we must clarify what the doctrines of total depravity and inability do and do not imply.
First of all, total depravity does not mean that everyone is as depraved as possible. In fact, no one who has ever lived was or is depraved to this extent.
Even Hitler, though certainly an evil man, was not as bad in every way as he could be.
Similarly, it does not mean that every unregenerate human being will commit every form of sin. Each of us has areas of sin to which we are especially prone and each of us possesses relative immunity against certain forms of sin as well.
Nor does it mean that the sinner has no knowledge of the will of God or that he or she lacks the ability to distinguish between good and evil. In fact, the Bible tells us the opposite.
Even those who have never read or heard of the Ten Commandments have an innate sense of the difference between right and wrong.
Finally, it does not mean that sinful human beings are incapable of recognizing and even admiring virtue in others. Because of the innate sense of right and wrong with which God has created us, we have the ability to acknowledge the outwardly good acts we see performed as well as the ability to condemn other acts as evil.
For example, we are quick to applaud the compassionate response to those who are the victims of a natural disaster such as a hurricane or an earthquake, and we are equally quick to condemn the inherent evil displayed when a mass murder takes place.
What the concept of total depravity does imply is that the corruption that results from original sin applies to every part of our nature and that there is no spiritual good in the sinner.
Certainly, the litany of sins presented by Paul in the passage from Romans 3 quoted earlier bears out the fact that sin corrupts every part of us. Paul speaks of the deceitful tongue and of lips that contain the poison of vipers.
He calls the throat an open grave. He says of the feet that they are swift to shed blood.
Sin affects both the mind and the heart. And in another passage, Paul says of unbelievers that “both their minds and consciences are corrupted” (Titus 1:15).
Our conscience, that is, our sense of right and wrong, although not absent, is corrupted by sin.
We are also reminded of what Isaiah says of our so-called acts of righteousness. They are filthy rags, menstrual clothes if you would.
How is it that Scripture can describe our outward acts of righteousness, our random acts of kindness, our compassionate responses to tragedies, and so forth, as bloody, smelly cloths? It is because as sinners, even when we are doing what is outwardly commendable, we act from selfish motives.
Whether we are intentionally seeking the praise of other people, acting to relieve our sense of guilt, or simply doing something kind because it makes us feel good, we are doing it not for the glory of God but for human-centered motives.
According to the Bible, only what is done solely to please God is truly good. As sinners, apart from God’s regenerative work within us, we cannot act to please God.
This brings us to the second part of the equation, our total inability to do what is pleasing in God’s sight.
Once again, we must first state what this does not mean. It does not mean that we are unable to perform acts that are outwardly good. From a temporal perspective, it is important to encourage people to do good and refrain from doing evil.
Aiding the victims of a tornado, feeding the hungry, providing shelter for the homeless, acting honestly in business, and working hard as employees—all these are outwardly good acts and should be encouraged.
But they do not gain us favor in God’s sight. Because of our sinful nature, we are incapable of winning God’s favor through our works.
Those controlled by sinful nature cannot please God.
In sum, our sinful nature is such that without the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and our minds we have no ability to please God. We are dead and we must be made alive.
