Featured A Vital Contemporary Question, from A.W. Pink.

I have not turned back so what's your point?.
MB[/QUOTE]

Yes, "If man is totally depraved how does he even breathe?" is a wonderfully superb example of arguing 'nothing'.

Thank you.

The "Flesh Profits Nothing".

 

All who have or will come into Being would and will go to Hell, Forever, as Totally Spiritless, with no Relationship to God, Who is Spirit, apart from God Granting them Conviction through the Word, Repentance toward God the Father and Agreement that the Law Condemns them, and Eternally Godly Giving Grace, to Have Faith in Jesus' Death, Burial, and Resurrection, as evidence they are God's Elect.

Those without Christ will wish they had never existed.

 

The Total Depravity of Man by A. W. Pink

Is man now in such a condition that he cannot be saved without the special and direct intervention of the triune God on his behalf?

In other words, is there any hope for him apart from his personal election by the Father, his particular redemption by the Son, and the supernatural operations of the Spirit within him?

Or, putting it in still another way: If man is a totally depraved being, can he possibly take the first step in the matter of his return to God?

The Scriptural Answer

The scriptural answer to that question makes evident the utter futility of the schemes of social reformers for "the moral elevation of the masses," the plans of politicians for the peace of the nations, and the ideologies of dreamers to usher in a golden age for this world.

It is both pathetic and tragic to see many of our greatest men putting their faith in such chimeras. Divisions and discords, hatred and bloodshed, cannot be banished while human nature is what it is.

But during the past century the steady trend of a deteriorating Christendom has been to underrate the evil of sin and overrate the moral capabilities of men. Instead of proclaiming the heinousness of sin, there has been a dwelling more upon its inconveniences, and the abasing portrayal of the lost condition of man as set forth in Holy Writ has been obscured if not obliterated by flattering disquisitions on human advancement.

If the popular religion of the churches—including nine-tenths of what is termed "evangelical Christianity—be tested at this point, it will be found that it clashes directly with man's fallen, ruined and spiritually dead condition.

There is therefore a crying need today for sin to be viewed in the light of God's law and gospel, so that its exceeding sinfulness may be demonstrated, and the dark depths of human depravity exposed by the teaching of Holy Writ, that we may learn what is connoted by those fearful words "dead in trespasses and sins."

The grand object of the Bible is to make God known to us, to portray man as he appears in the eyes of his Maker, and to show the relation of one to the other.

It is therefore the business of His servants not only to declare the divine character and perfections, but also to delineate the original condition and apostasy of man, as well as the divine remedy for his ruin.

Until we really behold the horror of the pit in which by nature we lie, we can never properly appreciate Christ's so-great salvation.

In man's fallen condition we have the awful disease for which divine redemption is the only cure, and our estimation and valuation of the provisions of divine grace will necessarily be modified in proportion as we modify the need it was meant to meet.

David Clarkson, one of the Puritans, pointed out this fact in his sermon on Psalm 51:5:

The end of the ministry of the Gospel is to bring sinners unto Christ.

Their way to this end lies through the sense of their misery without Christ.

The ingredients of this misery are our sinfulness, original and actual; the wrath of God, whereto sin has exposed us; and our impotency to free ourselves either from sin or wrath.

That we may therefore promote this great end, we shall endeavour, as the Lord will assist, to lead you in this way, by the sense of misery, to Him who alone can deliver from it.

Now the original of our misery being the corruption of our nature, or original sin, we thought fit to begin here, and therefore have pitched upon these words as very proper for our purpose: "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me."

 

Characteristics of the Doctrine

This subject is indeed a most solemn one, and none can fitly write or preach on it unless his own heart is deeply awed by it.

It is not something from which any man can detach himself and expatiate on it as though he were not directly involved in it; still less as from a higher level looking down on those whom he denounces.

Nothing is more incongruous and unbecoming than for a young preacher glibly to rattle off passages of Scripture which portray his own vileness by nature.

Rather should they be read or quoted with the utmost gravity. J. O. Philpot stated:

As no heart can sufficiently conceive, so no tongue can adequately express, the state of wretchedness and ruin into which sin has cast guilty, miserable man.

In separating him from God, it severed him from the only source of all happiness and holiness.

It has ruined him body and soul: the one it has filled with sickness and disease; in the other it has defaced and destroyed the image of God in which it was created.

It has made him love sin and hate God.

The doctrine of total depravity is a very humbling one.

It is not that man leans to one side and needs propping up, nor that he is merely ignorant and requires instructing, nor that he is run down and calls for a tonic; but rather that he is undone, lost, spiritually dead.

Consequently, he is "without strength," thoroughly incapable of bettering himself; he is exposed to the wrath of God, and unable to perform a single work which can find acceptance with Him.

Almost every page of the Bible bears witness to this truth.

The whole scheme of redemption takes it for granted. The plan of salvation taught in the Scriptures could have no place on any other supposition.

The impossibility of any man's gaining the approbation of God by works of his own appears plainly in the case of the rich young ruler who came to Christ.

Judged by human standards, he was a model of virtue and religious attainments.

Yet, like all others who trust in self-efforts, he was ignorant of the spirituality and strictness of God's law; when Christ put him to the test his fair expectations were blown to the winds and "he went away sorrowful" (Matt. 19:22).

 

Extreme nothing.