07. Nature of Native Depravity

CHAPTER VII Nature of Native Depravity My reason this, my passion that persuades; I see the right, and I approve it too; Condemn the wrong, and yet the wrong pursue. -Ovid.

Native depravity is within us and a part of us, yet it is not a physical entity. A misconstruction of the word "flesh" as it is used in some texts has led some teachers to the erroneous conclusion that sin, or depravity, is located literally in the flesh. Scriptural ideas are best understood when expressed in terms of the more easily comprehended material world. Hence Jesus constantly spoke in parables, and the entire Bible abounds in terms and illustrations borrowed from nature and from domestic and political life. In the study of the Bible we must constantly exercise vigilance to discriminate between the literal and the figurative sense of terms. The word "flesh," from the Greek word sarx, [sarx] means: 1. Literally, flesh, stripped of the skin; the meat of an animal; the body as opposed to the soul. 2. Kindred. 3. Figuratively, human nature with its frailties and passions. In several texts in the New Testament, also, it has a figurative sense, meaning the evil propensities of the heart. Paul says: "So then they that are in the flesh can not please God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his" (Romans 8:8-9). The people to whom Paul wrote were certainly in the flesh, the body, for his letter was addressed to the Romans; yet there was a more], or figurative, sense in which they were not in the flesh. Again Paul says, "They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts" (Galatians 5:24). The sense of both the crucifixion and of the flesh mentioned in this text is certainly figurative; Paul certainly could not mean that the bodies of those to whom he was writing were crucified. The flesh in this figurative, or moral, sense, is represented by Paul as lusting against the spirit (Galatians 5:17). This fleshly, or depraved, nature, which is contrary to the spirit, is the source, or subjective cause, of sin (Galatians 5:19-21). We must look for depravity, then, elsewhere than in the mere physical part of man.

Neither is native depravity located merely in the will. The will is simply a faculty of mind which completes the mind’s power of personal action. All impulses and inclinations are from the sensibilities. We must, therefore, look deeper for the location of native depravity.

We have learned that in the beginning man was created with a physical, a mental, and a moral nature. The question of native depravity does not pertain directly either to the mental or to the physical nature of man, but to his moral nature. The fact that native depravity is metaphysical, below consciousness, and can not be analyzed, does not destroy its actuality. It reveals itself in its activities, and these activities are conclusive proof of both its reality and its evil tendencies. Many things defying complete analysis are yet certain in their reality. To repeat our illustration of the lamb and the lion, for instance, we have never discovered what is the difference between their subjective states that determines the docility of the one and the ferocity of the other. Yet we must acknowledge that some difference in nature, though unexplainable, gives one the tendencies of the lamb and the other those of the lion. It is likewise a difference in the inner moral condition that is the primary cause for one man’s walking after the flesh and another’s walking after the spirit.

We might illustrate by the words of Jesus the fact that our inability to fully analyze an inner state does not destroy its actuality: " The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit " ( John 3:8 ) . Nicodemus could not understand the operation of the Spirit, since he did not perceive its nature. So it is with those who do not understand the nature of native depravity. But when we fully understand the nature of this moral lapse of the race-that it is a moral state from which arises evil impulses and tendencies-we more easily understand the whole subject of sin and salvation. We read in the moral degeneracy of the race and in the history of the wicked generations that man’s moral nature is depraved by the fall.

Native depravity, then, is not of the nature of a physical entity, nor is it an intellectual faculty, but it consists in a condition of moral sensibility that produces an evil tendency in the life. It is located, not literally in the flesh, nor yet in the mind but in the moral nature.