The Nature of Freedom and Depravity

Human beings are free to do as they wish. God made them that way. Adam and Eve were free to do as they wished. They could eat anything that grew in the Garden, save that from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam could name the animals whatever he wished. He could have named them this, he could have named them that. They could have eaten this, they could have eaten that.

God made humans that way in making them in his image. God does as he wishes--it is his most fundamental quality apart from self-existence. No being is freer of necessity than God, for who or what is there that could impose necessity upon him? He could have created the universe, or he could have not. He could have made beings like us in his image, or he could have not. But God did make us in this image of freedom, excepting of course, that he could not make himself, so the image is not as powerful, nor as free, nor as able as the original.

Nonetheless, that created in the image has to be free in a way analogous to God or it would not be in his image. If God determines our desires or decrees our choices we are no more free than a robot, and nor more in his image than a robot can be in ours. If our choice is circumscribed by desire, the result is not freedom but mere instinct. The Bible generally (there are specific exceptions) shows humans in a light in which the kind of choice described thus far would have to be presupposed in order for the accounts to make sense.

Mankind, since the Fall of Adam and Eve, are not as free as they were nor as free as a being made in God's image could be. Humans, on their own, could never replicate or reflect the choices that God would make (and they've been on their own since the Fall). Dead in spirit and separated from God, they have no means of discerning the way or the will of God. This lack of ability to discover anything or to do anything truly godly translates into mankind having neither the inclination nor the power to choose as God would have them choose. Even with God's word giving mankind more information than they could have ever gotten on their own, without spiritual renewal (regeneration) mankind remains depraved.

Fallen humanity does has the power of choice--the freedom to do as they wish. Their wishes, however, can never rise to nor align with the choice of God. Apart from the Spirit of God communicating the word of God into the soul of a man and thereby enabling faith, that man is not free to do as God wills or, indeed, to know what that is. With the action of God's Spirit bringing to bear God's word on the human heart and giving faith the opportunity to arise, something other than the general depravity of mankind is possible.

I Think We Need A Cold Shower!

Concupiscence refers to the passion aroused for sex--the longing that pursues and finds satisfaction in the completion of the act. Ray Romano, in Everybody Loves Raymond, serves up a workable video definition of the concept when he informs his wife that she's already activated the launch sequence. If we grant a Solomonic exception because Debra and Ray were married, then we have a picture of concupiscence. It is the arousal of desire that fixes itself upon the attainment of sex.

It is an obscure word, in Bibles only found in the King James Version, so many contemporary readers aren't even familiar with it. Modern versions of the Bible generally translate "covet," "lust," or "desire" where KJV translated concupiscence. Translators obviously felt a more general word was required, although I don't think that makes sense in Colossians 3:5 and 1 Thessalonians 4:5 (even though it does in Romans 7:8). I think the context of the Colossian and Thessalonian passages specifically includes things sexual--hence sexual arousal and desire.

Concupiscence is the very definition of how the heathen live, at least if we take our cues from the popular culture. Everything in that milieu is about sex, or more accurately, the arousal of sexual interest and its pursuit. It fills the silver screen, dominates the lyrical, and sells cars, tools, and perfume. It spills over into the church with the baptism of "romantic" love and the near universal evangelical acceptance of the cat and mouse sexual game the world is so adept at playing. I think we all need a cold shower!

Somehow Christians need to wake up from the daze we're in and realize that following Christ means not following the world. We must dare to be different, for we are a different sort in Christ. We're not called to be the versions of the worldly whose only difference from the lot is the address of our final destination. We're new creatures, with a different kind of fire, for the fire that is burning the world can only end in endless fire and is not the sort we want to share.

Lead With Sin

When Christians engage the educated and urbane evangelistically and/or apologetically, they often make a mistake of order, as I see it. They will engage the unbelieving on some issue they think will bear fruit, like the existence of God, the historicity of the resurrection, the founding of the church, etc.. More often than not, they end such entanglements having convinced their "opponents" of nothing more than that Christians are idiots who accept flimsy evidence, and who, with flawed conscience, follow an immoral figure as god.

It irks me beyond measure to see and hear the arrogance of this new class of atheists who seem everywhere at the moment, and who appear on the ascendancy culturally. They willingly engage Christians in debate along the manner limned above, and smugly toss away the challenge to their views--even though on the basis of sheer forensics, they've gotten their clocks cleaned. They're heroes to the young, brain-washed, and uninformed, who follow them like lemmings to their inevitable plunge into hell.

Why do these unbelieving, self-inflated blusterers seem bullet proof? I think that as long as the issue is God in general, or even Jesus Christ in particular, these blind guides and their rodent trains will continue to the precipice undaunted. They can be out debated and argued under the table until the cows come home, and it won't change a thing. A change of heart and mind is desperately needed, but it isn't going to come by arguing about things that are outside of themselves.

You see, change is wrapped up in the notion of repentance. Jesus has not come to call those who see no need for repentance but those who do. If any headway is to be made evangelistically with the growing horde of the educated, urbane, and unbelieving, the argument will have to be about man, not God. The man in them has to be humbled, shown that he is sinful, that he may be able to think a noble thought but lacks the self-control to live a noble life, that as a species he is tied up with the death of everything.

If something doesn't snap the pride of man, he marches unheeding into the fires of doom. An awakening must arise in each one, individually, deep inside. Something has to break the gaze upon self, so that the head can turn to see that the Redeemer is near. Christians have attempted to engage the unbelieving with every argument imaginable, and found their punches landing without impact. Perhaps it's time to lead with sin.

It is not like a logical, even a factual argument is going to bring anyone to salvation. That cannot happen apart from that unseen work of the Holy Spirit. Jesus did clue us into what the Holy Spirit is convicting people of, and it's not forensics. So, if one wants to flow with the Spirit, and see their witness have supernatural affect, the effort to concentrate on is to help the unbeliever realize he is a sinner. Apart from that he'll never be saved.

Just How Depraved Are We?

The natural spiritual state of mankind is both the subject of theological debate, and homespun philosophy without any reference to religious doctrine. Folksy conclusions drawn from the observation of life can be stated succinctly, running along a spectrum, from "nobody's perfect," to "everyone has some good in him," to "children learn what they live." The parallel theological spectrum runs from Calvinistic total depravity to Pelagianian ability. One would think that Paul put the issue to rest with Romans 7, but the debate lingers on.

In trying to assure that God gets all the glory in salvation, many feel they have to diminish man in order to elevate God. But, I wonder, does God need us as a step ladder? While the desire to glorify God is commendable, diminishing his stated plans, purpose and design for man in order to do it is, at least, misplaced assistance. How, exactly, does Worm Theology glorify the Creator in whose image the "worm" was made and the Son of God was incarnated?

Of course, in the opposite vein, overstating the quality or abilities of natural man only induces self-dependence, which results in pride, frustration and loss.

The problem outlined in Romans 7 for natural mankind is not that a sinful person is unable to perceive the goodness of the law, nor even to understand what is good conceptually, but that he has something within him which frustrates his ability to actually do anything about it. We do, in fact, have a clue in the scriptures that natural man is actually able to derive what is good on his own apart the written law, even though he's not able to carry it out. Even that ability owes its existence to the action of God who wrote such into mankind's very nature.

The truth is, natural man has no desire to know God or to do good.

So, the natural man is able to discern the nature of God by what God has given him naturally, and even able to discern and discover what is good by the same. His problem is that he does not have the inclination to do so nor the power to follow through. That certainly doesn't mean he isn't capable of seeing it when God graciously presents it to him-- he absolutely can, and without being regenerated! The godly sorrow that results from that perception is what leads the natural man to abandon his self-reliance and to put trust and hope in Christ. 

To the depraved Christ proclaims his life saving message, "Repent, and believe the good news!" More than mere communication, it confronts the sinner with divine presence, with Holy Spirit conviction. For sinners awakened by such communication and who do repent and believe, the frustration of personal depravity yields to the peace of his salvivic ability. That ability regenerates the sinner who has turned to him in faith, infuses that former sinner with the indwelling Holy Spirit and makes a life of obedience in faith possible.

So humans are never so depraved that they cannot sense the tap of the Holy Spirit on their shoulder and turn to Christ and be saved by him.

What Makes Us Sinners?

That mankind has a sin nature is clearly taught in scripture. Romans 7 gives an adequate description of how it displays itself, even in those who are "good," but what, exactly, is the sin nature? I think it could be described in terms of the bondage of the will accurately enough, but where exactly did that bondage come from and how does it work?

I stated before that mankind was made in the image of God, but in ignorance (innocence). That condition was called good by God, despite the claim I've made that it was not his ultimate aim, nor will it be our condition in eternity. Our higher abilities (like will, choice and creativity) were made complementary to God's because he wanted mankind to live on his level as his family and friends. Though he is the omnipotent God, scary on so many levels, his aim is to have us be one with him.

What does all this have to do with the sin nature? Well, God alone is good: only he has what it takes to express Godlike attributes in harmony with his perfect will. Only he can manage those things which make up his image. The sin nature arose in mankind when Adam and Eve, despite having the breath of God (a living Spirit), exercised Godlike capacities in opposition to God. Sin is the exertion of will contrary to the will of God.

As a consequence, the breath that God imparted lost its connection with the God who breathed it (spiritual death), mankind was thereby separated from God, cursed, and whatever capacity pristine man had to walk in the will of God was lost irretrievably. Since then, we walk in dying flesh apart from God, godlike to some degree, but anything but like God. We possess some godlike capacities, but without the ability to harness them to "good." We do what we have an urge to do regardless of what God wants: some more, some less. 

That is the essence of our sinful natures. Adam and Eve had their life degraded to that level, and at that level they reproduced what would become all the rest of us. They passed on their broken nature as sinners, because it was all they had to pass on. The machinery of our soul cannot function without God being in us, and us being in agreement with him. That disagreement, and the disability that results in being without God is what makes us sinners.