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" (Rom. 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" (Gal. 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 (Gal. 5:17). This
fleshly, or depraved, nature, which is contrary to the spirit, is the source, or
subjective cause, of sin (Gal. 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.
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