Totaled

Our 1986 gray Chevrolet Caprice had served us well. It had been Beth’s father’s car and was given to us when he died. Beth traveled back and forth to Nashville for four years to visit her mother who had had a stroke and was dying with cancer. We were sentimentally attached to what had been a reliable vehicle. One windy March day a tall pine fell across the rear of the car. It was declared as “totaled” by the insurance company. It was considered beyond repair. We watched rather sadly as the wrecker came and towed “old gray” out of our lives. But it was just a car. Something far more serious has happened to the human race. It all started with a tree thousands of years ago. Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and plunged themselves and all their descendents into the dark abyss of sin and separation from God. Man became unable to please God. We as Adam’s children are not able, by any strength of our own, to turn ourselves to God, or even prepare ourselves to turn to God. This is what the apostle Paul declares in Romans 3:10-12; “There is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God.”

There was once a television commercial which focused on a lamentable condition where a disabled person pleaded, “I have fallen and I can’t get up.” This is the condition of every human being. All humanity is dead in trespasses and sin and is totally unable to save himself (Eph. 2:1-2). But this is not all. Man’s total being is affected by sin as well. Body, soul, spirit, heart, intellect, conscience, will, and affections have all been wrecked by sin. In our natural selves we humans can do no good which can satisfy God. Any effort to gain God’s favor by our righteousness is like monopoly money (It doesn’t work in the real world). We lack spiritual perception. Like a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that is not there, we don’t see things as they really are. Our wills are set against God. We are very religious, but we don’t want God. Our hearts are deceitful (Jer. 17:9). How easily we can make ourselves believe what is not true. Even our affections are contaminated by sin. Instead of being sad and broken over our sin, we wallow in sorrow and pout when we don’t get what we want. And the greatest disaster of all is that by nature we are subject to God’s wrath (Eph. 2:3).

This is all not very flattering and runs against man’s view of himself as innately good. But this does not change the fact that man hates God and, without the restraints of God’s government over the world, would go from bad to worse. We should be thankful for human government, the presence of Christians in our world, and conscience which work together to restrain sin and its effects. All this is not to say that mankind can’t do good to his fellow man. Doctors, nurses, firemen, police, hospice workers, philanthropists, and countless other people do merciful and helpful things for their fellow human beings. This is because we are made in the image of God, and even though that image has been disfigured by sin, we can be kind, merciful, and generous. But no amount of human good can get anyone to heaven. A canoe is best used on rivers and lakes (calm waters), but it is not suitable to cross the ocean. So it is with our goodness. It can get us through life and benefit others, but it can’t make us acceptable to God.

All men are sinners and are in open rebellion against God, but that doesn’t mean everyone is as bad as they can become or that all have made the same progress in sinning. It has been correctly said that we are not as bad as we can be, but we are as bad off as we can be. It is also not true that we don’t know what we ought to do (Rom. 2:14-15). The human conscience, though unreliable because of sin, can like a broken clock be right at least twice a day. Neither does the Bible teach that unsaved people commit every form of sin. That we are by nature depraved and have taken up arms against God does not mean that we indulge in every form of sin or that we take any sin to the greatest possible extent (e.g. all have hated, but not all have murdered).

Where does all this not-so-good news about the nature of man lead us? If there is to be any movement toward God, any delight in His holiness, and any submission to His authority, God must do the drawing (Jn. 6:44, 65 “No one can come to Me, unless the Father, who sent Me draws Him . . . no one can come to Me, unless it has been granted him from the Father.”). Man the sinner must have divine enablement to be saved. The Holy Spirit must show the unbeliever his need for the gospel (Jn. 16:8-11). He does this “by revealing sin, directing the way to righteousness, and warning of impending judgment” (Robert A. Pyne). But this is still not enough. The Holy Spirit must carry out the divine work of calling (Rom. 8:30). Faith is commanded of the sinner (Jn. 3:16). The Spirit of God makes that possible (Matt. 11:27; Acts 16:14). At that same moment of time when the sinner believes on the Lord Jesus Christ he is regenerated (born again, Jn. 3:3; Tit. 3:5). New life is imparted by the Holy Spirit. All this takes place in a fraction of a second. It is a miraculous work of God. Out of the tomb of spiritual death comes a new creature in Christ. For it was He who said, “He who believes has eternal life” (Jn. 6:47).

Dear reader, have you come to know Christ and the eternal life that He gives? If you have not, why would you read on as if this were merely a piece of theological information that doesn’t apply to you? Why would you go on with the smell of death all about you? If you die in your sins there will be an eternity to pay for having refused God’s gracious offer of life in Christ. The payment for your sins was made on the cross of Jesus Christ. He suffered God’s wrath for you and was raised from the dead so that death’s claims upon you might be broken. From the wreckage of being totally unable to enjoy fellowship with God, you can be transformed to be what God made you to be, a worshiper of Him.

Dr. Howard E. Dial
Berachah Bible Church