And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience– among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. (Ephesians 2:1-3)
I want to spend some considerable time laying a foundation for what the state of natural man is and then attempt to show that because of man’s natural state there can be basis to believe that any man has the ability to draw himself to God. When I look at these verses, I see a picture of dead body. Like Lazarus in the tomb, or like Dorcas from Acts 9, or Jairus’ daughter in Mark 5, or even the valley of dry bones of Ezekiel 37. All of these are examples and pictures of what we all are in our natural state. You will notice what is universally true of mankind, we ALL have lived or are living in the passions of our flesh and ALL of us are naturally “children of wrath”; children of the devil.
But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousness-es are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. And there is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee: for thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities. (Isaiah 64:6-7)
The natural man is not capable of doing anything that is not permeated with corruption. None of our so called righteousness-es are anything more than “filthy rags”, in fact, we do not have any righteousness-es, all we have is a deceitful and wicked self-righteousness which is pure sin. In both of these passages so far, what we see is that our trespasses, iniquities, and sin are at the root of our deadness. No one is free from this corruption, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Matthew Henry had this to say in his commentary on this passage:
“We have all by sin become not only obnoxious to God’s justice, but odious to his holiness; for sin is that abominable thing which the Lord hates, and cannot endure to look upon.”
I have more to say regarding natural man…
Tags: Bible, Christianity, Election, God, Jesus, Law and Prophets, Predestination, Religion, Torah
