Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the 18th century philosopher championed the view that man is born free and yet everywhere is in chains, that human beings are born innocent and sinless and inherently good but are later corrupted by civilization. His view influences many who think themselves to be good people who have been victimized by society. Today is Holocaust Memorial Day in which we remember January 27, 1945 when the Soviet Army entered Auschwitz and discovered the horrors of Hitler’s Final Solution when six million European Jews were exterminated.
There are two views of humanity which seem to be paradoxical, self-contradictory: the dignity and the depravity of the human race.
What did Jesus think and say about human nature?
The first thing to be said is that he taught the essential dignity of man. Read Psalm 8 and discover that God made us the crown of creation, a little lower than the angels. Jesus spoke of himself as the good shepherd who ‘lays down his life for the sheep’ (John 10:11). Nothing reveals more clearly the preciousness of men to God and the love of God for men than the death of God’s Son for their salvation. As William Temple put it, ‘My worth is what I am worth to God, and that is a marvelous good deal, for Christ died for me.’
Nevertheless, side by side with his teaching on the essential dignity of man Christ affirmed man’s actual degradation. The Old Testament had taught that ‘there is none that does good, no, not one’ (Psalm 14:3).
Jesus taught that within the soil of every man’s heart there lie buried the ugly seeds of every conceivable sin – ‘evil thoughts, acts of fornication, of theft, murder, adultery, ruthless greed and malice; fraud, indecency, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly. All thirteen are ‘evil things’, and they come out of the heart of every man. This is Jesus Christ’s estimate of fallen human nature.
So then, according to Jesus, the ‘evil things’ which we think, say and do are not due primarily to our environment, nor are they bad habits picked up from bad teaching, bad company or bad example; they are due to the inward corruption of our heart. The dominant force in a person’s life is his heredity, and that the ultimate origin of his evil thoughts and deeds is his evil heart, his nature which is twisted with self-centeredness. As God has said through the prophet Jeremiah centuries previously: ‘The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt; who can understand it? (Jer.17:9).
Modern psycho-analysis has tended only to confirm this teaching of the Old Testament which Jesus endorsed, because it has further uncovered the horrid secrets of the human heart. Psychology and experience tell us that the subconscious mind (which is roughly equivalent to what the Bible means by ‘heart’, namely the center of our personality, the source of our thoughts and emotions) is like a deep well with a thick deposit of mud at the bottom. Normally, being at the bottom, the mud is safely out of sight. But when the well-waters are stirred, especially by the winds of violent emotion, the most evil-looking and evil-smelling filth breaks the surface – rage, spite, greed, lust, jealousy, malice, cruelty and revenge. These base passions keep bubbling up, raw and sinister, from the secret springs of the heart. And if we have any moral sensitivity, we must at times be appalled, shocked and disgusted by the foul things which lurk in the hidden depths of our personality.
But what is sin? Its universal extent is clear; what is its nature? Several words are used in the Bible to describe it. They group themselves into two categories, according to whether wrongdoing is regarded negatively or positively. Negatively, it is shortcoming. One word represents it as a lapse, a slip, a blunder. Another pictures it as the failure to hit a mark, as when throwing a spear at a target. Yet another shows it to be an inward badness, a disposition which falls short of what is good. Positively, sin is transgression. One word makes sin the trespass of a boundary. Another reveals it as lawlessness. Yet another as an act which violates justice. Both these groups of words imply the existence of a moral standard. It is either an ideal which we fail to reach, or a law which we break. Whoever knows what is right to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin’ (James 4:17). That is the negative aspect. ‘Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness’ (1 John 3:4). That is the positive aspect.
We all stand self-condemned. To some good-living people this comes as a genuine surprise. They have their ideals and think they attain them more or less. They do not indulge in much introspection. They are not unduly self-critical. They know they have occasional lapses. They are aware of certain character deficiencies. But they are not particularly alarmed by them and consider themselves no worse than the rest of men.
In his commentary on Romans 3:9-20, Paul supplies a series of seven Old Testament quotations (10-18) to describe sin. Three features of this grim biblical picture stand out.
First, it declares the ungodliness of sin. Scripture identifies the essence of sin as ungodliness (cf.1:18). Sin is the revolt of the self against God, the dethronement of God with a view to the enthronement of oneself. Ultimately sin is self-deification, the reckless determination to occupy the throne which belongs to God alone.
Secondly, this catena of Old Testament verses teaches the pervasiveness of sin. For sin affects every part of our human constitution, every faculty and function, including our mind, emotions, sexuality, conscience and will.
Thirdly, the Old Testament quotations teach the universality of sin, both negatively and positively. Every mouth is stopped, every excuse silenced, and the whole world, having been found guilty, is liable to God’s judgment.
The contemporary craze is for a bigger and better self-image. We are exhorted on all sides to love ourselves, forgive ourselves, respect ourselves, assert ourselves. And to be sure, as in all heresies, there are a few grains of truth in this one.
But to rejoice in God is one thing; to rejoice in ourselves is another. Self-congratulation and the worship of God are mutually incompatible. Those who have a high view of themselves always have a corresponding low view of God. It is those who have seen God high and lifted up, exalted in indescribable glory above the universe, who become overwhelmed with a sense of their own sinfulness and unworthiness. (See Isaiah 6:1-6). Modern men and women may value “self-esteem,” but God thinks differently. “This is the one I esteem,” he says: “he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word” (Is.66:2). Our proud, self-confident, self-congratulatory generation urgently needs to recover this biblical perspective. It is the acme of health and holiness.
In his commentary on Ephesians, John Stott expounds Paul’s description of humanity as being “dead in transgressions and sins” (Eph.2:1,5). He interprets the phrase as meaning “deadness of soul”, which is experienced by non-Christian people. While they may be alive in their bodies, minds and personalities, they have no life in their souls. “They are blind to the glory of Jesus Christ, and deaf to the voice of the Holy Spirit. They have no love for God, no sensitive awareness of his personal reality, no leaping of their spirit toward him in the cry, ‘Abba, Father’, no longing for fellowship with his people. They are as unresponsive to him as a corpse. So we should not hesitate to affirm that a life without God (however physically fit and mentally alert the person may be) is a living death, and that those who live it are dead even while they are living (1 Tim.5:6). To affirm this paradox is to become aware of the basic tragedy of fallen human existence.
(Condensed from chapter 4 of Ted Schroder, John Stott: A Summary of his teaching.)
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