As a Christian, I believe that a man in his natural state is totally depraved, and not only that, I also believe that man without the Spirit is completely dead in sin. I didn't come to this conclusion because I think I am not a depraved man, or a bright and intelligent creature, or because my brain so excellently works that it generated this idea on its own; I don't even think it is a good idea.
I came to this conclusion, by reading the bible; I don't like boasting but I still boast sometimes, and one of those occasions is this one; God gave me a hunger to study and read and meditate on His word; this was not my own initiative, and naturally, it was not even my desire; but He made it happen, in fact He is still making it happen; so I boast in Him, and my boast is that for 22 years I have been studying His book.
As surprising as this might be to me, and maybe even to some, I still don't know anything after 22 years; but one thing I know for sure, I was dead in trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:1) and now I am alive to God (Eph. 2:5-6). Knowing this, I also know that it was absolutely not my doing (Eph. 2:8-10), but He was the One who made me alive; I cannot take any credit for that, or for any thing for that matter.
I didn't ask to be born into this world in the first place, I had nothing to do with that. God made me, and He is the one who chose who I was to be, who my parents would be, the place where I would be born, the time and the day; in fact for years I didn't even know that I was born; the most remote memory that I can think about is when I was about three years old and I was riding a red tricycle on some gray sidewalk of an unknown street in Mexico City.
Knowing that I was an actual person did not happen to me until I was about 4or 5 years old; when I closely observed that my body was not really me, or who I am; I was aware, for the first time, that I was existing inside this cage we call body; I could see, and hear, and feel things, but I knew I was inside this head of mine, I was conscious of my being "inside", I was not my body.
I am sure this happens to everybody, but maybe I'm wrong. At any rate; my point is that I had actually no input to give to my existence, I wasn't bringing anything to the table, or to put it in other words, the equation was already balanced; I was just watching it all happen before my eyes and mind, life was just happening in me and around me. As they say, ignorance is bliss.
I also remember, as if it was yesterday, the first time I consciously sinned; and I said consciously because before that point I never heard the voice of my conscience. I was about 4 or 5 and my parents took us to one of their friend's home to visit; I have no idea who these people were but they were obviously rich.
Their house was so much bigger than our house, it was obvious to me that there was something different; their furniture was different; they had more rugs than we did, and their rooms were bigger than our rooms; they also had children, one of them was about my age. After the customary introductions, we headed up to this kid's room; and wow, he had some of the coolest toys I had ever seen.
That was the first time I ever saw a "Hot Wheels" toy car; he didn't have only one, he had what appeared to me to be hundreds of them, all of them in the coolest tiny boxes I had ever seen; gee, he even had trucks! Wow, I was in toy heaven, so I thought. Then he pulled this yellow plastic track out of his closet, and we made this race track to run the cars on; now that was my idea of fun.
That's when I saw it; the most beautiful toy car I had ever placed my tiny lustful little brown eyes on in my entire life, all five years of it; a beautiful red Corvette with fat tires, nice. Man, that was a race car; it also had a white stripe running from the front to the back on top of it; chrome exhaust and the whole nine yards, maybe even the whole ten; a big white circle with the number 1 on the doors. (By the way, I bet you don't know where that expression came from "the whole nine yards", I do but I'm not telling just to keep you on the edge).
I grabbed it and inspected every detail on it; I remember it had a couple of chrome Phillips screws holding the chassis to the body; everything was there, the muffler lines, the differential, the big cool letters "hot wheels" with the flames, and it said right under: Made in the USA, I didn't know what that meant, I just knew it was my dream toy. I think all hot wheels are made in China now, I haven't seen one in years. But whatever.
I don't remember how long I played, but I remember that it was too soon when I heard the command to say good bye to the adults and to my new best friend. I was still grabbing that red car in my left hand; then I put it in my pocket; we said good night, we got into our big blue 53 Cadillac Coupe De Ville and drove away into the smog.
All the way back to our house I heard the voice of my conscience screaming "THIS IS WRONG"; "did you like Pepito?" Or whatever his name was...my mom asked me; yeah, I liked Pepito or Panchito or Juanito, or whatever 'ito' you want to add to his name; and I liked his little red corvette better; what I did not like at all was the feeling that something terrible was about to happen, I would be caught with my hands on the dough, and the belt was coming; I was terrified of the belt, I had seen its effects on my older brothers, and heard the screams of pain before; I was convinced I was going to be judged and chastised for hours, and then even worse, I would have to go back to that house and confess my covetousness and dishonesty and give it back, horror struck my tiny depraved heart.
The most horrible thing was the feeling of shame that overtook my little chest; I could see the future; I knew I had to hide the car from my parents, and my brothers, and my friends; that was an expensive toy (at least it looked pricey) my parents could not afford, and even if they could, they would not buy it for me because buying a toy like that meant buying four more toys for the rest of my brothers, and that was never going to happen.
I never played with that red corvette; in fact I really don't remember if I buried it, or if I just threw it in the closet behind all the shoes or what I did with it; all I know is that I never really enjoyed it, never showed it to anybody; I knew if I did, it would mean that I was either a thief or a liar, or both; I knew I was both. Later in life my father told me "if you are a dishonest person, God will not bless you"; I think those words are true.
It is obvious to me that what I'm saying is kind of personal, but I am not ashamed to confess that apart from the grace of God I am a totally depraved, corrupt and sinful individual; in fact the closer that God draws me near to Him, the more I see the darkness that still abides in me.
By all the words I wrote above, I have proven to myself that what Paul said in Romans is true; let me print it here for your reading pleasure:
Rom 2:14 16 For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them, on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus.
Even at the age of 5, a human being can determine that his or her actions are either right or wrong; our conscience bears witness, and our thoughts either accuse us or excuse us, as the KJV says. In my case my thoughts accused me; and even if my parents never knew what I did, I knew what I did, and God knew what I did; I knew God was real.
My father was not a Christian until a short time before his death, but he often talked about God; he feared Him, and I feared both of them, my father and God, even though I never knew who this God was, I believed He was up there somewhere, watching my every move, hearing my every word; and I knew He was not pleased with me for being a little thief.
God declares that we are evil from our young age: Gen 8:21 The LORD smelled the soothing aroma; and the LORD said to Himself, "I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man's heart is evil from his youth; and I will never again destroy every living thing, as I have done.
David declares that he was born a sinner: Psa 51:5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, And in sin my mother conceived me.
Even Jesus declares the same thing: John 3:19 "This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.
Not only are we completely depraved and devoid of holiness without the grace of God, but we are also intelligently blinded: Jer 10:14 (NASB) Every man is stupid, devoid of knowledge; Every goldsmith is put to shame by his idols; For his molten images are deceitful, And there is no breath in them.
Let me take it even farther, I'm given to idolatry the moment I trust myself and my perceived ability to perform good works for God. So the problem, the real problem, is that a man without the Spirit can never think anything that is right or holy, much less do it. Our natural proneness is to be idolatrous; even we Christians are prone to idolatry when we think and believe something about God that is not true, and then behave according to that belief.
But who am I to say that kind of thing? I'm not a theologian or a pastor, actually, I'm nobody; I'm just a regular dude that gets irritated by the things I hear other brothers say, and even more irritated when I hear that some pastors out there are preaching (it's not even preaching really) nonsensical things about my King, robbing Him of the glory that should be given to Him, not to man and his stupid performance........Now let me tell you how I really feel.........ok, maybe not.
Of course the moment you talk about grace and God actually doing the work of sanctification in you, all by Himself by the way, then you are immediately labeled either as a 'Calvinist', or as an antinomian; and along with the label, they attach judgmental thoughts and statements like "he doesn't want to try"; or "let us sin that grace may abound"; and then if you actually show them scriptures to support what you're saying they say "oh, those are just verses".......where am I?
Some cats even refuse to sit down and reason together from the scriptures; such is the deceitfulness of the human heart, so swelled with insolence, always resisting the truth, always afraid of being wrong, always so adamant of being right.
The pride and arrogance of some people is insane; the whole thing goes so far as to say that when Paul wrote the ninth chapter of the book of Romans, he got himself into dire straits and could not get out of his predicament, so the easiest way to get out of his own trouble was to exclaim "who are you who answers back to God...? and so forth. But here it is, again, for your reading pleasure, so you can see for yourself:
Rom 9:18-24 "So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires. You will say to me then, "Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?"
On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, "Why did you make me like this," will it?
Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?
What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?
And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, even us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles.
How did I get to this point from talking about the red corvette? Ah, because of man's depravity; that's how; and as you can clearly see above, Paul did not get into dire straits in his reasoning, on the contrary, filled with the Holy Spirit and directly inspired by the Almighty he replies to those who were making the mocking objection (or questioning God's sovereignty) and puts them in their place; where we all belong.
He goes on to say that even those who pursued righteousness by the works of the law did not attain it, but only those who got it by faith. Later on Paul says in Ephesians chapter 2 that faith itself is a gift from God so that no one can boast about doing a single work; intimating that even the act of believing is from God alone; you go ahead and read it for yourself and be a Berean and find out that you are just mud. Mud does not, it cannot, mold itself into a vessel, either for honor or for dishonor; but whatever, I think you see my point, which is the same point Paul was making.
Maybe I should go back to talking about toys; that seems to be a topic everyone enjoys. Not..., let's just talk about cars, or Jennifer Lopez and American Idol, or about the latest idiocy coming in from Hollywood and its perverts; oh, I'm sorry, I think I crossed the line this time, I remain impatient and judgmental as it is......, never mind, I don't even have cable so how do I know?
I just saw a perverse creature in my mirror........
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