15. Native Depravity in the Justified Believer

CHAPTER XV Native Depravity in the Justified Believer

I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. - 1 Corinthians 3:1.

We have before learned that there are many important Christian doctrines which are amply proved by the Bible as a whole, but which can not be fully established by a single text. Those who oppose the doctrine of remaining depravity in the justified believer often insist upon a definite single text in proof of its correctness. Yet they themselves accept without question many doctrines which can not be positively proved by a single text or texts. For instance, every orthodox Christian believes unquestionably in the divine Trinity, yet it is most difficult, if at all possible, to find a single text that proves the divine unity in trinity. Therefore if the Bible as a whole, rightly construed, teaches that there is native depravity remaining in the justified believer, that doctrine will be as thoroughly established as the doctrine of the Trinity.

JUSTIFICATION REMOVES GUILT, NOT DEPRAVITY

Justification, in its very nature, relates to personal guilt, not to native depravity. It were impossible to make one just who was not unjust. Justification, therefore, presupposes the existence of guilt. But personal guilt is not a native condition, but the result of a disobedient act of a free agent. The terms " justification, " " forgiveness, " and " remission " denote the modes of that experience and point unmistakably to disobedience and consequent personal guilt, and not to native depravity. We have before proved that unregenerate men are both depraved and guilty, that they have a double need. If, then, man is both depraved and guilty, and if justification removes only his guilt, there remains in the justified believer an element of depravity.

It is reasonable that the conditions required for the obtaining of a thing should be such as would lead naturally to the obtainance of that thing. The condition requisite to justification leads unmistakably to the removal of personal guilt, and not to cleansing from native depravity. Godly sorrow for sin and a conviction of personal guilt can not be based upon a consciousness of native depravity. How can we be convicted for the presence of an element, when we are in no way responsible for its existence? We can not be sorry for our having committed the Adamic sin, for the very obvious reason that we were not present in the garden when our foreparents broke the divine law.

Repentance, another condition of justification, is a turning from sin to Cod on account of godly sorrow for disobedience. How can we turn from a nature that is native to us, from a moral state in which we were " conceived" and " shapen" (Psalms 51:5) ? flow gladly would we all turn, in our better moments, from that nature whose tendency is ever downward! When the Ethiopian can change his skin or the leopard his spots, then may we hope to turn, in our own strength, from the evil depravity of our hearts. We can turn from our disobedience, repent of our sins, and be justified from our guilt; but it is impossible to repent of that native condition for which we are totally irresponsible. In meeting the conditions for justification, we ask pardon for acts of disobedience, not for the existence of native depravity in our hearts. How could we ask pardon for being depraved, when we are in no way responsible for native depravity? However much we may deplore both our depravity and our being overcome by it, we can feel guilt of and ask pardon only for our own personal misdeeds. The exercise of saving faith by the pleading penitent is for pardon, forgiveness, and f or release from personal guilt, not for the removal of depravity. As the penitent cries out, like the despairing publican, "Lord, have mercy on me a sinner!" he does not stop to consider theories, formulas, deep spiritual truths, metaphysical conditions, and profound questions of theology. The feeling of his personal guilt overshadows for the moment every other consideration. It is only in later experience in the light of innocence and truth and hungering for more righteousness that he begins to discover that there is an element of depravity within.

Therefore, since all the conditions leading leading up to the experience of justification relate, not to the removal of native depravity, but to the removal of the effect of actual transgressions, justification does not remove native depravity. That there should be native depravity in the believer is as consistent as that there should remain in fallen man a moral instinct that calls for God and right. As we have before learned, both the Scriptures and human experience prove the existence of moral consciousness in the unregenerate. Paul says that even the heathen, who have not the law, are a law unto themselves; that their consciences shall either excuse or accuse them in the day when God shall judge the world. No heathen tribe, with one or two possible exceptions, has ever yet been discovered among whom could not be found traces of a moral consciousness and a moral responsibility to a higher being. This more] sensibility and religious consciousness, however, is often accompanied in the same heart with the vilest of sin. This proves the existence of a good and a bad element in the same heart at the same time. If this is true of the heathen and unregenerate, why may there not exist in the heart of the justified believer a dormant element of depravity? The Scriptures clearly prove the incompleteness of the justified state. Jesus, praying to his Father, said of his disciples, " Keep through shine own name those whom thou hast given me"; "I have kept them in thy name "; " I have given them thy word "; "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world" (John 17:11-16). Surely, there can be no doubt that men of whom all this could be truly said, were justified. Yet Jesus acknowledges the incompleteness of their experience in the words of the seventeenth verse of the same chapter: "Sanctify them through thy truth; thy word is truth." Again, in the nineteenth verse he says, " And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth." The first Christian experience of the Samaritans was incomplete. They "with one accord gave heed unto those things which Philip spoke " ( Acts 8:6). " When they believed Philip preaching the things concerning the kingdom of God, and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women" (Acts 8:12). Yet in the following words the incompleteness of their justified state is acknowledged: " Now, when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John: who, when they were come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost: (For as yet he was fallen upon none of them: only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.) then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost" (Acts 8:14-17). This infilling, or reception, of the Holy Spirit and the purification of heart are simultaneous experiences. In the following words Peter speaks of them as such: " God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as he did unto us; and put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith " (Acts 15:8-9).

Paul, writing to the Thessalonians, admits a partial but incomplete experience when he says, " The very God of peace sanctify you wholly." These people were evidently sanctified in part, that is, justified; but Paul wished them to be wholly, or entirely, sanctified. The experience of sanctification, using the word "sanctification" in its broadest sense, begins with justification and reaches its completeness in entire sanctification.

Though at the time when the first Epistle to the Corinthians was written, the Corinthian Christians were not an example of the justified life, Paul’s words to them in the third chapter, verse one, prove that they were at the same time both " babes in (Christ" and "carnal": "I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ " It is true that their " carnal " condition finally brought about "envy and strife and divisions," and caused them to again "walk as men" (1 Corinthians 3:3); but their latter state does not destroy the fact that they were previously both " in Christ " and " carnal. " As we have before learned, the two negative conditions of the unregenerate heart are native depravity and acquired guilt. These are the double need of man and constitute the basis of the double cure. Justification removes guilt, but does not accomplish entire sanctification, or complete redemption. The incompleteness of the justified state, therefore, can consist in nothing else than a remaining element of native depravity Hence we say there is remaining native depravity in the justified believer.