Paul wrote about the totality of man’s depravity in Romans 3:9-18, and within this passage he taught us that there is no one who seeks God, not even one. Paul also described the extent of man’s wickedness when he wrote in verse 9 that all men, both Jews and Gentiles, are under sin. Beginning in verse 10 we read:
“There is none righteous, not even one;
There is none who understands;
There is none who seeks for God.
All have turned aside, together they have become useless;
There is none who does good,
There is not even one.” (Romans 3:10-12, emphasis added)
In these verses, Paul quoted Scriptures from Psalm 14:1-3, Psalm 53:1-3 and Ecclesiastes 7:20 to describe the extent of man’s wickedness, and to emphasize that there is no one who seeks God, not even one. Paul then continued in this passage to quote several verses from the Psalms and Isaiah that speak of man’s wickedness and depravity. Since Paul taught us clearly that “there is none who seeks for God”, then God must seek men and Himself bring them to faith in Christ, if any from among them are to be reconciled to Him.
In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul again described the totality of man’s depravity by saying that he is “dead” in trespasses and sin. In chapter 2 we read:
And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. (Ephesians 2:1-10)
In verse 1, Paul did not say that man is sick with sin, or terminally ill with sin with some small spark of life left in him, but he said that man is dead in trespasses and sin. Paul described man’s total depravity and his condition of deadness and inability to respond to the things of God in order to emphasize the magnitude of God’s grace toward us whom He has saved.
Paul taught that all of us as believers were also once dead in our transgressions, until God, because of His love and mercy which He chose to show toward us, made us alive with Christ, even when we were still dead in our sins (verses 4-5). Paul then taught that it is solely by God’s grace that we have been saved, through faith in Christ. He also taught that our faith does not come from within ourselves, but it is a gift given to us by God. Paul made it clear that our salvation does not come about through any work or effort of our own whatsoever, so that no one may boast that he had anything at all to do with his salvation (verses 8-9).
If our faith were somehow based on even one good work of our own, even making the “right decision” to believe in Christ, then we would be able to boast that we made the right decision when others refused to do so, when they too supposedly could have. However, Paul taught that for those of us who have come to faith in Christ, we should understand that our faith is the gift of God and has nothing to do with any works of our own.
Paul again emphasized the inability of unregenerate man to receive and respond to the things of God when he wrote: “But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.” (1 Corinthians 2:14, emphasis added).
Natural man, or man in his lost, unregenerate state, does not accept the things of the Spirit of God because he cannot understand them. The things of the Spirit of God cannot be discerned and understood with the intellect alone. Rather, as Paul said, “they are spiritually appraised”, which is to say they are discerned and understood only through the Spirit of God. For this reason, when the lost, unregenerate man hears the Gospel message given to us through the word of God, it sounds like foolishness to him. He is simply unable to understand or accept it because he is without the Spirit of God, which means that he is still spiritually dead in his trespasses and sins.
A dead body is unable to respond to any outside stimulus other than the call of God raising it to life, as was the case when Jesus called Lazarus to life, though he had been dead for four days (John 11:38-44). In the same way, unregenerate man who is dead in his transgressions, is unable to respond to the Gospel message unless and until he has been called to life by God, and his regeneration occurs. At this point he has been made alive with Christ; he has been given ears to hear and understand the Gospel message (Matthew 13:8-9, 23), and he will then respond to Jesus Christ as his Lord who has saved him. There is no better example of God’s calling to life of an unregenerate individual than the biblical accounts of the conversion of Saul of Tarsus, who would later become the Apostle Paul.