T he natural man is morally depraved; he is also intellectually defective. What about his will? How does sin affect one’s will? Paul says that “there is none that seeketh after God.” Again, this statement appears to fly in the face of logic and common observation of the human race. Does not the fact that most people in the world are engaged in the worship of deities imply that the natural man seeks after a higher being? This question of man’s will in seeking after God dates back to the early days of the church. Pelagius – a fourth-century monk – argued that God could not command believers to do the impossible, and that man could not be held responsible for something for which he had no free will. As far as Pelagius is concerned, man is able to exercise his free will to seek or not seek after God. The Bible teaches the opposite. The natural man is not only totally depraved, but he is also totally unable to save himself. The fallen man – as Augustine of Hippo puts it – cannot not sin. There is a proclivity of the natural man toward sin and not God. Faced with a choice between sin and God, the will of the sinner is bent toward the former. Our Lord Jesus said that the natural man “loved darkness rather than light” [John 3:19]. If God has not pursued us, we would never have come to God by ourselves. This truth exposes the desperate state of the sinner, but it should not drive us to despair. On the contrary, it reveals the essentialness of God’s grace, and that the hope for us is not us, but a God who pursues us and His Son who died to redeem us.
LESSON
There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
THOUGHT
No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent Me draw him. – John 6:44
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