A. The sinful acts and dispositions of men are referred to, and explained by, a corrupt nature.
By “nature” we mean that which is born in a man, that which he has by birth. That there is an inborn corrupt state, from which sinful acts and dispositions flow, is evident [pg 578]from Luke 6:43-45—“there is no good tree that bringeth forth corrupt fruit.... the evil man out of the evil treasure [of his heart] bringeth forth that which is evil”; Mat. 12:34—“Ye offspring of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things?” Ps. 58:3—“The wicked are estranged from the womb: They go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies.”
This corrupt nature (a) belongs to man from the first moment of his being; (b) underlies man's consciousness; (c) cannot be changed by man's own power; (d) first constitutes him a sinner before God; (e) is the common heritage of the race.
(a) Ps. 51:5—“Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity; And in sin did my mother conceive me”—here David is confessing, not his mother's sin, but his own sin; and he declares that this sin goes back to the very moment of his conception. Tholuck, quoted by H. B. Smith, System, 281—“David confesses that sin begins with the life of man; that not only his works, but the man himself, is guilty before God.” Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:94—“David mentions the fact that he was born sinful, as an aggravation of his particular act of adultery, and not as an excuse for it.” (b) Ps. 19:12—“Who can discern his errors? Clear thou me from hidden faults”; 51:6, 7—“Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts; And in the hidden part thou wilt make me to know wisdom. Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” (c) Jer. 13:23—“Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil”; Rom. 7:24—“Wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?” (d) Ps. 51:6—“Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts”; Jer. 17:9—“The heart is deceitful above all things and it is exceedingly corrupt: who can know it? I, Jehovah, search the mind, I try the heart,”—only God can fully know the native and incurable depravity of the human heart; see Annotated Paragraph Bible, in loco, (e) Job 14:4—“Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one”; John 3:6—“That which is born of the flesh is flesh,” i. e., human nature sundered from God. Pope, Theology, 2:53—“Christ, who knew what was in man, says: ‘If ye then, being evil’(Mat. 7:11), and ‘That which is born of the flesh is flesh’ (John 3:6), that is—putting the two together—‘men are evil, because they are born evil.’ ”
Nathaniel Hawthorne's story of The Minister's Black Veil portrays the isolation of every man's deepest life, and the awe which any visible assertion of that isolation inspires. C. P. Cranch: “We are spirits clad in veils; Man by man was never seen; All our deep communing fails To remove the shadowy screen.” In the heart of every one of us is that fearful “black drop,” which the Koran says the angel showed to Mohammed. Sin is like the taint of scrofula in the blood, which shows itself in tumors, in consumption, in cancer, in manifold forms, but is everywhere the same organic evil. Byron spoke truly of “This ineradicable taint of sin, this boundless Upas, this all-blasting tree.”
E. G. Robinson, Christ. Theol., 161, 162—“The objection that conscience brings no charge of guilt against inborn depravity, however true it may be of the nature in its passive state, is seen, when the nature is roused to activity, to be unfounded. This faculty, on the contrary, lends support to the doctrine it is supposed to overthrow. When the conscience holds intelligent inquisition upon single acts, it soon discovers that these are mere accessories to crime, while the principal is hidden away beyond the reach of consciousness. In following up its inquisition, it in due time extorts the exclamation of David: Ps. 51:5—‘Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity; And in sin did my mother conceive me.’ Conscience traces guilt to its seat in the inherited nature.”
B. All men are declared to be by nature children of wrath (Eph. 2:3). Here “nature” signifies something inborn and original, as distinguished from that which is subsequently acquired. The text implies that: (a) Sin is a nature, in the sense of a congenital depravity of the will. (b) This nature is guilty and condemnable,—since God's wrath rests only upon that which deserves it. (c) All men participate in this nature and in this consequent guilt and condemnation.
Eph. 2:3—“were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.” Shedd: “Nature here is not substance created by God, but corruption of that substance, which corruption is created by man.” “Nature” (from nascor) may denote anything inborn, and the term may just as properly designate inborn evil tendencies and state, as inborn faculties or substance. “By nature” therefore = “by birth”; compare Gal. 2:15—“Jews by nature.” E. G. Robinson: “Nature = not οὐσία, or essence, but only qualification of essence, as something born [pg 579]in us. There is just as much difference in babes, from the beginning of their existence, as there is in adults. If sin is defined as ‘voluntary transgression of known law,’ the definition of course disposes of original sin.” But if sin is a selfish state of the will, such a state is demonstrably inborn. Aristotle speaks of some men as born to be savages (φύσει βάρβαροι), and of others as destined by nature to be slaves (φύσει δοῦλοι). Here evidently is a congenital aptitude and disposition. Similarly we can interpret Paul's words as declaring nothing less than that men are possessed at birth of an aptitude and disposition which is the object of God's just displeasure.
The opposite view can be found in Stevens, Pauline Theology, 152-157. Principal Fairbairn also says that inherited sinfulness “is not transgression, and is without guilt.”Ritschl, Just. and Recon., 344—“The predicate ‘children of wrath’ refers to the former actual transgression of those who now as Christians have the right to apply to themselves that divine purpose of grace which is the antithesis of wrath.” Meyer interprets the verse; “We become children of wrath by following a natural propensity.” He claims the doctrine of the apostle to be, that man incurs the divine wrath by his actualsin, when he submits his will to the inborn sin principle. So N. W. Taylor, Concio ad Clerum, quoted in H. B. Smith, System, 281—“We were by nature such that we became through our own act children of wrath.” “But,” says Smith, “if the apostle had meant this, he could have said so; there is a proper Greek word for ‘became’; the word which is used can only be rendered ‘were.’ ” So 1 Cor. 7:14—“else were your children unclean”—implies that, apart from the operations of grace, all men are defiled in virtue of their very birth from a corrupt stock. Cloth is first died in the wool, and then dyed again after the weaving. Man is a “double-dyed villain.” He is corrupted by nature and afterwards by practice. The colored physician in New Orleans advertised that his method was “first to remove the disease, and then to eradicate the system.” The New School method of treating this text is of a similar sort. Beginning with a definition of sin which excludes from that category all inborn states of the will, it proceeds to vacate of their meaning the positive statements of Scripture.
For the proper interpretation of Eph. 2:3, see Julius Müller, Doct. of Sin, 2:278, and Commentaries of Harless and Olshausen. See also Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 3:212 sq.; Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1:289; and an excellent note in the Expositor's Greek N.T., in loco. Per contra, see Reuss, Christ. Theol. in Apost. Age, 2:29, 79-84; Weiss, Bib. Theol. N.T., 239.