The 1689 London Baptist Confession

The Fall of Man, Sin and Punishment

--> Although God created man upright and perfect, and gave him a righteous law, which secured life for him while he kept it, and although God warned him that he would die if he broke it, yet man did not live long in this honor.

• Satan, using the subtlety of the serpent to subdue Eve, seduced Adam by her, and he, without any compulsion, willfully transgressed the law of their creation and the command given to them by eating the forbidden fruit.
• And this act God, according to His wise and holy counsel, was pleased to permit, having purposed to order it to His own glory.

--> Our first parents, by this sin, fell from their original righteousness and communion with God, and we in them. For from this, death came upon all: all becoming dead in sin and wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body.

--> They being the root, and by God’s appointment, standing in the room and stead of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed, and their corrupted nature conveyed, to all their posterity descending from them by ordinary generation. Their descendants are therefore conceived in sin, and are by nature the children of wrath, the servants of sin, and the subjects of death and all other miseries, spiritual, temporal, and eternal, unless the Lord Jesus sets them free.

--> All actual transgressions proceed from this original corruption, by which we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil.

--> During this life the corruption of nature remains in those who are regenerated, and although it is pardoned and mortified through Christ, yet this corrupt nature and all its motions are truly and properly sinful.

I think this is a very important doctrine to understand. This is the Doctrine of Total Depravity. We must understand that we are sinful. This is the starting point. Unless you understand your complete and total sinfulness, you’ll never really “get” your need for a Savior. This is also an important part of the Gospel presentation. When sharing the Gospel, we want people to understand that they are sinners and that apart from the forgiveness that Christ provides, we have no hope.

Psalm 51:5 says, “I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” We are sinful from the very moment of conception. It’s who we are.

Genesis 6:5 says, “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” This is a pretty broad sweeping statement. Not just every thought, but every intention of every thought. It’s all “only evil continually.” If that doesn’t give you a full picture of your own depravity, let’s look at one more: Romans 3:10-12, which says, “as it is written: None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” Eight times in these three short verses we see our universal condition. The final three words “not even one” are pretty final.

We are not greatly hindered in our ability to make a decision for Christ. We are not in need of some help to choose to follow Christ. Christ didn’t die merely to make it possible for us to choose to follow Christ.

God, in His divine sovereignty and grace, sent Christ to suffer for all of our sins and, as 1 Peter 3:18 puts it, “so that he might bring us to God…” We must understand our depravity. When we realize that we’re not even looking for God, it makes the Gospel even more beautiful, humbling, and amazing. I was drowning in my own depravity, totally doing my own thing, and in the midst of that, God sent Christ to show “his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romand 5:8)