There is a need for
preaching on human depravity
There is therefore a crying need today for sin to
be viewed in the light of God’s Law and Gospel, so that its
exceeding sinfulness may be demonstrated, and
the dark depths of human depravity exposed
by the teaching of Holy Writ-that we may learn what is
connoted by those fearful words, “dead in trespasses and sins.”
The grand object of the Bible is to make God known unto us, to
portray man as he appears in the eyes of his Maker, and to show
the relation of one to the other. It is
therefore the business of His servants not only to declare the
Divine character and perfections, but also to delineate the
original condition and apostasy of man, as well as the Divine
remedy for his ruin. Until we really behold the hole of
the pit in which by nature we lie, we can never properly
appreciate Christ’s so-great salvation. In man’s fallen
condition we have the awful disease for which Divine redemption
is the only cure, and our estimation and valuation of the
provisions of Divine grace will necessarily be modified in
proportion as we modify the need it was meant to meet.
It was truly pointed out by one of the Puritans
that “The end of the ministry of the Gospel is to bring sinners
unto Christ. Their way to this end lies through the sense of
their misery without Christ. The ingredients of this misery are
our sinfulness, original and actual; the wrath of God, whereto
sin has exposed us; and our impotency to free ourselves either
from sin or wrath, (from the introduction of David Clarkson’s
sermon on Psalm 51:5-around 1660)."
- A. W. Pink, The
Doctrine of Human Depravity
