The Total Depravity of Man Quotes

“If man is a totally depraved being, can he possibly take the first step in the matter of his return to God?”
― Arthur W. Pink, The Total Depravity of Man

“If Scripture teaches the imputation of sin, we should not stumble when we find it affirming the imputation of righteousness.”
― Arthur W. Pink, The Total Depravity of Man

“Here then is the divinely given reason why the death penalty is passed on "all men": "all have sinned," or, as the margin and the Revised Version more accurately render it , "in whom all sinned." The apostle is not here saying that all men sinned personally, but representatively. The Greek verb for "sinned" is in the aorist tense, which always looks back to a past action which has terminated. The curse of the law falls on us not because we are sinful, but because we were federally guilty when our covenant head sinned.”
― Arthur W. Pink, The Total Depravity of Man

“There has to be the putting forth of divine power also if the purpose of grace is to be accomplished. And it can be no ordinary power, but, as Scripture affirms, "the exceeding greatness of his power to usward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power" (Eph. 1:19). It calls for the exercise of far more might to recreate a fallen creature than it did to create the universe out of nothing. Why so? Because in that there was no opposition, nothing to resist God’s working; whereas in the case of fallen man there is the hostility of his will, the alienation of his heart, the inveterate enmity of his carnal mind, to be overcome. Furthermore, the malice and opposition of Satan must be neutralized, for he endeavors with all his might to retain his hold on his victims. The devil must be despoiled of the advantage which he had gained, for it is not consistent with the glory of God that he should be left to triumph.”
― Arthur W. Pink, The Total Depravity of Man

“The depravity of mankind makes evident the infinite patience of God. "The LORD is slow to anger, and great in power" (Nahum 1:3).”
― Arthur W. Pink, The Total Depravity of Man

“God’s glory is not dependent on the manifestation of any one attribute, but on the manifestation of each in its proper time and place, and in full harmony with the others.”
― Arthur W. Pink, The Total Depravity of Man

“Even in Christendom the average churchgoer is fully satisfied if he learns by rote a few of the elementary principles of religion. By so doing he comforts himself that he is not an infidel, and since he believes there is a God (though it may be one which his own imagination has devised) he prides himself that he is far from being an atheist. Yet as to having any living, spiritual, influential and practical knowledge of the Lord and His ways he is a stranger, altogether unenlightened.”
― Arthur W. Pink, The Total Depravity of Man

“Manton said: "Sin knows no mother but our own heart." "And sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death":”
― Arthur W. Pink, The Total Depravity of Man

“While men are rational creatures they are justly accountable for all they do, whatever the disposition of their hearts.”
― Arthur W. Pink, The Total Depravity of Man

“The total depravity of human nature does not mean that it actually breaks forth into open acts of all kinds of evil in any one man.”
― Arthur W. Pink, The Total Depravity of Man

“Mental tranquility and physical health are coveted, not the approbation of the Lord.”
― Arthur W. Pink, The Total Depravity of Man

“Because one stage of depravity is lower than another, this does not warrant the denial that the first stage is degraded. The development of wickedness is one thing; the presence of any measure of holiness or virtue is another. The absence of certain forms of sins does not imply any innate purity. It might as well be affirmed that a recent corpse, which is less loathsome, is therefore less dead than one which is far gone in decay and putrefaction.”
― Arthur W. Pink, The Total Depravity of Man

“The development of wickedness is one thing; the presence of any measure of holiness or virtue is another.”
― Arthur W. Pink, The Total Depravity of Man

“Behold the eyes of Omniscience ransacking the globe, and prying among every people and nation. He who is looking down knows the good, is quick to discern it, would be delighted to find it; but as He views all the unregenerate children of men His search is fruitless, for of all the race of Adam no unrenewed soul is other than an enemy to God and goodness. "They are all gone out of the way." Without exception, all men have apostatized from the Lord their Maker, from His Laws, and from the eternal principles of right. Like stubborn heifers they have sturdily refused to receive the yoke. The original speaks of the race as a totality, humanity as a whole has become depraved in heart and life. "They have altogether become filthy." As a whole they are spoiled and soured like corrupt leaven, or, as some put it, they have become putrid and even stinking. The only reason why we do not more clearly see this foulness is because we are accustomed to it, just as those who work daily among offensive odours at last cease to smell them.”
― Arthur W. Pink, The Total Depravity of Man

“Charnock said, there is "not a moment of a man’s life wherein our hereditary corruption doth not belch its froth.”
― Arthur W. Pink, The Total Depravity of Man

“Hence, as John Owen said: Sin’s proper formal object is God It hath, as it were, that command from Satan which the Assyrians had from their king: "fight neither with small nor great, save only with the king of Israel," that sin sets itself against. There lies the secret, the formal reason of all opposition to good, even because it relates unto God.... The law of sin makes not opposition to any duty, but to God in every duty.”
― Arthur W. Pink, The Total Depravity of Man

“Charnock said, "Water and fire may as well kiss each other, and live together without quarreling and hissing, as the holy will of God and the unregenerate heart of a fallen creature.”
― Arthur W. Pink, The Total Depravity of Man

“Intelligence begins with principles that must be accepted and not explained; and in applying those principles to the phenomena of existence, apparent contradictions constantly emerge that require patience and further knowledge to resolve them. But the mind, anxious to know all and restless under doubts and uncertainty, is tempted to renounce the first principles of reason and to contradict the facts which it daily observes. It seeks consistency of thought, and rather than any gaps should be left unfilled it plunges everything into hopeless confusion. Instead of accepting the laws of intelligence and patiently following the light of reason, and submitting to ignorance where ignorance is the lot of his nature as limited and finite, and joyfully receiving the partial knowledge which is his earthly inheritance, man under the impulse of curiosity, had rather make a world that he does understand than admit one which he cannot comprehend. When he cannot stretch himself to the infinite dimensions of truth, he contracts truth to his own little measure. This is what the apostle means by vanity of mind.”
― Arthur W. Pink, The Total Depravity of Man

“Since the mind occupies so high a place in the scale of our beings, and since it is the most active of our inward faculties, ever working, then what a fearful state for the soul to be blind! John Flavel said it is "like a fiery, high-mettled horse whose eyes cannot see, furiously carrying his rider upon rocks, pits and dangerous precipices.”
― Arthur W. Pink, The Total Depravity of Man

“And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins" (Eph. 2:1). As John Gill said, "The design of the apostle in this and some following verses, is to show the exceeding sinfulness of sin, and to set forth the sad estate and condemnation of man by nature, and to magnify the riches of the grace of God, and represent the exceeding greatness of His power by conversion.”
― Arthur W. Pink, The Total Depravity of Man

“We heartily agree with Charnock: "In that one word love, God hath wrapped up all the devotion He requires of us.”
― Arthur W. Pink, The Total Depravity of Man

“As Thornwell so aptly expressed it, "Holiness was the inheritance of his [man’s] nature—the birthright of his being. It was the state in which all his faculties received their form.”
― Arthur W. Pink, The Total Depravity of Man

“Human responsibility is the necessary corollary of divine sovereignty.”
― Arthur W. Pink, The Total Depravity of Man

“All by nature are essentially evil, nothing but "flesh"; everything in us is contrary to holiness.”
― Arthur W. Pink, The Total Depravity of Man

“Parenthood is an unspeakably solemn matter.”
― Arthur W. Pink, The Total Depravity of Man

“Had not the guilt of Adam’s offense been charged to his posterity, none would die in infancy. Yet it does not necessarily follow that any who expire in early childhood are eternally lost. That they are born into this world spiritually dead, alienated from the life of God, is clear; but whether they die eternally, or are saved by sovereign grace, is probably one of those secret things which belong to the Lord.”
― Arthur W. Pink, The Total Depravity of Man

“This is always the effect of sin; it destroys our peace, robs our joy and brings in its train a consciousness of guilt and a sense of shame.”
― Arthur W. Pink, The Total Depravity of Man

“George Whitefield put it well: I beg leave to express my surprise that any person of judgment should maintain human depravity, and not immediately discover its necessary connection with the imputation, and how impossible it is to secure the justice of God without having recourse to it; for certainly the corruption of human nature, so universal and inseparable, is one of the greatest punishments that could be inflicted upon the species... Now if God has inflicted an evident punishment upon a race of men perfectly innocent, which had neither sinned personally nor yet by imputation [He would be unjust]; and thus while we imagine we honour the justice of God by renouncing imputation, we in fact pour the highest dishonor upon that sacred attribute.”
― Arthur W. Pink, The Total Depravity of Man

“Christ is the grand center of all the divine counsels, and the magnifying of Him is their principal design. Had God kept Adam from sinning, all his race would have been eternally happy. But in that case Adam would have been their savior and benefactor, and all his seed would have gloried in him, ascribing their everlasting blessedness to his obedience. But such an honor was far too much for any finite creature to bear. Only the Lord from heaven was worthy of it.”
― Arthur W. Pink, The Total Depravity of Man

“The Greek word for "figure" in this verse means "type," and in the scriptural sense of that term a type consists of something more than a casual resemblance between two things or an incidental parallel. There is a designed likeness, the one being divinely intended to show forth the other.”
― Arthur W. Pink, The Total Depravity of Man