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Ephesians 2:1–3
“You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”
Concupiscence, or the inclination to sin, must be considered when we are thinking about the impact of the fall on mankind. Historically, Roman Catholicism has said that concupiscence is “a desire of the lower appetite contrary to reason” and that human nature as originally created by God includes it. Original righteousness in Roman Catholic theology is an extra aspect added to human nature and not inherent to it, and this original righteousness served as a check on concupiscence, helping to keep desires rightly ordered and to prevent the lower, sensuous desires of human beings from trying to overcome their higher, rational ones.
Roman Catholicism says that after the fall, we lost that gift of original righteousness. Concupiscence, being part of human nature created by God, remained—although for Rome, this tendency to sin is not actually sin. In other words, the desire for sin is not really sin; sin occurs only when the will assents to the desire. Thus, fallen people are in bad shape, but they are not thoroughly corrupted by sin.
The problem with the Roman Catholic view is that it is contrary to Scripture and results in the tendency to sin in human beings the fault of God. If concupiscence is inherent to human nature as originally created, then the Lord created human beings with the tendency to go bad, as it were. Genesis 1:31 reveals, however, that when God finished His work of creation, it was “very good.” The desire for sin cannot be inherent to human nature.
Reformed theology says that concupiscence is not part of human nature as originally created but is a consequence of the fall. Thus, human nature was not left mostly intact when it lost original righteousness. It became wholly against the glory of God, unable to do anything that is truly good in the eyes of the Lord apart from saving grace. We became spiritually dead, as Paul tells us in Ephesians 2:1–3.
In the fall, as Petrus van Mastricht writes, “the entire nature of man was so morally corrupted as regards the intellect, the will, the affections, that by nature he is blind in respect to all spiritual truth, likewise incompetent for any spiritual good, and prone to all evil in respect to his will.” This is otherwise known as total or pervasive depravity. Every part of human beings is now tainted by sin. “The corruption of [man’s] whole nature,” therefore, is part of the condition called original sin, as Westminster Shorter Catechism 18 puts it.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
The corruption of our nature means that our thinking is often cloudy, our affections are regularly misplaced, our bodies are prone to decay, and we are incapable of pleasing God until He brings us to new spiritual life. Even once we are regenerated, the remaining presence of sin still affects us. We should therefore be aware that we are always capable of sin until we are glorified, and we should be on guard lest we fall into sin.
For further study
- Proverbs 12:8
- Isaiah 64:6
- Romans 7:7–25
- Galatians 6:8
The bible in a year
- Job 1–3
- Acts 7:1–22