Jeremiah 17:9; Titus 1:15; Isaiah 1:5,6
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
Unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled.
The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment.
WILLIAM S. PLUMER (1802-1880): Probably the greatest practical heresy of each age is a low idea of our undone condition under the guilt and dominion of sin.
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): The virus of sin, what will it poison? Yes, what will it not poison? Its influence has been baleful upon the largest conceivable scale.
A. W. PINK (1886-1952): As to the terrible consequences which sin has wrought in the human constitution, scarcely any now have more than the vaguest conceptions. So long as a man obeys the laws of his country, discharges with measurable faithfulness his human obligations, and does not grossly defy the commandments of God, it is popularly assumed that there is little wrong with him—and he is altogether unconscious of the deadly virus of sin which has corrupted every part of his inner being…In the case of the unregenerate, though they have occasional twinges of conscience when they act wrongfully, they are very largely ignorant of the awful fact that they are a complete mass of corruption in the pure eyes of the thrice holy God.
ADAM CLARKE (1760-1832): Sinners are blind; their understanding is so darkened by sin that they see not the way of truth and salvation. They are lame—not able to walk in the path of righteousness. They are leprous, their souls are defiled with sin, the most loathsome and inveterate disease; deepening in themselves, and infecting others. They are deaf to the voice of God, His Word, and their own conscience. They are dead in trespasses and sins; God, who is the life of the soul, being separated from it by iniquity.
A. W. PINK: Precisely, what is the nature of human depravity?
C. H. SPURGEON: Man is a reeking mass of corruption—the virus of evil is in him.
H. A. IRONSIDE (1876-1951): You see, the trouble with all mankind is not that they become sinners by sinning, but they sin because they are sinners. We are born in sin and are shapen in iniquity. The virus of sin is in our being, from the moment we draw our first breath.
THOMAS COKE (1747-1814): Man’s nature is fallen; his heart is radically corrupt, all its faculties perverted, and his whole mind and conscience defiled. “The heart deceitful above all things; ” it puts false glosses upon sin, which hide its malignity and danger.
C. H. SPURGEON: Men think that sin is nothing, but what will sin do?
WILLIAM S. PLUMER: Truly, sin kills—sin has digged every grave.
C. H. MACKINTOSH (1820-1896): Sin brought death into the world. Sin is the very sting of death—and death introduces the sinner to judgment.
A. W. PINK: Had there been no sin, there would have been no death. It is sin, unpardoned sin, which makes death so dreadful, for not only does it put a final end to all its pleasures, but it conducts its subjects to certain judgment.
THOMAS COKE: Fear and terror of conscience are the natural consequences of guilt, and the present wages of sin.
C. H. SPURGEON: This disease, moreover, is not only exceedingly painful when the conscience is smarting, but it is altogether incurable, so far as any human ill is concerned. “For thus saith the LORD, Thy bruise is incurable, and thy wound is grievous,” Jeremiah 30:12. It would be much easier to heal a man’s body of leprosy than to heal a man’s soul of sin. It is a disease which takes such fast hold upon the nature and so entirely impregnates the mind with a deadly virus, that it abides in the very essence of manhood and can only be removed by a miracle. It is far more possible for the Ethiopian to change his skin, or the leopard his spots, than for a man who is accustomed to do evil, to learn to do well—especially to love to do well and find pleasure in it.
THOMAS COKE: Man’s heart is “desperately wicked;” not only evil in that mere state of nature, but evil continually and incurably, without the grace of God, desperately set upon sin, without power to abstain from it, or ability to get rid of the bondage of corruption.
JOHN GILL (1697-1771): “He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool,” Proverbs 28:26. Since the thoughts and imaginations of the thoughts of the heart are only evil, and that continually, Genesis 6:5—he must be a fool, and not know the plague of his heart, that trusts in it; and even for a good man to be self-confident, and trust to the sincerity of his heart, as Peter did, or to the good frame of the heart, as many do, is acting a foolish part; and especially such are fools as the Scribes and Pharisees, who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others, when a man’s best righteousness is impure and imperfect, and cannot justify him in the sight of God.
J. C. RYLE (1816-1900): We are all naturally self-righteous. It is the family disease of the children of Adam.
C. H. SPURGEON: If this were a matter of custom, or practice, it might be fought with and overcome, but inasmuch as it is a matter of nature, and the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint with it—no human power can possibly effect a cure.
THOMAS COKE: Nothing can cure it but His almighty grace; and therefore it were folly to depend on ourselves or others, in whose hearts such deceit and desperate wickedness are naturally so deeply rooted.
J. C. RYLE: To be sensible of our corruption and abhor our own transgressions is the first symptom of spiritual health.
A. W. PINK: He who is experimentally acquainted with the “plague of his own heart,” 1 Kings 8:38, is one in experience with the most eminent of God’s saints. Abraham acknowledged he was “dust and ashes,” Genesis 18:27. Job said “I abhor myself,” Job 42:6. David prayed, “Have mercy upon me, O Lord; for I am weak: O Lord heal me; for my bones are vexed,” Psalm 6:2. Isaiah exclaimed “Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips,” Isaiah 6:5…Daniel said, “There remained no strength in me, for my comeliness was turned in me into corruption,” Daniel 10:8. Paul cried, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Romans 7:24. Thus it is in the case of one who has been renewed by the Spirit: his eyes have been opened to see the awful filth which lurks in every corner of his heart.
J. C. RYLE: There is far more wickedness in all our hearts than we know.
THOMAS COKE: The more we know of ourselves, far from having fathomed the abyss of evil, we discover but the more clearly, that the depths of corruption in man by nature are unfathomable; we can neither understand the number of our errors, nor promise ourselves for a moment, without divine aid, security from the deepest and foulest falls.
C. H. SPURGEON: Apart from the work of the Holy Spirit, and the power of divine grace, hell itself does not contain greater monsters than you and I might become.
JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): Indeed, every sin should convince us of the general truth of the corruption of our nature.
