Psalm 51:1-5
Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest.
Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.
JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): The expression intimates that we are cherished in sin from the first moment that we are in the womb.
ADAM CLARKE (1760-1832): I believe David speaks here of what is commonly called original sin; the propensity to evil which every man brings into the world with him—The Hebrew word translated “shapen,’ means more properly, I was “brought forth” from the womb; and the word translated “conceive” signifies “made me warm,” alluding to the process of the formation of the fetus in the uterus—the formative heat which is necessary to develop the parts of all embryos; to incubate the ova in the female, after having been impregnated by the male; and to bring the whole into such a state of maturity and perfection as to render it capable of subsisting and growing. “As my parts were developed in the womb, the sinful principle diffused itself through the whole, so that body and mind grew up in a state of corruption and moral imperfection.”
THOMAS COKE (1747-1814): Nor do I see how it could be otherwise, when she first cherished him in her womb. I shall not easily be persuaded to think, that parents, who are sinners themselves will be very likely to produce children without transmitting to them those corruptions of nature with which they themselves are infected—“Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one,” Job 14:4.
A. W. PINK (1886-1952): Man’s very nature is corrupted…Thus it is clear that when Christ declared, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh,” John 3:6, He signified that which is propagated by fallen man is depraved, that whatever comes into this world by ordinary generation is carnal and corrupt, causing the heart itself to be deceitful above all things and desperately wicked,” Jeremiah 17:9.
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): That child which has just experienced the first birth has been made partaker of “corruptible seed.” The depravity of his parent lies sleeping within him. Could he speak, he might say so—he receives the evil virus which was first infused into us by the Fall—the virus of evil is in him.
CHRISTOPHER NESS (1621-1705): Infants are not innocents, being born with original sin— otherwise infants would not die, for “death is the wages of sin,” Romans 6:23; and the reign of death is procured by the reign of sin, which hath reigned over all mankind except Christ. All are sinners, infected with the guilt and filth of sin.
RICHARD CAPEL (1586-1656): Hence no sooner do we speak, but we lie. “The wicked are estranged from the womb, they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies,” Psalm 58:3. As we are in the body, subject to all diseases, but yet, some to one sickness rather than to another: so in the soul, all are apt enough to all sin, and yet some rather more to one vice than to another—but all are much inclined to lying.
A. W. PINK: No child has to be taught to lie—it comes naturally to him—he is born corrupt at the core of his being. This is the just entail of the Fall. Our first parents preferred the Devil’s lie to God’s Truth—and all of their descendants inherit the poisonous virus which then entered into them. By nature both writer, and reader, are liars.
JOHN CALVIN: Indeed, every sin should convince us of the general truth of the corruption of our nature.
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. We readily disobey God and go from one sin to another because of the sinful nature with which we are born.
THOMAS COKE: And I should think that there is need of no other proof that we are all born in such a state, than our own experience, and the present condition of the world we live in.
JOHN ANGELL JAMES (1785-1869): As united fires burn the fiercer, and the concentrated virus of many people thrown into the same room infected with the plague, renders the disease more malignant—so a sinful community grows in impiety, as every member joins his brother’s pollution to his own. Nothing is so contagious as bad morals!
H. A. IRONSIDE: We do not all sin in exactly the same way, but the Scriptures say that “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God,” Romans 3:23.
A. W. PINK: Precisely, what is the nature of human depravity?
C. H. SPURGEON: The virus of sin lies in its opposition to God—that it is sin against God.
A. W. PINK: This supplies the key to such passages as we have just quoted above in Psalm 51…Here, then, is the terrible nature of human depravity—that his heart is desperately wicked, that his mind is filled with enmity against God, that his will is antagonistic to Him, that he is altogether unconscious of the deadly virus of sin which has corrupted every part of his inner being, and which has completely unfitted him for any communion with the thrice Holy One.
C. H. SPURGEON: The sin that lies within us is not an accumulation of external defilement, but an inward, all-pervading corruption! The taint of secret and spiritual evil is in man’s natural life. Every pulse of his soul is disordered by it. The eggs of all crimes are within our being—the accursed virus, from whose deadly venom every foul design will come—is present in the soul. Not only a tendency to sin, but sin itself has taken possession of the soul, and blackened and polluted it through and through till there is not a fiber of the heart unstained with iniquity!
A. W. PINK: The criminal darkness and delusion which fill every soul in which sin reigns cannot be removed by any agent but God the Spirit—by His giving a new heart and enlightening the understanding to perceive the exceeding sinfulness of sin…Awakened souls were made to feel iniquity cleaving to them like a girdle, and inward corruption like a deadly virus poisoning their very nature, breaking out continually in unholy tempers, defiling all they did or attempted, and thus destroying all hope of justification or acceptance with God on the ground of personal conformity to His requirements. Alive to the truth of an ineffably holy and infinitely perfect God, they were also alive to painful misgivings and fears of guilt; and hence their confessions of sin, sobs of penitence, and cries for mercy.
C. H. SPURGEON: Beloved, if you would be cured of any sin, however spreading its infection, fly to Jesus’ wounds!—“With His stripes we are healed,” Isaiah 53:5. It is a universal medicine. There is no disease by which thy soul can be afflicted but an application of the bruises of your Lord will take out the deadly virus from your soul.
HORATIUS BONAR (1808-1889): “The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin,” 1 John 1:7. Remember it is all sin—even yours. It can wash, it can pardon, it can justify even thee. Take it now, for cleansing and salvation.
