3. Dead, not merely sick: sin and the bound will

The sentence of death was pronounced before the act was done. God set the tree before the man with the prohibition and the penalty in one utterance: "you shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die" (Gen 2:17). The penalty named at the beginning is not sickness, not decline, not a wounding. It is death. Paul reads the whole race under that sentence: "Therefore, as sin entered into the world through one man, and death through sin, so death passed to all men because all sinned" (Rom 5:12). Death passed to all because all sinned. The universality of the death rests on the universality of the sin, and the texts that describe man's state before God take their word from the sentence: the state is death.

Ephesians states the state and the remedy in a single breath: "You were made alive when you were dead in transgressions and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the children of disobedience. We also all once lived among them in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest" (Eph 2:1-3). The dead walk, desire, and obey. The death is not inactivity; it is a direction — away from God, under wrath by nature. The remedy word in the passage is not healing but life given to the dead: "even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved" (Eph 2:5). Colossians uses the same word for the same state and the same act of God: "You were dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh. He made you alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses" (Col 2:13). Romans gives the verdict that belongs to the dead: "There is no one righteous; no, not one. There is no one who understands. There is no one who seeks after God. They have all turned away. They have together become unprofitable. There is no one who does good, no, not so much as one" (Rom 3:10-12), and the summary that closes the argument: "for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God" (Rom 3:23). No one seeks after God. The sentence is not that man seeks badly. It is that he does not seek.

Scripture also speaks of the heart in the imagery of sickness, and the imagery stands in its place — under the death sentence, not in its stead. Jeremiah gives the heart's condition: "The heart is deceitful above all things and it is exceedingly corrupt. Who can know it?" (Jer 17:9). The word rendered "exceedingly corrupt" is the word rendered "incurable" when Jeremiah speaks of the nation's wound: "Your hurt is incurable. Your wound is grievous" (Jer 30:12). The sickness named in the heart is a sickness for which the patient holds no cure; the diagnosis agrees with the sentence of death, because an incurable corruption is not a lesser state than death but the description of why the dead do not rise by their own strength. Isaiah draws the same picture over the whole body: "Why should you be beaten more, that you revolt more and more? The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even to the head there is no soundness in it, but wounds, welts, and open sores. They haven't been closed, bandaged, or soothed with oil" (Isa 1:5-6). There is no soundness in it — not a sound part from which recovery could begin. The Lord takes the physician image onto His own lips: "Those who are healthy have no need for a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance" (Mark 2:17). The image is His. But the sickness the prophets describe is incurable by the sick, and the Physician in Mark's Gospel calls sinners; He does not wait for the sick to heal themselves first.

Against this death stands the bondage of the will, and the texts speak of both together. The Lord said, "Most certainly I tell you, everyone who commits sin is the bondservant of sin" (John 8:34). The saying was spoken to men of whom the Gospel has just said the opposite of what the exposure shows: "Jesus therefore said to those Jews who had believed him, 'If you remain in my word, then you are truly my disciples'" (John 8:31). Within the same conversation the exposure comes: "I know that you are Abraham's offspring, yet you seek to kill me, because my word finds no place in you" (John 8:37); "You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and doesn't stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks on his own; for he is a liar, and the father of lies" (John 8:44); "But because I tell the truth, you don't believe me" (John 8:45). The bondservant word is then stated for everyone in Romans, as the prior state of every believer and the present state of every man outside Christ: "Don't you know that when you present yourselves as servants and obey someone, you are the servants of whomever you obey, whether of sin to death, or of obedience to righteousness?" (Rom 6:16); "whereas you were bondservants of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were delivered" (Rom 6:17); "For when you were servants of sin, you were free from righteousness" (Rom 6:20). The two passages stand side by side as the texts set them: bondage spoken to the face of professed belief in John, bondage stated as the universal condition in Romans. Romans names the inability inside the bondage: "because the mind of the flesh is hostile toward God, for it is not subject to God's law, neither indeed can it be. Those who are in the flesh can't please God" (Rom 8:7-8). Not subject, and cannot be. The Lord states the same inability from the other side: "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him; and I will raise him up in the last day" (John 6:44). The will is not a weakened faculty awaiting assistance. It is a servant in another's house, and coming is impossible until the Father draws.

The section closes where the sentence and the gift are set in one verse: "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom 6:23).