3. Man's Depravity

God created man in his own image. Since God is sovereign and free, man was endowed with a will. Inherent in that freedom to chose was the possibility of sin.

And tragically, man chose to believe the lie of the Devil, and reject the truth of God as recorded in Genesis 3. See the section on the Bible for a fuller discussion of sin and redemption. Because our first parents, Adam and Eve, fell from perfection into corruption, and because like reproduces like, moral pollution infected the entire human race. By Genesis 6, God was grieved that he had ever made man in the first place, because "every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time" (Genesis 6:5).

Not only is man in a fallen spiritual and moral condition, he is utterly unable to save himself. Since a bad tree can only produce bad fruit, and since the leopard cannot change its spots, man was impotent to save himself from his ruined condition. Yet there was hope...