What does the Bible say about corruption?

Incorruptibility involves purity, probity, perfection and perpetuity; but corruption is the opposite to this—impurity, putrescence, depravity and vileness mark it. Ever since sin entered into the world through the fall of man, its debasing defilements have been progressing. As early as Genesis 6 it is Divinely recorded, “The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted His way upon the earth” (11:12). Mark, corruption had affected the earth itself, for man had also corrupted God’s way. Material as well as moral corruption was present. The varied forms of their defiling developments are multitudinous. In the wake of sin corruption has prospered increasingly; and, sad to say, its willing victims, through lusts of the flesh and of the mind, hasten to spread its appalling influences, being themselves “servants of corruption” as the Scripture says (2 Peter 2:19). When the sons of God appear with our Lord Jesus Christ in glory, honour, and incorruptibility, the creature shall be “delivered from the bondage of corruption”; their set-vice will be the opposite to that of the servants of corruption, bringing the creature into the liberty of the glory of the children of God (Rom. 8:21). Meanwhile, how awful is the groaning produced by the bondage of corruption!

There are two forms in which sin, or the activity of man's will, manifests itself — violence and corruption. This was seen at the time of the deluge. The earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. Satan is a liar and murderer. In man, corrupt lusts are even a more abundant source of evil.

Noah's three sons are again mentioned in verse 10, though evidently born after he was 500 years of age (Gen. 5:32). The most serious evil of man is then emphasized — his corruption before God — which led to an earth filled with violence (v. 11). Violence is of course against others, and people consider this the worst thing; but their corruption is against God, though they think lightly of it. If there were no corruption there would be no violence. But at this time “all flesh” had corrupted itself. God tells Noah that the end of all flesh was imminent because the earth was filled with violence, for violence was the glaring proof of man's corruption (v. 13). God would destroy the inhabitants with the earth.

The solemn truth that human nature is tainted and corrupt is not popular, but even if men could erase it from Scripture it would still be shouted to heaven from every corner of the habitable earth. There the fact IS. The Bible alone explains its origin and unfolds the remedy.

There is no other explanation of the fact that the children of Adam universally have a corrupted moral nature. The moral nature of man was first corrupted in him — our progenitor. Having become corrupted in him, it has passed on naturally as an inheritance to his descendants. They have a fallen, sinful nature through him. All his children are thus involved in his fall and ruin — the many involved by the act of the one.

Every creature of God has its own nature, and of God’s creatures on earth man has a very distinctive nature that sets him apart from all others. Alas, sin has entered into the nature of man and has brought in all the ruin, decay, disease and death that we see all around. Scripture relates plainly that this was brought about by the sin of Adam and Eve, and that every child of Adam has inherited his sinful nature. Adam’s sin made him a guilty creature, and put him at a distance from God, but it also introduced into his nature an evil principle, sin, that had not been there before. The long centuries of man’s life upon earth have demonstrated the utter ruin of human nature, but the cross of Christ has not only shown that it is incorrigible, but there God condemned the sin that controlled, and formed part of, man’s nature as away from God (Rom. 8:3).

Flesh and corruption are thus inseparably connected as cause and effect. This has been true as to man's physical flesh ever since the fall. His flesh then became mortal flesh with corruption as its inevitable end. It became equally true of his moral condition and nature which is "the flesh" in the passage we are considering. Its workings always issue in moral and spiritual corruption. The "old man" is "corrupt, according to the deceitful lusts" (Eph. 4:22), and so deceitful are its lusts that what appears to be the most intellectual and refined philosophic speculation may really be the wanderings of human minds that are controlled by the lusts, that is, the desires, of the flesh. Such persons just end by thinking what they want to think; and all the corruption which fills the world to-day originates in thought: words and actions follow after.

Our moral corruption is very deep. It is complete. But at times it will betray itself in very repulsive shapes, from which, with all the knowledge of it which we have, we instinctively shrink, confounded at the thought that they belong to us. Privileges under God's own hand may only serve to develop instead of curing this corruption.

For our minds are often in danger, while considering objectively the great phenomena of human wickedness which are revealed in Scripture, of forgetting that what is presented to our contemplation when the Holy Ghost marks out the moral lineaments of Christ's chief adversary among men, is but the ripe development of what is in the human heart of every one of us. It is fallen and corrupted nature, matured to full grown wickedness under the allowed fostering of the devil, that produces "the Man of sin."

Thus the fallen man, having been first stripped of every covering, stands revealed as corrupt, lying, slandering, cursing and murdering; leaving ruin and misery in his wake; and treading a path in which there is no peace, and no fear of God. Such is the solemn picture of fallen man under the eye of God. It is not that every one of these traits will be seen in each individual, for there are many restraints upon the manifestation of the flesh in its full evil. In the ordinary walks of life there are the restraints of education, civilization, and the outward forms of religion, which hinder the flesh showing itself in all its full wickedness. However, given the suited circumstances, the flesh will break through all restraints, and manifest itself in all its hideousness.