What is human nature? What does the Bible say about human nature?

The Scriptures teach that every regenerate person is the possessor of two natures: one, received by natural birth, which is wholly and hopelessly bad; and a new nature, received through the new birth, which is the nature of God Himself, and therefore wholly good. The following Scriptures will sufficiently manifest what God thinks of the old, or Adam nature: "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me" (Ps. 51:5). "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" (Jer. 17:9) "There is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one" (Rom. 3:10-12). God does not say that none of the unregenerate are refined, or cultured, or able, or sweet-tempered, or generous, or charitable, or even religious. But He does say that none are righteous, none understand God, or seek after Him. It is one of the sorest of faith's trials to accept the divine estimate of human nature, to realize that our genial and moral friends, who, not infrequently, are scrupulous in the discharge of every duty, filled with sympathy for the woes and the aspirations of humanity, and strenuous in the assertion of human rights, are yet utter despisers of God's rights and untouched by the sacrifice of His Son, whose divinity they with unspeakable insolence deny and whose word they contemptuously reject. A refined and gentle lady who would shrink with horror from the coarseness of giving a fellow creature the lie, will yet make God a liar every day! (See 1 John 1:10; 5:10). And this difficulty is vastly increased for thousands by the current praise of humanity from the pulpit. How startling the contrast between appearances and realities in the time before the flood. "There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown" (Gen. 6:4). And so it appeared that the world was growing better, in men's eyes; a continual improvement they probably would trace, and the apparent result of the unholy intermarriage of the godly with the worldly was the lifting up of human nature to still grander heights. But "God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually" (Gen. 6:5). "For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: all these evil things come from within, and defile man" (Mark 7:21-23). "But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" (I Cor. 2:14). "Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God" (Rom. 8:7-8). "Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath" (Eph. 2:3). By these it appears that the unconverted man has a three-fold incapacity. He may be gifted, or cultured, or amiable, or generous, or religious. He may pay his honest debts, be truthful, industrious, a good husband and father-or all these together-but he can neither obey God, please God, nor understand God. The believer, on the contrary, while still having his old nature, unchanged and unchangeable, has received a new nature which "after God is created in righteousness and true holiness." The following Scriptures will show the origin and character of the new man. It will be seen that regeneration is a creation, not a mere transformation-the bringing in a new thing, not the change of an old. As we received human nature by natural generation, so do we receive the divine nature by regeneration. "Verily, verily, I say unto thee [Nicodemus, a moral, religious man], Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God" (John 3:3). "But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (John 1:12-13). "For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:26). It will be observed what bearing these Scriptures have upon that specious and plausible, but utterly unscriptural phrase so popular in our day, "the universal fatherhood of God, and the universal brotherhood of man -- an expression all the more dangerous for the half-truth of the last clause.

We find that it was early in man's history that the divine verdict came forth as to the springs of evil in his heart. God declared that "the imagination of the thoughts of the heart of man were only evil, and that continually." This is God's estimate of man's nature; showing the thorough depravity of every spring of thought in his heart. Consequently, the next words are, "I will destroy;" for if man is only by nature a child of wrath, incurably bad, what else could be done with him, but to put him under the judgment of a holy God? and this judicial sentence was actually carried out by the flood. Years and even centuries passed over after this, man having been instructed and tested in various ways, when the prophet Jeremiah is heard to sound a somewhat similar note in saying, "The heart of man is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked." A long series of years, and wonderful interventions of God, again pass over, and we find the Son of God from heaven declaring to His hearers at Capernaum the humiliating truth that "the flesh profiteth nothing," and that "out of the heart of man proceedeth all manner of evil." But neither the Lord's own ministry, nor that of the apostles, improved man's nature; so that again an inspired apostle pronounces him as wilful and insubject as ever, saying, "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God;" and that "the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God." (Rom. 8:7-8.) All these Scriptures chew that God's estimate of the natural man is that he is thoroughly undone and corrupt, yea, incurably bad; and this is no doubt why the gospel does not propose to help or improve man in the flesh, says nothing about mending an evil nature; but, on the contrary, sets forth in the most absolute way his need of redemption and life. Thus the blessed gospel declares what God is to man, and what He has done for man; it is therefore concerning His beloved Son; for He having been delivered up for our sin and guilt to the death of the cross, God has graciously provided for us, not only in the judgment of sins, but of the nature too from whence our evil thoughts and desires proceed.

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).

We have already noticed that Adam's sin not only made him guilty of a serious offence against the commandment of God, but that sin entered into man's nature, an evil principle that defiled the springs of his moral being and manifested itself in deadly opposition to God and His will. The evil in man's nature was fully exposed by the presence on earth of the Son of God, and the cross of Christ is the evidence of its heinousness. Even before the cross the Son of God said, "They have both seen and hated both Me and My Father". Yet this evil was seen early in man's history, when Cain slew Abel because of his hatred of the righteousness manifested by his brother. Cain's insolent words to God indicated the hidden evil of his nature. As he could not harm God directly, he laid hands upon one in whom there was the life of God.

Man's nature, flesh, through sin became sinful flesh, and the ages during which man was under probation proved that the nature of man was incorrigible. Men vainly imagine that human nature can be improved by congenial environment, forgetting that it was in the perfect environment of Eden that man became a sinner. In whatever circumstances or conditions of life man has been, he has shown the dreadful evil of his heart. A Judas, who was for over three years in the company of the perfect Man, the Son of God, betrayed Him for thirty pieces of silver. Having proved that human nature is beyond recovery, incorrigibly wicked, God has brought it to an end in judgment in the cross, even as it is written, "God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin (that is, by a sacrifice for sin), condemned sin in the flesh" (Romans 8:3).

But the first man is of the earth, "earthy" (1 Cor. 15:47): and, since his fall, his pursuits, habits, thoughts, desires and character have been centred in himself. God is not in all his thoughts; and having come under the influence of Satan, he hates God, and lives in self-will and sin. Not only was one sin put to man's account by his disobedience, but sin entered into his nature, making it a sinful nature; and he put himself at a distance from God. There was no power with man to do what was good, or to resist the evil; and he could neither regain his place in Eden nor remove from his nature the principle of sin that had entered there.

To start with, the Lord Jesus reminds them of the fact that every man is evil by nature, a fact which has been so since the fall. God had said already at the time of Noah that the thought of man's heart is evil from his youth (Gen. 8:21). David reveals a deep understanding of God's assessment of men as he says in Psalm 51:5: 'Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.' But when men judged the only sinless one on the cross of Calvary as a criminal the total depravity of human nature was revealed in its entirety. The nature of the 'old man', that is of the flesh, is incorrigible, and this is why God gives new and everlasting life and a new nature to every one who believes.

It is important though to observe the unity of thought pervading all scripture as to man's utter ruin, and incurably bad condition, calling for nothing less than being born anew. If, early in scripture, we are told that "every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually," many hundreds of years after another prophet declared, that "the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked;" while hundreds of years later, our Lord said, "from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts," etc., and He did not name anything good in it. Later on an Apostle declared, that "the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be" (Rom. 8:7); so that as to man's moral condition in God's sight, ever since the fall, the testimony throughout has been, that "there is none righteous, no not one." The giving of the law, instead of helping or improving those who accepted the yoke, only caused the offence to abound, and gave "the knowledge of sin." Happy are they who so know the Lord Jesus Christ as their life and peace, as to be not under law, and vainly hoping to reach God by doings and efforts, but as brought to God in Christ, and through His precious blood can bow in adoring praise and thanksgiving to Him for the accomplished work of eternal redemption. Such is the uniform testimony of God concerning man throughout the entire volume of inspiration.

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.

Man is of a totally different order than angels. He is made in God's image, that is, he is created to represent God. He is made "after God's likeness," which involves similarity. God is a triune Being, Father, Son and Holy Spirit: man is a triune character, spirit, soul and body (1 Thess.5:23). Animals are amoral: they do not have a moral nature. God has a nature of truth and of goodness. Man was created with the same faculties, though sin has now badly corrupted his nature and he has become immoral. Man is directly responsible to God, as animals are not. This responsibility involves man's authority over the lower creation. The fact is stated, "Male and female He created them." Chapter 2:18-23 explains how the woman was created.

Man is of a totally different order than angels. He is made in God's image, that is, he is created to represent God. He is made “after God's likeness,” which involves similarity. God is a triune Being, Father, Son and Holy Spirit: man is a triune character, spirit, soul and body (1 Thess. 5:23). Animals are amoral: they do not have a moral nature. God has a nature of truth and of goodness. Man was created with the same faculties, though sin has now badly corrupted his nature and he has become immoral. Man is directly responsible to God, as animals are not. This responsibility involves man's authority over the lower creation. The fact is stated, “Male and female He created them.” Genesis 2:18-23 explains how the woman was created.