This is one that was not necessarily central to Dr. Coppenger's point, but that I found thought provoking none the less:
"Here is a man, for instance, who is very sick, he greatly dreads to die; his physician proposes to him to take a potion of very nauseous medicine, the patient is perfectly willing, and greatly desires the medicine. We ask, Is it really, the medicine the man wants, independent of its effects? O no, the medicine itself is disagreeable; it is the good effects of the medicine which is really the object of his desire. He wants to live, and he only desires the medicine as the means of obtaining the end. This, perhaps, unfolds the secret of your situation. If so, you are only a legalist; and it has not been religion you have been wanting all the while, but its good effects. If you will examine yourself closely, perhaps you will find that so far from having desired religion on account of what it is in its own nature, you have in reality been desiring it only as a kind of necessary evil, which you did not want, only as a means of obtaining certain wished-for ends....We see a great many persons who appear to be greatly concerned about keeping out of hell and getting to heaven, while they appear to be very little concerned about sin and holiness." -J.H.T. Kilpatrick
A short quote that shows the distinction between seeing lost man as wholly against God's Lordship and seeing him as just a neutral party who is on the fence and could go either way:
"It is not that the natural man is ignorant and needs instruction, feeble and needs invigorating, sickly and needs doctoring. His case is far more. He is spiritually lifeless, and needs quickening--a spiritual corpse which needs bringing from death to life." -R.G. Lee
This is maybe the best quote. There are echoes of Ephesians 2:1ff here:
"We are dead. We are corpses. We are born in that death. We are born in sin, even conceived in sin. All of our propensities and affinities flow in the direction of sin. We are by nature set in a fallen direction. Have you ever stood by the might Niagara? The great river falls over that precipice. It naturally does. It is uncoerced. It falls by nature. It cannot rise. It does not rise. It falls and each drop of water pushes the other over the rim of that great falls. We are set in a fallen direction....I am bound, paralyzed between two steel rails, one, my fleshly lust and the other, my fallen will. And I stand in the path of an inevitable judgment, inexorable death. I'm like a man paralyzed between two steel rails and thundering down on me is a great chain of cars....I can stand and preach to a dead corpse and say, "Don't you see?" But a corpse doesn't see. I can lift up my voice and say to a dead corpse, "Don't you understand?" But a dead corpse does not understand. I can say to a dead corpse, "Don't you hear?" But a dead corpse does not hear. It cannot will itself to a quickened life. It cannot choose, it cannot see, it cannot hear, it cannot think, it cannot understand. It is dead....The initiation of our salvation, of our calling, of our regeneration, of our new birth, of our salvation is in God and not is us. Consequently, our new birth, our regeneration, our calling is a gift of God....Now, when I read this in the Bible, and I look in my heart, is it confirmed in my experience? It is. And not only in mine, but in every man who has ever come to know Jesus as his savior. A man or a woman. Everyone of us." -W.A. Criswell
Dr. Coppenger wraps up the article with this quote, showing how when we raise our view of lost humanity, we undermine the beauty and power of God's grace in their lives. Forgiveness, regeneration, salvation, and the work of Christ on the cross suddenly aren't worth nearly as much, and aren't nearly as miraculous or amazing. Here is the quote:
"It is a pity that such preaching is more scarce than it once was. While few deny the reality of human free agency (else what sense could we make of the conscious rejection or acceptance of the gospel?), it seems that, today, the "freedom" of the lost has been magnified at the expense of their "bondage." Unlike the founders of the Southern Baptist Convention, some have come to view lost people as discriminating shoppers, whose failure to buy is due to our failure at marketing.
It is good to note that man's will is free in the sense that his choices flow freely from his character or nature, whether regenerate or unregenerate. But today the spiritual freedom of fallen man is being woefully overrated and, consequently, saving grace is being tragically underrated." -Dr. Mark Coppenger
If you actually made it through this, I am impressed. The clincher for this argument is not in what any of these guys have said, but what God's word says. Listen to what Paul wrote in Ephesians 2:1-7 and how he describes lost humanity--"And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus."
Thank God that He has shown grace and mercy to a completely lost and rebellious sinner like me!
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