A heart apart from God’s grace is desperately wicked but doesn’t know it. A heart touched by God’s grace might still slip into wickedness, yes, but it will knowingly turn in repentance and faith in God and find cleansing in His grace.
Malcom Muggeridge famously observed that “the depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality but at the same time the most intellectually resisted fact.” On the face of it, this observation rings true. And yet, we often hear expressions of absolute disgust at humanity alongside affirmations that “he’s basically a good person.” Why do we resist what seems so self-evident?
The roots of our resistance emerge from our hearts. References to the “heart” are replete in Scripture, because it is the Holy Spirit’s way of referencing our whole being or person. We see this even in our common manner of speaking. For example, when we talk about a person’s truly appropriating an idea or practice, we say, “She really took it to heart.” That is, it became a part of who she is through her regular thought and practice. When the Bible wants to address who we are as human beings, it speaks of the heart.
It’s quite a jolt, then, when we read in Jeremiah 17:9 that the human heart is “deceitful above all things” and, in the King James Version, “desperately wicked” (ESV “desperately sick”). If this is said of the heart, according to a biblical anthropology it must be said of human nature. Human nature, in its natural state, is “desperately wicked” or depraved. And the reason that humanity is unwilling to admit this is because our wicked hearts are “deceitful above all things.” We are in double trouble: we are sick and unwilling to admit it, which means we will never look for a cure on our own.
But, we might think, maybe this is just an Old Testament thing. Maybe this is Jeremiah doing his “jeremiad” thing. Maybe this is a judgment given when Israel was in a really bad place, and things got better with time.
The problem with these suggestions is Jesus’ own teaching. In Mark 7, He makes a point of highlighting what defiles a person. Much like the fascination many today have with “self-care” through eating the right foods and engaging in healthy practices, the Pharisees and scribes of Jesus’ day established traditions such as the proper washing of hands, pots, and even couches. However, for many Pharisees, these went beyond “self-care” to having a role in securing one’s righteousness before God (vv. 1–13). This approach presumes that the basic human problem comes from the outside. Jesus teaches the exact opposite:
