Bible Verses About Depravity of Man

So are we Jews better off? Not entirely; for I have already made the charge that all people, Jews and Gentiles alike, are controlled by sin.

As the Tanakh puts it, “There is no one righteous, not even one! No one understands,

no one seeks God,

all have turned away and at the same time become useless; there is no one who shows kindness, not a single one!

“Their throats are open graves, they use their tongues to deceive. Vipers’ venom is under their lips.

Their mouths are full of curses and bitterness.

“Their feet rush to shed blood,

in their ways are ruin and misery,

and the way of shalom they do not know.

“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

Moreover, we know that whatever the Torah says, it says to those living within the framework of the Torah, in order that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world be shown to deserve God’s adverse judgment.

Here is how it works: it was through one individual that sin entered the world, and through sin, death; and in this way death passed through to the whole human race, inasmuch as everyone sinned.

Sin was indeed present in the world before Torah was given, but sin is not counted as such when there is no Torah.

Nevertheless death ruled from Adam until Moshe, even over those whose sinning was not exactly like Adam’s violation of a direct command. In this, Adam prefigured the one who was to come.

(I am using popular language because your human nature is so weak.) For just as you used to offer your various parts as slaves to impurity and lawlessness, which led to more lawlessness; so now offer your various parts as slaves to righteousness, which leads to being made holy, set apart for God.

For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in relationship to righteousness;

Then did something good become for me the source of death? Heaven forbid! Rather, it was sin working death in me through something good, so that sin might be clearly exposed as sin, so that sin through the commandment might come to be experienced as sinful beyond measure.

For we know that the Torah is of the Spirit; but as for me, I am bound to the old nature, sold to sin as a slave.

I don’t understand my own behavior — I don’t do what I want to do; instead, I do the very thing I hate!

For I know that there is nothing good housed inside me — that is, inside my old nature. I can want what is good, but I can’t do it!

For I don’t do the good I want; instead, the evil that I don’t want is what I do!

But if I am doing what “the real me” doesn’t want, it is no longer “the real me” doing it but the sin housed inside me.

So I find it to be the rule, a kind of perverse “torah,” that although I want to do what is good, evil is right there with me!

For those who identify with their old nature set their minds on the things of the old nature, but those who identify with the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.

Having one’s mind controlled by the old nature is death, but having one’s mind controlled by the Spirit is life and shalom.