“It is our deep conviction that the vital question most needing to be raised today is this: Is man a totally and thoroughly depraved creature by nature? Does he enter the world completely ruined and helpless, spiritually blind and dead in trespasses and sins? According as is our answer to that question, so will be our views on many others. It is on the basis of this dark background that the whole Bible proceeds. And any attempt to modify, or soften, or deny, or tone down the teaching of Scripture on this matter is fatal.

There is therefore a crying need today for sin to be viewed in the light of God’s law and gospel, so that its exceeding sinfulness may be demonstrated, and the dark depths of human depravity exposed by the teaching of Holy Scripture, so that we may learn what is meant by those fearful words “Dead in trespasses and sins.”

The grand object of the Bible is to make God known to us, to portray man as he appears in the eyes of his Maker, and to show the relation of one to the other. It is therefore the business of His servants not only to declare the divine character and perfections of Christ, but also to teach people the original condition and apostasy of man, (as well as the divine remedy for his ruin).

Until we really behold the horror of the pit in which by nature we lie, we can never properly appreciate Christ’s so-great salvation. In man’s fallen condition we have the awful disease for which divine redemption is the only cure, and how much we value that cure, will necessarily be modified in proportion to how well we understand the depth and degree of our sin”

- A. W. Pink, “Man’s Total Depravity”