“Man is a fallen creature. It is not that a few leaves have faded, but that the entire tree has become rotten, root and branch. There is in every one that which is radically wrong. The word “radical,” comes from a Latin word which means “the root” so that when we say a man is radically wrong, we mean that there is in him, in the very root and fiber of his being, that which is intrinsically corrupt and incurably evil. Sins are merely the fruit; there must of necessity be a root from which springs the fruit. We sin because we are sinful by nature; we are sinful by nature because we are fallen creatures. It follows, then, as a natural consequence, that man needs the aid of a Higher Power to effect a radical change. There is only One who can effect the change. God created man, and God alone can re-create him. Hence the imperative demand, “Ye must be born again.”
- Arthur Pink