Shocking: Douglas J. Moo, PhD, Professor at Wheaton College, argues that persons apart from Christ are totally depraved and are totally unable to please God.

Douglas J. Moo, born in La Porte, Indiana in 1950.

The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God;

it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.

Those who are in the realm of the flesh

cannot please God,

(Romans 8:7-8).

Saint Jerome in the Wilderness The saint spent four years in the Syrian desert as a hermit, mortifying his flesh and elevating his spirit through study.

Paul's assessment of persons apart from Christ may justly be summed up in the theological categories of total depravity and total inability.

Every person apart from Christ

is thoroughly in the grip of the power of sin

Cain killing Abel (c. 1600) by Bartolomeo Manfredi

"Total depravity" does not mean that all people are as evil as they possibly could be -- that all people commit every possible sin -- nor does it deny that there is knowledge of the good within each person.  What is meant rather is that every person apart from Christ is thoroughly in the grip of the power of sin, and that this power extends to all the person's faculties.

All non-Christians have a "mind-set"

that is innately hostile to God

Wrath, by Jacques de l'Ange

Paul's language makes this clear: all non-Christians have a "mind-set," a total life-direction, that is innately hostile to God (v. 7).  All people, by nature derived from Adam, are incurably bent towards their own good (incurvatus in se) rather than the good of others or of God.

The symptoms of this underlying sickness

The Worship of Mammon (1909) by Evelyn De Morgan.

The various sins to which we are attracted -- desire for riches, or station in life, or power, or sexual pleasure -- are but different symptoms of this underlying sickness, this idolatrous bent toward self-gratification.  Once again, we must remember that Paul is not here using "flesh" as we often do, to denote sexual sin specifically.

Persons are manifesting that destructive, self-centered

rebellion against God and his law

which can be overcome

only by the power of God's Spirit in Christ

A Sistine Chapel fresco depicts the expulsion of Adam and Eve for transgressing God's command not to eat the fruit of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

To be "in the flesh," or "carnal," or "fleshly," includes, in the sense Paul is using flesh here, all sins.  The person who is preoccupied with his or her own success in business, at the expense of others and of God, is just as much dominated by the flesh as the person who commits adultery.  Both persons are manifesting, in different ways, that destructive, self-centered rebellion against God and his law which can be overcome only by the power of God's Spirit in Christ.  Verse 8, on the other hand, plainly shows that people cannot rescue themselves from this condition.  As long as people are "in the flesh" -- and only the Spirit can rescue us from this envelopment in the flesh -- they are totally unable to please God.

Source: Moo, Douglas J. The Letter to the Romans. 2nd ed. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2018, page 511.