Man's three-fold death can be defined in the following terms:

Fallen man is in a most miserable condition. His misery includes:

1. His sin (or sinful state) which separates him from God, his only source of spiritual life and growth.

2. His impotency (or sinful condition) of being unable to deliver himself from his state of spiritual death.

3. His punishment (or the result of sin) for the wages of sin is death, resulting in total separation from God's grace and eternal punishment under the full wrath of God.

Sadly, fallen man is blind for his own blindness. He does not feel his misery. He is unconcerned over his sinful state. The sadness of this condition is illustrated in the following story.

At one time, convicts were employed in building the high, thick walls around the prison grounds in Portland. Every block that was laid made their escape more impossible. Yet the imprisoning walls were being built by the very people imprisoned by them.

How does this picture an unrepentant sinner? The prisoners in this story were forced to build their own walls, but sinners build their own imprisoning walls willingly. How does this increase the sadness of sinful man's condition?

But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our rightcousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.

- Isaiah 64:6

Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good that are accustomed to do evil.

- Jeremiah 13:23

For the wages of sin is death.

- Romans 6:23a