What the natural man needs first and foremost is not education or reformation, but life

"That the natural man is dead in trespasses and sins is no mere figure of speech; it is a solemn reality, an awful fact. It is ignorance and the denial of this fact which lies at the root of so much of the false teaching of our day. What the natural man needs first and foremost is not education or reformation, but life. It is because the sinner is dead that he needs to be born again. But how little this is pressed today! The unspeakably dreadful state of the natural man is glossed over where it is not directly repudiated. For the most part our preachers seem afraid to insist upon the utter ruin and total depravity of human nature. This is a fatal defect in any preaching: sinners will never be brought to see their need of a Savior until they realize their lost condition, and they will never discover their lost condition until they learn that they are dead in sin.

But what does Scripture mean when it says the sinner is "dead"? This is something which seems absurd to the natural man. And to him it is absurd. "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Cor. 2:14). To the natural man it seems that he is very much alive. Yes, and Scripture itself speaks of one that lives in pleasure as being "dead while she liveth" (1 Tim. 5:6)."

~ A.W. Pink , "Gleanings in Genesis" Chapter 25 The Birth Of Isaac