Week 2 - Total Depravity

the natural person does not accept the things of the spirit of God, for they are folly to him. And he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

It affects our hearts. This is why scripture says that we love darkness, we love the lie, we love idols, we have perverted desires and fleshly passions that rule us, and we have no love for God. It affects our wills. In Romans chapter 7 verse 18, it says,

for I know that nothing good dwells in me that is in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.

So there's this loss of willpower, this futility, where even if we want to do something right, it's like we find ourselves unable to carry it out. And then it affects even our consciences. In 1 Timothy 4, Paul speaks of some whose consciences are seared as with a hot iron. And then Ephesians 4, it speaks more generally of unbelievers in general who are calloused and given over to sensuality. And the point's not that our consciences don't work at all, but it's that we're prone to ignore them and they become calloused and seared and not working like they should. Now on that point, it's important to clarify that total depravity doesn't mean that we're born as sinful as we could possibly be. In fact, even the worst of sinners could conceivably be worse. You could find murderers in jail that may still have some genuine affection for family members, may still have compassion for children. Jesus himself said that human fathers are evil, and yet even they know how to give good gifts to their children. So total depravity doesn't mean that we're as bad as we could possibly be. In reformed thought, there's a concept called common grace, which says that God graciously restrains sin, even in unbelievers. God gives all people a conscience and works to restrain sin and enable all people to some extent to strive to do what's right. But the key idea with total depravity is that no part of us is free from sin or truly working like it ought. Sin has affected the whole person, leaving no islands of righteousness or unaffected parts. And therefore, Whenever you begin to examine sin in your life or another person's life, you'll find that it's never just there on the surface. It's never that it was just a mistake. It's never just the outward action. You find that the sin isn't just in the action, it's in the thoughts that were behind the action. And that it wasn't just in the thoughts, but in the desires and the motivations that were behind the thoughts. And it's not just in the desires, but in our deepest, innermost beliefs and allegiances. And at the end of the day, you can trace sin deeper and deeper and deeper until you get to the very core of who we are. And depravity is total or pervasive in that it affects us, in that it affects all of us, and thereby stretches down to the very deepest roots of everything we do. It goes all the way in. And then further, as you trace it deeper down, you find that instead of it getting better, it only gets worse. It's like the deeper you go, the worse it is. It's kind of like when you see that little stain on your ceiling or the little crack in your wall. And on the surface it looks minor and you think, you know, this is nothing a little plaster and paint can't fix. But then you do some digging. And you find the leaking pipe, and then the rotted wood, then the mold problem, then the sinking foundation. And soon you realize that the problem goes so deep that this whole house is ruined. Well, that's what the depravity of man is like. That's why scripture talks so much about the heart. So often we can sort of plaster over our corruption on the outside, we can put on our Sunday best, we can do good outward deeds, we can talk about our motivations as if they were pristine. But underneath, under the hood, we're blackened with sin. And it's so much so that when you get to the very core of our being, you find that the fundamental foundation, that the driving reason why we do what we do is fundamentally corrupted and ruled by sin. This is why Jesus says in Matthew 12 verse 34,

good trees produce good fruit, but bad trees produce bad fruit.

And then he says,

you brood of vipers, how can you speak good when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.

It's not that there's just this faint taint of sin that goes down deep. It's that the heart is fundamentally sinful and then therefore out of the abundance of that heart comes evil words. Jesus says,

how can you speak good?

Now that brings us to a second thing that total depravity implies, which is not only that sin is total, and that it affects the totality of our being, but depravity is total in that it renders us totally incapable of doing any spiritual good. So look at that third bullet or third point in the notes, spiritual inability. Now what I mean by spiritual inability is the inability to do anything morally good in the sight of God. Now, total depravity doesn't mean that non-Christians can't do anything good at all in any sense. In fact, some non-Christians are very generous people, may be very compassionate to the poor, may be very honest, even to the point of telling the truth when it's costly. And there are many other ways in which non-Christians can do things which at least outwardly are morally good. In fact, to our shame, sometimes non-Christians may even outdo some of us in some of these ways. But the distinction that's being made here when we talk about spiritual inability and the inability to do what's good in God's sight is that there's a difference between just sort of doing what's sort of generally outwardly good and doing something that's good or acceptable or pleasing to God. Because God isn't just concerned with the outward action, but the motivation. And at the end of the day, the only way something can be truly good or pleasing to God is when it's done primarily out of love for him and a desire for his glory. It has to come from a heart that truly loves and trusts God. This is why passages like Isaiah 64 6 say,

all our righteous deeds are like filthy rags.

That's why Psalm 14.2 says,

the Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside. Together they have become corrupt. There is none who does good, not even one.

Hebrews 11.6 says,

and without faith, it is impossible to please God.

And Romans 14.23,

whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.

So, in other words, the point here is that it's not just that all of us commit lots of sins. It's that because of total depravity, apart from Christ, all we ever do is sin. That everything we do, even the best things we do, are fundamentally sinful in the eyes of God. We are unable to do any spiritual good at all. And this is also why scripture will speak of sin not only as something that we do and something we're guilty for, but even as a power that enslaves us. In John 8, Jesus says,

truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.

Romans 6 speaks about how we were once slaves of sin. In Romans 7, Paul says,

if I do what I do not want, it's no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

And then he says,

I see in my members a law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin.

You see sin being described like this power that enslaves us. And total depravity is saying that apart from Christ, the power of sin renders all of us incapable of doing any spiritual good. Now this all brings us to the real crux of the issue as it pertains to the doctrines of grace and to the sovereignty of God and salvation. And that's because if our depravity extends to every part of our nature, which includes our will, and if our depravity renders us incapable of doing any spiritual good, well then that means we're also born incapable of choosing to follow Christ and choosing to respond positively to the gospel. In other words, when the gospel is being preached. It's like if someone was drowning in the ocean and you throw them a buoy and you cry out, all you need to do is grab onto the buoy and you'll be rescued. But then you realize that the person's already drowned. The point is that because of total depravity, it's like that. Our sinful condition is so serious that we're actually spiritually dead and unresponsive to God. And therefore, no matter how many times we hear the gospel, no matter how beautifully it's presented, no matter how hard the evangelist tries to persuade us, at the end of the day, no one will ever respond because nobody wants to, no one loves God, no one has any island of righteousness in their heart that's responsive, that's willing to trust, that's able to do the spiritual good of repenting and believing in Christ. And therefore, if all we had was the gospel offer, we would still be just as lost and just as hopeless. God must initiate. God must draw. God must bring us to himself by his own sovereign will. Think of when Lazarus is dead in the tomb and Jesus calls,

Lazarus, come forth.

Well, the idea with total depravity and then the doctrines of grace is that that's what God does for us. That the gospel comes and by the power of the Holy Spirit, God says to us, come forth. Come to Christ, believe in him. This is why a really key verse as we think about total depravity and the need for God to do something to enable us to come to faith is John chapter 6 verse 44, where Jesus says,

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.

No one has the power or the ability to come to me unless God reaches down and draws, unless God reaches down and enables, unless God intervenes. And so the rest of the doctrines of grace are going to talk about how God does this. But total depravity is explaining why we need God to reach down and act. Now, next time in part two, I'm gonna come back to some questions. Like you might be wondering at this point, okay, well, this sounds really convincing. How might non-reformed Christians disagree? Where's the points of disagreement in this? Or maybe you're asking a question like, well, if total depravity renders us spiritually unable to do good, well, why are we guilty for sinning? How does that work? And then maybe a question like, so what exactly changes when we become Christians? Are we still totally depraved when we become Christians? And as Christians, are our best actions, are they still tainted with sin? And if so, how is that different than what it means to be totally So I want to come back and address those things next time, but for today, I want to first open up for any questions about what I've covered so far or what total depravity means. And then I have some questions for application, but first, any questions about what we've covered or about total depravity so far? Yes, Jasmine. Pelagianism. I think that's. That's a good question. I don't think there are many true Pelagians. We'll talk about semi-Pelagianism next time. So that's much more common. Yes, Mitchell. So probably an interesting subject. So when the child who is not grown into full consciousness, whatever age that is, Yeah, so there's a lot, I mean, that kind of broaches into a whole topic a lot broader than this one. I think almost no one would argue that all infants are sort of automatically lost and sent to hell. Actually, a lot of reform people would argue that all infants are saved. And there's various ways that folks will make that argument. Personally, I'm most comfortable just saying God is just, God is good, God is gracious. I don't know that scripture answers that question from what I've seen. But I would just lean into the character of God that we can trust him. Yeah. Yeah. So was Al the only one who was not a Catholic Christian? Was what? Yeah, so I think Adam and Eve both created upright, created in a place of innocence, so not with sort of a perfect righteousness that we were confirmed in. They obviously had the capacity, they could fall, but they didn't have sinful inclination built in from the get-go. Yeah. There's another great question for a whole other series. Well, in just the I want to, just a couple minutes, I want us to think finally, why should studying this matter? You know, why for us trying to understand this doctrine of total depravity, what practical benefit or importance does that have? What do you guys think? Yeah, Matt? Yeah, and that's a great point. Like, when we think about church services, when we think about evangelism, understanding this is going to really show us we've got to lean on God. Like, prayer and the Word of God and just trying to be faithful to what God says is what's really important. and no amount of manipulation, or pressure, or the right music, that's not going to make the difference. Because it's God that has to do something. Great. So you say trusting in God and His ongoing sanctification, you say I wouldn't have to worry about falling into asceticism when it comes to preaching the gospel of the Lord. Is that a responsibility? You're talking about for us sharing the gospel, or? I don't know if, um... I guess I'm kind of answering my own question here. Okay, we can come back to it maybe after your time. Dara, I think I saw your hand. Yeah, I was just going to say, I think it amplifies our kind of broke gratitude and salvation. Yeah. from some of the sins that I committed, but my entire being was saved. There was truly nothing good in it. Yeah, I think it amplifies that question. Right. Yeah, I mean, I've heard it explained. The grace of the gospel is like the stars. Where do they go at daytime? Well, you don't see them. But it's against the black backdrop of just how sinful we are that the love and the grace and the glory of the gospel stands out and we can see the true beauty of it. So this should help us see just what we needed to be saved from and therefore how great of a salvation Christ has won for us. Yeah. Brian? It should make us humble. Yeah. Apart from Christ, we have no superiority over anybody else. Right. Yeah, it's not that I chose to follow Christ because I was just a little bit more inherently holy or smarter or Yeah, it's the grace of God. Amen. Yeah, and I think that's where this doctrine, even though it's sort of focused on before we become Christians, thinking about the nature of sin and the heart and how deep it goes and what pleasing God really requires. Like, I think it challenges us as we think about sanctification. Like, it's not enough to just try to do the right outward actions. Like, God wants our hearts. God wants our worship. And so we need to strive, you know, just as we understand we were totally depraved outside of Christ. Well, the gospel has come so that we might be totally redeemed. And therefore, our hearts, our minds, our wills, our consciences, our bodies, everything is to be redeemed. And sanctification means fighting sin at all those levels. Yeah, we have to, the whole process of sanctification has to be strived after in full reliance on the Spirit of God. It's not something that we can do of ourselves. All right, well, in the interest of time, I'm gonna go ahead and pray to close this here, and we'll pick up next week. Father, we thank you for this time to study your word. Lord, we are reminded of just how deep our sin goes, but also just how vast and rich and full your grace is. Thank you, Father, for the gospel. Thank you that you reach down to save sinners like us. Thank you for the hope of eternal life through Christ. And thank you that we could gather here together tonight as your people. We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.