Total Depravity: The Great Power Struggle

Introduction

Evil is in the world because sin is in the world.

Sin is the act of going against God’s will to establish our own will. It is essentially a power play pretending to be god.

The law was given, not to justify us of sin or clear us of sin, but to display it. When God’s will is revealed through the law, it shows the heart we have.

Jew and Gentile Both Condemned

Our text begins with Paul asking if we, and the we there refers to Jews, better off. We say last week that Paul had admitted that there was much benefit in having circumcision and the law in every way, specifically because the oracles of God were given to the Jews who had been circumcised into the covenant.

However, this does not benefit them, as Paul closes the argument he made in chapter 2, because they didn’t keep the law and thus were cut off from the covenant. A true Jew, Paul said, is not one outwardly but one who is circumcised in their heart to obey God and follow him.

In order for one to be justified by the law, a true Jew, they must be perfect adherents of the law, but since the Jews are not perfect adherents of the law it condemns them and leaves them open to the same charge as the Gentiles: they are wicked sinners in need of justification from outside themselves.

Paul’s Quick OT Study of Total Depravity

Next Paul rapid-fires several Scripture references to Conclude his final charge: all are sinners, no one is good or righteous, all are guilty and stand condemned before God.

The Point: No one is righteous

This point is challenged by many:

God made promises to the Jews

God’s promise was punishment for unbelief.

Aren’t they trying their best to follow the law?

Their best is not good enough. God demands holiness from his holy people.

Only Jesus was a good enough Jew to be righteous by the law, and the Jews killed him.

Lack of faith in Christ is enough to condemn them for breaking the covenant, since he is the covenant King.

Aren’t there many people among the Gentiles who are doing the best they can with what they have?

No, there aren’t. If God had chosen any other people they would have acted the same way.

The Gentiles worship false gods in ignorance, but their conscience bears witness against them.

As Paul is about to show, God does not consider any of them righteous, and it is his standard that all must meet in order to be righteous and holy before him.

Sins of speech as an example

After quoting with a double negative that there is no one righteous, not even one.

No one understands, and no one wants to. The problem is not that they don’t know enough about God, as the Jews who had the oracles of God, they just don’t want to. They do not seek for God.

In the following verses that he quotes, he paints a picture of the state of man as entirely evil. He does this in two way, through sins of speech and through sins of violence. The sins of violence show the utter violence of human beings, while the sins of speech preceding and yet connected to them leave those who think they are not violent without excuse.

Speech is a kind of violence. It is a bloodless weapon that cuts deep. Often it is not those who have been physically beaten, but verbally beaten, that are the more hurt and hurt for longer.

No one who has used their words as a weapon is excused from the violent depravity that Paul is talking about.

Psalm 5:9; 140:3; 10:7.

James 3:6 ESV

And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell.

Sins of violence as an example

We do not have to look far into history or modern news to know that violence defines human relations. Paul quotes Isaiah in describing the violent human condition.

Isaiah 59:7–8 ESV

Their feet run to evil, and they are swift to shed innocent blood; their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; desolation and destruction are in their highways. The way of peace they do not know, and there is no justice in their paths; they have made their roads crooked; no one who treads on them knows peace.

Conclusion of quotation: No fear of God

Psalm 36:1 ESV

Transgression speaks to the wicked deep in his heart; there is no fear of God before his eyes.

Here Paul assigns all people, Jews and Gentiles alike, as being the ‘wicked’ identified so often in the Psalms. Not only are all people sinners, but the worst kind of sinner. They are violent, either in word or deed or both.

Human depravity is total. In infects and affects every part of human activity. It is a relational problem where we are in rebellion against God and have one lord: ourselves. We will defend that lord with our words and our actions, and this is what leads us to violence.

Depravity is total in that our natural allegiance is to ourselves or to what we decide it should be.

Depravity is total, not in the sense that all of us are doing evil actions all the time, but that our actions are driven by evil: rebellion against God.

The Universal Condemnation Under the Law

Paul referenced to the law in verse 10 with the words As it is written. The law refers not just to the Mosaic covenant, but all the OT Scriptures. The Tanach. Now he goes into more detail about the role the law played in exposing sin.

The law is God’s Word, his instructions to those who are created to serve him.

The law exposes sin. (end of verse 20)

The law shuts our mouths because we are unable to answer for our sin. (vs 19)

The law holds us accountible to God, so that we are unable to plead our case since it is clear what we are called to do.

The law is unable to justify us before God since we’ve all broken it.

Therefore, we sit in condemnation before God. The law is broken, we are violently depraved, and even our attempts to escape are fueled by a desire to serve ourselves, not God.

The heart of sin and depravity is the knowledge of good and evil. The moral position of choice. When we start to define good and evil, we’ve already made our choice. God’s law defines what is good and evil, and our knowledge of it and inability to follow it show our hearts are set on doing our own will.

Imagine playing a game with someone who keeps most of the rules, but changes a few of them here and there. Life is not a game, but there are rules and keeping most of them shows that in our minds and hearts we have our own set of rules which we think should be followed, and thus we condemn ourselves. We know God’s will, and refuse to follow it. We are not guilty because we are lawbreakers, we are lawbreakers because we are guilty of following our own hearts rather than God’s will.

Conclusion

Today I leave you on a cliffhanger. You can read ahead and see what the solution to the problem of our condemnation is, but tonight I want to focus to be on our universal condemnation before God. It is important, at times, not to rush to the Gospel before we have taken this in. We are absolutely, without exception, guilty of eternally punishable crimes against God. God is a just judge who will by no means clear the guilty.