Head 1: Total Depravity

Bible Reading:

Romans 7:7–25 CSB

7 What should we say then? Is the law sin? Absolutely not! But, I would not have known sin if it were not for the law. For example, I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, Do not covet. 8 And sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind. For apart from the law sin is dead. 9 Once I was alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life again 10 and I died. The commandment that was meant for life resulted in death for me. 11 For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me, and through it killed me. 12 So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good. 13 Therefore, did what is good become death to me? Absolutely not! But, sin, in order to be recognized as sin, was producing death in me through what is good, so that through the commandment, sin might become sinful beyond measure. 14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold as a slave under sin. 15 For I do not understand what I am doing, because I do not practice what I want to do, but I do what I hate. 16 Now if I do what I do not want to do, I agree with the law that it is good. 17 So now I am no longer the one doing it, but it is sin living in me. 18 For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh. For the desire to do what is good is with me, but there is no ability to do it. 19 For I do not do the good that I want to do, but I practice the evil that I do not want to do. 20 Now if I do what I do not want, I am no longer the one that does it, but it is the sin that lives in me. 21 So I discover this law: When I want to do what is good, evil is present with me. 22 For in my inner self I delight in God’s law, 23 but I see a different law in the parts of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and taking me prisoner to the law of sin in the parts of my body. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I myself am serving the law of God, but with my flesh, the law of sin.

Q7 Where does the corrupt human nature come from? A.From the fall and disobedience of our first parents, Adam and Eve, in Paradise, This fall so poisoned our nature that we are bnorn sinners - corrupt from conception on. Q8 But are we so corrupt that we are totally unable to do any good and inclined to all evil? A.Yes, unless we are regenerated by the Spirit of God.

What does it mean to be totally depraved

Aristotle once said: Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.

Let’s assume for a moment that Aristotle was right.

If knowing yourself makes you wise, then who are you? Do you know who you really are?

The Bible is simultaneously massively positive about who you are, and at the same time pretty grim in it’s assessment.

We are made in God’s image, as we hear this morning.

We have the power to shape and build, and discover.

We are creative, intellectual, powerful, but a little lower than the heavenly beings.

Our image bearing nature gives us dignity, and strength, and value.

We are truly special.

And that might be good for another sermon another day.

But the Bible is also pretty grim in it’s assessment of who we are today.

You see ever since since came into the world, that image bearing nature has been twisted. Twisted to such an extent that we are totally depraved.

Totally depraved. That what we are going to be looking at today. Cheery for a beautiful sunday morning isnt it.

Let’s start first by asking what does it mean to be depraved?

Our depravity is the reason we are sinful. To be depraved biblically means to fail the test of pleasing God.

What this means is that we are totally unable be pleasing to God in our work. We cannot do the good that God desires us to do. We miss the mark and we sin.

And the thing is, that once we break one part of the law that God requires of us, we have broken all of it.

God’s standard for living is far higher than what we are capable of. And any human being who has ever lived and come face to face with the commandments of God has experienced this.

I mean who of us can say that we have loved the Lord our God with all our mind, all our heart and all our strength?

What about the times you doubted him, didnt trust him, didn’t do what he asked. What about all the times when you felt like being a Christian was too hard. What about all the times you failed to love yourself?

To love your neighbour?

What about all teh times when you have known what the wrong thing was, but did it anyway? Only to feel remorse and regret afterward.

What about all the times you have presumed on God’s grace and mercy, where you have thought “oh I can just go ahead and do this, because I can just say sorry again and God has to forgive me”.

And I’m just talking about the things I do here. What about you?

All of us fail this test - we fail to live a life pleasing to God.

Our lives will not earn us eternal life.

That is what it means to be depraved.

But what does it mean to be totally depraved?

Because I don’t know about you, but I don’t actively choose to sin all day everyday huh.

Do in what sense is our depravity total?

Well total there refers to total in all aspects of our being, and total in the scope of people depravity affects.

So that means that there is no aspect of your life that is unaffected by your depravity.

Your prayer life is depraved. Your social life is depraved. Your relationships are depraved. Your spiritual life is depraved. Your eating habits are depraved. Your love for your children is depraved. Your ability to work hard is depraved. The thing you are the very best at in life is affected by your depravity.

That means that absolutely nothign you do, from the thing you are worst at - like I dunno, playing football, to the thing you are teh very best at is affected by your depravity. If you are the world number 1 at music, the music you produce would still be lacking, would still not be good enough in God’s sight - because of it’s depravity.

So not only can we not live up to what God wants for us, even the good we do, take us further from him.

So if this (hold up hand) is the standard of living God requires, we are here. And every action we take, whether “good” by human eyes, or “evil” actually take us further away from that standard - because of our total depravity.

So that’s who we are.

But how did we get into this terrible position?

Where does our depravity come from?

Now the question can be asked: Are we sinners because we sin, or do we sin because we are sinners.

Just consider that for a moment,

does our nature and identity change because we sin? That is do we become sinners when we sin.

Or does sin flow from our nature?

To sin means to do anything that goes against God’s good and perfect plan for us. So sin can be doing something against the perfect standard that God put in place - ou know God’s moral law.

Or sin can be failing to what is right. So for example you see grave injustice, which you have the capacity to change, and you do nothing.

That is sin too.

So now why do we sin? Why do we fail to do the good we want to do, as Paul says in Romans 7, and end up doing the evil we do not want to do?

Do we become sinners, you know sometime arround the age of 3, when you commit your first act of wrongful disobedience?

Or do we sin at 3 years old and assert our wrongful disobedience, because we are by nature sinners.

Well the doctrine of total depravity teaches us that actually we sin, because we are sinners.

Our identity, our nature, is to sin. In fact we can’t help it. It is part of who we are.

Now where does this sin nature come from?

It comes from our original parents. This is an inherited stated.

Sin is part of every human being because we have inherited it from our parents, and they from their parents, and they from theirs. All the way back to Adam.

Now you may never have thought of this before, but the way God has designed spiritual things to be is that we can inherit them. Our spiritual aspects are part of our inheritence - consider for example some of the people you know. It is often the case when you get someone who is a great prayer warrior, their parents and grandparents were often great prayer warriors.

Some of the great evangelists are children or grand children of other great evangelists.

Our spiritual nature is part of our dna you might say.

And the Bible shows us this, although often in the negative context. For example The patriarch of Israel, Jacob was the product of his mother’s favourtism. He was her favourite child, and then when he grew up and had kids, he had a favourite child - Joseph. Now in both the case of Jacob and Joseph, the parent’s favourtism wrecked the family homes. But never the less, the sin tendancy was inherited.

This is true of us today too. The children of alcholoics are far more likely to be substance abusers too. When you grow up in a home filled with rage and anger you are far more likely to be rageful and angry yourself.

The point is this, sinful tendancies are inherited, in the same way that our sin nature, our sinful identity is inherited.

Romans 5:12 expresses it this way.

Romans 5:12 CSB

12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, in this way death spread to all people, because all sinned.

Incidentally, it is for exactly this reason that we cannot believe in a sort of General Evolution of mankind. There had to be a literal singular Adam and Eve.

Now consider this: It is exactly for this reason, it is exactly why when Jesus was conceived, the Bible makes it clear that he was conceived BY The Holy Spirit.

It is for this reason that Matthew in particular makes it very clear in Matthew 1:24-25

Matthew 1:24–25 CSB

24 When Joseph woke up, he did as the Lord’s angel had commanded him. He married her 25 but did not have sexual relations with her until she gave birth to a son. And he named him Jesus.

Jesus had to be born, not of man, but of God. For the plan of salvation to work, Jesus had to not inherit Adam’s sinful nature for him to be able to not sin.

Which incidentally is why we also haev to hold to the fact that Jesus was conceived by the Holy spirit and born of the virgin Mary. And incidentally why the Catholic Church’s doctrine of Mary’s sinlessness makes no sense. She too inherited sin from her parents and was a sinner herself. She was highly favoured by God, but that doesn’t mean she was sinless.

So the sinful state of humans comes from our nature, we sin because we are sinners. Ephesians 2 describes us this way we are “by NATURE children of wrath”.

This is who the Bible says you are.

This is so completely different to how the world sees people.

As a society our world believes that every human being is basically good, but that we get a few things wrong from time to time. This is what parents say about their children who end up living bad lives isn’t it.

“He’s a good boy, he has just made a few bad choices”.

or we might say something like “it’s so unfair that that bad thing happened to him/her because they are such good people. Why is it that bad things happen to good people”.

But the reality is that by God’s standard there are no good boys who just made some poor decisions.

They are no good people to whom bad stuff can happen.

And when we hear that, we actually feel pretty offended right?

I mean i don’t like hearing that i am totally depraved, you probably dont like being reminded that in the light of God’s law, your life is totally without merit and every action you do, even every good thing you do, misses the mark and drives you further away from God.

But the only reason this offends us is because we have bought into the world’s view about humanity’s essential goodness.

But when we are truly honest with ourselves, we actually know this to be true don’t we. All of us have experienced our depraved nature, our sin nature asserting itself.

It’s not just that we don’t obey God’s laws, it’s that we don’t even obey the rules we put in place for ourselves.

Remember that promise you made to yourself, that this is the last time you you would do that. And then the next time you found yourself in the same situation you fell right back into the same trap.

Remember the commitment you made to God, that you were done with that perticular sin, but then tomorrow you find yourself doing the exact same thing, sometimes without even having realised you were doing the wrong thing until the guilt hits you later.

OR what about those things you know in your heart are wrong, that you know God against God’s law, or go against your own personal morals, but then when you think about it the sin just seems to good.

And so you start rationalising it, you start telling yourslef - this willbe hte last time, or I won’t ever be able to do that again, I have to grab hold of this opportunity. And so you actively choose to do the wrong thing, even though you know its wrong, because in the moment you believe that the bad thing will be good for you.

And that’s just you, a pretty decent perosn, a pretty Christian person, a church going, tithing, helps out where you can Christian.

If that’s you, imagine what all the rest of these hopeless sinners are actually like huh?

You see we have a propblem, and oru problem is our nature.

That is who we are apart from Jesus.

So if our sin nature is our problem and it is our sin nature that makes us totally depraved, then what?

We need a new nature -

We need a new nature

The solution to our depraved nature, is unsurprisingly Jesus Christ. This is why Paul in Romans 7 talks about how wretched he is.

He says it is so terrible because he knows the good he wants to do, but he can’t do it. And the evil he doesn’t want to do, thish e keeps on doing.

See he is talking about his sin-natur,e his total depravity.

And he cries out, who will save me from this body of death?

I think sometimes we can feel that trappedness too cant we. Who will save me from my body of death, this will that does the evil it doesn’t want to do?

Paul’s response: Thanks be to JEsus Christ.

You see when you become a believer in JEsus, there is a spiritual transfer that happens.

What happens is you spiritually get taken out of Adam’s family and you are transferred into Jesus’s family.

You are adopted into the family of Christ and no longer are oyu bound by the rules of Adam or by Adam’s nature. You are set free from this body of death, this slavery to sin.

And you are transfered into Christ - that is why the New Testamant so often uses the phrase that Christians are “in Christ”. That means inhert our new nature from him. We become slaves, not to sin, but to righteounsess.

So what happens to all the old life stuff? I mean you still inhabit the same body. The consequences of your choices and actions still remain? So in God’s sight what happens to all oyur sin, and all the evil you have done?

Well these things are not just swept under the carpet as if God ignores them. If he did that he would be unjust right. Evil demands justice. And if God just ignored your sin, he woudl be unjust. But God is just.

So what happens instead is that everything that belonged to your old self is crucified with JEsus.

Think about this for a moment. Death seperates things doesn’t it. So when JEsus died, taking on himself your old self, when he dies, that seperates from you as well. His death has separated you from being ruled by your old nature.

As a Christian, you actually have a choice to serve God and worship him, or to sin. Before you became a christian and before God’s holy spirit converted you, you had no choice other than to hate God.

But now you have a choice because your old nature has been seperated from you.

But it is seperated, but not erradicated. YOur old nature won’t be completely vanquished until Jesus returns. Until that day we have the Holy Spirit who empowers us to chose to live God’s way.

And we know this don’t we. We know that even though our hearts might be captured by JEsus, we still go wrong sometimes. But the difference is that in this life, we can also go right sometimes.

And this life is all about learning to more and more kill the old self in our own lives through the work of the Holy Spirit.

It is for this reason that James tells us in James 4:7

James 4:7 CSB

7 Therefore, submit to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

We can actually do that, because we have the HOly Spirit and because we have submitted ourselves to God.

in essence that is what the doctrine of total depravity is.

So the summary is:

we are totally depraved. Without God actively intervening in your life, you will only ever hate him and not worship him and not do anything good.

now so what? What practical difference does this make to our lives?

there are 4 practical applications I can think of:

1: the doctrine of TD gives me great assurance of my salvation

When I consider who I really am in light of this doctrine,

I should reject any idea that I somehow chose God, before he chose me.

If my salvation depends upon me choosing Christ,

there is no stability,

no solid ground upon which I can build,

because I may choose later on to walk away from Christ and go my own way.

But, if my salvation depends upon God’s choice of me

stuck in my sin,

with absolutely no way out,

nothing to recommend me to him,

then my salvation is sure.

then it is as certain

I can trust him, even when I can’t trust myself.

My salvation is secure, because it doesn’t depend on my own strength.

2. The doctrine of total depravity humbles my pride.

We started this morning by quoting Aristotle: Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.

So who are you: You are totally depraved, entirely unable to do anything that pleases God, without his intervention...

So to Aristotle the Bible will say: Actually no… the fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom.

When we grasp our depraved nature, we are put in our right place before God.

Ever since Adam and thought that they could be like God, the human race has been infected with pride.

Even many who Christians hate this doctrine, why, because it targets our pride.

But pride is the root problem. And the doctrine of total depravity takes away any pride we might have before God, because there is absolutely nothing we can do to make us righteous in his sight.

You are not and will never be saved because of anything you do.

You are saved only by God’s sovereign choice, to which you respond in faith, by Jesus’ work on the cross.

3. The doctrine of total depravity causes me to fear trusting in myself.

The world will tell you to do what makes you happy, to follow what your heart tells you, to listen to your heart.

But we grow to know our own hearts

, and the sin that still lives in us

we come to realise

that if I are to know victory over sin,

we must not trust in ourselves at all.

We can only run to our Saviour who said

“Apart from Me, you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

The best thing you can do is to not listen to your heart, but to listen to your Lord.

So assurance of salvation, humbles our pride, stop trusting your heart and

Finally

4. The doctrine of total depravity moves me to greater love and devotion to God for His amazing grace.

here is the Thing.

those who have been forgiven little, love little.

the doctrine of total depravity recaptures the depths of what we have been saved from.

a gospel message that does not cut right to the heart, that does not confront the proud sinner with the truth of their absolutely hopeless position before God, has not been preached correctly.

.”

The truth is, even the best of us were worthy a million times over of spending eternity in the lake of fire! in hell, with Satan and his demons.

all of us.

but as, Spurgeon, said,

the man who has stood before his God, convicted and condemned, with the rope about his neck,

is the man to weep for joy when he is pardoned, to hate the evil which has been forgiven him,

and to live to the honour of the Redeemer by whose blood he has been cleansed.” (C. H. Spurgeon Autobiography [Banner of Truth], 1:54).

the doctrine of total depravity forces us to look in the mirror of our souls, see who we really are, despair rightly, and run to the cross, cling it it with all we have, and praise Jesus for what he has done for us eternally.

amen.