Doctrines of Grace: Total Depravity (L2)

Kent Pletcher

Doctrines of Grace • Sermon • Submitted 3 months ago • Presented 4 months ago

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Free-Will

All three views have a definition of Free-will, but we differ with respect to our view of the degree in which the Fall affects mankind.

The Pelagian view believes that mankind was not affected by the Fall. Only Adam was affected by the Fall. Mankind is basically good.

Man has the ability to be sinless and live out perfection and some have.

Without espousing Pelagianism, this is where the majority of “Christians” fall in their thinking according to polling research.

This shows us the effect of humanism on society, even the Church.

Humanism is unbiblical.

The Semi-Pelagian view believes that the fall affected us drastically and we are in need of the grace of God.

But, God has granted such grace to all mankind so that there is an island of righteousness within us that allows us to accept Christ or reject Christ.

This view espouses God’s grace + Man’s cooperation are both necessary for regeneration.

The Reformed view believes that Adam’s fall into sin affected mankind dead in their trespasses and sins.

There is no island of righteousness within us.

Sin has affected every aspect of our being.

We cannot do anything good in God’s eyes without God’s grace.

It is necessary for God to do the initial work of re-creation in the soul before the fallen person has the moral power to truly receive the gospel.

Recall the questions from last week regarding Free Will and Predestination

The difference lies in the answer to the following question, “Do people have the ability (freedom) to move towards God in true rightness?

The difference in the doctrines of predestination lie in the answer to the following question, “How does God predestine the elect unto salvation?”

Lorraine Boettner states…

“The Pelagian denies that God has a plan; the Arminian says that God has a general but not a specific plan; but the Calvinist says that God has a specific plan which embraces all events in all ages. In recognizing that the eternal God has an eternal plan in which is predetermined every event that comes to pass, the Calvinist simply recognizes that God is God, and frees Him from all human limitations.”

What do we mean by Total Depravity?

Not Absolute or Utter Depravity

When we hear Total Depravity we can think that what the doctrine is teaching is that humans are as evil as they can be all the time.

But, that is not what the doctrine of Total Depravity means.

The theological phrase “Total Depravity” does not mean that human beings are equally corrupt in their behavior or as bad in their thoughts and actions as they could be.

Humans can be far more evil than they are in common interactions with other human beings.

Absolute or utter depravity would mean that we are as evil as we can be all the time.

So, we do not mean Absolute Depravity by the theological phrase Total Depravity.

The doctrine of Total Depravity also does not mean a complete absence of relative good.

Total depravity does not mean that fallen human beings are not capable of acts of kindness, benevolence, love, mercy, honor, loyalty, integrity and other human virtues.

However, this must be properly understood as it relates to man and God.

There are two perspectives that must be understood concerning this matter:

The Horizontal perspective which includes acts of kindness, love, honesty, integrity, as it relates to man’s dealings with his fellow man. From this perspective it may appear adequate or even excellent in nature.

The Vertical perspective involves acts of love, obedience, integrity, etc. as man relates to God.

Concerning this latter perspective, man always falls short.

Romans 3:23 (ESV)

23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

This is what the doctrine of Total Depravity directly addresses.

The doctrine of Total Depravity teaches that mankind is corrupted by sin in every aspect of their nature that they cannot do anything that is pleasing to God.

Let’s take a moment to discuss the Horizontal perspective or our Civic Virtue.

Doesn’t our daily experience tell us that many good deeds are performed by lost people?

We acknowledge that sinners in their fallen state are still capable of performing what the Reformers called civic virtue.

Civic virtue refers to deeds that conform outwardly to the Law of God.

Fallen sinners can:

Refrain from stealing

Perform acts of charity

However, these cannot be deemed good in the ultimate sense because God measures the heart

God looks at the motives and the motive required for everything we do is the love of God.

Jonathan Edwards said, civic virtue is motivated by enlightened self-interest.

These outwardly acts are motivated, not by a desire to please or honor God, but by a desire to protect our own interests.

We have the ability:

To restrain our self from speeding to avoid a ticket

To learn that crime does not pay to avoid jail.

We are restrained from sinning to our full potential by law, culture, and the prospect of conflict with other sinful people.

Also, on the positive side, we might even do virtuous deeds.

However, regarding virtuous deeds, we are motivated by a desire for the applause of others.

Here the opposite assumption is made, that certain “virtues” actually pay in this world, and this plays a role in our doing them.

However, absent in both of these situations is the motive of a heart-felt love for God!

Jesus teaches this same thing…

Matthew 7:11 (ESV)

11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

So, in the good deeds and the personal restraint of evil deeds we observe in the world, this truth remains…

Romans 3:23 (ESV)

23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

Total Depravity teaches that because man is born into corruption of sin, the natural man is totally unable to do anything spiritually good.

Total Depravity means a person can do nothing pertaining to his/her salvation.

When judged by God’s standards, the unsaved sinner is incapable of good.

The unregenerate person is dead in sin and his/her will is enslaved to his sinful nature.

Scripture teaches us the Scope of Man’s Ability

Let’s Focus on a Few Passages:

John 6:63–65 (ESV)

63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. 64 But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) 65 And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

The flesh is no help at all

John 3:3 (ESV)

3 Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

The new birth is absolutely necessary for one to perceive the Kingdom of God.

To understand spiritual things.

John 3:5–6 (ESV)

5 Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

The flesh is no help at all.

That which is born of the flesh is flesh.

That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

So, until the Spirit of God makes one alive. They are nothing but flesh.

And, the flesh is no help at all towards spiritual things.

1 Corinthians 2:14 (ESV)

14 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.

Paul is speaking here of the person who is not spiritual, of the flesh only.

Everything spiritual, of the Spirit of God, is foolishness to them.

This does not mean they cannot understand spiritual truths intellectually.

However, they do not love this truth, nor cling to it for their salvation.

‌Now listen to what Paul says about our condition before the gift of the new birth…

Ephesians 2:1–3 (ESV)

1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

There is your freedom before conversion.

Everything you did was of the flesh, against God, and deserved God’s wrath.

Everything you were capable of deserved wrath.

There was no island within you that did not deserve God’s wrath.

Your entire nature and personhood was under the wrath of God.

Let’s go back to John 6

John 6:63–65 (ESV)

No one is a universal statement binding on all of mankind.

The word can speaks of ability.

We do not have the moral ability to come to Christ.

Unless = necessary condition

Something must happen in order for someone to have the moral ability to come to Christ.

Who makes that something happen?

God the Father.

Jesus says the same thing in…

John 6:44 (ESV)

44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.

The Arminian would say that God woos all men to Himself but man has the power to accept or reject the gospel.

But here in this passage, Jesus states that those who the Father draws, Christ will raise up.

Raise up meaning resurrect unto eternal life.

Now, I want you to hear how this word that is translated draw here is translated in every other instance of the Bible.

James 2:6 (ESV)

6 But you have dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you, and the ones who drag you into court?

Acts 16:19 (ESV)

19 But when her owners saw that their hope of gain was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the rulers.

John 18:10 (ESV)

10 Then Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s servant and cut off his right ear. (The servant’s name was Malchus.)

John 21:6 (ESV)

6 He said to them, “Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in, because of the quantity of fish.

John 21:11 (ESV)

11 So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, 153 of them. And although there were so many, the net was not torn.

So, the use of the word draw in John 6:44, also used the same way in John 12:32, is not like your whistling at a stray dog hoping he’ll come to you out of the traffic.

Or sweet talking a lady with kind words and flowers hoping that she will eventually accept your proposal of marriage.

The word draw is defined as drawing water out of a well.

The power of the person drawing is exerted on the water and the water has nothing to do with being lifted out of the well.

The water is not taking an active part in being drawn out of the well.

The act of drawing is, from start to finish, an act completed exclusively the power of the person drawing the water.

So, in drawing us to Christ, we are drawn by the power of God exerted upon us by the work of the Holy Spirit in regeneration.

God must recreate us in order for us to have the moral ability to believe upon Christ.

Old Testament Examples:

Genesis 6:5 (ESV)

5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention [inclination] of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

Genesis 8:21 (ESV)

21 And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention [inclination] of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done.

Psalm 51:5 (ESV)

5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.

This is not David saying that his parents acted sinfully in his conception.

David is not saying that it was sinful for him to be born.

David is saying that sin corrupts us from the very beginning.

Psalm 53:2–3 (ESV)

2 God looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. 3 They have all fallen away; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one.

Psalm 58:3 (ESV)

3 The wicked are estranged from the womb; they go astray from birth, speaking lies.

Psalm 130:3 (ESV)

3 If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?

Ecclesiastes 7:20 (ESV)

20 Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.

Ecclesiastes 9:3 (ESV)

3 …the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead.

Isaiah 64:6 (ESV)

6 We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.

Jeremiah 13:23 (ESV)

23 Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil.

Jeremiah 17:9 (ESV)

9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?

—> The only correct answer is God.

New testament Examples:

When Paul teaches on Adam and Christ, the true and better and last Adam, he says…

Romans 5:12 (ESV)

12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—

Ephesians 2:1–3 (ESV)

Colossians 2:13 (ESV)

13 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses,

John 3:5–7 (ESV)

Mark 7:21–23 (ESV)

21 For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, 22 coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. 23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

John 3:19 (ESV)

19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.

Romans 8:7–8 (ESV)

7 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. 8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

1 Corinthians 2:14 (ESV)

14 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.

Ephesians 4:17–19 (ESV)

17 Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. 18 They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. 19 They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.

Ephesians 5:8 (ESV)

8 for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light

Titus 1:15 (ESV)

15 To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled.

John 8:44 (ESV)

44 You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

Ephesians 2:1–2 (ESV)

2 Timothy 2:24–26 (ESV)

24 And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, 25 correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, 26 and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.

1 John 3:10 (ESV)

10 By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.

1 John 5:19 (ESV)

19 We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.

Romans 6:20 (ESV)

20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.

Titus 3:3 (ESV)

3 For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.

Romans 3:9–12 (ESV)

9 What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, 10 as it is written:

“None is righteous, no, not one; 11 no one understands; no one seeks for God.

12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”

Matthew 7:16–18 (ESV)

16 You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. 18 A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.

Jesus speaking on the ability of Mankind to Respond Positively to Him stated in…

John 6:44 (ESV)

44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.

John 6:65 (ESV)

65 And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

The Biblical Picture of Man’s Will

Freedom is having the ability to choose according to your desires.

In Man’s fallen condition, our only desire is for sin.

Mankind is:

Born in sin.

By nature spiritually dead.

Must be born again in order to have any inclination towards God and His Kingdom.

Blind to spiritual truth.

Deaf to spiritual truth.

Darkened by sin in their minds.

Corrupt and evil in their hearts.

Children of the devil.

Under the control of the devil.

Slaves to sin.

Under the reign, power, and control of sin and therefore not righteous.

Unable to repent.

Unable to believe the gospel.

Unable to come to Christ.

Powerless, within themselves, to change their natures or prepare themselves for salvation.

This is the biblical picture of the effects of the Fall of Man.

This is the biblical picture of the scope of our inability towards God.

This is the biblical picture of the necessity of God to intervene from beginning to end in order for anyone to be saved.

Without God’s Intervention No One Would Be Saved

Augustine stated the following with regards to the necessity of God’s grace from beginning to end…

“From beginning to end, salvation is by grace alone. The fallen will, bound to sin, is unable even to seek God’s grace apart from the grace that he gives to his elect.”

If God were to look down the “Corridor of Time”, what does the Bible teach us regarding what He would see in mankind?

A person who is at enmity with God, who finds his greatest pleasure in suppressing the truth of God in unrighteousness, and would prefer there be no God rather than acknowledging his sinfulness and his need for Christ.

Since this is the biblical teaching of Man’s Inability or Total Depravity we want to ask and answer the question, “How can man be saved?”

And we will look at this next week by looking at the Doctrine of Unconditional Election.

END OF LESSON

Homework:

Read through the Lesson’s Scripture references and Romans 3; Ephesians 1-2.

Read over the Lesson Notes again.

In the next class, we will begin looking at the Doctrine of Unconditional Election.

Books used for this Lesson:

* ESV Bible

* “For Calvinism”, Michael Horton

* “The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination”, Loraine Boettner

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