I remember a college professor who constantly depicted the Puritans as kill-joys. He blamed their problem on their belief in total depravity. The professor’s caricature was, “A puritan is a man who cannot sleep at night because he is afraid that somewhere in the world someone may be having fun.” The Puritans really got bad press in that man’s class.
The carnal mind hates the doctrine of total depravity. Nothing cuts across the grain of the modern religious, psychological, and philosophical view of man and his basic nature as much as the truth that man is a depraved sinner. The unchallenged absolute in academic circles today is that “man is basically good.” Biblical depravity says the exact opposite. The Bible clearly sees that environment plays a great part in shaping an individual. However, it traces the root cause of all man’s problems to a wicked and selfish heart. The sun and rain cannot bring a single plant out the ground that is not already there in seed form, nor can a bad environment produce any fruit that is not potentially already in our hearts. Every one of us is capable, apart from grace, of being as wicked as any person who ever lived. If you balk at that statement, you have probably never become a Christian!
Once the fact of total depravity is accepted, then sovereign grace is man’s only hope. As long as this fact is rejected and man’s fictitious goodness is exalted, men will merely find more ways to justify their rebellion to God and his revealed truth.
Here is Webster’s Dictionary definition: “depraved – characterized by corruption; perverted; evil…” The word total means what it says and needs no comment. The word depraved is not in your concordance, nor is the word Trinity. However, both of these truths are stamped on nearly every page of the Bible.
Here is the doctrine of total depravity in a nutshell. “Man is bad, but he is not that bad, but he really is bad.” That means (1) man is a sinner, but (2) he is not nearly as sinful in actual practice as he could be. However, (3) he is really is a totally depraved sinner in the sight of God.
It takes both a negative and a positive wire to form a complete electrical circuit and thereby conduct electricity. Often times it is essential to clearly spell out what we do not believe before it is possible to understand what we actually do believe. We will begin our study with things that we do not believe, even though we are often very wrongly accused of believing these things.
First: Negative—let me show what we do not mean by total depravity.
1. Total depravity does not mean that man is without a conscience or any sense of right and wrong.
People often have a strong impulse to do “right,” and they often feel remorse for doing “wrong.” However, this only proves that man still has some remnants of his original creation. He still has a conscience and, depending on environment and training, it can be very strong. Conscience often drives people into a mental institution, and, in some cases, even to suicide. The following texts clearly show that man has a conscience.
And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one.…” (John 8:9)
For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience so bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another; (Rom. 2:14, 15)
C. S. Lewis spoke of the universal “ought” in every man. Every person will accuse others (and themselves in their conscience) of not doing what they ought to have done. This universal admission by every creature of a “right and wrong” will be one of the righteous grounds upon which God will judge all men as guilty. Man’s constant moral judgment of other people is absolute proof that man is a moral being created in the moral image of God. Man is not an animal without any consciousness of his creator. Man is a rational and moral creature who makes volitional choices based on both his rationality and moral consciousness.
Suppose the day that you were born God hung an invisible tape recorder around your neck. Every time you said either “you should have done such and such,” or “you should not have done such and such,” the invisible recorder went blip, blip, blip and recorded what you said. In the day of judgment, imagine God getting out the tape, with your own words of moral judgments on it, and saying, “I want to be fair in judging you. Therefore I will judge you on the exact standards that you boldly professed to believe. I will use your own words. I will not use either the Ten Commandments, or the words of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount; I will use what you yourself fervently acknowledged (by judging others) was right and wrong.” Could anything be fairer? Would we not all be proven guilty before God? Do you realize that very thing is going to happen!
Man indeed has a consciousness of right and wrong. We need only read Ann Landers or visit a mental institution to see that people often have a very deep consciousness of morality that sometimes screams at them. However, this does not mean that these people are convicted of sin in God’s sight. A “guilty conscience” is not the same as “conviction of sin.” People have great remorse for the results of sin who are not in the least concerned that they have offended God.
2. Total depravity does not mean that every sinner is devoid of all of the qualities that are both pleasing to men and useful to society when those qualities are judged only by a human standard.
Mother Teresa and Albert Schweitzer were great humanitarians. The world is a better place for many people because of them and their service. They rightly earned and deserve our praise for their humanitarian labors. However, they were still guilty sinners in the sight of a holy God. All the “good” they did will not earn them grace in God’s sight. They too are included in the “you” who must be “born again.” Were these two people “much better persons” than a Hitler or a Manson? Of course they were, if you judge only on the basis of a human standard. Is it possible that a Manson or a Hitler can be saved by grace and go to heaven, and a Mother Teresa and a Schweitzer be lost and go to hell because of self-righteousness? The answer is yes, both situations are possible, if you judge by God’s revealed standards.
A parent’s love and willingness to suffer even death for their child’s well-being is certainly a “good” thing that deserves to be admired and applauded. However, such actions do not prove the parent has grace in his heart, nor does it prove he is not totally depraved in God’s sight. All it proves is that man still has vestiges of the image of God from his original creation. A patriot’s sacrifice for his country is another illustration of the same principle.
A bombed and ruined religious temple may have fragments of beautiful columns or parts of painted walls that are perfectly intact. However, it is not a fit place for worship. It is ”totally” ruined for the purpose for which it was built even though a few isolated parts are not totally destroyed. Man has remnants of his creation in Eden, but he is totally ruined by sin as far as ability or desire to love and worship God.
Suppose a doctor in the Navy lead a crew into mutiny and took control of a Navy ship. He then uses the ship in piracy. The Navy finds him and demands that he either surrender, or they will destroy the ship. Upon his refusal, the Navy brings in the necessary firepower and begins to fight. During the battle, many men on the rebel ship are wounded. The doctor works without rest or food and risks his life over and over again in order to give his men the necessary medical treatment to keep them alive. When the Navy finally captures the ship, they will hang both the captain and his men because of their mutiny. The heroic “good” which the captain did in risking his life for his men will help neither him nor them at the trial. The judges who sentence the man to die may admire his courage, but he is still a traitor against the government and will therefore be put to death. None of his good will count for anything. The same principle applies to the all of the “good” that sinful men do.
It is this principle that is being taught in Proverbs 21:4: “A high look, and a proud heart, and the plowing of the wicked, is sin.” It is not the actual plowing of the man that is sinful, but the sinful attitude of the man’s heart.
a. His plowing is an exhibition of his faith in the seasons. If he did not believe that spring and summer were sure to follow, he would not plow and plant. His very act of plowing is an expression of faith in God’s providence and will condemn the man’s unbelieving heart for refusing to worship the very God he constantly acknowledges.
b. The man will curse God if there is too little or too much rain, but he will not praise God for a good harvest. His very cursing shows that he knows God is real and that he is in control of the weather. The man’s pride and self-sufficiency will not allow him to give God the credit for the good weather. The whole situation shows that his very plowing will someday be the evidence that condemns him in his sin of unbelief.
3. We are not saying that every sinner is prone to every form of sin.
The Pharisees prove this point. Jesus acknowledges that some of the things the Pharisees did were right and “good.” However, they also selectively omitted some other things. They will be condemned for the very good things they did because it proves they had an understanding of what God wanted. Their deliberate omissions prove the depravity of their hearts.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. (Matt. 23:23)
One form of sin will often exclude another form of sin. (1) The miser will be delivered from the sin of wastefulness. (2) The workaholic will be delivered from sloth and laziness. (3) The pride of position will often exclude immorality but only for fear of being caught. Shakespeare said it well: “I see it has pleased Devil drunkenness to give place to Devil wrath.”
This truth explains the apparent change in some men when elevated to a position of authority. Their nice personality is replaced with a tyrannical attitude. Actually, the man did not really change at all. His true self came to the surface for the first time. The man was always like that in his heart, but he never had the authority or opportunity to demonstrate it.
4. We are not saying that every sinner is as intense as he can be in his sin. Remember our original definition, “Man is bad, but he is not that bad, but he really is bad.”
No one person has ever expressed all of the sin of which they were capable. The following texts demonstrate this fact:
In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure. (Gen. 15:16 NIV)
But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived. (2 Tim. 3:13)
Every year we are convinced that society and the world simply cannot possibly get any worse. However, it does get worse and will continue to do so until our Lord returns. The old saying is true: “You ain’t seen anything yet!” I would not want to live in the same city, county, or state where God permitted one individual to express all of the rebellion of which he was capable. We ought to constantly thank God for his restraining grace.
We now put the positive wire into place and show what we actually do believe about total depravity.