Second: Positive—what we do mean by total depravity?

Total depravity means that man is totally dead in sin and not just sick and dying. The sinner is not an emergency room case who desperately needs attention before it is too late—the sinner is a graveyard case. He is dead, not dying. He is not incurably sick and on the verge of death—he is already dead! Ephesians 2:1 is clear: “And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins.”

1. Total depravity means that every sinner, including you and me, is destitute or without that love of towards God which constitutes the fundamental and all-inclusive demand of God’s law. The one great thing that all men owe to God is the one thing that they adamantly refuse to give Him.

Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. (Matt. 22:35-38)

All men, without a single exception, are guilty of this sin. They simply do not love God and put him first in any sense. They are commanded to do this twenty-four hours every day, but lost sinners have never consciously done one single thing in their whole life for the express purpose of glorifying God. They live to please themselves and have no thought of their indebtedness to God. I once pressed this fact on a high school teacher, and he claimed that his three children were produced out of obedience to God’s command to “be fruitful and multiply.” When I asked if that was the only motive involved, he grinned and said, “Well, maybe not entirely.”

This is what Jesus meant in John 5:42: “But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you.” That is, we lack the one thing essential in order to please God. We are not at all motivated by either duty or love of God. We are motivated entirely by sin and self.

2. Total depravity means that every sinner is guilty of elevating some lower affection or desire above regard for God, his law, and the gospel. This is the opposite of #1. Sinners not only do not love the true God and put him first, but they do love some other god and put that false god first.

…lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God. (2 Tim. 3:4)

It is not that pleasures are wrong in themselves. It is when pleasure becomes the cause for living and is a higher goal than knowing God himself. God can justly charge that this attitude controls the hearts of all lost men.

A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If I am a father [in the sense of creation], where is the honor due me? (Mal. 1:6 NIV)

Sinners do not give God the love and worship that he deserves because they are filled with love for something else. They feel no obligation to God and therefore they cannot help but be unthankful. Chapter 1 of Romans is a perfect picture of sinful man’s ungrateful and proud heart.

3. That “something else” that men love is an idol called self or me. Every sinner is determined, in his whole inward being and outward life, by a preference of self instead of God. The sinner treats himself as if he were the only true god.

People will be lovers of themselves.… (2 Tim. 3:2 NIV)

Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. (John 3:19 NIV)

It is bad enough to dethrone God the Creator, but to enthrone the creature, to enthrone self as God, is the height of sin (see Romans 1:21-23).

Sin, in the garden of Eden, created a monster called happiness that literally consumes people. To be happy is to have everything and everyone act the way that I want them to act. To be unhappy is to wish that I could make everything that disagrees with me to unhappen, or cease to exist. It is to earnestly desire to have everything and everybody line up in the way that I want them to so I can get everything I desire.

4. Total depravity means that every sinner is possessed with a nature, inherited from Adam’s fall, that is completely hostile toward God. We were all born with a “positive” aversion to God and his authority. By nature, every sinner wants his own way. Romans 8:7 makes this fact very clear. “…the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.”

The obvious question is, “Why does man not feel this awful hostility that, according to the Scripture, is in his heart?” The answer is simple.

But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead. For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me. (Rom. 7:8–11)

This hostility, or enmity, is against God’s authority, and as long as a man is not forced to think about God’s authority, that man will not feel the hostility that is in his heart. However, when God’s law, or authority, is pressed on the man’s conscience, then the enmity that is buried in his nature will surface. As long as the sinner sincerely believes that he is free to do as he chooses, and as long as he has a false view of God, especially God’s sovereignty and his duty to God, he will never feel either guilty or angry toward God. However, when God’s true character as sovereign Lawgiver and Judge is pressed on the sinner, then the sparks begin to fly. This rarely happens today simply because our generation has been lulled to sleep by a totally false view of a “God of love.”

Let me illustrate this fact. A truly virtuous woman may smile in mild amusement at a “wolf whistle” as she enters the grocery store. However, if the man would follow her into the store and literally force her into a corner, she would lash out in rage and indignation. Her true nature would manifest itself. You would see what she is really like. So it is with the lost man. It is not until his conscience is pressed with God’s true claims that his true nature of hostility comes to the surface. That is when the “nice man” tells you, in anger, to “Leave me alone to do as I please.”

Preaching the “love of God” makes no one angry. Preaching man’s duty to God as his Creator and Judge will make the sinner gnash his teeth. We must remember that all men think they love God. However, the god they love is a god of their own imagination and not the God of the Bible.

The ancient Greeks “sincerely loved” and “fervently worshiped” God. On any given day, you could find several “worship services” in process. We know that these religious feasts were nothing less than drunken orgies, but they were done in the name of Bacchus, one of the Greek gods. If we would have rebuked the “worshipers” for their drunken immoral behavior because in their heart of hearts they knew better, they would not have thanked us. They would have been furious. They knew that the one true living God hated such behavior. However, they did not care and did everything they could to forget that fact. They would hate us for reminding them of what they knew in their conscience. They would have raised their wine goblets and shouted, “Away with your God, Bacchus is God! Bacchus is God!”

We come down a little farther in history and meet a pirate named Eric the Red as he is about to go on a “business” trip. Of course, his business was to capture ships, steal what was worth stealing, and kill every one of his helpless victims. If we said, “But Eric, have you fear or love for God?” the poor man would be horrified. He would say, “Why, of course, I love God. Look at his image on the front of my ship. I pray to him before I go to sea, and I sacrifice to him when I return.” If we reminded this man that in his conscience he knew that the one true God who made the heavens and earth hated such behavior, Eric would be furious. He would put his sword under our chin and walk us off the gangplank backwards while he shouted, “Thor is God! Thor is God!”

Let us move down to the twentieth century liberal preacher who lives down the street from you. He is a hard working “do-gooder” sentimentalist. He “loves” God but when asked what God is like, the man admits he does not have a clue. When we begin to talk about the God who revealed himself at the cross in the atoning blood of Christ, we notice the man’s neck is getting red. He finally grits his teeth and blurts out in anger, “I hate your religion of blood and the God who requires it.” You see, he “sincerely loves God,” but it is a god of his own imagination and not the God of the Bible. He hates the true and living God revealed in the Scriptures.

The same reaction will come from the super-church leaders who insist on being “positive thinkers.” When we mention Romans 9 and its awesome picture of God’s sovereignty, we are hated and ridiculed. Put it into your memory system: men sincerely love a god of their own imagination, and he is always a god that they can control. Our duty is to confront men with the God of the Bible. He is the Creator, the Lawgiver, the Judge, and the only Redeemer. We must begin with Genesis 1:1 and not John 3:16. We are making a mistake when we begin with the God of John 3:16.

Let me illustrate this point. Suppose a man named Harry bitterly hated a next-door neighbor. The very sight of his neighbor made Harry furious. The neighbor finally moved to California. Several years later, someone visiting Harry said, “You really hated that guy who used to live next door.” Harry would probably say, “Well, I did not like him too much, but I would not say I actually hated him. That is a strong word.” No amount of arguing would convince Harry of how deeply he had hated that neighbor. You see, Harry has not seen the man for a long time. There was nothing confronting him that aroused his strong feelings.

Five years later, someone knocks on Harry’s door and says, “I am collecting money to buy flowers for the widow of that man who used to live next door to you.” It seems the former neighbor had died a tragic death. All of a sudden, the person at the door says, “Oh, I’m sorry; I forgot how deeply you hated the man. You would not be interested in helping. You are probably glad he is dead.” Harry would protest that he was being misrepresented. “I admit we had our differences, but as I look back, I am sure part of it was my fault. He really was not all that bad. Here is five dollars for the flowers.” It would be impossible to convince Harry that he had truly hated his former neighbor. The hatred had long settled in the bottom of his heart.

Five more years pass by and a moving van pulls up next door to Harry’s house, and the man he hated starts to move back into the same house. There had been a mix-up, and the man had not died; it was his brother. How long would that man have to live there before all of Harry’s buried hatred would once more be felt and expressed? The old saying, “out of sight, out of mind” is true. Man’s hatred of God is like the dirty mud puddles on the road right after a heavy rain. Those same puddles become clear as crystal after several days. The mud is still there, but it has all settled to the bottom and is not visible. However, if you started stirring the puddle with a stick, the mud would soon come to the surface. Man’s sinful heart is the same way. As long as Harry is not directly confronted with his enemy, he can never be convinced of the depth of his hatred. As long as men are not being directly confronted with a true picture of God, they do not feel the natural enmity towards God that is in their hearts. However, the moment we begin to tell them what God is really like, their rebellion against God’s authority and their love of self will come to the surface. The God of the Bible is a forgotten God in our society. The weak and wishy-washy god that is preached in most churches, even evangelical churches, would never stir up any valid feelings of any kind. This is why men can hate God while being deeply religious. Because men today love a god of their own imagination, there is neither deep faith nor visible antagonism in the churches today.

Regardless of what we think or what any individual believes, we must accept what the Word of God says—all men by nature hate God! We need only preach God’s revealed will to sinners, and press on them their absolute duty to do that will, and we see that Romans 8:7 is a fact. The one indelible mark of every lost man is Romans 8:7.

Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.

Likewise, the one indelible mark of a true believer is the exact opposite:

For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous. (1 John 5:3)

Before we were converted, we hated God’s authority over us simply because we wanted to “do our own thing.” We hated anyone who tried to tell us the awful consequences of our rebellion. We hated God’s commandments because they condemned us, and we hated those who reminded us of those commandments. We felt God was unreasonable and too strict. When the Holy Spirit gave us a new nature, we then loved the very same law that we previously hated. Our problem then was not with the strictness of God’s law but our total inability to keep it because we now wanted to keep it with all of our being.

5. By total depravity, we mean that every part of man’s being and nature has been affected by sin. This is what the word total means. Total depravity means that sin has affected every part of man’s being, and this includes his will. The primary difference between Calvinism (the religion of free grace) and Arminianism (the religion of free will) is whether man is totally depraved (meaning everything including his will) or whether he is partially depraved (meaning everything except his will).

Romans 6:17 is a key text.

But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have [1] obeyed [the will] from [2] the heart [emotions] that [3] form of doctrine [mind] which was delivered you.

This text shows the order of biblical conversion to be as follows: (1) the mind must be illuminated by the truth. God does not save us in a vacuum. We must hear, understand, and believe the gospel facts about our sin and Christ’s death. (2) The heart must be penetrated by the truth. It is not enough to believe intellectually; we must literally feel the power of truth in our inward man (cf. 1 Thess. 1:4, 5). (3) The will must be liberated with the truth (cf. Acts 16:14). Lydia’s heart must indeed be opened, and she must hear and believe the gospel in order to be saved. However, Lydia cannot understand or even desire the truth of God with her nature of sin. The Holy Spirit must “open her heart” (regeneration) before she is able to understand and believe. When the Holy Spirit gives Lydia a new heart, she will gladly be ready to believe. You will notice that all three of these things are mentioned in Romans 6:17.

The mind, or understanding, receives the form of doctrine, or facts of the gospel. Our natural minds are described as being totally incapable of understanding truth (cf. 1 Cor. 2:14; Eph. 4:18). Whenever a sinner understands and gladly receives the gospel, it is not because of their so-called free will; it is, as in Lydia’s case, because God sovereignly opened that heart in regeneration.

The heart, or affections, by nature is not able to feel the power of truth (cf. Jer. 17:9). Whenever the gospel effects a real change in us, it is because the Holy Spirit has powerfully and savingly applied the truth to the core of our being. When a girl says, “He gets me,” that can mean different things. If she sighs and almost faints when she says, “He gets me,” that means one thing. If she grits her teeth and shakes her fist when she says, “He gets me,” that means something entirely different. In both cases, the girl is saying, “Just seeing him or hearing his name evokes an uncontrollable feeling inside of me.” In one case it is anger, and in the other it is love. In both cases, it is automatic because the girl’s emotions are controlled by the attitude of her heart. It is the same with a child of God. He cannot hear the name of Christ without feeling deeply a heartfelt gratitude for such great salvation. The gospel really gets to a Christian and literally gets the Christian.

The will, or the power of choice, does not (indeed, it cannot) operate either independently of, or contrary to, man’s sinful mind and wicked heart. Our will is not an independent faculty or “little man inside the man that is unaffected by sin.” The will is chained to our sinful nature, and it is impossible for the will to operate independently of that sinful nature. The Scriptures are clear that man can no more change his sinful nature by an act of his will any more than an Ethiopian can “change the color of his skin” (cf. Jer. 13:23). To say, “A sinner can change if he sincerely wants to” is the same as saying, “An Ethiopian, who loves being black and hates any idea of being white, can change the color of his skin if he sincerely wants to.” In both cases, the problem does not lie in the power of the will but in the “want to,” or power that controls the will, and that power is the sinner’s totally depraved nature. The sinner always wants to please himself. We will come back to this point later.

Let me repeat that the word total in total depravity does not mean man is as wicked as he can be. It means sin has affected every part of our being in such a way that our autobiography reads, “I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) [that is, in no single part of me] dwelleth no good thing” (Rom. 7:18). It means that the sinner’s heart, which is the seat of his thinking, feeling, and choosing, is “deceitful and desperately wicked” (Jer. 17:9). The word total in total depravity means the same thing as putting a drop of deadly poison into a glass of water. The entire glass is totally (meaning every single particle of the water) poisoned and unfit to drink. If you pour that glass of water into a gallon jug, you will dilute the intensity of the poison, but you will still totally poison the entire gallon of water. Pour the gallon into a barrel of water, and you have totally poisoned the entire barrel of water. Remember our definition: “Man is bad, but he is not that bad, but he really is bad.”

The primary objection to everything I have said goes like this: “If the sinner does not have the innate power or ability to repent and believe, then God cannot hold him responsible.” In other words, man’s ability is always the measure of his responsibility. If God holds the sinner responsible to repent and believe when He knows the sinner is unable to do so, then God becomes unjust and grossly unfair. This objection totally misunderstands both sin and responsibility. It also denies the reality and effects of the fall. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to fully develop this point, so for now let me show how absurd the argument is: is a sinner able to perfectly obey the Ten Commandments? All will answer, “Absolutely not!” Does God hold sinners responsible for perfectly obeying the Ten Commandments and punishing them for breaking those commandments? The answer will be, with a bit of hesitation and without the absolutely, the exact opposite, or “Yes!” So then God can, and does, hold men responsible for doing something they are totally unable to do! The objection is exploded.

What we will see is that the reason sinners can neither obey the commandments nor repent and believe the gospel is the power of their sinful nature to totally control the sinner’s whole being. The only question is this: “Who is totally responsible for man’s sinful nature?” Did man acquire his sinful nature by an act of his free will, or did God force him to sin against his will? If man is totally responsible for his sin, then he is also totally responsible for the effects of that sin, and the awful affect is the sinner’s total depravity and total inability to change that sinful nature.

I can say without hesitation that the sinner is “totally free to do exactly as he pleases.” However, that kind of freedom is the sinner’s greatest problem. An unregenerate sinner, because he is totally controlled by a sinful nature, will always, every single time, freely, or deliberately, choose to please himself. We always do, or choose to do, things which are consistent with what we are. If we are sinners by nature and choice, then every decision will be affected by our sinful nature. Adam is the only man that ever had a truly free will that was free from sin. Adam is also the only person who ever became a sinner by sinning, or by an act of the will. You and I sin because we were born sinners; we did not become sinners the first time we consciously disobeyed. Our first act of sin did not produce our sinful nature. The sinful nature inherited from Adam produced the sinful act.

6. Man has a nature that will not permit him to choose God or righteousness. Man’s inability grows out of his depravity.

A lost man can choose between two evils according to which benefits him the most. He may choose a “good,” as judged by the world’s standard, instead of a “bad,” but in every case he is motivated by his own interests. The sinner cannot choose between God’s glory and his own selfish ends. Romans 8:7 stands as a biblical truth and a historical fact.