Tag: Reformed

When we speak of man’s depravity, we mean man’s natural condition apart from any grace exerted by God to restrain or transform man. 

The totality of that depravity is clearly not that man does as much evil as he could do. There is no doubt that man could perform more evil acts toward his fellow man than he does. But if he is restrained from performing more evil acts by motives that are not owing to his glad submission to God, then even his “virtue” is evil in the sight of God. Romans 14:23 says, “Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.” 

” I agree with Thomas Schreiner that this verse is introduced precisely because it stands as a sweeping maxim with profound biblical warrant: Acting without faith is sinning. “Thus Augustine (On the Proceedings of Pelagius 34; On the Grace of Christ 1.27; On Marriage and Concupiscence 1.4; Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 1.7; 3.14; On the Predestination of the Saints 20) was right in claiming that any act done apart from faith is sin.” Romans, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, Vol. 6 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1998), p. 739. Schreiner points out that Paul could very easily have made a more limited point by stopping with the first part of verse 23 (“But whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith”), but when he adds the unqualified maxim, “For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin,” he broadens the foundation to a general statement. Schreiner also points to the fact that in Romans 4:18-21, we see why this is so—namely, that acting in faith glorifies God, and we are to do that in every detail of life (1 Cor. 10:31). Not relying on God in any action or thought takes power and glory to ourselves (1 Pet. 4:11; 1 Cor. 15:10; Gal. 2:20). That is sin, even if the external deed itself accords with God’s will.”

This is a radical indictment of all natural “virtue” that does not flow from a heart humbly relying on God’s grace. 

An example might make this radical indictment of much human “goodness” clearer. Suppose you’re the father of a teenage son. You remind him to wash the car before he uses it to take his friends to the basketball game tonight. He had earlier agreed to do that. He gets angry and says he doesn’t want to. You gently but firmly remind him of his promise and say that’s what you expect. He resists. You say, Well, if you are going to use the car tonight, that’s what you agreed to do. He storms out of the room angry. Later you see him washing the car. But he is not doing it out of love for you or out of a Christ-honoring desire to honor you as his father. He wants to go to the game with his friends. That is what constrains his “obedience.” I put “obedience” in quotes because it is only external. His heart is wrong. This is what I mean when I say that all human “virtue” is depraved if it is not from a heart of love to the heavenly Father—even if the behavior conforms to biblical norms. 

The terrible condition of man’s heart will never be recognized by people who assess it only in relation to other men. Your son will drive his friends to the ballgame. That is “kindness,” and they will experience it as a benefit. So the evil of our actions can never be measured merely by the harm they do to other humans. Romans 14:23 makes plain that depravity is our condition in relation to God primarily, and only secondarily in relation to man. Unless we start here, we will never grasp the totality of our natural depravity. 

Man’s depravity is total in at least four senses. 

1. Our rebellion against God is total. 

Apart from the grace of God, there is no delight in the holiness of God, and there is no glad submission to the sovereign authority of God. Of course, totally depraved men can be very religious and very philanthropic. They can pray and give alms and fast, as Jesus said (Matt. 6:1-18). But their very religion is rebellion against the rights of their Creator, if it does not come from a childlike heart of trust in the free grace of God. Religion is one of the chief ways that man conceals his unwillingness to forsake self-reliance and bank all his hopes on the unmerited mercy of God (Luke 18:9-14; Col. 2:20-23). 

The totality of our rebellion is seen in Romans 3:9-11 and 18. “We have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written: ‘None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.’ … ‘There is no fear of God before their eyes.’” Any seeking of God that honors God is a gift of God. It is not owing to our native goodness. It is an illustration of God mercifully overcoming our native resistance to God. 

Natural Man Not Seeking God It is a myth that man in his natural state is genuinely seeking God. Men do seek God. But they do not seek him for who he is. They seek him in a pinch as one who might preserve them from death or enhance their worldly enjoyments. Apart from conversion, no one comes to the light of God. 

Some do come to the light. But listen to what John 3:20-21 says about them. “Everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.” Yes, there are those who come to the light—namely, those whose deeds are the work of God. “Carried out in (or by) God” means worked by God. Apart from this gracious work of God all men hate the light of God and will not come to him lest their evil be exposed—this is total rebellion. “No one seeks for God…. There is no fear of God before their eyes!”

2. In his total rebellion everything man does is sin.

 In Romans 14:23 Paul says, “Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.” Therefore, if all men are in total rebellion, everything they do is the product of rebellion and cannot be an honor to God, but only part of their sinful rebellion. Of course many of these acts which flow from inward unbelief conform outwardly to the revealed will of God (for example, obeying parents or telling the truth). But they do not conform to God’s perfect will because of that mere outward conformity. Let all things be done in love, the apostle says (1 Cor. 16:14); but love is the fruit of faith (Gal. 5:6; 1 Tim. 1:5). Therefore many outwardly good acts come from hearts without Christ-exalting faith, and therefore, without love, and therefore without conformity to God’s command, and therefore are sinful. 

If a king teaches his subjects how to fight well and then those subjects rebel against their king and use the very skill he taught them to resist him, then even those skills, as excellent and amazing and “good” as they are, become evil. 

Thus man does many things which he can do only because he is created in the image of God and which in the service of God would be praised. But in the service of man’s self-justifying rebellion, these very things are sinful. We may praise them as echoes of God’s excellence, but we will weep that they are prostituted for God-ignoring purposes.

 In Romans 7:18 Paul says, “I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh.” This is a radical confession of the truth that in our rebellion nothing we think or feel is good. It is all part of our rebellion. The fact that Paul qualifies his depravity with the words, “that is, in my flesh,” shows that he is willing to affirm the good of anything that the Spirit of God produces in him (Rom. 15:18). “Flesh” refers to man in his natural state apart from the work of God’s Spirit. So, what Paul is saying in Romans 7:18 is that apart from the work of God’s Spirit all we think and feel and do is not good. 

The Good That Really Counts

 We recognize that the word “good” has a broad range of meanings. We will have to use it in a restricted sense to refer to many actions of fallen people which in relation to God are in fact not good. 

For example, we will have to say that it is good that most unbelievers do not kill and that many unbelievers perform acts of benevolence. What we mean when we call such actions good is that they more or less conform to the external pattern of life that God has commanded in Scripture. 

However, such outward conformity to the revealed will of God is not righteousness in relation to God. It is not done out of reliance on him or for his glory. He is not trusted for the resources, though he gives them all. Nor is his honor exalted, even though that’s his will in all things (1 Cor. 10:31). Therefore even these “good” acts are part of our rebellion and are not “good” in the sense that really counts in the end—in relation to God. 

3. Man’s inability to submit to God and do good is total.

 Picking up on the term “flesh” above (man apart from the grace of God), we find Paul declaring it to be totally enslaved to rebellion. Romans 8:7-8 says, “The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”

 The “mind that is set on the flesh” (literally, “mind of the flesh”) is the mind of man apart from the indwelling Spirit of God (“You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you,” Romans 8:9). So natural man has a mindset that does not and cannot submit to God. Man cannot reform himself. 

Ephesians 2:1 says that we Christians were all once “dead in trespasses and sins.” The point of deadness is that we were incapable of any spiritual life with God. We had physical life, but our hearts were like a stone toward God (Eph. 4:18; Ezek. 36:26). Our hearts were blind and incapable of seeing the glory of God in Christ (2 Cor. 4:4-6). We were totally unable to reform ourselves.

4. Our rebellion is totally deserving of eternal punishment.

 Ephesians 2:3 goes on to say that in our deadness we were “children of wrath.” That is, we were under God’s wrath because of the corruption of our hearts that made us as good as dead before God. 

The reality of hell is God’s clear indictment of the infiniteness of our guilt. If our corruption were not deserving of an eternal punishment, God would be unjust to threaten us with a punishment so severe as eternal torment. But the Scriptures teach that God is just in condemning unbelievers to eternal hell (2 Thess. 1:6-9; Matt. 5:29-30; 10:28; 13:49-50; 18:8-9; 25:46; Rev. 14:9-11; 20:10). Therefore, to the extent that hell is a sentence of total condemnation, to that extent must we think of ourselves as totally blameworthy apart from the saving grace of God. 

This Terrible Truth of Total Depravity

 In summary, total depravity means that our rebellion against God is total, everything we do in this rebellion is sinful, our inability to submit to God or reform ourselves is total, and we are therefore totally deserving of eternal punishment.

 It is hard to exaggerate the importance of admitting our condition to be this bad. If we think of ourselves as basically good or even less than totally at odds with God, our grasp of the work of God in redemption will be defective. But if we humble ourselves under this terrible truth of our total depravity, we will be in a position to see and appreciate the glory and wonder of the work of God discussed in the next four points. The aim of this book is to deepen our experience of God’s grace. 

The aim is not to depress or to discourage or to paralyze. Knowing the seriousness of our disease will make us all the more amazed at the greatness of our Physician. Knowing the extent of our deep-seated rebellion will stun us at the longsuffering grace and patience of God toward us. The way we worship God and the way we treat other people, especially our enemies, are profoundly and wonderfully affected by knowing our depravity to the full.