SOTERIOLOGY 101: The Total Depravity of Man

A pastor once told a story that while riding on a plane en route to a pastor’s conference, another pastor who was his friend began scribbling on a piece of paper until it was completely covered. He than handed the paper to his friend and asked what was the first word he wrote to which his friend replied he had no idea. Then he showed his friend what he had done. He gave his friend another small blank piece of paper and told him to write “Christ” on it. On top of the first word and all over the rest of the paper, he was then told to write “Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopal, Pentecostal, Dispensational, fundamental, evangelical, liberal, protestant” and perhaps a dozen more such terms. His point was clear; the simple message of Jesus Christ is sometimes so encumbered with secondary matters and human interpretation that the world has a vague or a wrong idea of what the Gospel really is.

So what is the Gospel that Jesus preached? The Gospel is the central message of Christianity and the spreading of such is considered the most important job of each and every disciple of Jesus Christ. But with the proliferation of evangelical churches and Christian denominations it seems that there is a misunderstanding of what it really is. “Soteriology” a fancy theological term for the study of the doctrine of “Salvation” is given as a title to these series of articles wherein we are going to discuss in great detail this simple yet very important subject pregnant with such profound and great truths from the depths of God’s Words.

The goal of this article is not to showcase theological knowledge but rather to clarify some misconceptions about the Gospel message. We will follow the basic “ABC” outline used by most who are presenting the Gospel message. But instead of doing a basic presentation, we will dive into deeper theological truths.

A – Admit that you are a sinner – A theological & practical discourse on the Total Depravity of Man

Most of us who have ever gone soul winning after the preliminary introduction start the Gospel presentation with Romans 3:23. The very familiar verse “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God” seems very basic and simple that sometimes we really fail to grasp its full meaning. Because we are so used to presenting it we never think why we start with this verse or why it is necessary to be presented when presenting the Gospel message.

Why do I say that a lot of us fail to grasp the full meaning of the verse? Because most of us do not fully understand how deprave mankind is. Ask most Christian and they will tell you that they agree that yes man is sinful, but most Christians have this wrong idea that man still has the “free will” and the capacity to “seek for God.” While most Christians believe that it is only repentant faith in the Lord Jesus Christ that will save them, if you ask them if before they were saved if it is out of their free will that they choose Jesus Christ most of them will answer yes. In other words most Christians believe in the sinfulness of fallen man but do not believe that man is totally depraved and that man still has the ability to choose light over darkness.

So how deprave is fallen man? The Bible says in Romans 3:10, 11”There is none righteous, no, not one, There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.” Man is so totally depraved, his free will is totally depraved that even if given a choice, he does not seek God. This is the only free will that he can boast of, a free will that chooses wickedness. The best illustration of this is found in the carnivorous nature of dogs. If you have a tray of roast beef in your left and leafy green vegetables on your right, no matter what kind of thing you do to compel them to eat the leafy green vegetables on your right, they naturally go over to your left and eat the roast beef instead. Man by nature is like this. No man naturally seeks after God. The Bible further says that the heart of man is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. (Jeremiah 17:9) Jesus himself said in Mark 7:21 to 23, “For it is from within, out of a person’s heart that evil thoughts come - sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.”

In several passages of Scripture the Apostle Paul writes to believers and frequently reminds them that before they were saved they have been “dead in trespasses and sin” (Ephesians 2:1, Colossians 2:13) A spiritual dead man is not sensitive to the things of God. In 1 Corinthians 2:14 the Bible says that “the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” A dead person does not have any senses nor does he have the natural ability to perceive the world around him. So it is with fallen man. He is dead in trespasses in sin and for him spiritual things make no sense and considered foolishness.

What about the seemingly good things that man does? Have we not done some “good” things when we were still not saved? The Bible says in Isaiah 54:6 that “. . .we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousness are as filthy rags. . . ” Even the seemingly good things that we do are as filthy as rags when compared to God’s holiness.

Isn’t there any verse that states that man has the “free will” to choose the righteousness of God over sin? Nowhere in the Bible can you find any verse that says that, instead you can find a lot of verses supporting the doctrine of total depravity. The prophet Jeremiah emphasizes this point forcefully when he writes “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil” (Jeremiah 13:23). Fallen man by nature is accustomed to evil and can never have the “free will” to choose the things of God. Because of this the Apostle Paul writes in several passages that before we were saved we were once enemies of God (Romans 5:10) and alienated from him because of our evil behavior. (Colossians 1:21), He further emphasis this when he wrote that “the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.” (Romans 8:7-8). No matter what seeming good fallen man does, his good deeds can never please God and always falls short of his glory. (To be continued in SOTERIOLOGY 101: The Total depravity of Man – Part 2)

Jonathan Edwards considered widely by many as that used by God sovereignly to start the first “Great Awakening” vividly captures the total depravity of man and the consequences of such depravity. In his famous sermon “Sinners in the hands of an angry God” he writes “The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. It is to be ascribed to nothing else that you did not go to hell the last night; that you suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep. And there is no other reason to be given, why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God's hand has held you up. There is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell, since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship. Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into hell."

In Jesus conversation with Nicodemus he emphasizes the depravity of man when he makes the famous statement “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3) At first glance it would seem that the verse does not say anything about the depravity of man, but looking at the verse so carefully you could see the implication that Jesus is making, that is man is totally blind spiritually that unless God does his work of regeneration first, man cannot “see” the Kingdom of God. Man because of his depravity cannot even see the Kingdom of God how much more could he possibly enter into it by his own natural means? This is echoed by the Apostle Paul when he wrote in 2 Corinthians 4:4 “In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.” The Reformed Baptist preacher and theologian John Bunyan who wrote the classic book “Pilgrim’s progress” writes “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. By this one word, down goes all carnal privilege of being born of flesh and blood, and of the will of man. Canst thou produce the birthright?" Considering Bunyan’s words, one can see that even those who argue for the “free will” of fallen man by relying on the two words “whosoever will” in verse number 16 of John chapter 3 (Which is considered as probably the only words in Scriptures relied by those who argue in favor of the free will of man) will have to consider the bigger picture, that is to interpret these two words in verse 16 against the contextual context of the 3rd chapter of John and the rest of the Scriptures.

Perhaps some of you might think, why bring this all up? Is it not that one of our major doctrines is that man is sinful and in need of a Savior? Yes it is so, but let me state two reasons why I am adamant about discussing this subject more thoroughly. First of all, because unfortunately a lot of believers fail to understand the total depravity of man, this leads to a shallow Gospel presentation and a complete misunderstanding of the Gospel message.

Recent conversation with a fellow pastor reveals this sad truth. According to him, he discussed the issue about the total depravity of man with another believer (who graduated from seminary). Said believer insisted to him that although man is sinful; man still has the ability to “choose” God. This position is not something that is isolated. In fact if you did a random survey and talked to most believers, you can see that they take a similar stand and that they have a shallow understanding of the total depravity of man. We need to completely understand that fallen man is totally depraved and he desperately needs a Savior because he has no capacity whatsoever to save himself nor does he have the “free will” to choose God by his own natural ability.

Unless a person through the convicting power of the Holy Spirit comes to a point of understanding his total depravity and his ultimate spiritual bankruptcy before God, then he can never come to know the salvation that God offers. In the opening of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus himself said that blessed are the poor in Spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. The Greek word for poor here is “Ptochos” which means to “shrink, cower or cringe” as beggars often did in that day. It refers to a person reduced to total destitution, who crouched in the corner begging. In other words what Jesus is saying is this, those who understand their total depravity, their total destitution, their complete spiritual bankruptcy before Almighty God, acknowledging their sinfulness, their need for a Savior and coming in complete total surrender before Him are those that inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.

An illustration on the acknowledgement of total depravity and complete spiritual bankruptcy is portrayed by our Lord Jesus Christ in Luke 18:9 to 14 wherein a publican, the worst among sinners shows his being poor in spirit, shrinking, cowering and cringing like a beggar, standing afar off and would not even lift up his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, desperately asking God for mercy. In this parable Jesus Christ paints the perfect picture to illustrate that those who are “poor in Spirit,” those that realize their spiritual bankruptcy and total depravity before God are those to whom the Kingdom of heaven belongs to.

In Luke chapter 18:18 to 30, when asked how to obtain eternal life, Jesus told the rich young ruler to check himself against the commandments since the law, as the Apostle Paul writes is “our school master which makes brings us to Christ” (Galatians 3:24). Jesus wants him to see his total depravity and his complete spiritual bankruptcy before God. Unfortunately we are told by our Lord Jesus Christ that the rich young ruler saw only his own righteousness and never came to acknowledge his total depravity before God.

Secondly, it is also important to discuss in depth this major Christian doctrine because failure to fully grasp this will mean failure to properly understand the plan of Salvation as God intended it to be and as He presented it in Scriptures. If one believes in the concept of a “free will” that is man has the ability to choose God out of his own free will, then man is considered as having a part in his own salvation considering that it is out of his own “free will” he has chosen Christ. If we believe in this, we are as if saying that were it not for own free choice, we would have never obtained salvation. This makes us have a part in our own salvation making this contrary to what the Bible teaches. Salvation is not synergistic, instead to use a proper theological term it is “Monergestic.” By monergestic we mean that it is God and God alone who initiates and completes all the work of salvation. Faith in Christ only springs from a heart first renewed by God. More of this will be discussed in the next article.

(Zigfred Diaz is the Pastor-teacher of the Master’s Community Fellowship www.mastersfellowship.net. He frequently blogs on theological issues from a Reformed Baptist perspective at his blog "Straight from St. Pierre")