The sentiment that Jesus has unconditional love for all of us has become standard fare in many evangelical churches. The speaker assures the congregation that Jesus loves them to such an extent that he died for them. He assures the audience that Jesus is just waiting for them to turn to him and to reciprocate the love he already has for them. Some people go even further in their claims to unbelievers. I remember once reading an article by Rick Warren printed in Ladies Home Journal. In this article, titled "Learn to Love Yourself!," Warren wrote the following: "God accepts us unconditionally, and in His view we are all precious and priceless." The article closes with these words: "You can believe what others say about you, or you can believe in yourself as God does, who says you are truly acceptable, lovable, valuable and capable." Nowhere does he qualify these statements. Instead they are offered as blanket statements, encompassing all of humanity.

Is this how the Bible portrays God's feelings towards those who do not believe? It’s worth a glance at just a few of the many passages that speak of God's position towards the unregenerate.

Psalm 5:5 says that "The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers." The NIV translates this as "you hate all who do wrong." Psalm 11:5 tells us that "The LORD tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence." And turning to the New Testament, John 3:36 reads "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him." The Bible clearly portrays God as one whose wrath burns against both sin and sinner. His righteous anger burns against all unrighteousness, and against all who are unrighteous.

In The God Who Justifies, James White writes the following. "Theologians should be those enraptured by the beauty of the unchanging object of their study: the eternal, immutable God. But theologians are people, and they are influenced, to greater or lesser extents, by the society and era in which they live. The cultural decay of modern times has inspired many a theological denial of biblical truth, most often when that biblical truth speaks to something that is unfashionable. One such issue...is the oft-repeated biblical phrase 'the wrath of God.'" White goes on to say that while we most often associate God's wrath with the Old Testament, where he commanded the Israelites to utterly destroy the pagan nations, in reality his wrath is most clearly shown in the New Testament. Were you to ask where in the Bible we see the clearest picture of God’s wrath, I would have to point to Jesus' final hours, from the Garden of Gethsemane to his death on the cross. After all, what but the need for satisfaction of God's wrath, could compel the Father to send his Son to such a horrible, painful, death?

As anyone knows who has studied the life of Jonathan Edwards, he dedicated a large portion of his ministry to thinking, writing and teaching about the freedom of the will. And, of course, he eventually published a classic work dealing with the subject. In writing the book he thought back to the days when revival had swept his church, his community and the area around it. And as he reflected on the individuals who had been swept up in the revival, or those who had made professions of faith in the years following, he became aware of a fundamental flaw in many of these professions. "Self-controlled individuals, as he had observed in his parishes for the past fifteen years, would acknowledge guilt for particular sins, but not guilt for their fundamentally rebellious hearts."

Little has changed. I have met countless people who consider themselves Christians and who admit to sin in their lives and feel guilt and remorse for individual sins, but who seem unable or unwilling to admit the incontrovertible fact that their hearts are in rebellion against God. The Bible tells us in plain terms that we are not sinners because we sin, but we sin because we are sinners. And I don't think we can overstate what a fundamental difference this is! We do not need to seek forgiveness merely for the sins we commit, but for our fundamentally evil and rebellious hearts--hearts that, in their natural state, hate God and are fully and completely and gleefully and willingly opposed to Him.

In his oh-so-good biography of Edwards, George Marsden summarizes Edwards' assessment of this problem. "Guided by conscience, they saw particular sins as failures of will power, which might be overcome by exercising greater self-control." When sin has been defined merely as individual acts of the will, it is possible for humans, even devoid of God's help, to overcome those evil acts and deeds. An unbelieving man who explodes in anger or a woman who grumbles against her husband can overcome those sins in their own power. Unbelievers can throw off addiction and poor behavior through an act of the will. But they can never address the heart of the issue. While they may make cosmetic changes, they can never overcome the deeper issues because they can never change their hearts.

Yesterday I wrote about sin, asking if sin is primarily something we do or something we are. Some questions arose in light of that article and I wanted to carry on a bit of discussion by looking further at the doctrine of human depravity. I have shared most of this in the past but felt it was well worth covering again. It is easy to see this doctrine as one that is terribly depressing and deflating, but when we properly understand depravity I think we can also find it very liberating. It gives us cause to praise God for His grace.

Total Depravity

The doctrine of total depravity be defined something like this: “Total Depravity is a theological term primarily associated with Calvinism, which interprets the Bible to teach that, as a consequence of the Fall of man, every person born into the world is enslaved to the service of sin. In other words, a person is not by nature inclined to love God with his heart or mind or strength, rather all are inclined to serve their own interests over those of their neighbor. Put another way, even with all circumstances in his favor a man without God can do nothing but work for his own destruction; and even his religion and philanthropy are destructive, to the extent that these originate from his own imagination, passions and will” (I don’t recommend Wikipedia for theological precision, but in this case they offer quite a good definition). Because the purpose of this article is not to defend Total Depravity I will not offer biblical support for it. I hope to write such a series of articles in the future.

When we say that mankind fell in Adam, we affirm that as our federal or representative head, Adam’s sin was passed on to each of us. Adam represented the human race, and when he decided to forsake God, he did so on behalf of every one of us. This is similar to a head of state declaring war on another nation - his declaration means that each person within his nation, each person that he represents, is now at war with the foreign country. Job laments “Or how can he be pure who is born of a woman?” (Job 25:4) No one who has been born of man can escape this radically sinful nature. Nature tells us that like begets like; a dog can only give birth to dogs, not to cats or frogs or birds. Similarly a sinful person can only bring forth other sinful people (which helps us understand why Jesus needed to be conceived of the Holy Spirit).

Another affirmation we make in the Christian view of the fall is that there is a sense in which the first sin is ours in the same way in which it was Adam’s. While we did not actually take the piece of fruit and eat it, God foreordained our relationship to Adam long before Adam fell so that from the moment of our conception we are sinful. We are not innocent until we commit our first sin, but are condemned, sinful people from the moment our lives begin. Psalm 58:3 tells us that “the wicked are estranged from the womb; They go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies.” Before we are even born we are already sinful, and deliberately go astray as soon as we are able.

How Sinful Are We?

And so it is that humans are sinful from the moment life begins. But how sinful are they? Like many Calvinists today, I am convinced that a term such as Radical Depravity or Radical Corruption is superior to “Total Depravity.” I believe these terms contribute to clarifying the matter, for by total depravity we do not mean that people are as depraved as they could possibly be—they are totally corrupt in some ways but not in others. It is here that it is helpful to distinguish between extent and degree.

When we say humans are totally depraved in extent, we mean that their depravity has reached every part of their being. It extends to every part of them - their mind, body and spirit are all corrupt. When we speak of a total degree of depravity, we indicate that something is exactly as bad as it could possibly be so that there is not even a tiny bit of good left. The doctrine of total depravity speaks to extent, not to degree.

Consider an illustration of three glasses of water. The first glass contains clean, pure water and represents Adam in his perfect state before the Fall. Now consider a second glass which contains this same clean, pure water. We can put one drop of deadly poison in that glass and it renders that entire glass poisonous so that if you were to drink it, you would quickly drop dead. That one drop extended to every part of the glass even though the entire vessel is not filled with poison. This represents humans after the Fall. While they are not wholly corrupt, the corruption they do have extends to every part. And finally consider a third glass which is filled entirely with poison. From top to bottom there is nothing but deadly poison. This represents Satan, who the Bible portrays as being absolutely corrupt so there is no good left whatsoever, but this does not represent humans here on earth. Humans are not as depraved as they could possibly be.

The Equalizer

Total Depravity is the great equalizer of humans before God. Even when we compare the most sinful man to the young boy who was saved long before he even knew how to get into serious trouble, we see that all men are equal before God. The Bible teaches that we are not sinners because of the degree of our depravity, but because of the extent. The degree exists only because of the extent.

The extent of my depravity is just as great as that of the worst sinner the world has ever known. The thoughts of his heart were continually evil, and so were mine. He hated God, and so did I. As one who came to trust Christ as only a child I had little opportunity to express this hatred and resentment, yet the Bible teaches that it was there all along. Titus 3:3 tells us that “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.” These words are as true of a child as they are of an adult. Even my sweet little two-year-old redhead downstairs passes her days in foolishness, disobedience and malice towards both God and men. There are none who are truly innocent before God. Ephesians 2:1-3 tells us as much where it says, “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 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—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.”

Were it not for Scripture’s clear teaching on Total Depravity, I may have cause to boast or to consider myself somehow more innocent than a person who instigated and endured much pain and suffering before being drawn to the Lord. Yet the Bible teaches me that my depravity, even as a child, was as great in extent as anyone’s. It was only His grace that kept me from being as corrupt in degree. If God delights in saving us, who are depraved in extent, we know also that God can save anyone despite the degree of his sin. If I compare myself to another and find him more in need of a Savior than I, I have made the mistake of comparing my sin to his, instead of comparing my sin to God’s perfection. God does not judge us by comparing one to the other, but against His perfect Law.

Total Depravity is not “mere” doctrine, but is truth that should and must impact every believer’s life. This truth is the great equalizer, for it shows that the best and worst of men are all equally corrupt in light of God’s perfect standard. “The man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it-he will be blessed in what he does.” (James 1:23) God had to stoop just as far to grab me as He did the lowliest criminal, for we were equally dead, equally depraved and equally in need of His grace, His life. The miracle that brought me to life is the same miracle that must bring every sinful man or woman to life. We are equal as we fall to our faces before the cross. An old song by the French Canadian band The Kry says it well:

Down at the cross come and leave your pride
Lay everything at His feet
For all of us He was willing to die
Even when we were weak
When we were still without strength
When we were set in our ways
When we were filled with hatred for Him
Still He was willing to die for you and I

Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom
Let not the strong man boast in his strength
Let not the rich man boast in his riches
For all men are equal down at the cross

This is the biblical teaching on depravity. All humans are corrupt in extent—every part of us testifies to our imperfection, but thanks be to God, not in degree. And before us lies a decision. God tells us that when we die we can anticipate either becoming perfected, so once again we will be like that glass of water that is crystal clear, free from any poison of corruption or being cast out of His presence where we will become like that glass of poison, as corrupt and evil and filled with hate as we could possibly be.

Day two of Together for the Gospel began early. I assume my experience is typical in that I went too bed too late last night and arose blurry-eyed so I could get some breakfast and make my way to the convention center for 8 AM. Today we will be hearing from John MacArthur, Mark Dever, R.C. Sproul and Al Mohler.

We arrived this morning to find on each of our seats copies of The Courage to the Protestant by David F. Wells, The Gospel & Personal Evangelism by Mark Dever, Why We’re Not Emergent by Ted Kluck and Devin DeYoung and The Gospel According to Jesus (the Revised & Expanded Anniversary Edition) by John MacArthur. This brings the total book haul thus far up to 6 volumes. The morning began with two hymns: “Come Thou Fount” and “How Deep the Father’s Love” and after an introduction by Al Mohler, John MacArthur took to the pulpit to preach a sermon on total depravity. But before he did so, Mohler presented to him a medallion struck by Moody to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the first publication of the John MacArthur New Testament Commentary. This seemed to take MacArthur quite by surprise!

MacArthur began by suggesting that this doctrine, the doctrine of total depravity or total inability, may be the most attacked doctrine in the Christian faith. It is the most despised doctrine and consequently it is the most distinctly Christian doctrine. Contrary to all non-Christian views of man, all religions in the world offer some kind of a works righteousness system. People believe they can be good and good enough to contribute to their salvation—to merit favor with deity and a happy afterlife. It is a contrary doctrine because humans are deceived by the gravity of their own condition. Sinners are unwilling to see themselves as they really are. People do not see the evil in their good and the evil in their religion.

So many evangelical spokesmen hate the truth of total depravity as they seem to hate the God of Scripture. They continue to deceive the sinner about his sinfulness and hide the true God behind a domesticated God of their own making. False belief systems all affirm human goodness. But total depravity is the most God-honoring doctrine because it ascribes all of the goodness, all of the work to God. This is not a new doctrine or one that has been invented in recent times or even during the Reformation. It dates back to the church’s earliest days. And here MacArthur provided a brief historic overview of the doctrine.

Churches used to group together over common theology, but today it is over common methodology. So much of current evangelicalism is to find what people desire and to insist that God will give it to them if they have Him as Savior.

MacArthur took us on a survey of several biblical texts which together prove this doctrine. They show that we have inherited a corrupt nature from Adam—we have inherited death. We are sinners by nature, by birth. We are wholly entirely corrupt in every aspect of our being and we rely entirely on God to draw us to Himself. The sinner is unwilling to acknowledge God on His own and unable to accept the gospel on His own.

He then turned to a bit of a definition of “depraved.” It simply means that you can only sin, you can do nothing that pleases God savingly, and that it affects you totally—mind, heart, will, actual, thought, everything. The sinner is utterly unable to raise himself out of his state of death or to do anything to see out of his blindness. The contemporary idea is that there is some residual good left in the sinner. Many believe that sinners have a right to make a free move towards God and this sinner must make the first move to which God responds. But the Bible teaches that the sinner can’t and won’t make this move. He is both unwilling and unable. He has no capacity to make the first move and has no interest in making this move. He may make a false move toward God based upon his own fallen desires.

In regeneration we neither resist nor cooperate. We are acted upon by the Spirit who illuminates our minds so that we can hear and heed the gospel. The gospel call assumes that the sinner can do nothing—it pleads the mercy of God but acknowledges that God must first do His work.

What are the implications of this doctrine?

There are some historical implications to rejecting this view.

Denial of total depravity has been a staple of our religious culture for a while now. It is at the heart of old liberalism which rejected theology in favor of “living like Jesus in the world.” In so doing they destroyed the church. The emerging church is just the same thing and once again denies this doctrine. Inherent in church growth is the idea that the sinner will respond better if the methods change. We can never offer Jesus as if He is the one who will fulfill the sinner’s natural fallen desires. The fallen sinner hates God and loves Himself fatally. He wants a God who gives him what he wants but a biblical approach assaults the sinner’s self-confidence and attacks his confidence in his own religion and spirituality. You have to call the sinner to hate himself and to love God. Never appeal to that which enslaves the sinner to try to get the sinner to respond to God. You are appealing to the very thing that the sinner needs to be freed from. You need to call the sinner to flee from all that enslaves him and have him run to the cross to be saved from all of this. Soft preaching makes hard people. Preach the hard truth and it will break the hard hearts, leaving a soft people.

Another implication of this is that a pastor must be meek; he must be humble. No one should be as meek as those who preach the gospel. This is the only profession where a person can take absolutely no credit for what he does. He can only take credit for the failures.

The bottom line is this: be faithful to understand that the condition of the isnner is not one you can remedy with any kind of human manipulation. All hearts are the same and all hearts need the same message. The message cannot change and the message is what God uses to change sinners.

“Mighty indeed must that foe be who even when crucified is still alive!”

Today those of us who have embarked on a project to read some Christian classics together are going to be looking at the first chapter of J.C. Ryle’s Holiness. You can read more about this effort here: Reading the Classics Together. Last week we began our eight-week study of this book by looking at the Introduction to the book. This week we move on to the first chapter.

It seems a mite strange that a book dealing with holiness would begin with a look at the very opposite of holiness. The title of this post is telling: “Holiness (Sin).” It is like a book dealing with the art of Van Gogh beginning with an examination of the art of Challies or a book dealing with the music of Bach beginning with the music of William Hung. But Ryle makes a compelling argument that this is the place to begin. “The plain truth is that a right knowledge of sin lies at the root of all saving Christianity.” If we do not get sin right, we have no hope of getting holiness right.

Summary

The chapter follows this basic outline:

1. What is sin?
   1. Definition - a vast moral disease which affects the whole human race. “A sin consists in doing, saying, thinking, or imaging, anything that is not in perfect conformity with the mind and law of God.”
   2. Origin - the natural corruption flowing from the Fall. “The sinfulness of man does not begin from without, but from within.”
   3. Extent - pervading all men and all parts of a man. “The understanding, the affections, the reasoning powers, the will, are all more or less infected.”
   4. Guilt - we can’t know how bad it is but we approach the truest estimation in the Cross. “I do not think, in the nature of things, that mortal man can at all realize the exceeding sinfulness of sin in the sight of that holy and perfect One with whom we have to do.”
   5. Deceitfulness - sin pretends to be a small and light thing. “You may see this deceitfulness in the wonderful proneness of men to regard sin as less sinful and dangerous than it is in the sight of God and in their readiness to extenuate it, make excuses for it and minimize its guilt.”
2. Sin seen like this, should make us:
   1. Humble ourselves. “What a mass of infirmity and imperfection cleaves to the very best of us at our very best!”
   2. Thank God for the gospel. “We need not be afraid to look at sin, and study its nature, origin, power, extent, and vileness, if we only look at the same time at the Almighty medicine provided for us in the salvation that is in Jesus Christ.”
3. A thorough understanding of the sinfulness of sin provides the antidote to:
   1. Vague Theology. “People will never set their faces decidedly towards heaven, and live like pilgrims, until they really feel that they are in danger of hell.”
   2. Liberal Theology. “I know nothing to likely to counteract this modern plague as constant clear statements about the nature, reality, vileness, power, and guilt of sin.”
   3. Ceremonial Christianity. “When that wonderful part of our constitution called conscience is really awake and alive, I find it hard to believe that sensuous ceremonial Christianity will thoroughly satisfy us.”
   4. Perfectionism. “if men really mean to tell us that here in this world a believer can attain to entire freedom from sin, live for years in unbroken and uninterrupted communion with God, and feel for months together not so much as one evil thought, I must honestly say that such an opinion appears to me very unscriptural.”
   5. Low views of personal holiness. “There has been of late years a lower standard of personal holiness among believers than there used to be in the days of our fathers. The whole result is that the Spirit is grieved and the matter calls for much humiliation and searching of heart.”

Discussion

There were several areas that jumped out at me this week. Last week I discussed how relevant the book seems to our day, even though it was written long ago. This chapter only affirmed its relevance. Liberalism, perfectionism, a low value on personal holiness: all are evident in our day as much as they must have been in Ryle’s. It is good to read the classics and to see that they speak even today.

There were a couple of quotes that I highlighted (and wanted to highlight again and again). Yesterday I congratulated my friend Stephen Altrogge on the birth of his first child. Today I wanted to send him this (but perhaps I’ll wait a day or two). I’m know that he knows this, but it is good to reaffirm this truth often:

The fairest child, who has entered life this year and become the sunbeam of a family, is not, as his mother perhaps fondly calls him, a little “angel” or a little “innocent,” but a little “sinner.” Alas! As that infant boy or girl lies smiling and crowing in its cradle, that little creature carries in its heart the seeds of every kind of wickedness! Only watch it carefully, as it grows in stature and its mind develops, and you will soon detect in it an incessant tendency to that which is bad, and a backwardness to that which is good. You will see in it the buds and germs of deceit, evil temper, selfishness, self-will, obstinacy, greediness, envy, jealousy, passion, which, if indulged and let alone, will shoot up with painful rapidity. Who taught the child these things? Where did he learn them? The Bible alone can answer these questions! Of all the foolish things that parents say about their children there is none worse than the common saying: “My son has a good heart at the bottom. He is not what he ought to be, but he has fallen into bad hands. Public schools are bad places. The tutors neglect the boys. Yet he has a good heart at the bottom.” The truth, unhappily, is diametrically the other way. The first cause of all sin lies in the natural corruption of the boy's own heart, and not in public schools.

So often theology we know to be true is overcome by our emotional attachment to our children. Theology we would extend to others is discarded when we look at our children. This is particularly true in the case of depravity. But Ryle will not let this happen.

I also greatly enjoyed Ryle’s thoughts about original sin providing the only workable solution to the extent of human depravity. I’ve been reading God is Not Great, the anti-religion screed by Christopher Hitchens and he offers a slightly different take on depravity. “Evolution has meant that our prefrontal lobes are too small, our adrenal glands are too big, and our reproductive organs apparently designed by committee; a recipe which, along or in combination, is very certain to lead to some unhappiness and disorder.” When men consider the most fundamental truth of human nature and do so without God, this is the best they can do. Prefrontal lobes are too small, adrenal glands are too big, and reproductive organs are badly designed. These factors combine to explain all of the terror and warfare and evil that exists. What nonsense! Men may scoff at the account of Adam’s sin, but what else can explain the widespread problem? And what else can even begin to suggest a solution. Ryle gets it right. “And we say that nothing solves the complicated problem of man's condition but the doctrine of original or birth-sin and the crushing effects of the Fall.” And again, “I know no stronger proof of the inspiration of Genesis and the Mosaic account of the origin of man, than the power, extent, and universality of sin.”

Finally, I loved his hopeful expectation when looking to the future. “Nothing, I am convinced, will astonish us so much, when we awake in the resurrection day, as the view we will have of sin and the retrospect we will take of our own countless shortcomings and defects. Never until the hour when Christ comes the second time will we fully realize the ‘sinfulness of sin.’ Well might George Whitefield say, ‘The anthem in heaven will be: What has God wrought!’” Oh, how I look forward to seeing the full measure of the greatness of the Savior and the mercy of God. And what better way to understand this, than to regard His purity in contrast to my imperfections. And this, of course, is exactly what Ryle has attempted to do in this first chapter. Now that we have considered our sin, we are able to move forward to the solution to that sin and to its eradication, both now in part, and in eternity in full.

I walk away from the book this week with a greater appreciation of my sin and a better appreciation of how I cannot even begin to understand just how awful my sin appears to such a holy God. Yet I trust that as I see more of the holiness of God I will see more of my own sin and then begin to understand, just a little clearer, how great a Savior it took to bring about forgiveness for a man like me. The anthem, indeed, must be “What has God wrought!”

Next Time

We'll continue the book next Thursday (September 13) with the second chapter ("Sanctification"). If you are interested in joining in, please do. There is still lots of time to purchase the book or to read it online. See this discussion (Read the Classics Together - Holiness) for information.

Your Turn

I am interested in hearing what you took away from this chapter. Feel free to post comments below or to write about this on your own blog (and then post a comment linking us to your thoughts). Don’t feel that you need to say anything shocking or profound. Just share what stirred your heart or gave you pause or confused you.