TOTAL DEPRAVITY: or Free Will? (Calvinism Series: TULIP Part 2) | ask Theocast

Hi, welcome to the second video of our introduction to Calvinism, and in this video we're talking about total depravity, and no, it doesn't mean that everybody is totally as bad as they could be.

Stay tuned and I'll explain what I mean. Hi, I'm Jon Moffitt.

I'm the pastor of Grace Reformed Church and host of Theocast. This is Ask Theocast where we answer your questions from a

Reformed and pastoral perspective. Total depravity, as famously said by R .C.

Sproul, is probably the most important point, and all other points really hang on this first one, and understanding it from a biblical perspective really is going to help explain, and all the other ones kind of fall into place underneath it.

So when someone says they're a 4 .5er, it kind of doesn't make sense to me, and we'll see why here in just a minute.

But when we first start looking at total depravity, the word can be, the two words together can kind of give a misinterpretation of what is being said.

Total, we can conclude that everybody is as bad as they possibly can be. Depraved, right?

Depraved of things that are good. That's not what is meant by this.

Some would use the word total inability is one way. Totally dead is how

I would probably describe it. As it relates to your spirit, you are totally dead, not somewhat or partially.

So there's multiple ways you can change it, and we'll get to the explanation to it here in a minute. But to begin with, a lot of times people say, well,

I reject total depravity because you can see that humans make good decisions to help the old lady across the road or give to the poor.

That is not what we're talking about. That is a reflection of our nature as it relates to the nature of God.

But when it comes towards our ability to believe in God for salvation, that's where we're going to say there's a total inability or death in that relationship.

Now, when you study God's word, everybody has to look at it in its entirety.

You can't just look at one particular passage and interpret the entire Bible or even that verse by itself.

That's what we call biblicism. Biblicism is to look at one verse or a group of verses and make a decision or a conclusion, isolating them, one from the book, the greater context of the

Old and New Testament, or the Bible at large. So throughout history, theologians have created systems, or we would say explanations or lenses to help us understand and interpret the

Bible. Here's some that you are probably familiar with, and if you're not, then maybe you're a heretic and you don't even know it.

But the nature of Jesus is a great example. If you're reading Colossians 1, verse 15, where it says, the firstborn of all creation, you could conclude, and some have, that Jesus is not an eternal being and that he is a created being by the

Father. I mean, this was a doctrine that was rejected many hundreds of years ago by Athanasius fighting against Arius.

So what we have, we have to look at all of this, what the Bible has to say about the nature of God and the nature of Jesus, and make sure that we read individual passages that could be confusing.

We read them in light of what everything has to say, or all the Bible has to say about that subject, meaning the nature of Christ or the eternality of Christ.

Another one could be the omniscience of God or the all -knowing God, God is all -knowing. There are sections of Genesis that you could read where it says, well,

God repented, or God felt sorry because he made man. Well, did God not know that men would turn against him and become evil?

Did God not have this knowledge? Well, you can conclude that, but if you did, you would be a heretic.

We believe that God is all -knowing, and we look at all of Scripture, and we look at those passages of Scripture, and we formulate a conclusion about that particular idea,

God and what he knows, and we can conclude from all of Scripture that he is all -knowing.

Therefore, we go back to Genesis and interpret those sections in light of what we know of all of Scripture.

We're not going to explain those particular two instances in this podcast, but they are well -known doctrines that Christians have clarified for hundreds of years, and so we're going to use that same methodology of how do we know that Jesus is eternal and not created?

How do we know that God is all -knowing and he isn't learning? We're going to use that same method to learn about the nature of man.

Total depravity really is about the nature of man. If you get this wrong, the nature of man, there are so many domino effects that just tumble over in how you understand your relationship to God, how you understand the eternality, like where you're going to spend eternity, how you evangelize, how you care for assurance.

There are so many doctrines that are connected to this one doctrine, the nature of man.

Let's really turn this away from the title, total depravity, and let's have a conversation about the nature of man, and then we'll conclude on why this title works and makes sense.

First of all, we've got to start where the nature of man changed. In Genesis 3, Adam and Eve eat of the fruit.

If you know the story well, all of a sudden they are cursed, and because of this curse, spiritually speaking, their spirit, this connection that they had with God, there's a separation or there is a death that takes place.

A couple of passages that reference not only Adam and Eve, but all who came after Adam and Eve, this is passed down to us.

First Corinthians 15 .22, all of these verses will be in the notes if you want to look at it. First Corinthians 15 .22

says, for as in Adam all died, so we can conclude that all of humanity, our natures, follow that of Adam's and that our spirit within us, which when it says all die, doesn't mean as soon as someone's born, they die.

Well, that wouldn't make any sense, but he's talking about our spiritual nature. Romans 5 .18,

therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men. So, it is not that once you sin, then your spirit dies.

We aren't born neutral. This is what Pelagianism teaches, that everyone is born neutral and then they become a sinner.

No, we are taught that we become a sinner. So, when Adam sinned, he passed this down to all of us, and it killed the spiritual nature within us, that capacity to believe in God and know that God is the one to whom has created all things, and we must trust and follow him and worship him alone.

That part of us was now dead. The Old Testament picks up in this interpretation and understanding.

Let me read you a couple of passages here just out of the Psalm. Psalm 51 .5, David says, behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.

So, Job 15 .14 says, what is man that he can be pure, or is he born of a woman that he can be righteous?

He's saying, because we are handed to this by our parents, we don't have the capacity to be righteous or pure.

Psalm 58 .3, the wicked are estranged from the womb. They go astray from birth, speaking lies.

So, the Old Testament definitely had this interpretation that the human nature is dead. It does not have the capacity to believe in God and therefore obey

God in the way in which God has designed or commanded us to do so. This is a helpful quote

I want to read to you before we go to the New Testament that I would say is a summary from Martin Luther in his book,

The Bondage of the Will. He kind of summarizes a lot of the verses we're about to read, but this is what he says. Man does not do evil against his will under pressure as though he were taken by the scuff of the neck and dragged into it like a thief, being dragged off against his will to punishment.

But he does it spontaneously and voluntarily, and his willingness or volition is something which he cannot, in his own strength, eliminate, restrain, or alter.

So, in The Bondage of the Will, he's making the argument that because of this nature that's dead, the spiritual nature, our sinful nature, which is influenced by Satan, we're going to learn, we are slaves to our sin.

It's part of our nature. It's part of who we are. These are some of the verses that Luther probably used to come to these conclusions.

Romans 3 .10, as it is written, there is none righteous, no not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God.

Now, you would say, hold on, John, wait a minute, just a minute. I know people who vigorously want to seek after God and know who

God is. Well, we're going to go on and explain what that means. There is an awareness of who God is. The Jews, the

Pharisees, believed in God, and yet they would not accept Jesus to be their Savior. So, there's a difference between knowing

God and accepting God to be your Savior, your God, the one to whom you're going to serve.

Paul mentions this again in Ephesians 2. He says, and you were dead, there's that word, in your trespasses and sins.

And once you once walked following the course of the world, following the prince, the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.

So, he's describing someone who's enslaved and doing things that are contrary, and they aren't being forced to sin.

It's part of who they are. Then he says, 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.

1 Corinthians 2 .14, the natural person does not accept the things of the spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

So, he's saying, because your spirit is dead within you, the capacity to in God.

Described to us in Ephesians, Romans, no one is righteous. In 1 Corinthians, Paul says, the natural person, the person that is born without the spirit, this is the natural course of life, you are born of men and women, they do not have the capacity, it says, towards spiritual things because they are unable to discern them because it requires a spiritual nature to do so.

Here's some examples from Jesus, when Jesus is trying to explain the nature of humanity to people in his own ministry.

He's famously, John 3 .16, which we're going to get to here in a minute, but John 3, in this conversation early on,

Jesus is answering Nicodemus's question about what does it look like to go into the kingdom with him.

Jesus says, I say unto you, this is John 3 .3, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Now, to us, that language is so, we're used to it. We're used to hearing it. But Jesus is using a word picture here.

He's trying to use a metaphor, and what does he use? He uses birth. Now, you need to take note of that and don't just shove that aside.

What were you involved in when it came to your birth? Did you bring life to yourself?

No, you did not bring yourself into existence. Jesus is saying, the very thing you didn't involve in, you need to do it again.

Nicodemus obviously says, wait a minute, how am I to re -enter into my mother's room? That's impossible. He got the impossibility.

Of course, Jesus is speaking spiritually, and Nicodemus is speaking physically. Jesus goes on to even explain in that moment, which we're going to look at in the next video, that the spirit has to do this.

Because you are spiritually dead, the spirit has to come in and make you alive, which we're going to talk about in our next video in election.

John 6 .44, a little bit later on in Jesus' ministry, he's talking to a bunch of Pharisees who don't believe that he is

God, and they are very much opposed to the reality that he could be God. This is what

Jesus says to them. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day.

Now, what would be preventing them to come to him? Well, it's their nature, and Jesus goes on to even indicate this later on in the conversation in verse 61.

So, Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, do you take offense at this?

Then what if I were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before, which is to the

Father's right -hand side? It is the spirit who gives life. The flesh has no help at all.

The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life, but there are some of you who do not believe, for Jesus knew from the beginning who was his disciples and who would not believe and who it is that betray him.

He said, this is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the

Father. So, Jesus is openly saying, you do not have the capacity to come and believe in me because your nature is the one that's preventing you.

It has to be granted or it has to be given to you. So, the nature of man is seen throughout all of the

Bible, and it's been indicating over and over again that we are born this way, and then because of our nature, our freedom is bound.

We don't have that freedom because our nature, that part of us that we can trust

God for our salvation, it's turned off. It's dead. It's described as deaf, dumb, or blind, or illustrations by which we use in the

New Testament as relates to the capacity we have to see and to believe in God. Again, I'm going to read to this too.

I think it's helpful from Luther as he's describing the way in which our nature is. He says this, does it follow from turn ye that therefore you can turn, or does it follow from love the

Lord thy God with all thy heart that therefore you can love with all your heart?

So, what he's saying is just because the command's there doesn't mean the capacity's there. In other words, we are commanded to love

God with all our heart, but no one can do that. It's an interesting observation. What do arguments of this kind prove but the free will, he puts it in a quote, does not need the grace of God, but it can do all things by its own power.

But it does not follow from this that man is converted by his own power, nor does the word say, they simply say, if that will turn telling man that he should do, he should do so.

When he knows it and sees that he cannot do it, he will ask whence may he find ability to do so.

The disciples say this, well, then Jesus, who can be saved? And Jesus says what?

Well, with man is it impossible, but with God, all things are possible. The depravity of man totally means you are totally not capable of turning yourself from death to life, from not believing in God to believing in God.

Believing in such a way that you are trusting in Christ alone and nothing else other than to be saved.

This is why, again, going back to the passages in 1 Corinthians where he says, the natural person does not accept the things of the spirit for they are followed to him because they are spiritually discerned.

If you do not have the spirit alive within you, you cannot discern the gospel. Paul literally says that to those who are dead, the gospel is foolish to those people.

I found this quote also helpful from Spurgeon in his series on John 6.

He says, We declare upon scriptural authority that human will is so desperately set on mischief, so depraved and so inclined to everything that is evil and so declined to everything that is good, that without the powerful, supernatural, irresistible influence of the

Holy Spirit, no human will ever be constrained towards Christ. So when it comes to your will to help the old lady across the street to not murder somebody or to give to the poor, those are relatively good things to do, but that can't save you, and that doesn't prove that you have fully put your faith in God and love

God alone. That capacity within us can only be granted to us by the

Holy Spirit because you are dead. So we use all of these sections of scriptures to help formulate all that the

Bible has to say about this subject. You can't just isolate it. It says, well, for whosoever will, that means our wills have the capacity.

Well, there's an explanation to why Jesus said that in John 3 .16, which we're going to look at in our next video on unconditional election.

But in this video, we can conclude from Adam all the way to the writers of the

New Testament, including Jesus, that when men were born under Adam after his fall, that they were born spiritually dead.

They didn't have to be forced to sin. They sinned by nature because the Spirit was not within them, and we do not have the ability to make ourselves come alive and look to Jesus for our salvation.

As Jesus says, that has to be given to us. So total depravity means you are totally dead, spiritually speaking.

You do not have the capacity to flip that light switch on. You can't do that. So we're going to talk about the commands.

Does that mean the commands that are given to us are illegitimate? Can Jesus really demand something of us if we do not have the capacity to do that?

Those are all great questions. We're going to look at all of those passages of in our next video, and if you have any questions or follow -ups or comments or things that might be helpful, leave us a comment below.

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And I will provide some more resources, including our first video, in our comments below.