Myth-busters: Total Depravity is Utter Depravity

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No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

Apostle Paul said, "'But we did not yield in subjection to them "'for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel "'would remain with you.'"

In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her king.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. Steve Cooley is here, and WVNE is sayonara.

WVNE is in our rear view mirror. Well, if we had a mixture of German speakers and Indian speakers, it might be

V -W -N -E. Okay, moving right along.

A VW, a Volkswagen. Volkswagen. Yes, so Steve, today we're gonna talk a little bit more about Mythbusters, but tell me how the conference was with Pat.

How'd that work out? You know, it was probably one of the best conferences in recent memory.

I'd say in the last year, best conference by far. We're recording this a couple days before the conference, so that is why.

Oh, letting people in behind the curtain. Yes, have you read any good books lately, Steve? See, letting people, you know,

I've really been impressed by the book on, examining, what's his name?

How to Memorize Book Titles. No way. Yeah, that one, that one, loved it.

The guy in New York City. Tim Keller. Tim Keller, yeah. Engaging Keller. Yeah, Engaging Keller. Engage.

Yeah, thought that was really good. Yeah, I think that's excellent. What do we do if we're not in an urban environment?

Are we pretty much smoked out here in the middle of nowhere? Well, I think we just have to engage with the culture where we are.

We have to infect and affect the culture. Culture affects effects.

How about that? Okay. Yeah, my Zondervan manuscript on S.

Lewis Johnson's Romans Commentary is due in about three weeks, and I just asked the agent the other day, because it's supposed to be about 90 ,000 words, is it okay, or do

I include footnotes in that number, or not, because I've always been working under the assumption you don't include the footnotes.

Right, you do include the footnotes. You do. Because it's like total space, is that the idea?

You know what, I'm not really sure, but actually. Can you not go over the 90 ,000 words? Well, it's an 85 ,000 page word deal.

85 ,000 pages, that's very impressive. It's called SUMA. And you have 10%, according to this publisher, 10 % wiggle room, plus or minus.

Really? So it's about 94 ,000 now, and see, what I was doing is I was taking some of the text out and then dumping it to the footnotes for extra juice.

Okay. If you know what I mean. Yeah, to pump it up, pump up the jam. So how do you write a commentary for both scholars, pastors, lay people, and neighbors?

You don't. Yeah, I know. No. That's why I'm doing it. Steve, today in Mythbusters, we are continuing our

Tuesday series, where Steve and I talk about something that Christians are tempted to believe.

Would you say Christians are gullible? Why are they tempted to believe so many myths?

Maybe they're just some are immature, they buy into media, they read too many blogs, they

Facebook too much. No, I think these days, I think the tendency is to just see something with the word

Christian and to just accept that on face value. I think, now that's not always true, but I think, you know, discernment is really a lost art, and so you see a

Christian bookstore, and therefore you presume that everything in it is Christian. You see, you know,

Christian CDs, you think they're Christian. Everything is Christian, Christian, Christian. Christian radio station.

Everything is Christian, unless it's not. Steve, I came out of the Christian bookstore with all kinds of swag, and I had a

Deon Sanders biography, listening to the Unitarian, what's that one, who's that guy that's kind of Unitarian now?

Brooks and Dunn or somebody like that? What are their names? Brooks and, oh,

Phillips, Craig, and Dean? Yeah, something like that, I don't know their name. Yeah, their oneness pentacostal.

Did you know, this is a breaking news story, and I'm gonna talk about this at the conference on Saturday, but there are no

Unitarians in heaven. That's a breaking news story? Worthy is the lamb who was slain.

The spirit just told you that? Yeah, breaking news story. And then I think I also wanna just correct you, since we have the

European flavor to the show today, it would be discernment. Discerning.

I'm gonna have some discerned tonight, so. Yeah, that's good, your wife makes a mean discernment.

So today, Mythbusters number, whatever it is, five, six, seven, or eight, here's the myth, and then Steve will deconstruct the myth.

Ready? I'm ready to wax eloquent. Okay, total depravity is utter depravity, utter depravity, that's the myth.

Well, I think the first thing, you need to define total depravity, of course, then when I do that, that'll sort of dispel the myth.

I think there's a real lack of, you know, we were talking about lack of discernment. It's fun to say, isn't it?

No, it's more fun to say discernment. Did you know Tom Clancy died today? I did, yeah, I saw that, only 66,

I think, or something like that. That's right, that's not that far off for us. No, it just goes to show you never know. Okay. So, and there's the guy with unlimited resources, pretty much like we have here at No Compromise Radio.

Well, that's why we're no longer on WVNA, because we have unlimited resources. Unlimited resources, kind of like unlimited, oh, sorry, back to the subject at hand.

Total depravity just means, well, you know, really, it is better to talk about it in terms of ability, because the point is, we have no ability in and of ourselves to choose

God, to follow God, to believe in God, because of Adam's fall. The Ephesians 2 says that we are dead in our sins and trespasses.

2 Timothy 2, Romans 6 talks about, you know, before we're saved, we're slaves of Satan.

We have no, the myth of free will, in other words, is what total depravity is meant to destroy.

And total depravity, though, does not mean utter depravity, which is of a whole different stripe, just means you're horrible, you're as bad as you could possibly be.

Yeah, I think that's excellent, Steve. What I was taught back in seminary and early on in my

Christian career, do I have a career? It's a long and storied career.

Yes, it's a long and winding career. No, I just said that on purpose. When I think of total, if I say to myself,

I'm as bad as I could get before I was a believer, totally bad, totally depraved to the nth degree,

I would be thinking wrongly. Total, though, meaning pervasive, meaning it totally affects the person.

It affects their mind, it's fallen. The fall affects the emotions, the will.

What's wrong with your neck? Oh, it's just really stiff. Okay. I'm stiff -necked. Nobody could see that. Yes, stiff -necked, that's right.

And so it affects the mind, soul, will, strength, everything about the person is affected.

And to pick up where you left off, the will is also affected. It isn't some Gilligan's Island of righteousness.

Well, I mean, this whole idea that, you know, somewhere inside of you, there's a little spark, there's a little flame, you know, there you go.

There's just a little spark that God just kind of, you know, brings to full flame. And that's, no.

Steve, I eat Quaker oats every morning, but you're doing some Quaker theology with a little inner light stuff,

George Fox. This little light of mine. Yeah, perfectly. That's of my will. I'm gonna make it shine.

The fall happens early in Genesis. And a few chapters later, then

Yahweh saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

That's an indictment of all indictments. But there were still some good people. Now, not everybody though,

Steve, was as bad as they could be. As we talked about Sunday night, Hitler could have been worse.

I think he really did like dogs, which is good. Yeah, so Hitler liked his dog till the end.

Yeah. What was the dog's name again? I think it was Goebbels. We treated him like a dog, which reminds me of the funny story, since we're not paying for airtime, we can just talk about whatever we want now.

No, it's still valuable. When I went to Germany five, six years ago, and Christian asked me if I would do the

Shepherds Conference there, MacArthur was gonna be videoed in, and I would be the live guy, I'd be the guinea pig. And I would say to my friends, it just seemed right to me to say

I was going to the German Shepherds Conference. Ba -dum -bum -tsh. Uh -huh, and it was like a dog training. It was a dog training deal.

Halt. Okay, okay, so let's think about it this way.

If you were going to give me a synonym for the two words that are very important theologically, total depravity,

Steve, give me some other ones. Remember R .C. Sproul's? Radical something. Corruption.

Yeah, that's it. Excellent, okay. So men and women, because of the fall, are radically corrupt.

Adam's sin was imputed to all of our accounts, and in consequence to that, we have a sin in nature.

What's another way to put this? Total inability, would you like that?

Yeah, I'd love that. I think that's better, because you are totally unable to do something, versus total depravity, we don't get the pervasive stuff, sometimes we just get the degree.

Well, and even radical corruption. You know, when I think about that, I think of like, I don't know, a leaky battery.

I mean, you know, and it just gets kind of, yeah, in other words, it doesn't really, I think total inability pretty much tells me what

I need to know, which is I have absolutely no ability. Jesus said in John six, "'No one can come to me, except the

Father draws him.'" And so you look at that and you go, what does it mean that no one can? Does that mean some can?

All can? No one means no one can. That's exactly what he meant.

Perfect, if I were trying to teach this to a group of younger kids, like at our

Awana program or something, Awana, and I would take a glass of water and I could drop in some oil, that oil would all stay at the top and it would stay coagulated, it would remain apart from the water.

But if I took some red dye number two, didn't you like to play with dye when you were a kid? Mom's dye and the food dye, red dye two, yellow, blue?

Mm, usually not, except for at Easter egg time, because bad things happen.

That's exactly right. And so if you put a drop of red dye in a glass, it pervades everything.

Is anything left untouched? So we don't mean that you, to utter depravity would mean you couldn't sin any more than you, you know, you sinned to the nth degree already, you couldn't sin anymore.

Everything you did was totally evil. I mean, it would make you basically Satan incarnate, because everything that you did would be as bad as it could possibly be.

Yeah, so let's talk about the depravity of man, total inability, radical corruption, as it relates to common grace,

God restraining sin, common mercy, if we wanna use Arthur Pink's terminology.

We believe, don't we, Steve, that God has restrained sin from its inevitable consequences of being like a snowball, going pell -mell down some huge hill?

God does restrain sin. Absolutely, we even see that implied in Romans 1. You know, you were talking about that,

I think, Sunday night, not from the standpoint of him restraining, but of God giving them over.

Well, what does that imply? That there were worse levels that they could go to, and that God had restrained them previously from going there.

And now he's like, fine, go ahead. We love that Jonathan Gershner quote here.

There's always, in the unbelieving man, room for - Deproofment. Deproofment. You wanna improve?

When I first got saved and listened to that Jonathan Gershner tape, I think it was Roger Nicole. Actually, Roger Nicole was the first speaker, the outside conference speaker at Bethlehem Bible Church.

Did you know that? No, the first. Roger Nicole. Roger Nicole. Yes. Well, he's a, that was a good get.

I liked it when somebody asked him about some C .S. Lewis quote, and he's like, I prefer to stick to the text and not exegete the author,

Anglican, Brit. I've had some people ask me about C .S.

Lewis, you know. We need to do a whole show on that, but we need the quotes. Yeah. He was an excellent writer,

I'll give him that. Yes, he was. But so was Macon. Yes, and I mean, the thing about C .S.

Lewis, for all the enjoyment I've gotten out of his books is he's just not a theologian, and people need to wake up.

Well, he's a theologian. He's not a particularly good theologian. Now, Steve, what do

I now do when I say to people that in my mind, I know

I'm a nobody, even though I've had an illustrious career, that when

I say Tim Keller is the modern -day C .S. Lewis, what might

I mean by that? I don't know, but that's a body slam. Well, you know, with C .S.

Lewis, a lot of good thinking, a lot of deep thinking, but when we compare what

C .S. Lewis says to the Bible, C .S. Lewis doesn't quite meet the test. You know, he falls short in a number of areas.

Now, could C .S. Lewis have been a Christian? I think so, you know, but I - I want it to be the case.

Yes, I, but I - Keller's got a better chance of being a Christian than C .S. Lewis does. Well, probably.

I'm not using chance. Probably, you know, based on his view of the atonement and some other things. But, you know, it's funny because as a

Mormon young man, when we would talk about the Chronicles of Narnia, people would just say, you know, he would have made a fine

Mormon. Well, now, as I look back on it, what a horrible insult, you know? I'd hate for somebody to say, you know, after I'm dead and they look at some of the things

I've written or said and they go, you know, Steve would have made a fine Mormon. Forbid it, Lord. You know, that's all, that's all

I can say. True or false, Steve? We're talking about total depravity and the concept here versus utter depravity.

The thieves have honor. There is honor among thieves. Yeah, yeah, it's true.

I mean, look, I worked in jails for a number of years and there are some things that they will not do.

There are things that they don't like to do, like snitch on each other and stuff like that, but that's not something that they will not do. What they will not do is show any kind of forbearance for, say, child molesters.

There's nothing lower on the face of the planet to them than a child molester and don't let them get their hands on them because they will mess them up.

Abortion doctors are nice to their own kids or can be nice to their own kids. Yeah.

Generally. I was reading out something about Gosnell earlier today and it just makes me sick.

How about this term, radical fallenness? I don't really like the term because it doesn't flow off my tongue very easily, but I like the idea that we're radically fallen because everybody forgets about the fall these days and if you get the fall wrong, then you get everything wrong.

Oh, exactly. Because you wind up, again, like my Mormon friends, you wind up a

Pelagian. Their articles of faith say that we believe we're held responsible, this is what they believe, for their own sins only and not for Adam's transgressions.

That's what they believe. Steve, when the Bible says in Genesis 8, every inclination of man's heart is only evil from childhood, would it be fair to say that the unbeliever is unable to not sin?

Yes, that would be very fair to say. I do like saying that. The unbeliever is not able to not sin.

I forget what the Latin is, I've heard R .C., I don't know how many times I've heard him do that, I don't know, a couple hundred, you know, and then he does the simultaneously, you know, sinner and yet righteous, you know, kind of thing.

Yes, absolutely. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God, Romans chapter eight, verse seven and eight, you could read for your listening pleasure.

So now let's make this a theological conversation that turns into practical application.

Steve, what does total depravity, spiritual inability, radical fallenness, radical corruption, what does it say about our need for a savior and how

Jesus talks about no man can come to me unless the Father draws him? This leads up to something, doesn't it?

Well, it absolutely does and what it shows is that there's nothing we can do. I mean, that's why

I like total inability. It shows that something has to be done to us. And so we come to a passage like John three,

Jesus with Nicodemus, you know, perhaps the preeminent religious

Jew of his day. And he doesn't say, you know, obey better, you know, tweak your belief system a little bit, be open to this, that or the other.

What he says is something has to happen to you, Nicodemus, your best efforts, this is my expansion of the text, but your best efforts are worthless.

Something has to be done to you, you must be born again, you must be born from above, the Holy Spirit must regenerate you.

There has to be a savior, there has to be direct intervention from God, initiated by God, as we were talking on Sunday.

Nicodemus, you don't need a teacher, you need a deliverer, you need a savior because you're unable to do it.

If people were able to respond, if there was plagianism, then what would that say about the death of Christ?

Would he have had to die? Probably not, because for a good man, one might even dare to die.

Since they're gonna deny penal substitution, they would say, no, you wouldn't need Christ's death for that, but you would need

Christ's death for an example of love. Well, you know, there are some religious systems that would say, you know, you need them for your sins, but then, you know, you can repent, change your mind, stop sinning, and eventually become righteous yourself.

So there would be some systems that would say that too, which would be wrong by the way. Steve, when man fell,

Adam fell, he was our representative, and God gave him the fruit of his faith.

Of his action. The image of Adam and the image of man since, we still retain the image and likeness of God, and it's there, although it's marred.

Don't you think if we were utterly depraved, then it would be more than a marring of the image and likeness of God, it would be a complete defacing?

Yeah, it would be an eradication. You know, if I were to use this analogy, because when you say, you know, marred,

I think of a penny with scratches on it, and you can look at that and you can still tell what it is. Well, if you let,

I don't know, if you run it over with a train, you can still sort of tell what it is. But if you run it through a train, and then maybe melt it down, and you know, do some other things, bury it in rocks and stuff like, then you wouldn't be able to tell that there was ever a penny there.

And that's kind of the idea. It's not eradicated, we're not as bad as we could be.

We're still image bearers, it's just, it's rough. You know, it's harder to see that.

It's like at Yosemite, you put in two quarters in a penny, and you crank that thing, and then out comes some little souvenir.

Doesn't look like a penny at all, except it's the same color of a penny. When I think of marred, Steve, I think of Johnny Marr, the

Smith's lead guitarist. And when you hear a good solo, you've been marred. That's so sad, the

Smiths. I mean, that's just a whole, you know, group of musical folks that I just assume pass over.

Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spot? Jeremiah 13, 23.

How about 1 Samuel 24? I don't quote this very often, but I love this verse, because I love every verse. Out of the wicked comes wickedness.

It's just natural, you know, or, you know, Jeremiah 17, nine, the heart is deceitful.

You know, if you can't trust your own heart, contra Hollywood and everything else that you've ever heard, well, then what can you trust?

If you can't trust your own feelings, your own gut reaction, well, why can't you? Well, it's because you have a sin nature.

You lie to yourself. And all of your being has been affected by the fall. Steve, what does the doctrine of total depravity, an informed doctrine of total inability, what does it do for our evangelism?

How does it remind us to stay on point, stay on target, preach the text? Well, we can't appeal to some inherent goodness in people.

What we need to do is bring the text to bear, why? Because it's only the Bible that will, that the

Holy Spirit will use to bring people alive, to really show them their need for a savior, right? We want people to understand that they're sinful.

Well, we can't get there without using the Bible to say, you know, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Well, what does that mean? You know, what is a sin? How do we fall short of the glory of God? Well, does that really mean that we're commanded to be perfect?

Well, yeah, it does. Well, but I sin all the time. Good, then you understand that somebody has to pay for your sins.

You need a sin bearer. Steve, when I forget the doctrine of radical corruption and try to evangelize, inevitably,

I just find myself in a philosophical, scientific, imperialistic, no, no, empiricism, dealing with that.

Instead of saying, you know what? I know all these questions you have, but there's a bigger issue. This is what the Bible says about your sin.

This is what the Bible says about your savior. I entreat you to believe in this risen savior. Yeah, you wind up looking for evidences, or you wind up, ultimately, what you wind up doing -

Points of contact. Yeah, you wind up arguing with the unbeliever on their turf, you know, where they wanna argue, instead of, and the only thing that we have, which is scripture.

You know, faith doesn't come by reasoning to, you know, to a suitable conclusion.

Faith comes by hearing the word, and that's what we need to preach to people.

That's what we need to tell them. The good news at No Compromise Radio is that even though we're spiritually bankrupt,

A, in Adam's fall, we sinned all, as the New England Primer would say, even though that happened, we have a savior.

We have a last Adam, and he is greater than our spiritual inability. Think about Jesus, not fallen, not affected by the fall, and he could live that perfect life that Adam was supposed to live, and we get credit for that life through faith.

And why did he not have a sin nature? Because he was born of a virgin, therefore avoided the entire curse of Adam and that whole lineage there.

What does that mean about Mary? She was a sinner. She had a sin nature. I'm Catholic bashing.

Mike Abendross, Steve Cooley, No Compromise Radio. You can write me at info at nocompromiseradio .com,

and you can write Steve. Tuesdayguy at nocompromiseradio .com. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible -teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston.

You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.