So . . . What’s the Purpose of this doctrine of Total Depravity?
The heart, the essence, of total depravity is that it results in our complete dependence on God for redemption. We have sinned, and there is nothing we ourselves can do to un-sin, to restore ourselves with God. God has said:
Romans 3:23 (NLT)
For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.Romans 6:23 (NLT)
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.
Certainly, some of us sin much more than others, or much less, but to God, the amount of sin is not the problem, it is that we sin, and this requires a remedy.
John 3:16 (NLT)
“For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
Our inclination is always that we somehow want to fix this problem of sin by ourselves. We want to do good deeds to counteract our sin. We want to show God that we are worthy of forgiveness because we do good, because we have good hearts. But God has said that there is nothing we can do to offset our sin or to earn forgiveness.
The good news (Gospel) is that God has actually taken care of this for us! God sent his son who lived without sinning and was rejected, persecuted and murdered. Yet because He was righteous, his death on our behalf has enabled God to see past our sin and grant us a free gift of forgiveness. In fact, from God’s perspective, he will see us as if we had never sinned when we accept the forgiveness He has made available to us.
How do we get this forgiveness?
Ephesians 2:8–9 (NLT)
God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.
You see, if we could earn forgiveness by doing good, then we would be able to brag about how awesome we are! God has said “Nope.” We get this forgiveness by accepting a freely given gift of Grace. Grace means receiving something you do not deserve. If you deserve it, then it isn’t Grace, it’s justice. God has chosen to extend Grace to us.
What do we do to get this Grace? We believe. Believe what? That Jesus is God’s son, who became a man and lived a life without sin so that his unjust death could pay the penalty for our sin. The price of our sin has been paid. We only have to accept it by believing.
It seems too simple.
How can God just forgive us without our deserving it, without our earning it? That’s actually the hard part. The concept of Total Depravity is that we can not fix ourselves. God must do it. For God to intervene on our behalf, we have to believe. If we choose to not believe, we reject God’s Grace, and we stand before Him as a sinner.
Do we sin because we are sinners or are we sinners because we sin?
When i said that we sin because it is our nature, because we have been damaged by Adam’s sin (the concept of Original Sin), my cousin Mike asked:
What is the meaning of “by nature” ? Does it determine or cause my inability to love God or is it the source of my depravity?
Theologians often treat this question as an important thing to argue about. That’s mostly what theologians do, argue with each other (though to be honest, their arguments are usually based on intensive study and the desire to resolve questions and clarify things).
Here is John’s opinion:
This is a chicken and egg question.
We sin because we are sinners. We are sinners because we sin.
We have been taught in our western culture that things can be only one thing or another. The reality (and the way that eastern culture looks at things) is that sometimes, something can be both.
For instance: Science teaches us that Light can be both a wave and a particle, but the problem is that those two things are mutually exclusive, and yet experiments have shown that Light is both. Both are true.
The same is true with sin and being a sinner. Why do i say that? Adam’s sin resulted in the nature of mankind becoming damaged. We have an inclination, a propensity, to sin. We have inherited a damaged nature. We are sinners by nature. However, each sin we commit, is a choice. We choose to lie. We choose to cheat. We choose to steal. We choose to hate.
We are sinners by nature, and we are sinners by deed. The solution to both of these problems is the Grace i spoke about above. Believing does not remove our inclination to sin, but it gives us forgiveness and it restores our position in God’s eyes to be someone without sin because Jesus’ death has granted us forgiveness of our sin.
St. Paul says it like this:
2 Corinthians 5:17 (NLT)
This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!
That is the Gospel, and that is why the doctrine of Total Depravity is important.
Please leave a comment with any questions, disagreements, agreements, or things you would like me to explain better.
Here are the links to the first 2 posts about Total Depravity: