Total Depravity
Paige Patterson
The doctrine of election is generally considered the most hated doctrine in the church. According to some, lack of agreement on exactly what election means makes it a despised doctrine, emphasized by some, neglected by others. Actually, the most hated doctrine is the doctrine of the exclusivity of Christ in salvation. The second most hated doctrine, especially in the postmodern era, is the doctrine of human depravity. The columnist Mike Adams, speaking from a political point of view, suggested that this fact alone is the difference between conservative and liberal perspectives: “If there is one thing that separates the conservative from the liberal it is his view of human nature. The conservative sees man as born in a broken state. This tragic view of human nature sees man as selfish and hedonistic by design.”1 Adams continued:
This tragic view of human nature also explains why conservatives often speak of religion and family values. Given his selfish nature, man must internalize some reason to behave in prosocial ways. That fact that he falls short of these values does not mean he is a hypocrite. The one who does not even believe what he says is a hypocrite. The one who believes what he says and falls short is merely human.2
There are two reasons Jerry Vines asked me to write on the doctrine of total depravity. First, he wanted me to address the most objectionable doctrine. The second reason was somewhat more pointed. When he called and asked me to write this article, he said, “I just could not think of anybody who modeled total depravity as well as you do!”
To address the subject of total depravity, we must go to the Scriptures. Since it is commonly known that I am neither a Calvinist nor Reformed, I can perhaps be permitted this observation. A tragedy exists in the pulpits of most non-Calvinists. Far too many preachers apparently feel no mandate to preach sermons expounding the biblical text. Thankfully, many of our Calvinistic brethren are still proclaiming the Word of God instead of pop psychology. If a preacher is not a Calvinist and yet is not consistently expounding the Word of the Lord, that preacher is not pleasing the God who inspired the Book. No wonder so much depravity is exhibited in churches, considering the fact that preachers are often giving their people no insight into what God’s Word really says! Preachers are too busy entertaining their congregants. I commend my Calvinistic friends for consistently teaching the Bible.
The locus classicus for the subject of depravity is found in Romans 1–3.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things. Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting (Rom 1:18–28 NKJV).3
Then a litany of deeds, which are characteristic of the human family, follows:
Being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful; who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them (Rom 1:29–32).
Paul continues his description of the human condition:
What then? Are we better than they? Not at all. For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin. As it is written:
“There is none righteous, no, not one;
There is none who understands;
There is none who seeks after God.
They have all gone out of the way;
They have together become unprofitable;
There is none who does good, no, not one.”
“Their throat is an open tomb;
With their tongues they have practiced deceit”;
“The poison of asps is under their lips”;
“Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.”
“Their feet are swift to shed blood;
Destruction and misery are in their ways;
And the way of peace they have not known.”
“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth to be a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus (Rom 3:9–26).
Those passages are seldom read in contemporary churches, and they are expounded even less frequently. Neither the modern mind nor the postmodern mind wants to hear about God’s verdict on the human family. Having read the texts, what exactly are Christians to understand about depravity? First, the question, What is depravity? needs to be discussed. Second, a brief discussion about the origin of depravity by exploring the question, How does it happen? needs attention. Finally, an answer to the question, What can a dead man do? must be considered.
The Meaning of Depravity
These verses display several observations concerning the meaning of depravity.
1. “There is none righteous, no, not one” (Rom 3:10). Depravity means that there is not a single human being on the face of the earth who is right with God. Prior to the exercise of regeneration and justification, whereby he is made right with God through the blood of Christ, there is not a single person, however religious or ethically moral he may be, who is righteous before God.
2. “There is none who understands” (Rom 3:11). Whatever else is happening in depravity, intellectual abilities have been adversely affected. Rather than being able to see clearly what humans need to see, at the very best, they see truth in a distorted way. That is true even for those who have come to know Christ. As the apostle Paul said, “For now we see through a glass darkly” (1 Cor 13:12 KJV). Christians are looking forward to a time when they shall see with great clarity. If even the redeemed do not see with perfect clarity, what shall be said of those who are still in an unredeemed state? On the one hand, “what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them” (Rom 1:19); but, on the other hand, “the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor 2:14). In his state of depravity, a man may know that God exists and that He is overwhelmingly powerful; but he will still fail to understand the nature and truth of God.
3. That same verse provides a third observation. “There is none who understands. There is none who seeks after God” (Rom 3:11). The direction of depraved man is away from God. While he is going away from God, he may go to church because of a sense of obligation; but he is still going away from God. On his way away from God, he may take his coat and, in an act of chivalry, lay it over the puddle of water so that a lady can walk across. It is a good deed, but it does not change the direction in which he is going. He is going away from God because he is depraved.
4. “They have all gone out of the way; they have become altogether unprofitable” (Rom 3:12). Isaiah echoes this: “All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned, every one, to his own way” (Isa 53:6). This action has necessitated the Lord’s laying upon Christ the iniquity of all humans. Humans have become unprofitable. They have turned to their own way; and in going that way, there is no way by which they profit spiritually—they are totally depraved. “There is none who does good, no, not one” (Rom 3:12). Someone may protest that this verse fails to acknowledge the acts of nobility such as frequently attending worship, doing an act of chivalry, giving money to Tsunami victims, or any number of good things. The verse does not mean that a person never does anything good. Rather, one can never do anything that is counted as good toward a right standing with God. “There is none who does good, no, not one” (Rom 3:12). In addition, any good deed, however laudable it may be, is invariably tainted with the contagion of human sinfulness.
5. “Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways. And the way of peace they have not known” (Rom 3:14–17). Total depravity means that there is no ultimate peace in the heart. There may be denial. Someone may insist that he is living a wonderful life and having a good time, but this claim is shallow. Deep inside lies a troubled heart. The presence of war in the world is a continual reminder of total depravity; and that war, which courses over the face of the globe, wherever it may be found, is the same war that is going on in the human heart. There is no peace in the heart. If at no other point, the heart is not at peace because there is enmity toward God and His purposes; humans are totally depraved (Col 1:21). Finally, “There is no fear of God before their eyes” (Rom 3:18). There may be those moments when a man is in a foxhole, the ordinance is falling, and a certain fear is elicited. In that moment he may even cry out to God. But as a matter of the course of his life, he lives in such a way as to show that he does not understand the power of God—let alone the justice and the holiness of the God.
To illustrate God’s perspective regarding sin, suppose a person goes to school to become a heart surgeon. He goes to the hospital one morning, prepared to do surgery. He goes by the medical records room and reads over his patient’s chart so that he knows exactly what needs to be done. Putting that aside, that physician walks into the preparation area or the scrub room and scrubs himself down. They give him a green beret to cover his hair, put a green robe around him to cover his clothes, and even give him green moccasins for his feet. Then he dons the surgical gloves. He now walks into the operating room.
The patient is on the operating table, and the surgical team has gathered. He asks the nurse to pull the sheet back from the chest of the patient. The nurse reaches over and pulls back the sheet to expose the chest of the patient; and, as she does, three cockroaches race from under the sheet across his chest and onto the floor. What will the surgeon say? “Who is responsible for these conditions in this operating room? My patient will not die of heart problems, nor will he die of a mistake I made. He will die because there is filth in the operating room!”
The revulsion that he would feel as a heart surgeon under those circumstances is one in eight to the six hundredth power how God views sin. One may begin to understand how a holy God feels about one single solitary sinful thought. “There is no fear of God before their eyes” (Rom 3:18).
Total depravity, like Trinity, is not a biblical term. Like Trinity, the term provides a short form helpful for stating the truths above. The purpose is to demonstrate that man is fallen in every aspect of his being and cannot, without regeneration and the imputed righteousness of Christ, ever please God or be satisfactory to God. Some Calvinists (not all) take the term to mean that in order for a depraved human being to respond to God’s redemptive act in Christ, that person must first be regenerated. In other words, God regenerates an individual, thus enabling him to exercise repentance and faith. Except for citing John 6:44, the argument garners little other biblical support but follows the logical demands of the Calvinistic system.
While no one comes to Christ of his own volition (“unless the Father draws him,” John 6:44), the Bible also affirms that “I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples unto Myself” (John 12:32). The Father’s plan for the Suffering Servant is one way by which appeal is made to every human heart. Calvinist C. H. Spurgeon saw as unscriptural the idea that regeneration preceded faith.
If I am to preach faith in Christ to a man who is regenerated, then the man being regenerated is saved already, and it is an unnecessary and ridiculous thing for me to preach Christ to him, and bid him to believe in order to be saved when he is saved already, being regenerate. But you will tell me that I ought to preach it only to those who repent of their sins. Very well; but since true repentance of sin is the work of the Spirit, any man who has repentance is most certainly saved, because evangelical repentance never can exist in an unrenewed soul. Where there is repentance there is faith already, for they never can be separated. So, then, I am only to preach faith to those who have it. Absurd, indeed! Is not this waiting till the man is cured and then bringing him the medicine? This is preaching Christ to righteous and not to sinners.4
Therefore, all people, though totally depraved and unable to do anything to save themselves, receive the witness of Christ lifted up in His atoning work to draw them to the Savior. This enablement, together with the witness of the Word of God and the convicting agency of the Holy Spirit, is adequate to elicit faith but may ultimately be resisted by the sinner in his depravity. As Norm Geisler says:
Extreme Calvinists believe that a totally depraved person is spiritually dead. By ‘spiritual death’ they mean the elimination of all human ability to understand or respond to God, not just a separation from God. Further, the effects of sin are intensive (destroying the ability to receive salvation).5
But this view negates the order of salvific events found throughout the New Testament.
The Origin of Depravity
The depravity of all members of the race must be understood in connection with the rebellion of Adam in Eden. The soteriological message of the Bible is intimately tied to the historicity of the Genesis account of the temptation and fall of Adam. Romans 5:15 and 18 paint the picture.
But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man’s offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many (v. 15).
Therefore, as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life (v. 18).
The question to be addressed is the meaning of the word “many” in verse 15. If “many” means that only some of the race were adversely affected by the sin of Adam, then an argument for limited atonement would be possible since the gift of God’s grace in Christ abounded only to some. But verse 18 renders that understanding impossible. Through one man’s offense, condemnation came to “all men.” So through Christ’s righteous act, God’s gift is made available to all. But the cause of universal human depravity is clear. This is confirmed again in 1 Cor 15:22 when Paul declares, “In Adam all die.”
In what sense does the whole race die in Adam? Augustus Hopkins Strong delineates several historical theories, but for most evangelicals the choice is between the Federal Theory of the imputation of Adam’s sin and the Natural Headship Theory. Strong defines the Federal Theory as follows:
According to this view, Adam was constituted by God’s sovereign appointment the representative of the whole human race. With Adam as their representative, God entered into covenant, agreeing to bestow upon them eternal life on condition of his obedience, but making the penalty of his disobedience to be the corruption and death of all his posterity. In accordance with the terms of this covenant, since Adam sinned, God accounts all his descendants as sinners, and condemns them because of Adam’s transgression.6
Strong’s objections to this theory are well taken. The theory is extra-scriptural, contradicts Scripture, and impugns (even if this is not intended) the justice of God. In addition, the Federal Theory fails to explain adequately the transmission of a sinful nature and does not account for the necessity of the virgin conception of Christ.
Strong defines the Natural Headship Theory that many of the Reformers advanced:
It holds that God imputes the sin of Adam immediately to all his posterity, in virtue of that organic unity of mankind by which the whole race at the time of Adam’s transgression existed, not individually, but seminally, to him as its head. In Adam’s free act, the will of the race revolted from God and the nature of the race corrupted itself. The nature which we now possess is the same nature that corrupted itself in Adam—“not the same in kind merely, but the same as flowing to us continuously from him.”7
This explanation rings true, offering a viable explanation for the effect of Adam’s sin upon all subsequent members of the race. Also, it has the advantage of transferring the inherent proclivity to evil from Adam to all subsequent humans but establishing guilt before God as the act or rebellion against God of each individual. By the same token, the virgin conception of Jesus, the second Adam, is necessitated since if Jesus were born with a sinful nature, then He, too, would have been susceptible to sin. As the second Adam, with no sinful nature, He was able to confront temptation, triumph over the overtures of Satan, and remain a spotless, sinless sacrifice for Adam’s race.
When our first parents had eaten of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they immediately began to demonstrate in many ways how sin affects the race. First, they discovered their nakedness and made aprons of fig leaves (Gen 3:7). Once detached from the tree, a fig leaf withers and dies—not a very profitable long-term solution, to say the least. Human solutions to spiritual problems always fail. Our first parents knew it did not work because when the voice of the Lord God was heard when He was walking in the cool of the day, they hid themselves from an omniscient, omnipresent God (Gen. 3:8). Sin never makes people clever. They hid themselves, thereby indicating that they knew the fig leaf solution was inadequate.
Why did Adam and Eve cover their reproductive organs? They knew those were the very organs of their bodies that ought to have been the most treasured because with their reproductive organs they could do something that could not be done in any other way. God has so designed the man and the woman to make it possible for them to join with Him in making a new human being who has the potential, if rightly related to God, to live forever. What a treasure God has given to humanity! But Adam and Eve were mortified about the exposure of those organs because by those organs they were going to perpetuate the memory of their rebellion against God. Every son, every grandson, every great-grandson right on down the line until now—all have been affected by the sin of Adam. All the fig leaf solutions—the human solutions of the world—are not going to suffice. Later, when they discovered the bloody, bludgeoned body of their son Abel, they could only say, “Look what we have done.”
Can the Dead Respond?
Are humans born guilty before God? That cannot be demonstrated from Scripture. Humans are born with a sin sickness—a disease that makes certain that humans will sin and rebel against God. Humans are condemned for their own sins. The Bible says this repeatedly (cf. Ezk 18:19–20; Rom 1:32; 3:23). What about Eph 2:5, which says that humans are dead in trespasses of sin? If humans are dead, then they cannot do anything to respond to God. Dead people cannot do anything. When people are dead, they are dead!
As a boy in Southeast Texas, I often hunted in the woods. Rattlesnakes were a favorite prey, and I had only one weapon. I visited the army surplus store and purchased an old bayonet, which I learned to use like a machete. At age nine I was armed to the teeth with a bayonet. My friends and I would find a rattlesnake, and I would chop its head off. One day I was not too accurate, severing the reptile about six inches behind his head. He was dead, and I left him there for a while before touching him to be sure that he was dead. He was such a big rattler that I wanted to take him home and show my father. In a careless moment, I reached out to take his frame, and at that moment the snake’s head struck at me and nearly got me. In fact, he did strike the bottom of my blue jeans. I was so glad I was not wearing shorts that day. Its teeth stuck in the bottom of my blue jeans. That was a dead snake!
Actually, being dead does not assure that someone can do nothing. Ephesians 2:1–3 demonstrates this situation:
And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.
Note that those who were dead in sin walked in lust and fulfilled the desires of the flesh and mind. When Adam and Eve first took the fruit of the tree, they died—“The day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen 2:17). They did die then! Yet in another sense they kept on living. Though dead spiritually, they could and did respond to God, preparing for His visit, hiding, talking with Him, and eventually accepting His remedy for their nakedness.
Consider Rom 4:16–22 for what it says about Abraham.
Therefore it is of faith that it might be according to grace, so that the promise might be sure to all the seed, not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of all (as it is written, “I have made you a father of many nations”) in the presence of Him whom he believed, even God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did; who, contrary to hope, in hope believed, so that he became the father of many nations, according to what was spoken, “So shall your descendants be.” And not being weak in faith, he did not consider his own body, already dead (since he was about a hundred years old), and the deadness of Sarah’s womb. He did not waiver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully convinced of what He had promised, He was also able to perform and therefore “it was accounted unto him for righteousness.”
Without straying far from the text, one can imagine what may very possibly have happened: Three men—two of them were angels and one the Angel of Yahweh—came to visit Abraham and Sarah one day under the Terebinth trees at Mamre. They said to Abraham, among other things, “You are going to father a child. As a matter of fact, Sarah your wife is going to bear a child” (cf. Gen 18:10). Sarah was behind in the tent and laughed because she knew it was not possible. The men asked, “Why did Sarah laugh?” “Oh! I did not!” Sarah said (cf. Gen 18:15). Her depravity was apparent. She then lied about it, the visitors went down to Sodom, and the days passed.
One night about eight o’clock, the sun had long since set in the west. They had their lamb kabobs and barley loaves for dinner and maybe a few bitter herbs washed down with goat’s milk. They had just brought the camel saddles into the tent and placed a carpet over them. Abraham was leaning against them, working with some leather. One of the camels had died a few months before. They tanned the hide, and now Abraham was making some new sandals for his feet from the hide. Sarah was leaning up against the other camel saddle and making herself a new dress out of the beautiful red fabric that was so characteristic of that part of the world.
While Abraham was working on the sandals, he just looked over at Sarah, and a smile came across his face. Perhaps he was thinking, “She has lost some of that young beauty she once had, but I remember it very well. Did Pharaoh fall for it? He dropped like a rock into placid water! Abimelech nearly got in trouble also. She was a looker, no question about it. He just could not take his eyes off her. He just kept looking at her. She looked at him and said, “What?!” Abraham said, “I did not say anything!” She said, “Yes, but you are looking at me!” And he said, “Well, is that criminal?” “No, but it is just the particular way you are looking at me. I have not seen that in a long time.” “Don’t worry about it, Honey.” He went back to working on that leather sandal, but soon he was looking at her again. She caught him again and said, “What are you thinking?” He said, “Nothing.” She said, “That is not true. There is a smirk on your face. I haven’t seen that for years. I know what you’re thinking!” He said, “Yes, Honey, you know we are going to turn in a little early tonight.” Sarah cautioned, “You have lost it!” “Yes,” replied the aged patriarch.
Every old man ought to love this passage! The text declares that he did not stop to consider his own body as though it were already dead, since he was, after all, a hundred years old; nor did he consider the deadness of Sarah’s womb. All Abraham did was to consider his own faith in the promise of God regarding the birth of Isaac; and sure enough the impossible happened because with man it may be impossible, but with God all things are possible. His faith led to an interesting night. That interesting night led to the promises of God becoming reality.
Sarah’s plan to produce a male heir through her servant Hagar not only failed but, with the birth of Ishmael, inaugurated a host of headaches from which the world still suffers. Without God’s plan and miracle, human efforts to meet the need inevitably fail (Gen. 16:1–16). Isaac’s birth was a miracle of God’s hand, but Abraham and Sarah cooperated.
It was October 25, 1944. The U.S.S. St. Lo, along with other ships operating in Filipino waters, was attacked for the first time by kamikaze pilots.8 I once heard a sailor give a report of an incident that happened that day. Even if apocryphal, it demonstrates the point about depravity and inability. According to this veteran, one of the sailors on the St. Lo opened the door and came out onto the bridge just in time to be transfixed where he stood. He could not believe it. Less than 100 feet away, a Japanese suicide bomber was coming right at him. He knew it was going to hit him. He knew he was going to die. At the last second, somehow the plane dropped just a little below the bridge and crashed into the St. Lo with a full load of bombs. The explosion knocked him from his feet, blew out most of his hearing, and immediately engulfed him with a fireball. He knew that he was on fire. The fire was so intense that it blinded his eyes, but he knew he was on fire. He could feel that, and he did the only thing a man would do under those kinds of circumstances. In desperation he thought, “I’ve got to get the fire out even though I know I am dead,” and he just threw himself overboard into the ocean.
When the sailor plunged beneath the waters, the flames, of course, were extinguished. He came back to the surface and could not see anything at all. He began to swim, but after a little while, he realized there really was no use—he was far away from shore. About that time the St. Lo finally sank beneath the waves; and when it got down to about 50 feet of depth, the depth charges the St. Lo was carrying exploded in an unbelievable display of destruction. Water flew into the air, and the sailor felt the full force of the explosion. The explosion rattled him again, but he did not see anything because he was blind. He floated and struggled as long as he could. He later expressed fear that he may have even caused the death of other sailors because as he encountered objects in the water, not knowing what they were, he would struggle to get hold of them, only to have them drift away from him. He only prayed they were not other sailors, but he did everything he could to save himself. Finally, he realized no hope remained.
About that time, though injured and his ears nearly ruined, the sailor heard faintly the whirring sound of the helicopter. As he listened to the sound of the helicopter hovering overhead, he began to shout, “Here I am! Here I am! Save me! Here I am! Save me!” The chopper dropped the collar down to him, but due to his lack of sight and the ocean’s rising swells, he could not find the collar and get a hold on it. He was growing weaker by the moment, and at that point the corpsman in the helicopter said to the pilot, “I’m going after him.” That corpsman dived into the water and surfaced next to that sailor. He got over to him and reached out to help him, but the sailor was so panicked by then that he actually fought him off as though he thought the corpsman was attempting to take him down. I suppose he may have imagined that he was another one of the sailors who had been hit from the St. Lo, and so he actually tried to fight off the one who would be his savior. Finally, the corpsman hung on to him until he could get the collar around him, and then he gave the signal to the helicopter. The wench began to do its work and lifted that sailor into the helicopter. He was eventually delivered to the hospital.
Weeks went by, accompanied by several surgeries. Finally, the doctor told the sailor, “Son, I do not know whether I have been able to save your eyes. We have done everything we can do. We are going to come to the moment of truth and remove the bandages to see if your sight has been saved.” The sailor said, “Well, I am ready to live with it either way, but I want to know if I can see.” So in a semi-darkened room, the doctor first removed the outer bandages and then gradually the cup bandages closest to the eye. The first visual for the sailor was the face of the corpsman who had jumped into the water, placed the collar around him, and saved him.
The heavenly Father is the Admiral who saw our hopeless condition and sent that helicopter. That helicopter with the whirring blades is like the Word of God. The Lord Jesus is like the corpsman; He came to Earth and leaped into the water to save us even while we resist him. Three years—ages six to nine—were the most miserable of my life. I thought that the invitation hymn, “Just as I Am,” had 336 stanzas, and we seemed to sing them all in every service. My father would stand at the front and plead for people to come to Christ. I resisted Jesus and fought with the Holy Spirit; as in my own depravity, I refused to come to Christ. Finally, the Lord Jesus made Himself known to me through the Word of God—through the testimony of the Holy Spirit of God. Some wonderful day I am going to stand in heaven. The scales of all remaining depravity will have been taken away, leaving my glorified body; and the first face I will see is the One who loved me so much that He gave Himself to save me from my sins. We will stand before the Lord Jesus Christ.
If analogies are pressed, they all break down. Analogies do work as illustrations to help understand what is involved in depravity. Humans are all like that sailor. Humans are blind and cannot spiritually hear as they ought. They cannot save themselves. The sharks are closing around them, their strength is dying, and they are going down. Humans are totally depraved. They cannot help themselves. That is what depravity means. Humans are in sin that has come from their father Adam, and now it has been visited upon them. They are helpless and hopeless in that sin, but they can still cry out to God. All the people on the face of the earth can cry out to God. Abraham did not count his body or Sarah’s womb dead, even though he was a hundred years of age, but instead he believed God.
Robert Picirilli speaks of preregenerating grace. Of this he pointed out, “By definition, pre-regenerating grace is that work of the Holy Spirit that ‘opens the heart’ of the unregenerate (to use the words of Acts 16:14) to the truth of the gospel and enables them to respond positively in faith.”9 Further, he stated:
Theologically, this concept meets the need of the totally depraved sinner. As already acknowledged, the unregenerate person is totally unable to respond positively, by his natural will, to the offer of salvation contained in the gospel. Pre-regenerating grace simply means that the Spirit of God overcomes that inability by a direct work on the heart, a work that is adequate to enable the yet unregenerate person to understand the truth of the gospel, to desire God, and to exercise saving faith.10
In brief, the wise Blaise Pascal noted:
It is dangerous to prove to man too plainly how nearly he is on a level with the brutes without showing him his greatness; it is also dangerous to show him his greatness too clearly apart from his vileness. It is still more dangerous to leave him in ignorance of both. But it is of great advantage to show him both.11
Gracious Lord, we are sorry for our sin. We do not know why You ordered things as You did and why we inherited a sin nature, but Lord, we have certainly demonstrated that we have it. We admit that to You openly. Depravity has touched every part of our being. We are not what we ought to be physically; we are not what we ought to be mentally; we are not what we ought to be spiritually. In every way we are totally depraved, but, Lord, I thank God that the Bible’s witness, throughout its pages, is that “whosoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Rom 10:13). I believe that You have given us the witness of the Spirit of God, the witness of Holy Scripture, and the witness of countless thousands of missionaries and proclaimers of Your Word who have preached the gospel of Christ to every man. Everyone who hears it and calls out to You will surely be saved. God grant that we be faithful. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.
NOTES
1. Mike Adams, “The Nature of Conservatism,” Salem Web Network, May 18, 2009, http://townhall.com/columnists/MikeAdams/2009/05/18/the_nature_of_conservatism; accessed December 1, 2009.
3. Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture passages are from the New King James Version.
4. C. H. Spurgeon, C. H. Spurgeon’s Sermons: Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit (Pasadena, TX: Pilgrim Publications, 1970), 532.
5. N. Geisler, Chosen but Free (Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 1999), 56.
6. A. H. Strong, Systematic Theology (Philadelphia: Judson Press, 1907), 612.
8. See “USS ST LO (CVE 63),” available from http://www.bosamar.com/cve/cve63.html; accessed December 1, 2009.
9. R. Picirilli, Grace, Faith, Free Will: Contrasting Views of Salvation, Calvinism and Arminianism (Nashville: Randall House, 2002), 154.
10. Picirilli, Grace, Faith, Free Will, 154.
11. M. A. Molinier, The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal (trans. C. K. Paul; London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1885), 45.