Total depravity - is it biblical?

In what does the ruin of man consist? By sinning he has placed himself under a burden of guilt and has rendered himself liable to judgment. There is more than this, however. He has also become possessed of a fallen nature utterly and incorrigibly bad, with a heart "deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked" (Jer. 17:9). But even this is not all. Sin has acted like a subtle poison in his veins and has so stupefied and perverted his reason, will and judgment, that "there is none that understands, there is none that seeks after God" (Rom. 3:11). Even in the presence of grace and the sweet pleadings of the Gospel men reject the Saviour provided, and with perverse unanimity prefer the empty follies of the world. Like the "great herd of swine" they rush madly to destruction, and hence the only hope is a sovereign interposition of God.

We place the heart after the conscience. Man's heart was captured first by Satan — a deceived heart turned him aside, then the act of disobedience followed; that which was forbidden was taken, and the eyes of the conscience were opened. Man knew within himself, by the light of the commandment he had broken, what good and evil were. In the state of innocency man's conscience was like a sleeping babe; he fell, and his conscience awoke like a giant, never to close the eye again. The sense of good and evil is acquired, never for all ages to be lost; but, with the sense of good and evil, man, in his fallen state, has no power to attain to righteousness, no power in himself to rise out of the state of evil in which he is.

We may however discern this that man's will, if he is left to himself never turns toward God. The fall has given it a permanent twist away from Him. This is definitely stated in Romans 3:10-12. It is stated first of all that "there is NONE righteous;" that is, none "right with God." Yes, we might say, that is true, but surely some people are more sincere and understanding than others, and so these get converted. Not so, for there is "NONE that understands." This makes man's plight much worse — nobody right, and nobody understands their desperate position. But again we might say, Yes, but surely some will have an innate sense — a kind of intuition — that they need God, and so begin to seek after Him. But once more, not so, for, "there is NONE that seeks after God."

But first of all, man is proven to be absolutely lost. There is no power of recovery found in the creature. Left to himself he must inevitably perish. Put into the most favourable circumstances, given the best education, given the most perfect religious training, brought up in the most moral environment: he is still a sinner. He is under death and wrath on account of his sins, he loves sin, and serves it with every member of his body; he is a slave to his lusts, and an inveterate hater of his Maker.

There is nothing wrong with our head, and hands and feet, for we are exhorted to yield our “members as instruments of righteousness to God” (Rom. 6:13)—what is wrong is the utterly depraved fallen nature of man—“the flesh” as Scripture so often calls it. Was there ever a more sweeping condemnation than Genesis 6:5, “Every imagination of the thoughts of his [man’s] heart was only evil continually”? A more deadly description, allowing no loophole of escape, so precise is the language, could not be framed.

Internally, the wreck is no less complete. The sources of life have been poisoned; the mainspring of man's will and affection has broken. Chaos reigns supreme in the mind and heart of every sinner. Instead of his being joyous and free, moving with intelligent subjection in the sunlight of God's favour, he is in bondage. Instead of being master of himself, sin is his master. Instead of his spirit being in control of mind and body, it has become like a captain of a vessel, overpowered and battened down beneath hatches, at the mercy of a whole crew of evil passions and lusts.

The flesh is the flesh, and its character is that of enmity against God. It cannot be improved; thus, those who are in the flesh, have no power to please God (v. 7, 8).

Such then is the solemn truth as to fallen man. His ruin, and utter wickedness, as recorded in the Scripture, and demonstrated at the Cross, is shewn to be complete. Good for us if we justify God in His Words, not only admitting that what God has said is true about men generally, but that it is the truth as to each one of us individually — that, however much the flesh may have been restrained by particular circumstances, yet this is its true character.

The difficulties which envelop this subject largely vanish if we begin with the full acceptance of the truth that man is a totally lost creature with no point of recovery in himself. In Romans 3:10-11, the word "none" is thrice repeated. We all easily acquiesce in the first, "There is none righteous." Still for an unrighteous man there is hope if only he recognizes his estate. Alas! "There is none that understands." That being so the only faint hope lies in a man being in some way attracted Godward so that he may begin to understand. Alas, once more! "There is none that seeks after God." Then hope is dead as far as man is concerned!

The apostle carries us back now to what, alas, was our previous fellowship. We have been called to the fellowship of Christ, but how good for us to look back and see what He has called us out of. "And you," he says, "hath He quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins." This is the first time in the epistles that we find such a statement with regard to man's condition. The epistle to the Romans speaks of our being under death as the penalty upon our sins. It speaks of our being dead to sin as the effect of the new place of identification with Christ in His death, which God has given us; but now there is something more than this. It is man himself who is dead. That state, impracticable of help to any except God, is his. There is no possibility of self-help. There is no possibility of working out of that condition. No work is conceivable in such a state. This death is Godward. There is not anything which for Him constitutes life at all. He says that this is not a condition of irresponsibility, however, but the reverse. It is "in trespasses and sins" that men are dead; active enough, fully active in this character in which the epistle to the Romans has spoken of them, but dead as to the hopelessness of it, as to the total absence of all response to God which it implies. Activity there is enough, "in which ye once walked," he says, "according to the course of this world, according to the ruler of the power," or authority, "of the air, the spirit which now worketh in the sons of disobedience." This is what gives its character then to the course of this world, age, as it is literally, as we have seen; the whole period characterized by that which is away from God, and with the ruler over it who, as the ruler of the power of the air, is exhibited to us as having that complete control of the earth which the heavens have for fruitfulness or for disturbance. This ruler is the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience. They are marked out as the sons of disobedience, as that which gives him title to the power which he manifests over them. How complete is this apostasy, then, from the blessed place in which God created man to be at the beginning, the one with whom He had come down to walk as with a friend. Nor was there any who did not share this place. "Among whom we also," he adds, we Jews as well as you Gentiles, "all once had our conversation in the lusts of our flesh." We had our common fellowship, terrible fellowship indeed, "in the lusts of the flesh, fulfilling the wills of the flesh and of the mind;" that is, the grosser or the more refined and spirit part of our nature, both alike evil and away from God. Thus we were "children of wrath by nature even as the rest." The Jew is in no wise exempt, but, on the contrary, as being in this condition in spite of all the blessing and privilege which God had bestowed upon him, is only, if possible, in a greater depth of evil than the Gentile. Such is man's condition, then.