Christian quotes and Bible verses (2024)

24/09/2021

18/07/2021

16/07/2021

Second: Positive. What we DO mean by Total Depravity, or, What the Bible DOES teach on the subject.

Total depravity means that man is totally dead in sin and not just sick and dying. The sinner is not an emergency room case who desperately need attention before it too late–the sinner is a graveyard case. They are dead, not dying. They are not incurably sick and on the verge of death–they are already dead! Ephesians 2:1 is clear: "And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins . . "

1. Total depravity means that every sinner, including you and me, is destitute or without that love to God which constitutes the fundamental and all-inclusive demand of God's law. The one great thing that all men owe to God is the one thing that they adamantly refuse to give Him.

Matthew 22:35-38 Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, 36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law? 37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 38 This is the first and great commandment.

All men, without a single exception, are guilty of this sin. They simply do not "love God" and put Him first in any sense. They are commanded to do this 24 hours every day, but lost sinners have never consciously ever done one single thing in their whole life for the express purpose of glorifying God. They live to please themselves and have no thought of their indebtedness to God. I once pressed this fact on a high school teacher and he claimed that his three children were produced out of obedience to God's command to "be fruitful and multiply." When I asked if that was the only motive involved, he grinned and said, "Well, maybe not entirely."

This is what Jesus meant in John 5:42: "But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you." That is, we lack the one thing essential in order to please God. We are not at all motivated by either duty or love to God. We are motivated entirely by sin and self.

2. Total Depravity means that every sinner is guilty of elevating some lower affection or desire above regard for God, His Law, and the Gospel. This is the opposite of # 1. Sinners not only do not love the true God and put Him first, but they do love some other God and put that false God first.

https://www.monergism.com/doctrine-total-depravity