Sunday's Hymn: Leaning on the Everlasting Arms

What a fellowship, what a joy divine,
Leaning on the everlasting arms;
What a blessedness, what a peace is mine,
Leaning on the everlasting arms.

Refrain

Leaning, leaning,
Safe and secure from all alarms;
Leaning, leaning,
Leaning on the everlasting arms.

Oh, how sweet to walk in this pilgrim way,
Leaning on the everlasting arms;
Oh, how bright the path grows from day to day,
Leaning on the everlasting arms.

What have I to dread, what have I to fear,
Leaning on the everlasting arms?
I have blessed peace with my Lord so near,
Leaning on the everlasting arms.

—Elisha A. Hoffman

Other hymns, worship songs, or quotes for this Sunday:

• Only a Sinner at The Happy Wonderer
• John Newton Explains Why Grace Is Amazing at The Outspoken Tulip

Selected Reading, June 20, 2020

Besides what I’ve posted here this week—Jesus Died, the tenth truth in the 16 truths series, and Total Depravity, the latest edited and updated theological term—I recommend these.

Bible Study

Knowing the Bible: Hebrews
Here’s a twelve week study on the book of Hebrews by Matt Capps. The Bible study I host in my home/back yard has been working through Hebrews since January of 2019. But then we only meet once a month because we all spend a lot of time studying (20 hours or so for me) in between our face-to-face (zoom or in person) meetings. If you want something that goes faster than that, this looks good.

Gospel

Propitiation
Another Simply Put podcast. I’m linking this one because it fits so well with the 16 Truths post I posted this week.

Prayer

In this house of prayer
An old post from Steve Hays who passed away a couple of weeks ago. It’s fiction, but is likely based on Steve’s own practice of prayer. 

Theological Term of the Week: Total Depravity

total depravity
The inherent corruption of humankind which “extends to every part of our nature, to all the faculties and powers of both soul and body; and that there is no spiritual good, that is, good in relation to God, in the sinner at all, but only perversion.”1

• In scripture:

  [B]oth Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written: 

  “None is righteous, no, not one;
  no one understands; no one seeks for God.
  All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
  no one does good, not even one.” (Romans 3:9-12 ESV)
  

  And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body  and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. (Ephesians 2:1-3 ESV)

• From the Second Helvetic Confession, Chapters 8 & 9:

  Sin. By sin we understand that innate corruption of man which has been derived or propagated in us all from our first parents, by which we, immersed in perverse desires and averse to all good are inclined to all evil. Full of all wickedness, distrust, contempt and hatred of God, we are unable to do or even to think anything good of ourselves.

  What Man Was After the Fall. Then we are to consider what man was after the fall. To be sure, his reason was not taken from him, nor was he deprived of will, and he was not entirely changed into a stone or a tree. But they were so altered and weakened that they no longer can do what they could before the fall. For the understanding is darkened, and the will which was free has become an enslaved will. Now it serves sin, not unwillingly but willingly. And indeed, it is called a will, not an unwill(ing).

• From Concise Theology by J. I. Packer:

  The phrase total depravity is commonly used to make explicit the implications of original sin. It signifies a corruption of our moral and spiritual nature that is total not in degree (for no one is as bad as he or she might be) but in extent. It declares that no part of us is untouched by sin, and therefore no action of ours is as good as it should be, and consequently nothing in us or about us ever appears meritorious in God’s eyes. We cannot earn God’s favor, no matter what we do; unless grace saves us, we are lost.

  Total depravity entails total inability, that is, the state of not having it in oneself to respond to God and his Word in a sincere and wholehearted way (John 6:44; Rom. 8:7-8). Paul calls this unresponsiveness of the fallen heart a state of death (Eph. 2:1, 5; Col. 2:13), and the Westminster Confession says: “Man by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation; so as a natural man, being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, is not able by his own strength to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto”

• From Living for God’s Glory by Joel Beeke:

  [T]otal depravity means that sin is tragically inclusive, i.e., it dreadfully impacts every part of us. There is something terribly wrong not only with who we are inwardly, but with every aspect of our being. No element of our personality is less affected by sin than any other. Our intellects, our consciences, our emotions, our ambitions, our wills, which are the citadels of our souls, are all enslaved to sin by nature…. 

  Total depravity means that when God scrutinizes the human heart, affections, conscience, will, or any part of the body, He finds every part damaged and polluted by sin. Apart from saving grace, every part is alienated from God and actively pursuing sin. If the Spirit teaches us this experientially, we will understand Jonathan Edwards’ confession: “When I look into my heart, and take a view of my wickedness, it looks like an abyss infinitely deeper than hell.”

Learn more:

1. Got Questions: Total Depravity - is it biblical?
2. Simply Put: Total Depravity
3. Loraine Boettner: Total Depravity
4. Bob Burridge: You Are Worse Than You Think
5. R.C. Sproul : Human Depravity
6. Brian Schwertley: Man’s Need of Salvation: Total Depravity and Man’s Inability

Related terms: 

• fall (of man)
• image of God
• inability
• noetic effects of sin
• original sin

Filed under Anthropology

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