Why I Love the Doctrine of Total Depravity
Monday, November 2, 2009 at 4:46PM Total depravity is going to be this week’s theological term, so I searched the archives of the very old blog to see whether I’d posted on it and I found this. I’ve punched up the ending a bit, added the picture, and I’m reposting it.
I came to Christ when I was very young. For almost as long as I can remember, I have been a crooked arrow being made straight rather than a crooked arrow spinning wildly. My testimony doesn’t start with “I was a teenaged prostitute drug-dealing felon, but God saved me.” Nope: “I was a naughty five-year-old” is about the worst I can do.
This is why I love the doctrine of total depravity: Understanding total depravity is the best antidote for pride. You might not know it, but coming to Christ as a youngster and being protected from some of the more sensational sins can be a recipe for pride, but the uncomfortable truth of total depravity is the great equalizer.
When Paul says
For we too were once foolish, disobedient, misled, enslaved to various passions and desires, spending our lives in evil and envy, hateful and hating one another (Titus 3:3 NET)
the “we too” includes me. You may not have seen it, if you’d known me, because I didn’t have much of an opportunity to express those passions and desires in a visible way. But the seed that blossoms into evil and envy and hate was there germinating in my heart.
This includes me, too:
And although you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you formerly lived according to this world’s present path, according to the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the ruler of the spirit that is now energizing the sons of disobedience, among whom all of us also formerly lived out our lives in the cravings of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath even as the rest… (Ephesians 2:1-3 NET)
Yep, there I was, in the evil band marching along the vile path. I looked innocent enough, with my ringlets and ruffly dress and patent leather shoes, but what you couldn’t see is that I was being energized by the spirit that is ruled by the prince of the power of the air. The same spirit working in the teenaged prostitute drug-dealing felon was already working in me. I was a cute little girl; I was a child of wrath. And God, in his mercy, reached down and plucked me from the power of darkness and transferred me to the kingdom of the Son (Colossians 2:13 NET).
Do you see? I, too, have a former life. But God saved me!
Total depravity is both the nastiest and loveliest of truths. It shows me exactly what I was—and what I am, minus God’s grace to me. That’s the hideous part, but I must look at it—see it; for it’s by knowing exactly what I was that I can understand what has been done for me. It’s by fathoming how low my heavenly Father stooped to grasp me that I can begin to plumb the depth of his love for me. And his deep, deep love is glorious.
