Tiptoe through TULIP - T

Total Depravity
What It Does Not Mean

The “T” in TULIP is for Total Depravity. However, this isn’t the best description. Total Depravity does not mean that Man is as bad as he can get. Certainly there are people who are better behaved than others. Even Hitler was probably not as bad as he could have been. Nor does it mean to imply that Man is incapable of doing “good deeds”. Certainly people are capable of obeying the laws of the land, being nice to one another, taking care of family, etc. This is not the intent of Total Depravity.

What It Does Mean

The concept behind Total Depravity is that natural Man, at his core, is sinful. It is close to the idea of Original Sin. It means that Man, by nature, is sinful. Now, admittedly, it goes farther than that. Here is what Total Depravity holds, based on Scripture:

1. Man will not submit to God. According to Rom. 3:9-10 and18, Man is in rebellion. According to Jesus in John 3:19-20, everyone who does evil hates the light.

2. In His rebellion, everything Man does is sin. Paul says in Rom. 14:23, “Whatever is not of faith is sin.” He strongly declares “No good thing dwells in my flesh.” (Rom. 7:18)

3. Man is not externally prevented from submitting to God, but he is morally unable to submit to God. Right after the Flood, God said, “The inclination of man's heart is evil from his youth.” (Gen. 8:21) Anyone who is “in the flesh” (a description of natural Man) is hostile to God (Rom. 8:5-8). When Jesus commented on why people didn’t believe in Him, He had these things to say in John 6:63-65. “The flesh profits nothing.” Further, He made a quite definitive statement. “No man can (believe).” While we might tend to minimize these statements (“He said ‘No man can unless the Father give it to him’.”), those listening took it much harder. “As a result of this, many of His disciples withdrew and were not walking with Him anymore.” Natural Man is, then, hostile to God, inclined only to evil, and, according to Eph. 2:1-3, dead in sins, “by nature children of wrath.” Since the god of this world has blinded Man (2 Cor. 4:4), he is internally prevented from submitting to God.

4. According to Rom. 6:23, our rebellion deserves eternal punishment.
(For a summary, see Rom. 3:10-18)

The Ramifications

According to Rom. 3:12, no one does good. What this means is that no one does what God defines as good. Good, to God, is whatever is done by and for Him (1 Cor. 10:31). While natural Man can certainly be “nice”, he is, by nature, hostile to God and, therefore, incapable of doing anything by and for God. In fact, although nothing prevents Man from coming to God on his own, his natural inclinations make it impossible for him to choose God. To do so would be to go against his own inclinations. In essence, for natural Man to choose God of his own free will would be to choose that which he didn’t want to choose. This would, then, be a violation of free will. The problem for Man in his sinful state is not God. The problem is not so much that he can’t choose God, but that he doesn’t want to choose God. This is the principle of Total Depravity.