Of all the doctrines in Scripture perhaps the most hated is the doctrine of the total depravity of man. When we share the gospel with someone, yes, it is important to tell them that God loves them, but to leave out the fact that they are born sinners and rebels against God, as well as totally depraved in their thoughts and behaviors, withholds from them the key to helping them see their desperate need for Christ.
You see man likes to view himself as basically good and until he realizes that this is a lie from Satan, he will never come to grips with his need to cry out to God for mercy and grace to save him from eternal judgment. So, what does man do? Instead of acknowledging that he is a sinner and in desperate need of a savior, he invents religion and a false God as his way to think he can now do some good works and find acceptance from his manmade God.
But the Bible says that man can do nothing to earn his way back to God. He is totally dead in his sin and hopelessly lost. Not only that but he has no desire to seek after God and since he is totally dead in his sin no capacity to search after God. And that my friends is why we must share this doctrine of man being totally depraved, as unpopular as it is, to help our lost friends and family, and those we are sharing the gospel with, realize that on their own they can do nothing to find God. (Ephesians 2:1) states our plight clearly when it says: “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins.”
Not only that but (Romans 3:10-18) tells of our incurable sinful state of affairs, as well as our open hostility toward God, for we read:
10As it is written:
“There is none righteous, no, not one;
11 There is none who understands;
There is none who seeks after God.
12 They have all turned aside;
They have together become unprofitable;
There is none who does good, no, not one.”
13 “Their throat is an open tomb;
With their tongues they have practiced deceit”;
“The poison of asps is under their lips”;
14 “Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.”
15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood;
16 Destruction and misery are in their ways;
17 And the way of peace they have not known.”
18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
Telling someone that we all fit into the (Romans 3:10-18) scenario will often not be received well, but withholding this essential biblical truth leaves the one who we are sharing with no way to understand that their only way back to God is through crying out to God and asking Him to be merciful to me a sinner. Sadly, man wants to believe that he can do something to secure his salvation but salvation is totally a sovereign work of God’s mercy and grace. And unless the Holy Spirit convicts man of sin and begins to draw him to the Father, he can in no way come to Jesus.
In conclusion, yes, it is true that God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life, but it is also true that we are dead in our sins and in desperate need of being born again by the power of God. And just as we play no role in our physical birth, we also play no role is our spiritual rebirth of being born again.
And just as we shared in yesterday’s devotion on the mysteries of God, here is another great mystery: how can God hold us accountable for our sin if we have no capacity to break out of its evil clutches. While the Bible teaches both man’s responsibility and God’s sovereignty it does not try to explain how these two can coexist without violating one another.
I like how Mark Ballenger puts it: “What we can conclude, however, is that the Bible does not emphasize a contradiction between man’s responsibility and God’s sovereignty but emphasizes their harmonic relationship. Our job as Christians is not to spend our lives learning to reconcile these two truths in our minds which don’t need to be reconciled in reality. Rather, our job as Christians is to learn to rely on God’s sovereign strength so we can fulfill our human responsibilities better and better every day.”1
1 Man’s Responsibility and God’s Sovereignty | ApplyGodsWord.com