The False Identity of Total Depravity

The False Identity of Total Depravity

Contra Total Depravity, part 2

Jeremiah and the Israelites

Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?”

I have heard this verse quoted to me many times by Calvinists. They understand it as the definition of mankind’s sinful condition. But they don’t just stop there. Even though they have supposedly been “born-again,” they apply it to themselves as their own identity as well. Some of them also very much like the idea of calling themselves “the chief of sinners” and “wretched,” and may even go so far as to say that they have a “sin nature.” They self-identify with a depraved sinful condition because Total Depravity is the whole mental framework in which Calvinism is built upon and it is the lens in which they view all of humanity. But no accurate English translation of the Bible says that Christians have a sin nature and when Paul used the term “chief of sinners” he was referring to his previous life, not his current one.

But this is not where our identity should be. Acts 13:38-39 says, “Therefore let it be known to you, brethren, that through Him forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and through Him everyone who believes is freed from all things, from which you could not be freed through the Law of Moses.” Do you see what that says? Those who believe in Jesus are set free from things that the law of Moses could never set people free from. That means, even if Jeremiah 17:9 is an accurate description of every single person of their day, it should not be a reflection of who Christians are today, nor something that we place our identity in. I wonder how many of us live only in the power of the old covenant rather than the new covenant because our thinking is all wrong. Perhaps some of us are not free from things and our hearts and minds reflect not being free from things because instead of renewing our minds to our true identity in Christ, we are un-renewing our minds in conformity with the identity of unbelievers and rebellious Israelites. And then we wonder why we’re still bound and struggling with the same sins we were dealing with ten years ago. And then to top it all off, we hear messages from the pulpit telling us how we are all so depraved, and sinful, and rotten, and some of us just can’t help it because that’s just who we are. But let me ask you this, “do you have more freedom believing in Jesus than Old Testament saints had?”

Perhaps some thinking needs to change here. Romans 6:11 says, “Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” But I like how it is said in KJV, “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Let me ask you, “How can you reckon yourself as dead indeed unto sin if you are at the same time reckoning sin as your identity?” The answer is, you can’t. As long as you think within this paradigm of being a sinner, being depraved, and your heart being desperately wicked and all that, your entire being will conform to that identity. So stop using Bible verses to support and validate your own sinfulness. Just because you found it in the Bible, that does not mean it is an accurate description of you or of your friends or of your own family. Instead, reckon yourself as dead indeed unto sin and alive to God.

What is the context of Jeremiah 17? Let’s see… they were making altars to worship foreign gods, they turned their hearts away from the Lord in rebellion, they were ignoring every warning from God that came through His prophet, Jeremiah. They hardened their own hearts through rebellion, continual sin, and not listening to God. And they sacrificed their children alive into the fire to the false god Molech. Do you sacrifice your children to Molech? Do you ignore every warning from God to turn from sin? Are you worshipping other gods? No! At least, not that I know of anyway. I hope you don’t do all that. Your friends probably don’t even do all that. So, what is the condition of your heart? Is it desperately sick?

What about that verse that says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Oh no. Well, if your heart is desperately sick and deceitful, is it also pure? Will you pass the test or condition to see God? Matthew 5 indicates that if your righteousness does not surpass that of the Scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Jesus’ whole sermon was indicating not that He will just let you in heaven despite you living however you want because He’ll just forgive you. No. But rather, you need a change of heart to fulfill true righteousness that is pleasing to God. Is your heart changed? Is it pure? Has your heart been cleansed? Or is it desperately sick?

For the unbeliever, their heart is sick. Jesus explains this as the Pharisees and scribes were grumbling over the fact that Jesus was eating with sinners. Jesus said, “It is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Lk 5:31-32). But the word “sick” does not imply anything to the nature of corpse-like dead, unable to respond or unable to repent.

Jeremiah 13:23 says, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then you also can do good who are accustomed to doing evil.”

Under the doctrine of Total Depravity, if you have a bad heart then you need to get a new good heart. But there’s nothing you can do to get a good heart. You can’t turn from sin. You can’t even believe. You just have to listen to the gospel over and over again until one day, God decides to zap you with a new heart. But that’s not even a guarantee because if God didn’t choose you in eternity past to be one of the “elect,” then you’re out of luck, my friend. You were doomed from the womb... And that’s the good news of the gospel for all people! Well, except you. It’s just bad news from here on out. “All people” and “the whole world” just means a select chosen people and no one else. The “outward” gospel call is only there to tease you and rub it in your face that you weren’t chosen by God. Which, ironically, the unbeliever is spiritually perceptive of being rejected somehow and innately senses that this is wrong, but just does not have enough spiritual perception granted to them by God in order to truly believe…

But contrary to that message, we believe that Jesus provisionally died for all people to whosoever believes upon Him, they may be saved. We believe the good news is for every single person. So what was going on with the Israelites in Jeremiah’s time? Well, we just previously explained all that so those things apply to this verse as well. These people were not born “accustomed to doing evil,” but they developed sinful practices and rebellion over time. They were not born with hard hearts but they hardened their own hearts by their sin because of the magnitude of their iniquity (v. 22). You see? The application of Jeremiah 13:23 is not about every single individual living on the face of the earth but is specific to the rebellious Israelites. God was specifically describing them. Context is important. Let’s not make the passage say more than it actually says. This verse should be a warning to all those who apostatize and give themselves over to a reprobate mind. Once someone is in a hardened state like that, there is not much hope for their repentance. In this specific situation, the people did not turn from their sin and many of them perished under the Babylonians. And so, Jeremiah 13:23 was true of the Israelites’ condition. But later on, their descendants after them did not grow up and develop the same hardness of heart and so those people repented and turned from their sin (Neh 9). Though, at this time, the Holy Spirit did not dwell within any one of them. Yet, they were able to recognize the error of their fathers and decided to not follow the same path.

If a leopard cannot change his spots and every sinner is like a leopard, then does that mean the Israelites in Nehemiah’s day were unable to repent and believe? Obviously not. Which means, not every sinner has become like a leopard. However, we still maintain that believing in Jesus is where true practical righteousness comes from. All throughout the Bible, faith in God resulted in obedience. But faith is something that we do as we respond to who God is and what He has commanded. Leighton Flowers makes a good point in mentioning that even if a leopard can’t change his spots, is he incapable of admitting that he has spots? Is he completely oblivious that he has spots so that he will never recognize that they are there? What about a patient who needs life-saving heart surgery? Is he unable to walk into the hospital, ask for help, lay down, and submit to the knife of the surgeon? The Calvinists don’t think a lost sinner is capable of responding to God that way. A more accurate picture of their view is that the surgeon comes to your house uninvited, kicks down the door, and starts cutting away. Anything less than that is considered to be the works of man. Like, you can’t even open your arms to receive a gift because that would be a work… But we believe that people are truly able to admit and confess their sins, and call upon the name of the Lord to be saved to receive God’s grace.

How wicked are we?

Genesis 6:5 says, “Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”

Some might take this to be a description of mankind in general in their normal state. Even worse, I’ve heard some Calvinists say that we (as believers) sin every single second of the day. I do have to wonder why they would say that considering 1 John 3:9 says, “No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.” But instead of identifying with their new nature in Christ, they instead decide to identify with something more similar to Genesis 6:5, which, by the way, is where evil became so bad on the earth that God decided to flood it and purge the evil away and start over with Noah’s family. That description of wickedness should have no association with true believers. If it does, you are doing, thinking, and believing something wrong. But even if we make it a general description of unsaved humanity, that is not completely accurate. Is “every” intent and “every” thought “only” evil “continually”? There is a reason God flooded the earth at that time and I don’t think every person on earth has quite become that wicked yet.

Jesus’ brother, James, didn’t even think that. He says, “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all” (James 2:10). He didn’t say, “you guys are disobeying every single commandment every single second of the day and you are all totally depraved sinners. All you do is evil.” James did not assume that the only thing people could do was evil. He was pointing out that breaking the law even at one point makes you a law-breaker and therefore guilty, not that breaking one law makes you a continual rebel breaking every law. He was saying this to those who thought it inconsequential to break a law of God as if it’s just one law and they could pick and choose. James was emphasizing the seriousness of breaking the law because it was against God and ultimately that law is wholistically the law of love and so breaking that law at one point is to collectively break it since it is one and the same law. But he did not intend to mean that if you commit adultery then you are a murderer, and nor does he mean that hatred and murder are equal sins in God’s eyes. The emphasis here is really on the guilt and the seriousness of the offense against God, not the breaking itself.

Total Depravity does not even fit in with the definition of sin “to miss the mark,” because for Calvinists, the idea is that you can’t even shoot the arrow or if you can, then there is a zero percent chance of actually hitting the target. But can you truly miss something that you never shoot? Or miss something you never hit? Or are even capable of hitting?

So far we have established that sick does not mean to be incapable. To have spots does not absolve one of the responsibility and capability to call upon the Lord and change one’s mind to receive God’s help. The Israelites during the time of Nehemiah were able to do that, even without the Holy Spirit regenerating their hearts. And the description of the evil going on preceding the flood is not a good verse to appropriate to every single living person today, as that would be an overexaggeration. What about Cornelius? How depraved was he?

What about Cornelius?

Acts 10:22 says, “Cornelius, a centurion, a righteous and God-fearing man well spoken of by the entire nation of the Jews, was divinely directed by a holy angel to send for you to come to his house and hear a message from you.” (cf. v. 1-4).

He was devout and God-fearing and offered many prayers and gifts to God. But he had not received the Spirit yet and did not know Jesus yet. He was also a Gentile. He was not yet regenerated. He would need the Holy Spirit to be regenerated. But how was he devout and God-fearing before being regenerated? Did he receive some kind of Prevenient Grace to make him less of a spiritual corpse? If the Calvinist says, “oh, well, God caused him or enabled him beforehand in making him worship God.” So which is it? Is dead dead? Was he partially regenerated? Was he causally determined to seek God?

Show me the proof! If you can’t biblically defend this philosophy, then it has no reason or purpose in being there. The fact is, it’s not there, and if it’s not there, why would that presupposition be inserted into the text? Why imagine something that is not there when in reality, the opposite is true—that before Cornelius received the regeneration of the Holy Spirit, he had faith in God. “God-fearing” is not a title for unbelievers, the title for unbelievers is “sinners.” Are you willing to honestly admit then that faith is possible before regeneration? Even if you say he was not justified prior, then you will have an even bigger problem to deal with. Why would someone with no faith worship Yahweh if they are incapable of doing so? Was his worship just in pretense? Did the Jews respect him for nothing?

Apparently, John MacArthur believed that Cornelius was a “dead man,” while at the same time saying, “His was a seeking heart.” But isn’t that a contradiction in his Calvinistic paradigm? I thought that dead men cannot seek God because they are unable to respond because they are corpse-like dead because dead is dead and they need to have the Holy Spirit first in order to respond and make them willing… Isn’t that the whole purpose of regeneration, to make people willing to worship God since they have been brought to life since they could not have done so prior? So how is it possible that he was worshipping or seeking God prior to receiving the life of the Spirit?

Well, I suppose if he were one of the preemptive elect, then his seeking of God was just a work of God ordained from eternity past. And so God determined every prayer he prayed and determined every gift he gave, even his very seeking of God was determined. But since God’s deterministic choice is always logically prior to any choices of mankind regardless of man’s response, there is no free will, because his choice to fear God was just all part of the program that was already written and he is just following the script unbeknownst to him. He thinks he is acting on his own accord but he actually is not. God made him seek Him. But is his will any freer once he receives the gift of the Spirit? After all, that does not change the logical order of God’s determination. That’s how such a system would have to work according to that understanding. There is no feasible solution of how this solves the problem about mankind still being responsible if these kinds of actions are determined by God. It also throws out the whole necessity for having this argument about regeneration making someone alive so that they then become freely willing and able to worship God. You see, it no longer becomes about regeneration but it has always been about God’s determination—His determination to make you choose the choices that you make. Since that is the crux of the matter, regeneration has no practical use to help someone or make them willing to worship God. It all goes back to God’s divine decree by which He determined these things to all happen. Regeneration then becomes a redundant thing for the Calvinist system.

Whether Cornelius was a true believer or not prior to the gift of the Spirit, can we take a moment to acknowledge his moral behavior? His description certainly does not reflect a leopard with spots who cannot stop doing evil, and nor does it describe that every thought of his was only evil continually. It does not even say he was dead in sin or lost or sick. Only positive things were spoken about him. In Acts 10:34-35 Peter acknowledged before Cornelius, “I most certainly understand now that God is not one to show partiality, but in every nation the man who fears Him and does what is right is welcome to Him.” This Peter said before the Spirit came upon them and he was speaking about people’s beliefs and actions being welcomed by God prior to the regeneration of the Spirit. Perhaps mankind is not that depraved and dead as the Calvinists think. They can fear God and do what is right. Do you know that this word for “right” is the same word for “righteousness”? (dikaiosynē). The fact is: Cornelius believed that God was a rewarder of those who earnestly seek Him because of his constant prayers and gifts. If he did not believe God would reward him or answer his prayers, he would not have wasted his time.

Isn’t it also interesting that Peter says, “God is not one to show partiality,” and anyone who meets these certain conditions is welcome to Him? Peter mentioned nothing about a limited small chosen group of people only being able to come to God. Rather, those “in every nation” are welcome by God. And, they can meet those conditions before their coming to Him. This shows us that faith preceding regeneration is not only possible but it is actual. But if this is the case, the question for the Calvinist is: Did God determine your faith?

Instead of appealing to mystery at this point, I would encourage you to abide by the understanding that the Word of God gives to us. Faith precedes regeneration and man is not totally dead before regeneration. Is the Word of God more authoritative than philosophy? You might say, “Oh, this is just man’s perspective of how things work,” and I would say, “no, this is the Bible’s perspective of how things work.”

Ezekiel and Israel

Someone might reference a few passages in Ezekiel which speak about God removing Israel’s heart of stone and giving them a heart of flesh (Ezek 11:19; 36:25-26). They might liken a stone heart to Total Depravity as the normal condition of the unsaved person as totally spiritually dead and unable to respond to God. But we need to keep in mind the situation and context here. Ezekiel lived during the time of Jeremiah and they were speaking to the same rebellious people who had turned away from God. Their stone hearts were about their stubbornness in sin and refusal to repent, not about their inability to repent. It’s about a callousness in sin and a hardening of the heart in rebellion for this specific audience who had strayed so far from God they had become extremely corrupt. But that’s not the way they started out from birth. They got that way through the accumulation of all their choices. Also, we have to keep in mind, we cannot hyper-fixate on this one passage and ignore the rest of Scripture, especially considering the fact that the book of Ezekiel has much non-literal language and symbolism and prophecy.

It could be that God was referring to when the Israelites’ hearts would be changed and they would repent during the time of Nehemiah. Or He could have been speaking of same later eschatological day when He would give them a new heart. But He was certainly addressing national Israel as He says that He will gather them together from all the nations and bring them into their own land (36:24, 28). But since the focus is on putting a new heart and His Holy Spirit within them (36:27; 37:14), this indicates a future time after Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was given or even further into the future, especially since the Davidic Kingdom is mentioned, which is the Millennial Kingdom (Ezek 37:21-28). It also still remains for them to “make an end to sin” and “to bring in everlasting righteousness” (Dan 9:24). That has not happened yet. Though we have the Holy Spirit, believers still sin and do not walk fully in the law of God. They have not fully fulfilled this phrase, “I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances” (Ezek 36:27). This prophecy has only been partially fulfilled. A future revival is still to come to bring believers into everlasting righteousness and reign in the physical and spiritual Millennial kingdom. Because of all these things, I would not use these Ezekiel passages as a reference for Total Depravity or even as a reference to our current day belief and experience regarding the regeneration of the Holy Spirit. However, I still affirm that regeneration is wholly a supernatural work of God. But this does not mean that we are incapable of humbling ourselves before God like little children to come to Him (Lk 18:17).