Paul's Passing Thoughts

As I sat in church, in corporate prayer to our Sovereign Lord, the words from the preacher’s lips bespoke the idea of the total depravity of believers.  “We don’t love you, Lord.”  “What?! – we don’t?!  I do, I do, I do!” I screamed in my head.  There was more along those lines, like ‘we don’t do as you command.’  Is this His church?  Is this how we praise and worship Him?  Since when are we to be of the mindset that “[g]race will NEVER be amazing, until [our] sin is amazing first.”[1]

When preachers teach believers “…that the very BEST things we’ve ever done—the most pious, most religious, most holy, most selfless acts of obedience, with the purest motives we could possibly muster on our best days, if rightly accounted for, would be in the debit column of our lives, NOT the credit column,”[2] how are we to “…go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matthew 28: 19-20).

The idea of the “total depravity of the saints” is creeping into our churches and denying the intrinsic value of the Holy Spirit in our individual lives and the life of His church.  “New Calvinist Paul David Tripp describes Christians as “dead” on page 64 of How People Change (2006) and states: ‘When you are dead, you can’t do anything.’ On the same page and the one following, he describes Christians as God’s enemies, fools, not only unable to please God, but lacking the knowhow even if we wanted to (which is a blatant contradiction to what Scripture states), alienated, guilty, and rebellious sinners.”[3]

Is total depravity of the saints simply a pessimistic view of Christian life since “the flesh is weak” as opposed to an optimistic focus on “the Spirit is willing”?  (Matthew 26:41).   Both are true, yet where is the balance?  What should the Christian mindset be?  Dead in sin?  No.  “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:11).  “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works” (Hebrews 10:24).   “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own….”  (1 Corinthians 6:19).

Good news, believers — we’re alive!  And since we are partakers of His divine nature, can we make an effort to keep from falling?  Yes.  In 2 Peter 1:5-11, we’re commanded to.  And, “whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him” (John 14:21).