Total Depravity

  • Christian Chat is a moderated online Christian community allowing Christians around the world to fellowship with each other in real time chat via webcam, voice, and text, with the Christian Chat app. You can also start or participate in a Bible-based discussion here in the Christian Chat Forums, where members can also share with each other their own videos, pictures, or favorite Christian music.

    If you are a Christian and need encouragement and fellowship, we're here for you! If you are not a Christian but interested in knowing more about Jesus our Lord, you're also welcome! Want to know what the Bible says, and how you can apply it to your life? Join us!

    To make new Christian friends now around the world, click here to join Christian Chat.

TMS

Senior Member
Mar 21, 2015
3,946
1,269
113
Australia
The doctrine of “total depravity” originated with John Calvin in the 16th century. That makes it 1500 years too late to be a doctrine of Christ. That also makes it a “doctrine of man”. Matt. 15:9, Mark 7:7, Colossians 2:22

Ezekiel 18 pretty much destroys this doctrine.
Christ said little children are of the kingdom of God. They are innocent and since God said long ago that children do not inherit the sins of their fathers, they are sinless. And He said unless we become like them, we cannot go to heaven. Christ used children as an example of “purity.”

Psalms 106:38 says those people “shed innocent blood”, the blood of their sons and daughters. The doctrine of “total depravity” according to John Calvin is wrong. 2 John 9 says if we don’t abide in the DOCTRINE OF CHRIST we don’t have God. Matthew 7 is a picture of what will happen at the end of time to people who practice “lawlessness” ( out side of God’s law) 7:21-23.
Why do children have selfish natures?
I agree they are innocent,

We are told that we are unable to change our hearts. And our hearts are carnal.

Jer 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
Rom 8:7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.
Isa 64:6 But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.
Jer 13:23 Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.

We are not left in this evil condition.

We have a saviour. To save us from sin.

FROM SIN not in sin.

We are born with a sinful nature but sin is a choice.
 

TMS

Senior Member
Mar 21, 2015
3,946
1,269
113
Australia
We can have a sinful nature (which we all do) but not choose to sin. By grace, through faith Jesus can free us from the bondage of sin.

All good comes from God.
We are not able to be good or act good without God.
Jas 1:17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
 

posthuman

Senior Member
Jul 31, 2013
37,844
13,558
113

PaulThomson

Well-known member
Oct 29, 2023
3,479
455
83
We are born spiritually dead and disconnected from God.

The day Adam ate the fruit, his spirit died and mankind was disconnected spiritually from God. Eve was too. They could then only reproduce spiritually dead children and that's how when we are born "in Adam", we are born "in sin". Every man on this planet ever born was born this way...... save one. See Mary was not impregnated by a man was she. This wasn't just for God to "show off", Jesus was conceived of the Holy Spirit, He was born whole and not of the corrupt seed of Adam. That is why they call him the 2nd Adam. And also why the virgin birth was necessary and is so completely genius.

So total depravity is a way of saying that we are ALL born broken, ad it is absolutely truth, even for the little new born baby. It would be so tragic concerning babies dying, if I didn't know how merciful and forgiving our glorious God is. So what do you think, are we "born good"?
Romans 7 says that when we are born, sin is dead and we are alive. Remind us what you define "dead" as?

and Romans 7 says that it was only after we sinned that we died and sin came alive in us. If sin came alive in us ADTER we heard a moral law, in us, and was dead before that, how could sin be affecting us in any way. before we learned and understood a moral law.
 

PaulThomson

Well-known member
Oct 29, 2023
3,479
455
83
Probably because sin comes to life whenever a person reached the age of accountabiity and devils use the child's culture's laws to encourage and deceive the child into sin nd death. In every case, sin came ,alive again.
 

homwardbound

Senior Member
Oct 24, 2012
16,557
497
83
Everyone and their fancy words.

Total depravity is when you fail again after trying hard to give something up.
The reality:
I can't be perfect, I am not perfect, in fact I have still sinned, after belief to God in risen Son for me too.
I cannot claim to not have gotten angry, mad, lust or anything else. The lust of this world
Mark 4:19
And the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful.
Titus 2:12
Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world;
(Yet we the people do not live righteously) at least me
2 Peter 1:4
Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
(Has anyone, escaped sin all sin completely, anyone of us here alive in flesh and blood today)
  1. 1 John 2:16
    For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.
    In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations
  2. 1 John 2:17
    And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.
No chance for me under Law to do to get in, is there since under Law, I have to be perfect to get it? I am not perfect so then how?
Matthew 19:26
But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.
Only by belief to Son unto Father are we allowed in by Father for us in us through us, at least me
Thanks for the prompted post Burn1986
Matthew 5:48
Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

So, anyone go ahead and see for you in you, and see it is impossible to obey law perfectly, then ask God Father for the exchanged life, your life for his life to live through you. Not you anymore trying to imitate the Son in his history walk, nor in his risen life imitating. Now in his risen Life reality, where you the first born person is dead and alive to God, In God's Spirit and Truth only for you, you, me and all others available, just go to God personally from within you and believe see and be new in wonderment too
 

homwardbound

Senior Member
Oct 24, 2012
16,557
497
83
Romans 7 says that when we are born, sin is dead and we are alive. Remind us what you define "dead" as?

and Romans 7 says that it was only after we sinned that we died and sin came alive in us. If sin came alive in us ADTER we heard a moral law, in us, and was dead before that, how could sin be affecting us in any way. before we learned and understood a moral law.
No matter
Unless born again you not in. Yet babies in not knowing, aware of truth, are in. Because God is merciful, revealed in Son to us the people, yet not all believe this and are mixed up, just as I am, seeing to take any thought in me to my Father of the risen Son Jesus, to hear and know truth over error, to live in God's Spirit humbly, not my own. Being dead to flesh, alive to God thanks to Son I stand in belief to this truth
Psalm 100:4, 103:12 Ezekiel 36:26
 

NightTwister

Well-known member
Jul 5, 2023
2,103
793
113
65
Colorado, USA
Probably because sin comes to life whenever a person reached the age of accountabiity and devils use the child's culture's laws to encourage and deceive the child into sin nd death. In every case, sin came ,alive again.
Where in scripture is this "age of accountability?"
 

HeIsHere

Well-known member
May 21, 2022
5,927
2,296
113
Where in scripture is this "age of accountability?"
Exactly, babies go straight to eternal damnation.

In Adam we forfeited all right to all earthly as well as heavenly mercies: God might have taken thee from the womb, when thou wast a sinner but of a span long, and immediately have sent thee to thine own place; thou hadst no right to a drop of water more than what the bounty of God gave thee: And whereas he might have thrust thee out of the world as soon as thou camest into it, and so all those days of mercy thou hast had on earth might have been spent in howling and unspeakable misery in hell
John Flavel
 

homwardbound

Senior Member
Oct 24, 2012
16,557
497
83
Where in scripture is this "age of accountability?"
I haver not found that, I am interested in that too. I think society under psychology, has called this age of accountability, age 12, mans study of the development of peoples minds on an average
I think, when one knows, one knows and will have no excuse, unless one has not come to know as those born with down syndrome
 

homwardbound

Senior Member
Oct 24, 2012
16,557
497
83
King James Bible
is. 7:16 For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings.
Where is the age here of accountability? /no age frame mentioned and this is about the Messiah Jesus. Yashua
It is about belief to God, Yaweh. About one will not be established if one does not believe God, being busy in their own thought(s) of worrying
 
Mar 23, 2016
7,021
1,673
113
i find the concept of Adam being ignorant of God a bit weird.
right ... I said "we try" ... I should have clarified I was not speaking for Adam ... although we behave just as Adam when we try to hide from God.

We've got to get to the point where we run to God the moment we realize we have been enticed away from Him.




posthuman said:
after all, if he really thought he could hide, why would he be afraid?
Adam said "I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself".

Adam was afraid because he was naked. Adam tried to hide his nakedness from God.

In Gen 3:7 both Adam and Eve hid their nakedness from each other. They didn't hide from each other ... they hid their nakedness from each other.

Even as we roll our eyes at Adam trying to hide, we do the same thing ... we try to hide our sin from God ... from each other ... and, most detrimentally, from ourselves.
.
 

Magenta

Senior Member
Jul 3, 2015
60,334
29,581
113
People were asking about what Total depravity ment. And if we can believe in it differently calvanists.

My research shows that there is a difference between the sinful nature and the sinful act.

We are born with a sinful nature, but the action is a choice.
I just heard a teaching on this distinction on Thursday! From a general search ===
  • Iniquity refers to the inherent sinful nature of mankind that leads to wickedness.
  • Sin refers to acts of disobedience against God and His laws.
  • Transgression refers to the willful crossing of boundaries established by God.
  • Iniquity is the inward motivation that leads to sinful actions.
  • Sin is the outward behavior that violates God’s laws.
 
Mar 23, 2016
7,021
1,673
113
Being born after our parents just makes the image of God in man corrupted; not nonexistent. All a part of what Jesus came to fix. That's one way in which He destroys the works of the devil.
right ... I went back and re-read the post to which I responded.

I thought you were saying that Adam's sin was passed from generation to generation and I wanted to clarify that Romans 5:12 states sin entered into the world through Adam ... but it is death that is passed upon all men because all sin ... iow, we all sin which results in death. Not that I die because Adam sinned. I die because I sin.

And, yes, I am so, so thankful for the Lord Jesus Christ giving us the victory over sin and death. :cool:


1 Corinthians 15:55-57 O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
.
 
Mar 23, 2016
7,021
1,673
113
I also noted this subtle distinction. Sin entered into the world and so also death by sin. We don't have any (earthly) examples to demonstrate the result of any man were to go through life without given into to temptation apart from Jesus, of course.

"I looked and there was no one...therefore my own arm brought salvation to me" comes to mind.
yes ... the Lord Jesus Christ ... the Author of eternal salvation


Hebrews 5:6-9 As he saith also in another place, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec. Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared; Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him
.
 

FollowerofShiloh

Well-known member
Jan 24, 2024
4,321
714
113
When David's first baby with Bathsheba died David said this:
2 Samuel 12:23 But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.'

Is King David in Heaven?
He said he was going to go to where his baby is at [I shall go to him, but he will not return to me]

Clearly, there is an age of accountability because David is planning on seeing his baby in Heaven when he gets there.