After the fall, man still possesses all the natural faculties necessary to come to God. It’s not as though he cannot believe, for he believes in many things. Even the unregenerate have that natural capacity. But because of his corruption, man lacks the moral ability to repent of his sins and trust in Jesus Christ for salvation.

Recently, I preached a short Reformation series on the Doctrines of Grace to reflect on those great truths that have so profoundly shaped the Christian world. Whether we call them the “Five Points of Calvinism” or simply the Gospel of God’s Grace in Christ, one thing is for sure: these are not the inventions of men, but the truths of Holy Scripture gathered into clear, systematic form.

In my opening message, I looked at the first of these truths, Total Depravity, and we began our consideration with a basic definition of the term: To be “totally depraved” means that the moral corruption of sin extends to every part of our being: mind, heart, and will. Certainly, the body is under the curse of sin: it grows old, weak, and dies. But the soul, too, is corrupted—the heart is deceitful, the mind is darkened, and the will is bent away from God.

(While these are not separate parts of us, but only different ways of describing the same reality of the inner man, Scripture wants to emphasize that every power by which we think, desire, and choose has been tainted and disordered by sin.)

Scripture gives us a clear and sobering view of man’s inner condition:

• “Every intent of the thoughts of man’s heart is only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5).
• “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked” (Jer. 17:9).
• Jesus says that “out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, and blasphemies” (Mat. 15:19).

Paul adds that because of their unthankfulness, God gave men over to a “depraved mind,” and that “the carnal mind is enmity against God,” not being subject to God’s law (Rom. 1:28; 8:7). Thus the unconverted mind is not neutral; it is hostile to God, hates His law, and suppresses the truth rather than receiving it.

And since the “will” is simply what Jonathan Edwards called “the mind choosing,” it shares the same corruption. The problem is not that the will follows the mind—it is that the will is the mind in motion. Because the heart and mind of man is darkened, every decision he makes reflects that darkness. As Scripture says, “The soul of the wicked desires evil” (Prov. 21:10).

The tragedy of sin isn’t that man can no longer make choices, for he makes them all the time. But in moral and spiritual matters, those choices always move him in the wrong direction. Apart from grace, the entire bent of his life turns away from God rather than toward Him.

Then we moved on to two important clarifications.

1. First, the “total” in total depravity refers to extent, not degree.

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