Podcast: The Misunderstood Doctrine of Total Depravity (Jonathan Gibson)

April 29, 2024 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

What Total Depravity Does and Doesn’t Mean

In this episode, Jonathan Gibson unpacks what he considers to be one of the most misunderstood doctrines of the Christian faith, answering common questions and engaging with common objections that Christians often have about the doctrine of total depravity.

Ruined Sinners to Reclaim

Ruined Sinners to Reclaim

David Gibson, Jonathan Gibson

With contributions from more than two dozen well-respected Reformed theologians and church leaders, this volume offers a comprehensive defense of the doctrine of total depravity from historical, biblical, theological, and pastoral perspectives.

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

01:09 - Defining Total Depravity

Matt Tully
Jonny, thanks for joining me again on The Crossway Podcast.

Jonathan Gibson
It’s good to be with you again, Matt.

Matt Tully
In his forward to your new book, Michael Horton writes, “Total depravity is one of the most misunderstood doctrines of the Christian faith.” So to start us off, I wonder if you agree with that sentiment.

Jonathan Gibson
I would agree with it, and I think it’s because we tend to think from the title, total depravity, that it means that we are as depraved as we possibly could be. That’s one of the myths about total depravity, or one of the misunderstandings. The doctrine of total depravity is not saying that as sinful human beings we are as sinful as we possibly could be, but rather that sin is pervasive in every facet of our being. Sin has impacted or tainted or corrupted all aspects of what it means to be a human being—our desires, our emotions, our thoughts, our words, our deeds, our body. Everything is tainted by sin. And so that’s really what total depravity is teaching, and hence why it is I think one of the most misunderstood doctrines.

Matt Tully
Are there other terms that people have proposed? It does seem like the term itself, total depravity, you get the depravity term—that is just not something we typically say and not a word we use a lot in modern English in our world today—paired with total which does suggest something maybe that isn’t actually intended. Are there other words that are often used? What do you think about that?

Jonathan Gibson
Human corruption is another term that’s used. It’s used, I think, in the Canons of Dort to explain the doctrine of sin, so people talk about sin and human corruption, sin and depravity. I think that adjective total is a legitimate and good one because it’s speaking about extent. The totality of our depravity is that it has impacted every part of our being. It’s not so much the intensity that we are absolutely depraved as much as we possibly could be. So I think the nomenclature is fine, it just needs to be explained. A bit like the term limited atonement, I think the nomenclature for that point of the five points of Calvinism is legitimate and fine. It just needs to be explained. In our other book, From Heaven He Came and Sought Her, we defined it as definite atonement. And we wanted to do that by explaining it, perhaps, in a slightly better way. So total depravity I think is a good term, but human corruption is the other term that people use to try and describe this doctrine.

Matt Tully
That’s helpful. So I wonder if you could then take a step back and if you were going to explain this doctrine to a fifth grader—that seems to be the common age that we seek to explain things—how would you define the doctrine in an accessible, understandable way?

Jonathan Gibson
I think I’d take a glass of water with me and some purple dye, and I’d drop the purple dye in the glass of water and say, Watch what happens. And I’d maybe stir it a bit with a spoon and then say, What’s happened to the water? Is there any part of the water that has remained untainted from the purple dye? And, of course, it would be obvious to them that the whole of the glass of water has become tainted with purple dye, and that is a picture of total depravity. Sin affects the fountain of our being at the very source of our being, and it pervades and corrupts all aspects of our being. So that’s the kind of illustration that I think captures what total depravity is about. There’s a number of verses that I think can sort of point us in this direction in the Bible. Genesis 6:5 I think would be the key one, where God sees that the wickedness of mankind on the earth has become great. And then it gives the explanation that “every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” And I think there’s four aspects there. There’s the totality of it—“every.” There’s the intensity—“the inclinations of the thoughts of the heart.” There’s the internal nature of our depravity. There’s the extent—“only evil.” And then there’s the constancy—“continually, all the time.” And I think that’s a verse that sort of captures that picture of total depravity. So purple dye in the water; it is all purple constantly and to the full extent.

06:10 - Total Depravity vs. Original Sin

Matt Tully
There’s another concept that is often discussed related to this and maybe even confused with this doctrine of total depravity, and it would have to be the doctrine of original sin. So I wonder if you can help define original sin briefly and explain how that relates to the doctrine of total depravity.

Jonathan Gibson
Original sin is the doctrine of how we have inherited the sin of Adam. His sin has been inherited by us through being descendants from him, but also federally and covenantally we have inherited his sin and guilt. He was not just a private person when he sinned; he was a public person. He sinned in his role as the head of the human race—as a prophet, as a priest, as a king. And in that public office, when he sinned and became guilty, he corrupted the whole of humanity. And so the doctrine of original sin is really speaking about how we have inherited the original sin of our father, Adam, and how that’s come down to us. The question, then, is to what extent has Adam’s sin affected us, and that’s where the debate is. Historically, in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, Arminianism taught that sin has affected us, but not to the extent that we might think. We still have a free will. We still have an ability to resist sin in ourselves or to resist God’s grace in our lives, and so our will is free. And that’s where the debate and the discussion is—To what extent has original sin that has come down to us from Adam affect us? But that’s the relationship between original sin and total depravity. We have inherited the corrupt and sinful nature of our father, Adam. But realistically, by descending from him—Acts 17:26: “From one man God made all the nations of the earth”—but federally, covenantally (this is the really important part), we are sinful and guilty because Adam acted on our behalf and ate the fruit.

Matt Tully
Would it be fair to summarize, then, that original sin answers the question, How did we become sinful? Where did that sin come from? Whereas total depravity answers the question, How sinful are we because of that? How far does it go? How bad is the problem for us?

Jonathan Gibson
Yeah, that’s a nice way of putting it.

08:47 - Total Depravity and Common Grace

Matt Tully
A lot of this talk about our total depravity does raise a question about the issue of common grace. Sometimes people will point to common grace and say, Total depravity can’t be true because look at all the goodness and all the good people around us. How does that relate to this doctrine of common grace? How do you hold those two things together?

Jonathan Gibson
Well, both are true. I think we can deduce both from the Scriptures, that we are corrupt in every facet of our being, and yet we’re not as corrupt as we possibly could be because we still do good things. Christians and non-Christians can act in good, charitable, reasonable, caring, loving ways. And so there has to be something going on, if we are corrupt in every part of our being, why people are still able to do good things. And that is the doctrine of common grace, as you say. The key thing, though, is we mustn’t think that in common grace the antithesis between good and evil, between our sinful nature and our desire to do good, is somehow decreased or waned or removed in common grace. Rather, the antithesis remains. The force of evil against good is always there. What happens in common grace is God restrains that evil in an unregenerate person and an unbeliever. God holds them back from being as corrupt as they possibly could be. And so common grace is operative in all of our lives. Now, there are times when you see God sort of let the restraining power of his common grace lessen. You see this in genocide circumstances, wars, and I’m thinking even at the moment in Haiti, where there is just complete and utter anarchy at the moment and it’s like a living hell on earth. And, really, what’s happening there I think is we are seeing the heart of man in all its ugliness come out, and common grace is being pulled back from that situation. But the point being that when anybody does anything good in this world, it’s not because they are inherently good; they are inherently evil and incapable of doing any good. They’re inclined to evil. They are a slave to sin. It’s impossible for anyone to do anything good, as Paul says in Romans 3: “There is no one good, no, not one.” So the question then is, How do they do good? Well, it’s because as image bearers made in God’s image, they have common grace operating in their life, where God restrains them from the evil that they could do. And as image bearers, they act in ways that they ought to act by his grace.

Matt Tully
It seems like the doctrine of God’s common grace is sort of what makes total depravity not what it maybe sounds like at first blush. It sounds like we’re saying that people are as evil as they possibly could be in every way. It’s actually common grace that prevents that from being the case. This doctrine just says that there is evil affecting every part of us.

Jonathan Gibson
Yes, and I think what’s really important there in the discussion of total depravity is the acknowledgement of common grace. Because once we clarify what we mean by total depravity, that you’re not as totally depraved as you possibly could be, we mustn’t think that’s unconnected to common grace, that if common grace didn’t exist, you still wouldn’t be as totally depraved as you possibly could be. It is common grace that is stopping us from being as totally depraved as we possibly could be. What total depravity is saying is sin has affected every aspect of your being, and had God’s common grace not been operative, you would have been as totally depraved as you possibly could be. If left to yourself, that is where you would go. And I suppose we would say that that is the existence of people in hell is there is no common grace in hell. And that’s why hell is what it is—a living hell for people because all grace is removed and people are, at that point in their existence, as depraved as they possibly could be.

13:20 - Do Humans Have Inherent Goodness Because of the Image of God in Them?

Matt Tully
It’s a sobering truth to consider. So all of this leads to a number of common questions or even objections that people will often have about this doctrine. It’s a doctrine that I think you would acknowledge as a hard, heavy doctrine that maybe even pushes against our natural inclinations in the way we think about ourselves, the way we want to think about ourselves as humans and as “good people.” So my first question is, What would you say to someone who says this seems really negative. It seems like a really dark perspective on humanity, but doesn’t the Bible say that all people were made in God’s image, and therefore, isn’t there a core of inherent goodness in all people that we should be able to celebrate and highlight, even as Christians, because we were made in God’s image?

Jonathan Gibson
Again, I think it’s a case of holding a number of biblical truths together in tension or synthesis. I think we start with a good creation. In the beginning, God made the world, and he saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And that included the creation of humankind—man and woman, male and female made in his image. And sin did not remove that image. When Adam fell, we remained in the image of God. You see that in Genesis 9. After the flood, God makes a command to Noah about preserving life on the earth because people are made in his image. James 3:9 speaks about people made in the image of God in the context of people being sinful. So sin does not erase the image. Calvin said that the human being after the fall is like a ruined castle. You can see what the castle was in its original glory. You can imagine what it was like. And it is still a castle, but it’s ruined. And so I think that’s what we need to affirm, that the image of God is not erased. It remains. We could say that that remains a good aspect of the original creation that continues post-fall in humanity and in a human being. But we also need to hold the truth that sin has corrupted every aspect of that good nature, of that image of God aspect of what it means to be a human. And so we need to hold the two together. We are ruined castles, as Calvin would say.

15:52 - What about Free Will?

Matt Tully
That’s so helpful because I think that nuance of holding both of these truths together—so often they’re pitted against each other as if they’re mutually exclusive. But you’re saying they’re not, actually. Another objection or question is if total depravity is true, what does that suggest about the idea of free will? Because if we don’t truly have free will, how can God hold us responsible for our sin? How can we be guilty without the concept of free will? But it seems like total depravity says you don’t actually have free will. You can’t choose to do the right thing. You are always, by necessity, all your actions, all your desires, all your words are tainted by sin.

Jonathan Gibson
Well, I would back it up one step before and even ask the question, How is it fair for God to treat us as sinners and guilty for the sin of another person? Adam sinned, and because of his sin we’re sinners and we’re treated as guilty by God because of Adam’s sin.

Matt Tully
I think that is the question that so many of us have wrestled with and struggle with. How is that fair? How is that just?

Jonathan Gibson
And at one level the answer is God is God, and he can set up the world whatever way he chooses, and for it to operate whatever way he chooses. And in this case, we are all tied to Adam as our covenant, federal head, and we are sinful and guilty because of his actions. And that’s the way God set the world up. It’s the covenant of works. We are in him, and we’re the ones who inherit his nature and inherit his sin and guilt. But if we think that’s unfair, then we would have to say that the gospel is unfair as well, because we are recipients of God’s grace in the gospel because of another man’s obedience. Because of Christ’s obedience, we inherit righteousness, justification, life. And so we have this two-Adam structure to the way God has made the world to work. It was Thomas Goodwin who said, “In God’s sight there are only two men, Adam and Jesus Christ, and these two men have all other men hanging from their girdle strings.” And I think if we can get that picture in our mind, that is the architectonic structure of the whole Bible. There are two men, Adam and Jesus Christ, and these two men have everyone else hanging from their girdle strings. And so that’s the first thing we need to deal with. Is that fair? Well, God is God, and that’s the way he made the world to work. The second thing is, Is it fair to say that you don’t have a free will and therefore you don’t have a free choice to sin or not to sin? I think it’s good to distinguish between free will and free choice. The two are not exactly the same. When I go into a coffee shop with my wife—she’s an Aussie, she loves her coffee, she’s a coffee snob.

Matt Tully
Are you not a coffee drinker?

Jonathan Gibson
I do not drink tea or coffee. As I say to her, my body is a temple.

Matt Tully
I think probably most people are hearing that and thinking, What a barbarian! How can you not drink any of these hot drinks?

Jonathan Gibson
They’re thinking, How depraved is he?

Jonathan Gibson
Well, when we go into a coffee shop, I’ve just never liked the smell or taste of tea or coffee. I never order it. But every time I go in, I have a choice. I could order it if I want to. Nobody’s taking away my free choice. What I don’t have is a desire for it. And that affects my choice. My wife has a desire for it, and so every time she chooses her flat white or whatever it is she would like that day, she chooses it because she has the desire for it. She also has a free choice. She could say no to coffee on that day if she wanted. But her desire is there, and so she chooses it. My desire is not there, and so I don’t choose it. What the doctrine of total depravity teaches is that our desires have become corrupted to the extent that we don’t desire God anymore. Back to Romans 3, “There’s none that seek after God. No, not one.” That is, there’s no one who desires God. And you see this with Adam in the garden, don’t you? He sins, and he goes running away from God and hiding from him. He’s lost his desire for communion with God. And that’s what we’re like as human beings. We don’t have a desire for God. What we actually have now is hate and enmity against God. And when you read the New Testament, this is where you see the clarity on the doctrine of sin. We are enemies of God. We are enslaved to sin. Our flesh cannot please God. We have nothing in us that desires God. And so our will is not free. Our will is bound to sin. It’s our master. And whilst we are given a choice to love God or to love ourselves or something else other than God, every time we have a free choice, but we never make the right choice because we are controlled by our will, by our desires. C. H. Spurgeon put it really nicely in a succinct little maxim. It’s a classic Spurgeon quote:
“All are our cannots are really I will nots.” I cannot do that. Well, that’s because I don’t want to do it.

21:29 - Can I Ever Truly Please God?

Matt Tully
It puts it back in the category of will, of desires. To use Edwards’ term, he referred to them as the affections. That’s such a helpful nuance there. Maybe one final objection or question that people might have, and this might be one coming from the perspective of the Christian specifically. If literally every facet, every part of my being, is tainted by sin, does that mean that we can never truly obey or please God even as Christians? As Christians, we don’t believe that upon becoming Christians our sin nature is removed from us completely. We’re growing in sanctification, but we still struggle with that sin. Does that mean that we can never actually please God with our obedience?

Jonathan Gibson
These are big questions. That’s a whole other podcast, but let me do my best at answering that. When we’re saved, God, by his Spirit, regenerates us. He makes us a new creature, a new person. We are tied to the new creation that Christ inaugurated in his resurrection. “Anyone who is in Christ is a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17). But the sinful nature—the flesh—remains, even in that new creation, as we wait to be fully redeemed on the last day from that sinful nature—glorified. So we are new people. We can now obey God. We can now love him with new hearts that are genuinely loving God. But it’s not yet a perfect love. It’s not yet a fully glorified state of confirmed righteousness that we cannot shift from it. We have desires for God that wane and grow; they come and they go. And so we’re in a battle—a battle between the spirit and the flesh. Paul would also say we live between the two ages. We are now connected to the age to come, and yet we’re still living in the present evil age. And so we feel the tension there. And so is it possible to obey and please God? Well, first of all, we are in Christ. We are united to Christ, so we please him by faith alone, in Christ alone, and it is Christ’s righteousness by which we are pleasing God. So that never changes. But Paul can say in Titus, “Keep yourselves in the love of God” (Jude 21). Without holiness no one can see the Lord, says the writer of Hebrews. And so there’s still this emphasis that you need to obey. You need to be doing things that you know are pleasing to your Father in heaven. And you see this in Paul’s letters in Colossians. He has exhortations and admonitions and encouragement to slaves, to masters, and masters to slaves. Why? Because you are serving the Lord Christ. There’s a sense in which you are to live an obedient life in order to please your Father in heaven. But of course, we’re not saying that at any point we can reach a level of human perfection in our own efforts that pleases God and makes us justified before him. Our justification is through faith union to Jesus Christ and his perfect righteousness. Living a life of perfect obedience under the law is what is credited to us. And then being united to him, we receive his Spirit, and his Spirit is making us a new creation—changing our desires and sanctifying us. And in that way, we’re pleasing to him, but it’s never detached from justification. Perhaps I could maybe put it like this, if this is helpful. I like to think of the thief on the cross. When he was saved, he didn’t just have his sins washed away, he also had his mouth washed out. He was cursing Christ in the early stages of the cross, and then by the end he was blessing Christ and acknowledging him to be who he was. He was saying things that were pleasing to God. But how did it come about? It came about because he, by faith, acknowledged who Jesus was. So in that moment he was simultaneously justified and sanctified, positionally sanctified, and actually progressively sanctified. His mouth started to be clean. And I think that’s maybe a helpful way to keep in view what is happening in us. When we put our trust in Jesus, our sins are washed away, we’re justified before God. But we’re having our heart, our mouth, our thoughts, our deeds cleansed by the Holy Spirit—sanctified so that we can do good works that please the Father in heaven.

26:19 - Why Focus on Sin and Depravity?

Matt Tully
I think the listener could be thinking that a book on sin and depravity is just a discouraging thing. And it made me think about, again, the forward in the book. Mike Horton wrote that. In that foreword he reflects on our culture’s wholesale abandonment of the notion of personal sin. He highlights how we understand personal shame. And we talk a lot about, actually, corporate guilt and corporate sin today in our culture, but not a lot about personal sin. And he writes, “In our secular culture, sin has been canceled.” So I wonder if you could speak to the person listening right now who is maybe skeptical that all of this talk and all of this focus on sin and depravity is actually really very helpful. Maybe they’re feeling like, Is this really what we should be focused on as God’s people? Or should we maybe be thinking about some other doctrine that is more positive, that is more forward looking perhaps? Put another way, Why would it be good for a Christian to spend time really digging into the doctrine of total depravity?

Jonathan Gibson
Because sin is the great presupposition of the gospel. First Timothy 1:15, “This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” Jesus himself said, “I did not come to save the righteous, but sinners.” Unless we understand what sin is, we’re not going to understand what salvation is or who Christ is as our Savior. Jesus didn’t come as a doctor to make sick people better. He came as a Savior to save people from their sin, from death, from hell. And so we need to hear the bad news before we hear the good news. And when does the moon shine most brightly? It shines most brightly on the darkest night. When the dark night sky is most clear to us, then we see the brilliance and beauty of the moon. And that’s like the gospel. We are not going to appreciate who our Savior is—what he did in his life of obedience under the law, what he did in his sacrificial death on the cross, what he did rising from the dead three days later, ascending into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father—we are not going to appreciate all of that unless we appreciate how sinful we are. My son recently was interviewed by the elders in our church so that he could come to the Lord’s table. And they asked him, “What is the gospel?” And he said, “The gospel is that Jesus was born for me, lived a perfect life under the law for me, died and was punished for my sins, rose again three days later to give me new life, ascended into heaven so that one day I can go to heaven, and he is currently interceding for me.” What I loved about his little summary was that he had grasped the seriousness of sin. That had Jesus not died for him, he couldn’t be forgiven. Had Jesus not risen again, he could never have been given new life from being dead in his trespasses and sins. And had Jesus not ascended to heaven, he could never have gone there because God cannot have sinners live in his presence. And I think that’s what the doctrine of sin and depravity teaches us. It teaches us how wonderful our Savior is, how great the gospel is, and what an amazing thing he has done for us. Because the most misunderstood thing about Jesus is that he was just a good moral teacher who taught us how to live better. But that’s not what Jesus is or who he was. He is a savior of sinners. And until you understand what sin is, then you won’t understand what it means to say Jesus is my Savior.

Matt Tully
Amen. Thanks, Jonny, for taking the time today to help walk us through this doctrine—this often misunderstood doctrine—and, as you said, show us how as we understand what it means to be a sinner more clearly, we will understand our Savior all the better. We appreciate it.

Jonathan Gibson
Thank you, Matt. I’m thinking of that quote by John Newton, the famous hymn writer and author of “Amazing Grace.” Near his death he said, “There’s two things I am certain of. The first is that I’m a great sinner, and that Jesus is a great Savior.” And that’s what we hope for this book. We hope people will see, reading this book, that they’re great sinners, but most of all that Jesus is a great Savior.

Matt Tully
Absolutely.

Jonathan Gibson
Thanks very much for having me on the podcast to talk about it.

Matt Tully
Thank you.

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