Sermon Genesis 3:1-6 – The Doctrine of Total Depravity

Rev. Jeffrey T. Howard
Sermon Genesis 3:1-6 – The Doctrine of Total Depravity
Eagle Rock Presbyterian Church
June 28, 2009

Listen to this sermon.

Today I will be preaching my third in a series of four sermons celebrating the 500th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin. As we saw two weeks ago Calvin was a protestant reformer in the 16th century whose views about scripture and church have been very influential. Last week we looked at the Doctrine of the Sovereignty of God and the comfort it gives us knowing that God is in control. But we also saw that since there is evil in the world God must have given us some freedom of independent action which allowed sin to enter creation. Today we will look at this sin and effect is has on our lives. But first please pray with me.

Grant unto us, O Lord, to be occupied in the mysteries of thy Heavenly wisdom, with true progress in piety, to thy glory and our own edification. Amen. (John Calvin)

Genesis 3:1-6 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God say, 'You shall not eat from any tree in the garden'?" 2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; 3 but God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.'" 4 But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not die; 5 for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.

For the first four centuries of the church theologians considered the nature of God. They were concerned about our belief in one God as experienced as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And they were concerned with the person of Jesus Christ, fully human and fully divine. These issues were talked about and eventually settled with the Nicene Creed. This solution allowed theologians to think about other issues and they turned to questions about sin and our relationship with God. As we saw last week our idea of the sovereignty of God must be adapted to include an element of human freedom to account for evil in the world. The questions facing theologians of the fifth century concerned how much freedom we have and to what extant is God in control.

One group of fifth century theologians was the Manicheans. The Manicheans believed that God was totally in control. Everything that happened was determined by God. This meant that there was no responsibility on our part for our actions. Since God is in control of everything, why should we experience any kind of guilt at all for what we do? This belief opened the door for all kinds of licentious behavior, drinking, sex, whatever. If you have no liability for your actions you might as well live it up. It is party time! You can imagine how attractive this thinking was to Christians in the fifth century. They could do whatever they wanted to do without having to pay the consequences for their actions. Even St. Augustine was seduced into the Manichean way of thinking early in his career.

An opposing group in the fifth century was the Pelagians. The Pelagians believed in free will. Human beings were free to act for good or evil. Evil actions had their consequences. Human were to be good. Perfection was the goal that all Christians should strive for. Do away with your drinking and sex outside of marriage, they said. Obey the commands of God fully, because God would never tell us to do something we were not able to do.

Augustine, the fifth century bishop of Hippo in North Africa, was familiar with both views. He realized that the Manicheans were denying the reality of free will for human beings and that the Pelagians were denying the sovereignty of God. Augustine knew that both were needed. To explain how we live in a world that is both controlled by God and one where we have freedom and responsibility Augustine developed the concept of depravity.

Augustine looked back at the creation story in Genesis and realized that the disobedience of Adam and Eve had far reaching implications. It destroyed the relationship they had with God. It affected all of creation as they were expelled from the garden. And it even afflicted their children, Cain and Able and those who followed. Augustine began to think that sin was like a disease that was passed on from parent to child. Sin seemed to have the power to hold people captive; they couldn’t get away from it. And sin resulted in guilt passed down from generation to generation. Augustine believed that this “original sin” of our ancestors now corrupts all of creation including all of humanity. This is the doctrine of Total Depravity.

Of course this creates a big problem for us. We are so stained by the actions of our earliest ancestors that sin is a part of our very nature; we cannot stop sinning. We are also responsible for our sin and experience guilt for our actions because those actions were voluntary. Imagine a scale with good on the one side and evil on the other. Imagine also an incredible weight, called original sin, placed on the evil side so that the scale is already tipping. Now imagine that you are required to do enough good to bring the scale back to balance, but you can’t do it. That’s the problem, original sin so weighs us down that we can never get back to balance no matter what we do. The Manicheans were wrong: we are responsible for our actions. The Pelagians were also wrong: we can never do enough good to overcome our sinful nature. Augustine concluded that we are depraved by nature and deserve to be punished. Our only hope is in the grace of God.

It was John Calvin, in the sixteenth century, who offered a solution to this mess. He said that since we are overwhelmed with sin we cannot know God. We need help. Think about using a typewriter or a computer. As the words go on the page it is important to line them up in the proper way. Usually the words on each line are lined up with the left margin. This is called left justification. The words on the page cannot line themselves up along the left margin. They require the work of the typist or word processor to justify them. A typist hits the return carriage at the end of the line. A word processor wraps the words automatically. Either way the words are justified along the left margin by an outside force. Just as the words on a page need to be justified with the left margin, so too must we be justified with God. And just as the words need help in being justified so too do we need help being justified with our creator. According to Calvin we are justified, put right with God, by Jesus Christ.

According to Calvin, justification works this way. Once we believe in Jesus Christ our faith unites us with Christ. When this happens our depravity is replaced by Christ’s righteousness. Once we are clothed with Christ’s righteousness then we can approach God. This then leads to our regeneration as we reclaim our birthright of being created in the image of God.

This is why we worship the way we do on Sundays. We come to church conscious of our sinful nature and knowing our own unworthiness to come into the presence of God. We then say a prayer of confession where we humble ourselves and admit to God and to one another our sins of willfully violating God’s law. We admit that sin has affected our whole nature. We experience guilt for turning away from God. And we are prepared to receive the punishment we deserve when suddenly the good news is proclaimed: By accepting Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we take Christ’s sinless nature upon ourselves, and approach God in righteousness. God then forgives all of our sins and the original sin that has stained us since birth. And we are united with Jesus Christ in new regenerated lives that are now pleasing to God. This is why worship is so important. It is where we are justified by our faith in Jesus Christ.

So the answer to the fifth century questions about free will and sovereignty of God are: that we have free will, but because we are also so stained by sin our exercise of that will is always tilted toward evil. For this we experience guilt and hide from God. But God loves us so much he sent his son Jesus to live a sinless life. And if we believe in Jesus Christ, God will pretend that Jesus’ sinless life is really our’s. And amazingly God welcomes us as if we truly were sinless like Jesus. God does this because God knows that this is the only way to give us regenerated lives. Amen.