Total Depravity

I do like TULIP--- it is rooted Biblically but completely misunderstood by many. On Faith: Faith is a gift from God and not generated by people. Heb 12:2 says "...Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith". And Rom 12:3 says " ... God has allotted to each a measure of faith." These two verses clearly tell us that faith is not something that we do or a presence of mind that we develop, but that faith is a gift from God. Rom 10:17 says " ... faith comes from hearing and hearing by the word of Christ." In 2 Cor 10:15 we see that faith can grow, so as we study the Bible God can add to our faith. God is doing the work not us. Rom 5:1 says, " ... justified by faith" and Rom 4:5 says, " ... his faith is counted as righteousness". We clearly see from these verses that faith is not of our doing for that would be a works based salvation and we know from Eph 2:8,9 that salvation is surely not from works. However Eph 2:8 says something else that I never hear proclaimed and that is "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God." In Eph 2:8 the "it" refers back to faith which is consistent with Rom 12:3 and the other scriptures above and nobody ever talks about that. Faith is a gift from God. Rom 3:28 also says, " ... a man is justified by faith."If we must muster up our own faith then justification is by works and again we know that is not correct. We also see in Heb 12:2 that " ...Jesus is the author and perfecter of faith." which fits in nicely with Jesus that He is not only the author -- the originator of faith --; He is also the one who perfects it in us. So we see that faith is a free gift from God and comes to us at our salvation (Rom 5:1 and Rom 4:5). The problem with simply surface reading Hebrews 11 and counting it as us who gives faith, we miss out on how good God really is to ill-deserving people. Jesus said love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. ---- We don't.... in fact we can't. See God makes many statements knowing that on our own we won't and actually can't apart from Him pursuing, choosing, and changing us first. Philosophical argument: I affirm with John 3:16 and 1 Timothy 2:4 that God loves the world with a deep compassion that desires the salvation of all men. Yet I also affirm that God has chosen from before the foundation of the world whom he will save from sin. Since not all people are saved we must choose whether we believe (with the Arminians) that God's will to save all people is restrained by his commitment to human self-determination or whether we believe (with the Calvinists) that God's will to save all people is restrained by his commitment to the glorification of his sovereign grace (Ephesians 1:6,12,14; Romans 9:22-23). This is not easy to understand and I admit that I sometimes get headaches. On Total Depravity: Man's depravity is total in at least four senses. (1) Our rebellion against God is total. Apart from the grace of God there is no delight in the holiness of God, and there is no glad submission to the sovereign authority of God. Of course totally depraved men can be very religious and very philanthropic. They can pray and give alms and fast, as Jesus said (Matthew 6:1-18). But their very religion is rebellion against the rights of their Creator. It is a myth that man in his natural state is genuinely seeking God. Men do seek God. But they do not seek him for who he is. They seek him in a pinch as one who might preserve them from death or enhance their worldly enjoyments. Apart from conversion, no one comes to the light of God. Some do come to the light. But listen to what John 3:20-21 says, "Every one who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does what is true comes to the light, that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been wrought in God." There are those who come to the light -- namely those whose deeds are the work of God. "Wrought in God" means worked by God. Apart from this gracious work of God all men hate the light of God and will not come to him lest their evil be exposed -- this is total rebellion. "No one seeks for God...There is no fear of God before their eyes!" (2) In his total rebellion everything man does is sin. In Romans 14:23 Paul says, "Whatever is not from faith is sin." Therefore, if all men are in total rebellion, everything they do is the product of rebellion and cannot be an honor to God, but only part of their sinful rebellion. If a king teaches his subjects how to fight well and then those subjects rebel against their king and use the very skill he taught them to resist him, then even those skills become evil. In Romans 7:18 Paul says, "I know that no good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh." This is a radical confession of the truth that in our rebellion nothing we think or feel is good. It is all part of our rebellion. The fact that Paul qualifies his depravity with the words, "that is, in my flesh," shows that he is willing to affirm the good of anything that the Spirit of God produces in him (Romans 15:18). (3) Man's inability to submit to God and do good is total. The "mind of the flesh" is the mind of man apart from the indwelling Spirit of God ("You are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit, if the Spirit of God really dwells in you," Romans 8:9). So natural man has a mindset that does not and cannot submit to God. Man cannot reform himself. (4) Our rebellion is totally deserving of eternal punishment. Ephesians 2:3 goes on to say that in our deadness we were "children of wrath." That is, we were under God's wrath because of the corruption of our hearts that made us as good as dead before God. In summary, total depravity means that our rebellion against God is total, everything we do in this rebellion is sin, our inability to submit to God or reform ourselves is total, and we are therefore totally deserving of eternal punishment. It is hard to exaggerate the importance of admitting our condition to be this bad. If we think of ourselves as basically good or even less than totally at odds with God, our grasp of the work of God in redemption will be defective. But if we humble ourselves under this terrible truth of our total depravity, we will be in a position to see and appreciate the glory and wonder of the work of God. On losing faith ---- We do not lose our salvation. ---- it is not a "fact" that the bible teaches we can lose our salvation. In 2 Peter he is talking a doctrines from false teachers.... that they speak "puke", then the congregation eats it as well as the "pastor", they go home and throw up some puke and then eat it again and feed it to their kids. That's gross.....exactly. The question arises did they lose their salvation? No. Jesus said no one could snatch us out of His hand. What Peter is saying in vs. 21 is that its like a pig, you can wash up a pig, and afterwords its still a pig who then goes back to the mud. There was no rebirth, no regeneration, there is no new nature. You can take a non-christian and get them to come to church, stop cussing, drinking, smoking, doing evil and injustice. But as soon as your done cleaning them up they go back into the "mud" because they haven't had a change in the deep fundamental essence of who they are. Too many people are trying to live a new life as an old pig. They are not a sheep, they are a pig. Religion is all about cleaning people up, just getting pigs out of the mud so they can go back into the mud. Jesus is about changing us so that in our deepest inner part we want to serve and love Him. What is happening here is apostasy and is different than "losing" salvation. And to say that it is anything short of devastating is an understatement. On Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistible grace , and Perseverance of the Saints--- i have no more room. =P