Rebecca Writes

The word total in the term total depravity means that the depravity that came to all of us as a result of the fall affects every part of our being. If I’d been naming the doctrine, I’d have called it “comprehensive” depravity, but no one asked me, so  we’re stuck with a name that many find confusing.

It all boils down to this: Post-fall, nothing in us works the way it was created to work. Our bodies have their faults. We get sick; our teeth decay; we have genetic imperfections; and we all eventually die. Our minds are imperfect, leaving our thinking powers warped. Our emotions run amuck, too. And this depravity extends to our wills, leaving us with desires that have also been corrupted. 

The corruption of our desires—of our will—puts us in a pickle when it comes to the demands God makes on us as his creatures. He commands that we obey him, but in our natural state, we don’t really want to, and even when we make an attempt to obey, we don’t do it for the right reasons. Ephesians 2:1-3 tells us that people in their natural post fall state—those who remain dead in trespasses and sins—are living out their lives in the cravings of their flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and the mind. They don’t care about pleasing God; but rather, they care about pleasing their own flesh. This problem of persistent warped desires is universal. Those who are not yet believers remain in that state and those who are believers were once in that state.

You see the predicament, right? God’s commandments are nothing more than what people ought to be doing, yet the corruption that came to every one of us through the fall warps our desires so that we just keep on indulging our twisted cravings instead of doing what God asks us to do. Fallen human beings are so intransigent in this disobedience that scripture tells us that the natural person—a person who remains as they are born post fall without any supernatural intervention—is unable to submit to God’s commands (Romans 8:7-8).