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Thank you Brad. I’m an old man. I look back on my past with dismay. Throughout my life, I thought of myself as one of the good guys. Now I marvel at the lack of awareness of my sin. It could be a source of regret and sorrow, but it has driven me deeper into his grace - “Mercy from first to last.”

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I forget who, but one of the classic distinctions between Total Depravity(the teaching that every part of man is sinful) and the heretical Utter Depravity(that man is sort of at maximum sinfulness, that there is no goodness of any sort, essentially that the Imago is entirely gone) is that Total Depravity is not about the intensity of sin but about its extent, that is it is not simply my 'appetites' or intellect as the Romanists would have it that are sinful but my will, my judgment-my heart.

The great defense of Total Depravity, to me, is that any part of me that is sinful can expect redemption, so if every part of me is lost in sin then I can trust that every part of me will be redeemed. So, rather than trying to search out some goodness in ourselves we can just consign all of our righteousness to the fire as the Old Man.

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