Total depravity is primarily inward—an inwardness that stems from our profound and tragic fall in Adam. When we think of sin, we are prone to limit ourselves to outward actions such as murder, theft, assassination, cruelty, and anything else that is external and observable in human behavior.
But the Bible is much more rigorous and far more radical. It looks not simply at what is outward, touched, and heard, it goes into the depths of human life and says that sin and depravity exist there, too—in our thoughts, our ambitions, our decisions, our motives, and our aspirations.
Jesus said that it is not what a man eats or touches that defiles him, but that which comes out from him that defiles him and affects all he thinks and does Matt. 15:17–20
It is not so much that human actions or speech have missed the target; it is that the heart of man has missed the target. The very heart of man is unbelieving, selfish, covetous, sensuous, and always desiring to displace God Himself. Hence, the very desire to sin is sin.
John Calvin put it this way: “According to the constitution of our nature, oil might be extracted from a stone sooner than we could perform a good work.”
We were affected by Adam’s sin in two ways. First, the guilt of his sin was imputed to us, so we are guilty sinners before God, as
Paul tells us graphically in Romans 5:18 “By the offence of one [man,] judgment came upon all men to condemnation.”
Second, we inherited the pollution of his sin, so we are corrupt sinners before God, conceived and born in iniquity, as David tells us graphically in Psalm 51:5: “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.”
We are depraved in our inner beings through our fall in Adam, both in our state of guilt and in our condition of pollution. Isaiah said that the best of our righteousness—that is, the best of our best—is as “filthy rags” before the holy God. We are worse than we can imagine.
Jeremiah 17:9 tell us, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Calvin declares that no one knows even 1 percent of his sin.
