Total Depravity 13

As do the aforementioned Major Prophets, the Minor Prophets also articulated the reality of man’s total depravity in sin. They revealed that salvation from first to last was a work of God’s sovereign grace.

The Prophet Hosea poignantly illustrates the tendency by man to commit spiritual adultery against God. “When the LORD first spoke through Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea, Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the LORD” (Hosea 1:2 ESV).

The spiritual adultery by the sinner against God results in spiritual alienation and enmity.

So he went and took Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son. And the LORD said to him, “Call his name Jezreel, for in just a little while I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel. And on that day I will break the bow of Israel in the Valley of Jezreel. She conceived again and bore a daughter. And the LORD said to him, “Call her name No Mercy, for I will no more have mercy on the house of Israel, to forgive them at all. But I will have mercy on the house of Judah, and I will save them by the LORD their God. I will not save them by bow or by sword or by war or by horses or by horsemen. When she had weaned No Mercy, she conceived and bore a son. And the LORD said, “Call his name Not My People, for you are not my people, and I am not your God. (Hosea 1:3-9 ESV)

Micah, who upheld the supreme greatness of God, proclaimed that all men are impacted by their innate depravity towards sin.

Woe is me! For I have become as when the summer fruit has been gathered, as when the grapes have been gleaned: there is no cluster to eat, no first-ripe fig that my soul desires. The godly has perished from the earth, and there is no one upright among mankind; they all lie in wait for blood, and each hunts the other with a net. Their hands are on what is evil, to do it well; the prince and the judge ask for a bribe, and the great man utters the evil desire of his soul; thus they weave it together. The best of them is like a brier, the most upright of them a thorn hedge. The day of your watchmen, of your punishment, has come; now their confusion is at hand. (Micah 7:1-4 ESV)

The Old Testament in all of its many genres throughout the centuries testifies of man’s radical depravity. However, so too does the New Testament in the genres we identify as the four gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, which chronicles the church’s early history, the epistles and the apocalyptic literature of the Book of Revelation.