No doubt Faith Bible is known for clearly presenting the concept of total depravity. One can't regularly attend and not understand that humanity is intrinsically opposed to God. This usually leads to the idea that we are so evil and insignificant compared to God that He really has no need for saving anyone.

I have had some problems with this view, however. The Bible makes it clear that God is extremely jealous for His own glory (Ex. 34:14, Deut. 4:24, Nahum 1:2, Joshua. 24:19). God passionately desires glory, but we are unable to glorify God except through the Holy Spirit, which dwells in every believer. So is it possible that God indeed must save people? For otherwise, He will not receive the glory and worship which He so greatly requires. I could be wrong, but all the same I've begun to cringe whenever someone says that God doesn't need to save anyone. I'm not at all suggesting that we can have some kind of leverage over God, for that would oppose the order of creation. I'll just throw this one out there and see what happens.

And as a sort of vaguely related addendum, there is a distinct difference between being depraved and deprived. I've heard people confuse the two so many times, it makes me crazy beyond belief. Depravity is innate corruption due to original sin, whereas deprivation is the forceful withholding of something.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 25th, 2007 at 2:44 pm and is filed under Theology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.