Bible Readings:
Ephesians 2:4–6 (NKJV)
4But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,
5even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),
6and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
T.U.L.I.P
Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, Perseverance of the Saints
I What does total depravity not mean?
II The Origin of Sin
Romans 5:12 (NKJV)
12Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned—
The Canons of the Synod of Dort A.D. 1616 – 1619
THIRD AND FOURTH HEADS OF DOCTRINE
The Corruption of Man, His Conversion to God, and the Manner Thereof
ARTICLE 1
Man was originally formed after the image of God. His understanding was adorned with a true and saving knowledge of his Creator, and of spiritual things; his heart and will were upright, all his affections pure, and the whole man was holy. But, revolting from God by the instigation of the devil and by his own free will, he forfeited these excellent gifts; and in the place thereof became involved in blindness of mind, horrible darkness, vanity, and perverseness of judgment; became wicked, rebellious, and obdurate in heart and will, and impure in his affections.
III The Spread of Sin
ARTICLE 2
Man after the fall begat children in his own likeness. A corrupt stock produced a corrupt offspring. Hence all the posterity of Adam, Christ only excepted, have derived corruption from their original parent, not by imitation, as the Pelagians of old asserted, but by the propagation of a vicious nature, in consequence of the just judgment of God.
ARTICLE 3
Therefore all men are conceived in sin, and are by nature children of wrath, incapable of saving good, prone to evil, dead in sin, and in bondage thereto; and without the regenerating grace of the Holy Spirit, they are neither able nor willing to return to God, to reform the depravity of their nature, or to dispose themselves to reformation.
IV What does total depravity mean?
ARTICLE 4
There remain, however, in man since the fall, the glimmerings of natural understanding, whereby he retains some knowledge of God, of natural things, and of the difference between good and evil, and shows some regard for virtue and for good outward behavior. But so far is this understanding of nature from being sufficient to bring him to a saving knowledge of God and to true conversion that he is incapable of using it aright even in things natural and civil. Nay further, this understanding, such as it is, man in various ways renders wholly polluted, and hinders in unrighteousness, by doing which he becomes inexcusable before God.
V Salvation is entirely the work of the Triune God