“It is my opinion that the Christian conception of God current in these middle years of the twentieth century is so decadent as to be utterly beneath the dignity of the Most High God and actually to constitute for professed believers something amounting to a moral calamity” (A. W. Tozer).
“The trend of modern theology-if theology it can be called-is ever toward the deification of the creature rather than the glorification of the Creator, and the leaven of present-day Rationalism is rapidly permeating the whole of Christendom. The malevolent effects of Darwinism are more far reaching than most are aware. Many of those among our religious leaders who are still regarded as orthodox would, we fear, be found to be very heterodox if they were weighted in the balances of the Sanctuary. Even those who are clear, intellectually, upon other truth, are rarely sound in doctrine. Few, very few, today, really believe in the complete ruin and total depravity of man. Those who speak of man’s “free will,” and insist upon his inherent power to either accept or reject the Saviour, do but voice their ignorance of the real condition of Adam’s fallen children. And if there are few who believe that, so far as he is concerned, the condition of the sinner is entirely hopeless, there are fewer still who really believe in the absolute Sovereignty of God” (A.W. Pink, The Sovereignty of God).
When Pink speaks of the complete ruin and total depravity of man, he is simply speaking of the historical doctrine of the Christian Church since the time of the Reformation. It is also the doctrine of Holy Scripture. Now, for a more complete picture of what Pink means by this, he wrote a volume entitled Gleanings from the Scriptures with the subtitle of “Man’s Total Depravity.” This 350 page volume is divided into two parts with one on “The Doctrine of Human Depravity” and the second on “The Doctrine of Man’s Impotence.” In this volume he sets out with devastating clarity and a voluminous amount of Scripture he sets out what Scripture teaches the total depravity of man. So it is not without some background that Pink says that those who speak of man’s free will and his inherent power to accept or reject Christ are simply voicing their ignorance of the real condition of man.
If we take what Pink says at face value, we can simply note that this should have a huge impact on evangelism and sanctification.. If man has no inherent power in terms of receiving or serving Christ, then this must impact the way we do evangelism. If the sinner is entirely hopeless in and of himself and God is absolutely sovereign, then indeed modern theology has deified man and stripped the Creator of His essential glory in terms of the conception it has of Him. If we are getting men to make decisions for Christ that they believe is coming from their power to decide, is that really biblical evangelism? Do men really believe in the total depravity of man today? We must tread carefully here and be sure to think with care. If man is indeed hopeless because of his depravity, then it is virtually a different religion to assert something else. If God is indeed absolutely sovereign, then at what point is He a different God over a different religion than the non-sovereign gods that are so widely asserted in our day?
Pink thought that there were few in his day that believed what he said. While there appears to be a growing movement of those who at least call themselves “Reformed,” there are perhaps fewer people now who believe Pink’s words than when he wrote. In one sense we can see how the failure to believe in total depravity influences what man believes and practices concerning God’s sovereignty. These two doctrines go together and cannot be separated. This is perhaps one of the major reasons that Tozer’s words ring so true today when he speaks of how decadent the Christian conception of God was in his time. While Tozer did not believe in the sovereignty of God as Pink did, he did believe in the sovereignty of God and had an exalted view of God. But we must grapple with these men that God used greatly in their own time as well as the present. They believed that the way that man views God and the way man views himself were linked. In fact, the way man sees himself is determined by the view he has of God. It is also true that the way man sees God is determined in some degree by his own pride and view of himself.
The moral calamity that is going on with modern man’s view of God is directly related to his exalted views of himself and his own freedom. As theology moves toward a deification of man rather than a glorification of God, man’s view of himself has grown greater and his idea of God’s sovereignty has lessened. What is needed is for man’s pride to be broken so that he will not be puffed up with his arrogance and be able to see that God is sovereign and not man. The Church is to be salt and light in the world but it has absorbed the thoughts of the world and its concept of God has gone down as its concept of man has gone up. Until our theology is informed by Scripture, the world will not be. The Church needs the old teachings on God and man so the Church can exalt God in Truth before the watching world. At the moment, the Church is too much like the world in its conception of God to say anything to it. “Darwin loves you” is a popular bumper sticker these days. At the risk of being offensive, does it really mean much more than a sticker that tells us that “Jesus loves you” on the bumper? As we reflect on those two statements, the modern view of Jesus is so low that it means little more if as much to most people as the one about Darwin. The Church must repent in order to declare that a sovereign God reigns.
God Loves... Himself 
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