Featured Calvin on "total depravity"

This needs clarification. Please read Hebrews 10:5

"Therefore, when He came into the world, He said: 'Sacrifice and offering You did not desire,
But a body You have prepared for Me.'"

Now, let's get specific by replacing the pronouns:

"Therefore, when He [Son of God] came into the world, He [Son of God] said: 'Sacrifice and offering You [God the Father] did not desire, but a body You [God the Father] have prepared for Me [God the Son].'"

Who is God the Son?

John 8:56 Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad.” 57 Then the Jews said to Him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?” 58 Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.”

God the Son has no beginning and has no end. He is "the Alpha and the Omega". He is self-existing and lastly "God is Spirit". John 4:24

About 2000 years ago God the Father prepared "a body" for God the Son. At the incarnation that body was united to God the Son.

Gal 4:4 But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son (i.e., God the Son), born of a woman, born under the law...."

The body that was "born of a women" belonged to our humanity. The question is what type of humanity? The humanity that existed in Adam before the fall or after?

 

You need to understand what Paul means by "flesh". If you look at the Greek word for "flesh", which is Sarx, Strong's given this definition:

sarx: flesh
Original Word: σάρξ, σαρκός, ἡ
Part of Speech: Noun, Feminine
Transliteration: sarx
Phonetic Spelling: (sarx)
Short Definition: flesh, body
Definition: flesh, body, human nature, materiality; kindred.

 

We are made of three parts, body, soul & spirit. All these components are interdependent. One fails, they all fail.

Let's look at the details:

Eph 2:3 "Among them (i.e., "children of wrath") we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest."

Before Christ...before the "new birth" the flesh (human nature) and the mind were in complete harmony. What our fallen natures desired the mind wanted too....

After the new birth, the mind is no longer in harmony with the desires of the flesh. Paul talks about this in Romans 7:22-23

22 "For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man (i.e, the born again mind), 23 but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind...."

Here's the new birth in a nutshell: "...be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect." Rom 12:2

The soul is essentially our minds, which includes the ability to think and learn and choose, our ideals, love, hate, feelings, discernment, etc.

Paul, then, is referring to our minds....

 

Oh, now you've switched over to the spirit....

Physical function of the mind? What are you trying to say?

 

Then you need glasses:

Here's what I said in post # 65

 

I didn't attempt to connect those two...

 

I believe you are referring to Romans 8:10

"If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness."

According to Romans 7:23, "the law of sin"..."is in the members" of our bodies. The body is dead because of indwelling sin, yet the human spirit has been made spiritually alive by God's Spirit.

That infers before conversion (the new birth) our "spirits" were also dead, spiritually speaking.

 

Before conversion, our spirit is not indwelt by God’s Spirit. Except for the conviction the Holy Spirit brings to us from without, we can hardly feel our spirit’s function in the life. Therefore, prior to the new birth, we are dominated by the soul, or mind, and its preoccupation with self — or by the body with its lusts. At conversion, our spirit is made alive because the Holy Spirit comes and dwells in us. Our spirit becomes God’s dwelling place and the seat of His will in our lives.

 

Only in the sense we have agape, but that agape has been bent back to self by the fall. Instead of loving our neighbors unconditionally...in stead of living solely for their prosperity, we now unconditionally love ourselves. This u-turn agape is Satan's invention.