What is the meaning of Total Depravity?

[fhansen]

My text states that "he believed God and it (his belief/faith) was credited (imputed) to him as righteousness." (Ro 4:1-5. 22, 2 Co 5:21, Php 3:9).

The word ellogao (impute) does not mean "declared."

Most whose theology resembles your own have no problem with "declared" as they believe it refers to a legal change in status only in God's eyes. But I listed two other words there: "reckoned" and "credited". There are two Greek words used in Rom 4 for these concepts (and neither are used in the other passages you mentioned). The words are: elogisthē, used 5 times by my count, and logizetai, also 5 times.

elogisthē: reckon, account, charge, numbered
logizetai: count, reckon, credit, calculate

The only translation offhand where I could find "impute" was the KJV and NKJV, 5 times out of 10, sometimes used for elogisthē, sometimes for logizetai. "Reckon" was used more often than not in all translations, with "counted" or "credited" following.

But the real question here is, why does God reckon us righteous when we believe? Is it because He counts/reckons faith as righteousness, or is it because He merely now sees us as righteous because we believe? And what does impute mean here? How is it used?

 

[BelieveItOarKnot]

Oh, so God created everyone to be sinners. Wow, what a god.

Read it and weep:

Romans 11:32

For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.

Jesus came to heal the sick, but He can't do it.

Pretty sure believers still get sick. But there is a deeper type of sickness that can't be seen, nor will God eradicate it til the end of their time.

Anyone who does God's will, with the help of His medicine His grace, by the Spirit, is a hypocrite.

Hypocrities are easily spotted. They think they're better than the other sinners.

They always promote works, to prove they are sinless or to prove to themselves and others they'll be saved.
They seldom claim they are present tense sinners
And they NEVER claim their own sin is "of the devil."

But it's not really the people doing the above anyway. It's the disobedience that God bound everyone with.

We're just supposed to know the cause and have dominion over, not eradication. Doesn't make us any better and a lot of times worse.

Eph. 2:2
Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience:

God bound everyone to the spirit of disobedience.

Some have a slice of honesty to see it, and admit it. Doesn't make them (or me) any better than any common sinner. But it might be better than being a lying hypocrite.