Who would find your seats? It's been a little bit of a hectic morning for our children's ministry, so hopefully everything gets settled down and figured out. We've got some room changes because of all the things they got going on here, but we are here, we are in this auditorium, and it's good to be here this morning. So if you would, pray with me as we get started with our Sunday school time. Father, thank you for another opportunity that we have to come before you, to learn from your word, to understand better who we are, before we know Christ so that we can truly understand what it is that glorious gift of salvation and that we don't deserve you, and yet you give freely to us through your Son. I pray, Father, as we discussed this morning, that you would be in the words that are spoken and that your scriptures would speak mightily to how we ought to think and how we ought to act. We thank you for all of the blessings that we have. We pray that you would receive all the honor and glory and praise. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, so we're going to continue on in our discussion of homardiology. This week we're going to be discussing the pervasiveness of sin. But as we get into this, let's remember what we've covered thus far. In week one, we defined sin, and I'm going to repeat the definition again for those of you to try and get this definition to stick with us. We have sin is nonconformity, intentional or unintentional. That's something I added last week. Sin is nonconformity, intentional or unintentional to God's law and character in act, attitude, thought, or nature. That's our definition of sin. We also discussed the origin of sin, that is, how Satan fell, then tempted and caused man to fall. And then last week we discussed many of the results of sin. It wasn't exhaustive. There are lots of results of the fallenness that we all participate in. But we talked about a broken relationship with God, broken relationships with others, the guilt that we receive both being legally guilty as sinners and also having guilt and shame over the wrong that we intentionally do, the punishment that we receive, which is death, spiritual, physical, and eternal death, the three different types of death that we receive as being in Adam. Then we also discuss the transmission of sin. And to clarify that, we have the inherited sin and imputed sin. Those are two categories of sin. Inherited sin is the result of being a physical son of Adam. So you can trace your sinfulness from your parents all the way back to Adam. and also the imputed sin, which is the result of being spiritual sons of Adam, meaning my sin is directly from me to Adam. I receive Adam's sin directly. So that's what we talked about last week. So the question that's before us today that I want to discuss is this idea of pervasiveness of sin, or how sinful are we really? How sinful is our sin? How sinful are we as human beings in our before salvation state? In Adam, how sinful are we? And so this idea of pervasiveness of sin is that sin exists in every part. I'm going to give you my thesis before I defend it. Sin exists in every part of our being. It's spread to all parts of mankind and every individual that is a participant in Adam. And again, Christ is not in Adam. His father is not Adam. His father is God. So everyone aside from Jesus is in Adam. So this sinfulness affects the material and the immaterial parts of our being, that is body and soul. And this concept is going to get into the idea of total depravity or the depravity of man. So when you hear that concept, what do you think of? When you think of depravity, what are you thinking of? Depravity. You can't define the word with the word. Yeah. Yeah. Every aspect of the human is broken or corrupted. Yeah. Depth of evil, the utter depth of evil that we're capable of. Yeah, Bill. Total inability to be righteous. Keep that phrase in mind, total inability. Man is essentially bad, not essentially good. Anything else? That's a pretty good definition for us. That covers most of what we're gonna discuss this morning. Oftentimes what I think of, when we think of total depravity, who do you think of? What individual in church history do we think of? Calvin it's anybody familiar with tulip It's the T in TULIP, that's the five points of Calvinism. Total depravity, that's the first one. We're not gonna get into all of the points of Calvinism, we're not gonna get into it. We are gonna discuss the view from that perspective, but the point of today is not to discuss five point Calvinism. That's not what we're doing here today. As we get into it, let's begin with a discussion of some of the major concepts related to the pervasiveness of our sin. So there are three essential aspects. We're not getting into every possible thing that we could talk about today. These are, I believe, three essential aspects of our humanity that's affected by the pervasiveness of sin or depravity. So the first one that I want to discuss is our human nature. Our human nature is affected by the pervasiveness of sin, and the text that I want to go to is one that Dan already referenced, is Romans 3. There is none righteous, not even one. There is none who understands. There is none who seeks for God. So our human nature, that is our essence as created beings, because we are created We are not in our created form, because we talked about the fall broke that created nature. We still bear the image of God, but it's broken. But our essence as a sinful being is broken. It's fallen. So as a result of being an atom, we are spiritually dead. That's what this nature is. It relates to our deadness. There is no aspect of us that is spiritually alive or that can be spiritually alive on our own. So our nature is spiritually dead in Adam. And this is universal. This affects every single being that is in Adam. I've already hit that. I already talked about that. Every one of us that is descended from Adam, which is everyone in this room and everyone on the planet right now, is descended from Adam and we are all afflicted with a sin nature. So when we talk about a sin nature, this is what we're talking about, that we are spiritually dead in our trespasses and sins. We are blind to the gospel and enemies of God. So we can hear the gospel. You can hear the words. I could be teaching you right now, and you're spiritually dead, hearing the words that I'm saying, and it won't affect you in the slightest. Because you're spiritually dead. And until you are spiritually alive, what I say and what this word says doesn't matter to you. The Holy Spirit has to make you alive for you to be able to understand what the scriptures say. We will not choose God on our own. Human beings will not choose God when left to their own devices, even if we have the scriptures. I can read them. There are lots of people out there in the world that study the Bible. They set their life's goal to understand the scriptures, and yet they're totally lost. We were in North Carolina for a long time in the Raleigh area, and there's a guy named Bart Ehrman. Anybody familiar with Bart Ehrman? He is a professor in that area at Chapel Hill, and he wrote, has written lots of textbooks. He is one of the preeminent New Testament scholars in the country, in the world. Preeminent New Testament scholar and totally rejects the New Testament. You can be the smartest guy in the room related to the New Testament and not be regenerate. So just knowing the scriptures doesn't mean that you're going to choose it because you're spiritually dead. And until you are spiritually alive, you will not choose it. As I was thinking through this, it just made me think of kids and their desire for health food. How many of you try to feed your kids vegetables? I hope everyone that has children has tried to feed them vegetables. I tried to feed my daughter green beans last night. And after about four bites of green beans, these are real green beans, not the little, not the paste. After about four, she was like, okay, that's enough. But then after dinner, she saw the candy dish and was like, ah, that, I want that. Courtney was having a sucker and Eve was like, please, please, please. Why? Because she doesn't want health food. That's us before salvation, before the Holy Spirit, that's us. We know that there are other things out there, and there might be people that are telling us that this is what we need, but we're not gonna listen to them. We don't want it. I don't want to eat salad most of the time, but I do because I know it's good for me and I'm a grownup. I choose to eat ice cream even though I know it's bad for me. I feel like that's a pretty apt description of what our sin nature is. Not saying that ice cream is sinful and that salad is good, because I would say that it's the opposite, frankly. I know there's more than one in here that agrees with me. All right, that's our human nature. Now, next, I wanna discuss this idea of human depravity, and for that, Jeremiah 17, nine is the first one that comes to mind. When we talk about whether humans are good or not, and you talk about it from the scriptures, how do you get around this? You can't get around the idea of depravity, or you can't get around this verse when you're considering the idea of depravity. The heart is deceitful more than anything else, and desperately wicked. Desperately sick, that's the other translation I memorized that's coming through as I'm reading it. Who can know it? The heart is more deceitful than anything else and desperately sick. Who can know it? We don't even understand the depths of our own depravity. Now, when we talk about the concept of depravity, this doesn't mean that every human being is as depraved as they possibly could be. Now, I did some researching, and I wish I hadn't because it's truly, it's horrifying, but there was a movie that came out, and I can't remember it because it's a quote from the judge on the trial, but it's extremely wicked, horribly shocking, and vile or something like that. It has to do with Ted Bundy. If you know anything about Ted Bundy, that man was almost as depraved as they come. That is the depths of human depravity. Not everyone, Not everyone here, not everyone in the world is as depraved as they could be. So when we talk about depravity, that's not what we mean. We don't mean every person is as totally depraved as they possibly could be. What we're talking about here is that it affects every aspect of us. Every aspect of our being is depraved. That's what the term total means in this. It's not that you are Ted Bundy. Everybody's walking around Ted Bundy, but it's veiled because we're trying not to be Terrible for the culture that we live in. It's not that. Total means it affects every aspect of it. And the depravity has to do with our corruption. That we are corrupted. Not that we are as wicked as we could possibly be. Everybody understand that? We on board? So when we discuss this idea, it's affecting our mind, will, emotions, and our flesh, our body. So every part of us is corrupted by sin, and the corruption is that we're not able to do what is righteous. We could still do some moral, social, and cultural good. We can still create good things. We can love people around us. We can do good in our community. We see lots of people who do that. There are good upstanding citizens outside of the church that are totally depraved. but they are not doing good that brings glory to God. God is not glorified by the good that we do before we are saved. In our depravity, our works are what does Isaiah call them? Filthy rags. Our works are totally useless before God when we're still in our sin. We cannot glorify God in our depraved state. Without the regeneration of the Holy Spirit, these works cannot be done. The good things that we do cannot be done to the glory of God. All right, and the last aspect I wanna discuss is our human will. This is Romans 8, 5, and 8. I took bits and pieces of it because it contrasts those who are in the spirit, and I just wanna focus on the flesh. It says, for those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, and those who are in the flesh are not able to please God. So this idea of our human will, we're going to get into this, but what I'm teaching and what I believe, what we believe here at this church, is that ultimately our desires are enslaved to sin. We will not, we cannot choose God because we are enslaved to our sin. When you are a slave to someone, are you able to do what you want to do? No, because you're bound to your master. Your master tells you what to do, and you can't go against what the master says. So in the book of Romans, in chapter six, we're not gonna get there today specifically, we'll spend some time in Romans, but in chapter six, Paul talks about the idea that we are enslaved to sin. When you are enslaved to your sin, you cannot do righteousness. You will not do righteousness. Slavery to sin is an inability to do righteousness. And this comes back to this idea of the total inability. Bill mentioned it earlier. We are unable to do anything to satisfy God or earn His grace or favor. So when we talk about total depravity, I want you guys to think about the idea of total inability. That means we are not able. We cannot do anything to earn God's grace. We can't do anything to earn God's favor. We can't do anything to seek after God. We will not do those things for this reason that's on the screen, Romans 8. Because those who are of the flesh, that is unbelievers, They only do the things that are in the flesh, and they cannot please God. One writer described this idea of inability, or he called it an ethical cannot. We cannot because we will not. It's not that we can't because God doesn't let us. It's that we can't because we don't want to. When we talk about our human will, we're talking about the concept of our desires. And in our sinfulness, when we talk about sin, we will not, we do not want God. We have zero desire to please God. All the good things that we do, ultimately, they're not to please God, they're to please others. All of the good things that we do, ultimately, they're to please us, makes us feel better. When we do good in our community, we do it because we want the accolade. As much as we say that we don't, We want those, we want the recognition and we want people to look at us. I'm just, I'm reminded of a movie that Courtney and I watched recently. We've seen it several times. It's called Return to Me. There's a guy that shows up multiple times talking about his donation that he gave anonymously, of course. It was a very generous donation I gave anonymously. And that's what we do. That's what we want. We wanna give it anonymously, but we wanna tell somebody. So at least somebody knows what good we've done. So ultimately, our desires are not to please God. We have no interest in that. Without the Holy Spirit, we will never desire God or seek Him. Any questions on these points or thoughts on this? You're in good company here. Okay. That's bad theology. She says, when Hallmark tells me, and she confessed, she occasionally watches Hallmark. If you guys know me at all, or if you've listened to me teach, I've added myself. I watched Hallmark last night. It was pretty good. I'm not going to lie. It was pretty good. What'd you say? Yes, it was. All right. She's saying, when Hallmark tells me, when you don't know what to do, follow your heart, that's bad. That's correct. That is bad theology. Follow your heart, that's only going to lead you down further into the depraved nature of who we are. Yes, Jan. I think it's hard. She's asking about whether Mary was sinless, and in Catholic theology that she was sinless. I don't know, honestly, where it comes from. I don't think it—just because it doesn't talk about her having sin in the Scriptures, I don't know that it— I don't know where they get it, frankly. But I think after her having Jesus, she goes to the temple and does the necessary sacrifices. That's showing that she has uncleanness. That's not necessarily saying that she's sinful, per se, but I think to assume that she's not because the scriptures don't say it, it's dangerous. Yeah, Scott. Yeah, there you go. She says she rejoices in God, my Savior. She is also acknowledging that she needs a Savior in that. So I think that's an implicit acknowledgement that she's sinful from herself. Any other thoughts or questions? Yeah, Dan. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it gets to, we're actually gonna talk a little bit about the Catholic theology on the idea of depravity. I think it gets to what they believe is that ultimately, man can do good, and man can be good, and we're not totally depraved, we're not totally corrupt or broken. But Dan's mentioning, well, if Jesus had to be sinless, then whoever brought him into the world had to be sinless. Well then, whoever brought her into the world had to be sinless, right? then whoever brought them into the world had to be sinless. So I feel like you can't stop with Mary. If you wanna say that whoever brought Jesus into the world had to be sinless, well, why can't we say that her mom was sinless too? But we're not here to talk about Catholic theology entirely. We are gonna talk, like I said, we're gonna talk a little bit about this, but any other thoughts or questions on this view of the pervasiveness of sin? Bill. Yes, we have the potential for evil. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Even Job in his righteousness gets to the point where he sees his own sin, and Bill says that he says, I loathe myself. So Job, even in his righteousness and knowing and trying to defend himself, he says, I know how sinful I am. I just read recently this week, and I can't remember, is it 19, where he says, I know my Redeemer lives. So Job is acknowledging also that he needs a Savior. All right, so as we transition out of this, I wanted to lay the foundation of what we teach, or what I believe, what we believe as a church, before I went into a couple of different views on this idea of the pervasiveness of sin. We're gonna cover three main ones. I think these are broader categories, and I'm broad brushing pretty significantly, but I'm gonna talk about the Roman Catholic view because you'll see that there's a significant difference in what they teach and what they believe and how it leads to salvation from what we teach and what we believe and what our salvation is. And then I'm gonna talk about the Arminian view, which is also within, that's a biblical view. It's, we're not, when we talk about Arminian and Calvinist, we're going to talk about a Calvinist view as well. These are both biblical views. We're talking about brothers in Christ. So this is not, when we discuss an Arminian versus a Calvinist perspective, we're not talking about unbelievers and believers. We're talking about believers and believers most of the time. Again, I'm broad brushing. There are people out there that would make stronger claims than some, and I'm just trying to get most. That's the idea, is we're getting most people. The things that I say on these three views, I probably would have people in each camp that would say, nah, I don't agree with that. And you guys might disagree with what I'm saying is the Calvinist view here, but the idea is to get a big picture of what the theological views are surrounding this idea of the pervasiveness of sin. All right, let's begin with the Roman Catholic view on pervasiveness of sin, and there's a reason for the gap here. The top three have to do with homardiology and anthropology, and the bottom two have to do with our soteriology. I'm not gonna spend a ton of time on it, but I think it's important, especially when we talk about the Catholic view, to understand what they believe about grace and salvation, because that affects the way that they view their sinfulness. That's true of the Arminian view as well. So these are on here. I don't wanna spend a ton of time on the salvation issues because Justin's gonna talk about that next month. But I think that it's important that we have these on here because what we believe about our sinfulness affects what we believe about our salvation. That make sense? All right, so when we talk about human nature within Catholicism, I'm gonna read from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, number 405, or Article 405, I don't know how they would, I wasn't catechized, so maybe someone can correct me later. But it says, although it is proper to each individual, original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam's descendants. That means that there's no personal sin that anyone is participating in in Adam. It's a deprivation of original holiness and justice. So we are deprived of the holiness that Adam was created with. We don't have the same kind of holiness. But human nature has not been totally corrupted, or you could say, totally depraved. It is wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject to ignorance, suffering, and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin, an inclination to evil that is called concupiscence. That word, concupiscence, is better said as sinful desires. So we are given to sinful desires. We are fallen in that we have the ability to give in to the sinful desires. We have an ignorance, we experience suffering, we experience death. but it's not necessary that we have to give in to those things. So the human nature is wounded, but it's not destroyed. Human nature is fallen, but not depraved, not corrupted. Okay, so the innocence is lost, but we are not totally sinful. And when we talk about this idea of our sinful desires, that is, concupiscence is a big Latin word, and it comes from the scriptures. Romans 7, 8 translates this word that they're using as covening. Colossians 3, 5 calls it evil desires. 1 Thessalonians 4, 5 calls it lustful passions. So these are our sinful desires in, as what the Catholic Church says, as a fallen person, in our fallen nature, we are given to sinful desires. We have the ability to give into those. We have the desire for sin, though we're not entirely sinful. We still have the ability to do good deeds. We can live morally, but we can't obtain a supernatural good aside from grace. So we can do good things because our nature isn't totally fallen, but the supernatural good, well, I'll come back to that, that is salvation, we can't do on our own. We can't be saved on our own. I'll come back to it. Depravity, in the Calvinist tenet that we've talked about, total depravity says that every part of man has been corrupted by sin. The Roman Catholic Church would say that we've been corrupted kind of, but not totally. So there is sinfulness, we still have reason, we still have conscience, and we have the ability to seek God. That's a big one for them. You can choose to seek God in your sinful state. Before salvation, you can seek after God, you can pursue God. and you have the ability, you have the free will to choose to obey God in your human will, your human nature. You still have the ability to choose God. And then so this idea of will, it's still free, which means you can choose to do right or you can choose to give in to your sinful desires. That concupiscence or those sinful desires that you have, you can, in your fallen state, reject those and choose to obey God and seek after God. All right, so that has to do with our humanity. Now, grace, this is important, because I did a lot of research on this. I didn't grow up in the Catholic Church. I didn't grow up learning to defend myself against the Catholic Church. But as I was researching this, they talk a lot about needing grace for salvation. They say man needs grace, and it's only through God's grace that you can achieve this supernatural good. And this is how they would define grace. This is also from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It says, grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God. Do we disagree with that? Not really. This is coming from their catechism. This is what they teach. Now, this also comes from the Catechism. It says, baptism, by imparting the life of Christ's grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God. But the consequences for nature weaken and incline to evil persistent man and summon him to a spiritual battle. So when they talk about the idea of grace, they don't mean grace like we mean grace. Even though they define it as God's unmerited favor, they would agree with that. Grace comes through the Catholic Church. Grace comes through baptism. That's where you get grace. So baptism is what saves you. And you only choose that baptism through your free will. And you choose that baptism through your free will because God offers it through the Catholic Church. And our salvation ultimately comes through our participation in being baptized. So salvation is through faith in the grace that God gives through the church. So it's faith and works through participating in the sacrament. So I'm gonna summarize this. In Adam, this is according to the Catholic Church, man's nature is wounded but not entirely corrupt. He's still able to exercise his will to participate in the grace of God and salvation, which is baptism through the Catholic Church. Any questions or thoughts on that? Yes. Yes. Yeah, they're covered, yeah. Infant baptism comes as a result of that. If you're saved through the waters of baptism, which if you've ever been to a Catholic funeral, I've been to several, that's what they point to. Every time, we know, we know where they're at because they were baptized through the Catholic Church. That's what they hang everything on is that baptism. That's the grace of God is through baptism in the Catholic Church. Anything else? Yeah. That's a complicated question. I want to talk about this a little more next week, but can you lose your salvation in the Catholic Church? That gets to the idea of mortal and venial sins. There are some sins that cause you spiritual death, and you have to do certain things. If you die in a state of having committed a mortal sin, you aren't guaranteed, but you can work your way out of that. And ultimately, everybody ends up in purgatory eventually, and you've got to work your way out of there. Yeah, is that? Right. Yeah. Your monies that you give to the church can be used to hasten on someone's purgatory experience. That's another thing that is a part of a Roman Catholic funeral is, you know, talking about praying for them so that they can ultimately, they can get out of purgatory faster. Anything else? All right, I'm not a Roman Catholic scholar, so if you wanna talk about that a little more or educate me some more, I'll correct anything I got wrong next week. All right, next, I wanna talk about the, not Armenian, I don't know why I do that here. Armenian, Armenians are different than Armenians. All right, so there are going to be several similarities between this and the Calvinist view, but there are also differences. And they might even seem slight. And again, this is an argument of degrees because we're both believers. Generally speaking, we're both believers. But we're talking about, and generally we're looking at the same verses. We're just arguing from different perspectives, different presuppositions. These are distinct views, but they both represent biblical positions. So you can be Arminian, be saved, and just be wrong, if I can say it that way. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. We're talking about believers here. So when we discuss the idea of nature, they, agreeing with the Calvinists, would say that man is spiritually dead. In Adam, man is spiritually dead. He can do nothing on his own to seek God. God must intervene. Man needs God's grace. Again, Calvinists or Catholics would say the same thing. Man needs God's grace, but God's grace comes through the Catholic Church. Calvinists would say the same thing. Man needs God's grace. We'll talk about grace in just a little bit. But ultimately, spiritually dead, we can do nothing. Depravity. They may, depending on your Arminian you discuss with, they may accept the idea of total depravity. Generally speaking, again, the definition is it affects all of man, all of the individual, body and soul, and it affects every individual. So it's pervasive through mankind and pervasive within the individual. But they wouldn't accept the idea of total inability. That is, man cannot on his, I don't wanna say on his own, let me check that. Total inability is man cannot understand God without the Holy Spirit changing him, and that gets to the idea of salvation. Again, that's why these are up here, because these are arguments of degrees, especially for the Arminian and the Calvinist positions. We will not choose God on our own. So in the Arminian perspective, man must exercise his free will to accept the gospel. You hear the gospel and you as a person must exercise your free will. Humans, their position would be humans aren't robots, God doesn't, they might believe election, but they wouldn't necessarily discuss the idea of unconditional versus conditional. Again, that's soteriology, Justin can talk about that. But they would say that mankind has to exercise his will, even in his fallen state, to accept the gospel. So the will is not totally, totally broken. It's depraved, but it's not totally unable to accept. And so because of that, the man's will is free and able to respond to the gospel. So this gets to the idea of provenient grace, or what we could call a pre-regenerating grace. So they would say that there's a different grace that man needs that has to come before salvation. Man's heart is opened by God to be able to accept the gospel. So those who are elected receive this provenient grace, or this pre-regenerating grace, and then they choose the gospel, and then they are saved. So man exercises his free will because of God's grace, the provenient grace, and then he chooses the gospel, and then is regenerated by the Holy Spirit. So the grace comes from God, but it can be resisted. So God gives prevenient grace, but you can reject it. You could hear the gospel and say, I don't want that. Even though God has given you the prevenient grace, you can choose to reject it. So you can resist God's grace and therefore not get saved. So salvation comes after, or regeneration comes after conversion. You exercise your faith and then the Holy Spirit changes you from the inside. Everybody understand that? Any questions on that? I went pretty quick through it. Any questions? All right, let's talk about Calvinism, and maybe once we've got all three, we can discuss a little further. But this is the Calvinist view here, is that ultimately our nature, this is the same or similar to the Arminian view, depending on who you're talking to. Man is spiritually dead. unable to do any good by God's standard, unable and unwilling to seek God. That's our nature. Man is God's enemy. Calvinists would say man is totally depraved. That's the T in TULIP. Those are Calvin's points, which Calvin didn't articulate his theology that way. His followers created that system. So if you don't agree with the system, don't blame Calvin entirely, okay? So man is depraved. Again, depending on who you talk to, this is similar to the Arminian perspective. The depravity affects every part of man, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's to the fullest extent. But it can get there, and it usually does. When man has zero inhibitions, it gets there. Judges 17.6 says, every man did what was right in his own eyes. Genesis 6.5, every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. It gets there. I feel like we're living in a world where it's getting there. We're doing whatever we want, whenever we want, and no one can tell us otherwise. I am my own authority. The government can't tell me what to do. My parents can't tell me what to do. The church can't tell me what to do. God can't tell me what to do. I choose. That's ultimately what we end up with in this concept of depravity. It affects everyone. And this idea of total inability is what I want you guys to remember, that we are not able, we cannot seek God without God intervening first. God has to change us before we want him. Our hearts have to be regenerated, brought back to life, brought to life, not back to, because you were never alive. Our hearts have to be brought alive from the dead in order for us to desire God and to do his will. And then our will, and I like the way that, I like this way to think about our will is that we are enslaved to sin. We talked about it earlier. If you want to compare it to the Armenian perspective, it's that they would say that we're free, but we can choose. I would say, yeah, we're free and we can choose. And what do we choose? Sin every time. That's what it means to be enslaved to sin. You only choose sin every time. That is our free will in our humanity. My free will says I'm going to choose sin because that's what we are before salvation. Romans 6.17 says, to which you were given over. Then in verse 19, it says, you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, leading to further lawlessness. And then in verse 20, it says, for when you are slaves of sin, you are free in regard to righteousness. Our will, being enslaved to sin, is free, or another way to say it, unable to do righteousness. That is total inability. We cannot do what is right. Then when we discuss the idea of grace, it comes from God, it's necessary to free us from our slavery to sin, and it precedes faith. It comes before we can believe. God has to change our hearts in order for us to believe. Now, this is a really complex issue when we talk about faith and conversion, it's really complex. And when we talk about the idea of God's predestination of mankind and our free will, we're getting into really difficult discussions here. I'm gonna affirm that both are true. God chooses, God changes, and I also have to exercise my free will. I only do that because God gives me the ability but it's still my responsibility. Because if I don't do that, I can't say, well God, you didn't change me. You didn't regenerate me. That's not my fault. You're supposed to do that. So it's God's responsibility and it's my responsibility. The Bible teaches both. Why we gotta choose? We don't. Because God says both things are true. Just because I can't understand it doesn't make it untrue. It's okay to not understand. God is bigger than you. God is bigger than me. Jesus is God and man. How can we understand that? I don't know. How did Mary, being a sinner, get conceived of the Holy Spirit and produce a sinless person? If you got a better answer than that, you come tell me. Ultimately, our salvation only comes because of God's work. God has to change your heart. And until God changes your heart, you're only gonna choose your sin. That's the pervasiveness of sin. Every single one of us only chooses sin forever until God intervenes. And by His grace, He did. For most of us here, Lord willing, I pray that He changes every heart in this room. I pray He changes every heart in the world. But that's not, that's not what he wants for some reason. I don't, again, I don't understand it. But it's not my job to understand. It's not your job to understand. It's your job to do what he says. It's your job to obey the gospel, to obey Christ, to be like Christ. That's our job. We're not to be Christ, to be like Christ. All right, any questions about these views here? Yeah, Dan. Yeah. Dan's question is, when do we change the title on the slide to the biblical view? I would say it's the biblical view. I say it's the right view. I don't say it because Calvin said it. I say it because I get it from the scriptures. We are thousands of years, well not thousands, hundreds of years from Calvin. We're thousands of years from Christ. we have the benefit of church history, we also have to deal with the categories that church history gives us. When I say the biblical view, the Arminian's gonna go, hey, wait a second, my view's the biblical view. And the Catholic's gonna say, wait, wait a second, my view's the biblical view. So that's where the categories, David says this, I'll say it, I don't like labels. I don't wanna label myself a Calvinist. Nobody likes Calvinists, especially not on Twitter. Calvinists on Twitter are the worst. Stop talking, please. We're not with them. I would love to call it the biblical view, Dan. I totally agree. That's what, for us, this is the biblical view. You can disagree with me if you want. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Right. That's right. We wouldn't choose Him, so God had to choose us so that we would choose Him. And ultimately, for what purpose? To the praise of His glorious grace. To His glory. That's all. Not me. Because if I had any part in this, I could say, you know what? I'm pretty good. I did something. I at least got there, right? I had to believe. But if it's all God, what am I supposed to say other than, God, thank you? Praise be to God alone. It's Christ alone, faith alone, and grace alone, God's grace alone, not mine, not my ability. It's not by grace through faith after all I can do. It's not by baptism through the Catholic Church or any other church. It's just God's grace. Any other thoughts or questions about this? Yeah, Lynn. No, I wouldn't. Regeneration and conversion, I think, is... Man, it's two sides of the same coin. I don't know how well you can... I think faith and conversion, those are probably definable. I think conversion comes before faith. That is, regeneration comes before my faith. I have to be regenerated by God's grace before I will exercise it. That's what I think. But we're talking hairline split here. If you're saved by God's grace alone, I'm not gonna argue, I'm not gonna say that because, like the Arminian would say, well, I had to exercise my faith and God regenerated me. If you're saying God regenerated me, not I regenerated and this work that I did, that's what got me saved, I'm okay with that. I'm not necessarily, that's how I would put it. That's where I would put those things. Yeah, Scott. Yeah. Yeah. It's simultaneous, and this is where the rubber meets the road, is monergism and synergism. Those are big words that just mean God did it, or I had to help God. And I don't think the Arminian would say that they're synergistic. Most of them, some might. As long as it's God's work, and I'm a passenger here, how it falls, it's a really tight shave as to where, because I don't know it until we start arguing about theology. As long as we're both saying, well, because I believe in Christ, that's the only thing that gets me saved, we're not going to talk about the timing there. Stephen. It could be semantic. The question is, do people get lost in the terms and are we arguing about the same things? It could be. I think this conversation that Lynn's asking about isn't necessarily semantics. I would say it's higher level than most people are really interested in talking about. The average—if you bump into an Arminian on the street, and he's wearing his name tag, I'm an Arminian, and you're wearing yours, I'm a Calvinist, and you guys say, hey, what do you believe about salvation? You're both going to say, by grace, through faith, in Christ alone. That's what you're probably both going to say. If you bump into a Catholic who's wearing his name tag, you're going to have different answers. But we're talking about both biblical arguments. We're not talking about tradition and text or anything like that. So it could be semantic or it could be more than that, just depending on. And I think this isn't necessarily semantics, what Lynn's asking about with regeneration and faith and conversion, because When you get down to it, you are getting more granular, and there are gonna be differences in what people believe, but I don't know that the efficacy of it makes any difference. I don't think that you're gonna be saved if you believe that regeneration happens before faith, but you won't be saved if you believe faith happens before regeneration. I'm not saying that at all. Yeah, Kat. I mean, I think that that's just fine to pray. I think praying for someone to have faith to believe, that's just fine. You can pray that and that the Holy Spirit would change their heart because both of those things need to happen. They both have to happen. The Holy Spirit has to intervene, has to remove the blinders. I love this example David gives about the resistible nature of grace. When Paul is accosted on the road and the light blinds him from heaven, he says, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And he says, who are you? And he says, Jesus Christ, whom you're persecuting, and he's blind. Could Paul have said, no thanks, I'm good. I don't want that. I'll stay blind. I don't think he could have. I think at that moment, Paul is changed. There's something is different. And then Ananias goes and speaks with him and the scales are removed and he believes. So something happened to Paul on that road and he couldn't shake it. He couldn't stop it. Something, that something was Jesus. That something was the Holy Spirit. That something was God the Father changing Saul of Tarsus, his heart. So both of those things have to happen. So I think it's just fine what you pray for your husband as long as you're praying for them. This goes for anybody who's an unbeliever that you know. Every one of us has unbelieving family and friends. Pray for those people because God can change them. He does, Scott. Yeah. Yeah. It's necessary for us to share the gospel to someone, to live the lifestyle of Christ, to exercise those things. Yeah, Travis. Yeah. Yeah. He missed the point that was right in front of him. Yeah, he's asking, is that the problem with Nicodemus? He's so caught up in the smaller things of the law, and he's not dealing with what Jesus is telling him right in front of him. No, it's not that you keep the law. It's not that you do the right things. It's not that you have to go back to your mother's womb. It's that you have to understand that the change has to happen. It's only through God. It's not through keeping the law. All right, we gotta close up. If you have any more comments or questions, I'll be up in the front for a few minutes before we start. But let me close this in prayer. Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for Christ, most of all. Thank you for the Holy Spirit changing our hearts so that we can believe in what Christ has done. Because ultimately, we can only believe through the scriptures that are communicated to us. Because Christ at one time was obedient to the law and he died so that we might live. And only through our faith in him can we have that life. So we thank you for Christ. We thank you that the Holy Spirit has regenerated us and is continuing to regenerate us. And we're putting our sin to death, I pray, that you would help us to continually do those things. Pray for the hour to come that you would receive all the glory through it, because we're only here because of you. We're only saved because of you. And so the only thing that we can say, even in our church services, our teaching, the reading of the scriptures, is may it be to the praise of your glorious grace. We pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen. You're dismissed.