In session two, we will consider the question, can just anybody believe in Jesus? The issue here, as you might suppose, is man's free will. I would say we are free moral agents, and we make our own decisions. The problem is, although we're free, we are at the same time biased. We are not neutral. We have an inclination towards sin. And the question is related to can just anybody believe in Jesus? The question is how bad is our inclination towards sin? how deeply, how radically has sin messed up our decision-making faculties. And so we're back to, does natural fallen man have the ability to choose God? If a person believes that God's election is based on his foreknowledge that you would one day believe, that's called conditional election. Why do you think it's called conditional election? That's correct. God's election of you is conditional on Him knowing that you would of your own volition choose Him. Now, if you believe that God's election is not based on foreseen faith, that it's based rather on God's pleasure, God's mercy, God's purpose. That's called, not conditional election, but unconditional election. There are no conditions on your part that qualify for you to be elected by God. So it's not dependent on anything you do or don't do. It's not based on anything in you. When I say it, I mean God's election of you is not based on anything you did to deserve it. So again, ability is the issue that we're looking at. Scripturally, God does want us to make the offer of salvation to all people. John 3, 16, pretty famous, whoever believes has eternal life. Whoever, and that's true, whoever believes does have eternal life. Jesus commanded the apostles to make disciples of all nations. So we've got that impetus to go out and tell people at work, at school, wherever, about Jesus. That's our duty. That's what God wants us to do. But even though we offer the gospel to all people, we call them to believe and repent, the question remains, does natural fallen man have the ability within himself, in and of himself, to choose God, to turn away from his sins and to embrace Jesus. That's what we're gonna look at in this session. We'll start with what Jesus said about it, which I think is a pretty good place to start. Now I'm gonna put a quote by Jesus on the screen. And the question is, who is the only person that will come to Jesus according to Jesus? This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father. So according to Jesus, who is the only person who will come to him? There is somebody who'll come. Who is it that'll come? The one who's been granted by the Father to come. So according to Jesus, without the Father's involvement, who will come? No one, no one. That is a universal negative, right? It's all inclusive or all exclusive. No one. Universal negative can come to me. Not the Pope, not Billy Graham, not Mother Teresa, not John Calvin. How about you? Can you? Not you. Universal negative. Now let's look at this word can. What does can mean? It means is able to. It means that in English. It means that in Greek. I went to public school, and all the time, somebody raised their hand. Teacher, yes. Can I go to the bathroom? The teacher said, I'm sure you can. And yes, you may. Now, sometimes in English, we use the word can wrongly to mean permission. Can I have permission to go to the bathroom instead of ability. And so he's not just saying God has to give you permission to come to Jesus. Jesus is saying you don't have the ability to come to him because the word in the Greek denotes ability. So let me say it again. Do some men in and of themselves have the ability to come to Jesus? Well, no, obviously they don't. Now look at this word unless. What does unless mean? It's an exception clause. This is a prerequisite. It is a necessary condition that must be met for something to happen. What is the necessary condition, according to that verse? What's the condition? It's gotta be granted, that means given to you, by the Father. Also, notice Jesus said, I told you. What does that mean? I told you. What does that tell us that we should look for? This ain't the first time he ever said this. There's another time he said it. So his previous statement is a few verses back in John 6, 44. We're gonna find out who are the only ones who can come to Jesus. Who's the only ones who can come to Jesus? Right, now first it was, you had to be granted by the Father. Now you have to be drawn by the Father. And the key point here is that Jesus taught it is impossible to come to Him unless drawn or granted by the Father. Now, what does draw mean? In English, we use it this way a lot. What's that picture represent? What kind of draw is going on here? That's right. He's lured in there by something very pleasant, right? And so a lot of people understood that drawing to mean the idea you're enticed, you're wooed, the same way a guy is drawn to a girl, you see. And the same flower is involved in both cases. So the Armenian understanding of being drawn is quite reasonable. It's totally up to you. You know, the girl doesn't have to say yes to the guy. So if the father draws you to Jesus and you say yes, you're saved. If you resist, you'll be lost. It's totally up to you. And so nobody's much offended by that. But now even in English, this word draw can have a much more forceful meaning. How do you draw water out of a well? Do you stand at the top and go, here, water, water, water. Do you woo the water to the top? You hold a flower up there, water. No, you have to take it out. You have to haul it out. You have to basically force it out. So that lady's gonna tie a rope around that jug and drop down in there and she's gonna pull that water up to the top. Now if you had a pump, you put the water under pressure and you force it to the top. So even in English, this word draw, can mean to compel or to force, you see. Now, the question is, how is it used in the Greek? So we've got these two contrasting ideas, is draw a woo or is draw to be compelled? It's one or the other. In English, it could be both. It's not really that way in Greek. For example, this same Greek word is used here, Peter having a sword, drew it. Now, how do you get a sword out of a sheath? You pull it out. Did Peter woo it out? No. He pulled it out. There's friction there. You have to overcome friction to get the sword out of the sheath. Now, this same word for draw, the Greek word is helkou, you see it at the top. It's used in this verse, James 2.6. Which one of those English words translates Helcuo? It says, are not the rich the ones who oppress you and the ones who drag you into court? Which one of those words is Helcuo? Drag. Drag. No one can come to me unless the father drags him. That's the same exact Greek word. Are not the rich the ones who woo you into court? Oh, yes. All right, now, here's another one. Is that me? No. They seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the rulers. So, there it is again. Helcuo is dragged. Now here's another example. This is from John 21 6. Guess which word is Helcuo there? Cast the net on the right side of the boat and you will find some. So they cast it and now they were not able to haul it in because of the quantity of fish. Which word is Helcuo? Haul, H-A-U-L. So we got a business here called U-Haul. It's not U-Woo. And so the picture is, now here, these guys are straining with all their might to haul the fish in the boat. It was so heavy. But you see, that is the word. If you looked up in a Greek dictionary, it says, halkuo means to drag a person forcibly and against his will, to impel, we've already seen Bible verses with that in it, or to compel by irresistible superiority. So that is what the word means. And so we're back to this question of you being drugged someplace. You draw a sword out of a sheath with force. You haul things in. Does fallen man have the ability to choose God according to Jesus? No, he doesn't. This is not just an isolated thing in Scripture. It's all over Scripture. Going back in time to the flood. Now, you know there was a flood and there was a reason for the flood. Somebody on the back row, read that for us. The wickedness of men was great in the earth. Why did God decide to block man off the face of the earth via the flood? Because we were so bad. Yeah, we're so wicked and evil, that's right. Now, how bad were we? Before the flood, how bad were we? Wow, look at that. Every, every intention, the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Man basically good or basically bad, would you say? This impacts, for example, your view of government. Liberals believe man is basically good. And they think it's good to concentrate power in the hands of a few basically good men. So bigger and bigger and bigger government because man's basically good and you can trust him with power. Well, according to this, man's basically evil and you probably should not trust him with power. Otherwise, you become like a Pharaoh who is a bad guy. And so your view of mankind is gonna have an impact on your view of government, for example. But going back to the point, you say, oh, I'll ask people before the flood, God took care of that, he killed them all. It's different now, right? Okay, somebody, free will, read the verse. What we're looking for is, what does God promise he'll never do again? The Lord said in his heart, I will never again curse the ground because of man. For the intentions of man's heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have. So what's he promised never to do again? Yeah, curse the ground, and what that means is wipe out the earth because of us. He's not gonna do that again. Now, what words in verse 21 describe the conditions of man's heart after the flood? Evil from his youth. Now, again, what does that verse indicate about whether man is basically good or bad? Bad, yeah. And according to verse 21, how early do people begin a course of evil? See that? From their youth. So, just based on these two verses we've read and this assessment of the human race, what does this suggest about the likelihood of a person turning away from his sins and coming to Jesus on his own? It's not likely. That's correct. There's a paradox in verse 21. A lot of people teach their kids about Noah's flood and the rainbow and it'll never happen again and that's true, but there's a big paradox right here, a non sequitur. What is it? Excellent. That's right. Nothing's changed. We all in ourselves apart from Jesus deserve to be wiped out just as much now as we did before the flood. So God makes this wonderful unconditional promise despite the fact in face of the fact that we're still just as bad as we were before the flood. Y'all see that? All right, it's not that we're getting better and better. Now, here's another verse. David, the king, a man after God's own heart, poetically expresses the extent of his own wickedness. Tell me how he did that. Somebody read that verse for me. So how is he poetically expressing his sinfulness, and how sinful, how bad he really is? Right, now he's not saying that conception is evil. He's saying from the moment of conception and then from birth, he was prone toward iniquity and sin. Y'all see that? Now medical science confirms this because isn't it true that every baby is born with an unbiblical cord? Okay, now, if this, look guys, if this is true of King David, big, yes, you have a question about that? Well, I'm just gonna suggest to you, if it's true of David, what does that suggest about our natural condition? We are born morally retarded, is what it comes down to. All right, Isaiah, pretty good guy. Look what he said about himself and his generation. Look how he says what was true of the people of his day. When you think of something that is polluted, what do you think of? Dirty. I was talking to this guy, he was home from leave in the army, and we're talking about how dirty you get when you're out in maneuvers and stuff for weeks on end, sleeping outside. And he said, his clothes get filthy. He doesn't mind wearing them as long as he never takes them off. But as soon as he takes them off, just the thought of putting them back on is beyond him. And so sometimes they translate it as like bloody rags. Imagine a hospital setting and they're changing wrappings that are full of pus and blood and ucky stuff and you got this pile of bloody rags. Well, that's pretty gross. You wouldn't want to put that on, would you? And so he says, when God looks at the best we are and all of our righteousness, it amounts to how much to him? Dirty rags, polluted garments. That's the best we can do. And it says in Psalm 143, 2, no one living is righteous before you. Now, Jeremiah said some stuff about this, too. Look what insight he gives into the human heart. Jeremiah 17, 9. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it? Who can understand it? What's the implied answer to that question? No one. You don't know how bad you are. You know, a lot of people say, just go with your heart. Well, that could be dangerous. You're messed up. And heart, what does heart mean in Hebrew thinking? What's your heart? Motivation. It's the center of your being. It's your mind, it's your will, it's your emotion. It's another way of really saying your brain, but it's you. So that's our heart condition. Going into the New Testament, look at this next verse. How many of us have righteousness in and of ourselves? And I'm gonna get Joe to read it. What does that say? How many of us have righteousness on our own? None. And why does he add, no, not one? Wasn't none sufficient? Why does he say, no, not one? Not even you. Emphasis, not even you. We read that one, except me. No, not you either. Nobody has got it. Now, who on his own seeks for God, according to Romans 3.11? No one seeks for God. No one understands. No one seeks for God. No one understands what? What is it we don't understand? The depth of our sinfulness, our lack of righteousness, our need for righteousness, and really God and what He's all about, because as you've already said, we're suppressing the truth about God. But if no one seeks for God, how does anybody ever get saved? Why? Are you here? How does anybody ever get saved? you're chosen by God and the Father grants it to you and he draws you in. It's like the tractor beam on Star Trek. You're coming, all right. Otherwise, this is our natural fallen condition. Now, it doesn't mean you're not religious. People are very religious, but it's their own religion is a man-made religion. It's not righteousness on God's terms. It's the salve of a guilty conscience. Look at Romans 3.12. We wanna know what percentage of people have turned aside. What percentage? 100%. All have turned aside. Together they have become, what's that word? Worthless. No one does good. Not even one. Why does he add not even one again? Emphasis. You think, oh, except me. Except my grandmother. Not even one. No one. Worthless. They are precious in His sight. Worthless. Are you precious or worthless? With respect to what are you worthless? How are you worthless apart from God? I'm talking about the natural man. How is he worthless? You can't do good. All your righteous deeds are worthless. Your self-righteousness is worthless. The chances of you coming to God for salvation are worthless. Yeah, we're creating God's image. We have worth in that sense, but your goodness? What have we turned aside from? God and the truth. Suppress the truth in unrighteousness. That's an interesting thing. Worthless. Yes, sir. Armenians obviously don't ignore the Bible. Oh, no, they don't. So they have to explain these differently, right? Yes, they explain them differently. So when they say, you're worthless, accept that little, pervenient grace that God gives all mankind. Wesley said, God gives you a little bit of grace to overcome it. So it's a level playing field. Now, Romans chapter 8 goes on. If you're not in Christ, you're in the flesh. He describes the condition of people in the flesh. And so we're going to read that, 5 through 8. Those who live according to the flesh So let's look at some things that are true of those who are in the flesh. First thing, their minds are set on the things of the flesh. What's the opposite of that? What's the opposite of being set on the things of the flesh? He had to be set on things of God. So that means a person who's not a Christian is not thinking about the things of God. He might be religious, but he's not really thinking about the things of God. So again, you have to wonder if somebody seems to be seeking, the Lord seems to be seeking Jesus, if he truly is, that's coming from some divine influence going on in his life, that's the tractor beam. The mindset on the flesh is death. What does that mean? Lots of people look alive to me. They eat and drink and breathe and cause trouble. So in what sense is there death? They're spiritually dead. That's right. If you drove up this morning and there was a corpse laying over there in the trees and you went over and kicked him, what would happen? Is he going to respond? If you shout at him to get up, is he going to get up? So you wonder, how does somebody quit being dead? Stop being dead. How do you stop being dead? You can't unless some bigger thing happens from the outside. Ooh, hostile to God. Hostile to God. So every time you witness to a person that's in the flesh and he's hostile to God, every time he's not gonna respond. So why do people respond? The Lord is drawing them in. That's right, that's the only explanation for it. He does not submit to God's law. He's not gonna submit to what you tell him about God. He cannot. There's that word can again. What does can mean? Ability. He doesn't have the ability to submit to God's law. He cannot please God. Would it please God for somebody to believe in Jesus? Yeah. Does he have the ability to do that? No. That's why Jesus said, no one can come to me unless the Father drags him. Alright, somebody read that verse for me. So, what is it that the natural man without the Spirit does not accept? The things of the Spirit. Again, how does anybody ever get saved? That means every time you witness to a natural man, he's not going to accept it, every time. By himself. Why doesn't he accept it according to that verse? Yeah, he's not able to understand it. And he says it's folly to him. Folly. And what can he not do? He says he's not able to understand. He cannot understand it. Cannot. He doesn't have the ability to understand it. There's that word can again. And there they do put able. So, how does anybody ever get saved? By himself, he's not gonna be. All right, look at this one. You were dead in the trespasses and sins of which you once walked. We're talking about that dead person again. Whenever you witness to somebody, this is what it's like. This is exactly what it's like. You're the person on the right, I hope. The guy you're witnessing to is on the left. Is he gonna respond? Probably not. He's dead. You need to envision this. This is spiritually what's going on with every lost person you witnessed it. Should this affect your evangelism? Well, yes, it should. Now, we're commanded to evangelize. It's the fragrance of life to those being saved. It's the stench of death to those who are perishing. But you need to understand, you're never going to argue anybody into heaven. Anything you can talk him into, the devil's gonna talk him out of. Yes, you should present reasons to believe if the guy wants to know it, but you need to understand, unless the Holy Spirit works through what you say and works in his life, he doesn't have the ability to respond. So, in a sense, it should take the pressure off you. Evangelism, yes, we evangelize, but you gotta understand, a successful witness is sharing Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit and leaving the results Tell God. So you don't need to beat yourself up. Oh, I said that wrong. Well, you could probably say it better. Try to say it better. Study to show yourself approved. But it takes a lot of the pressure off, because God's the one that's got to close the deal, not you. You just got to provide the information in love. So someone read Ephesians 2, 4, and 5 for us. God being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which So how can the dead be made alive? Through Christ, Jesus does it. But God, well it's not but you, but me, it's but God did something out of mercy, pure mercy, great love, what'd he do? Made us alive with Christ. God resurrects corpses. So now in Arminian theology, the lost man is a terminal patient. He's on his deathbed. and the doctor comes in with a miracle cure called the gospel, and he puts it up to the terminal man's lips. And if he drinks it, he'll be saved, but if he turns his head away and refuses the miracle cure, he'll be lost. And the key to that scenario is that the man, he's almost dead, he's gonna die, but he's still barely alive, and he makes the decision on whether he's gonna take the medicine or not. Now that's the Arminian position. The Augustinian position is, oop, too late, He died, he's a corpse laying there. And you can hold the gospel up to his lips all you want to, he's not gonna drink it. And so unless God resurrects that corpse, there's no hope. But that is exactly what God does in every unbeliever's life, that comes to faith. He, but God, those two words makes a big difference. It's the but God part of it. That's the Augustinian view. So how would you answer the question? Did we come because we were chosen? Or were we chosen because we came? Which is it? It looks like, based on man's inability to respond to the gospel, we came because we were chosen. 1 John 4, 19, we love because He first loved us. So I was asking who pulls the trigger, which is cause, which is effect. Well, the reason you love God is because He first loved you. 1 John 4, 10, in this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. John 15, verse 16, Jesus said, You did not choose me, but I chose you. That gets pretty clear, doesn't it? So we need to talk just a minute about free will. A free moral agent always chooses according to his greatest desire at the moment of choice. Even if you don't like the choices, if you're in Chicago and some criminal puts a gun to your head and he says, your money or your life, now you've got a choice. What choice will you make? You could decide, well, without money, I'm as good as dead anyway. Go ahead and shoot. Or you could decide, no, I'll give him my wallet because my greater desire is my desire to live. So even though you might not like your choices, a free moral agent always chooses according to his greatest desire at the moment of choice. Does that make sense? The problem is, let's imagine you're in Chicago and you go on top of the Sears Tower. and you have a choice. You can stay on top or you can jump off. Your choice. You can do either one. But if you exercise your free will and you jump off the top of the Sears Tower, let me suggest to you, you no longer have a free will. The law of gravity is going to take over and you're going down. And no matter how badly you might want to be back on top, the consequences of your previous decision mean you're going to come to a sudden stop down at the bottom. This has to do with our free will. The last people in history who had free will because they were morally neutral were who? Adam and Eve. They had no sin nature. They made an unbiased choice when they chose to disobey God. Problem is, ever since then, All people have been bound by their truly free will decision. So unlike Adam and Eve, we're born, like David said, with a sin nature, a bent towards sin. In our natural state, we're slaves to sin. And that's why Romans 519 says, by one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners. Who was the one man? Adam. Look, I'm gonna say we have free will. We do. But it's within the context of what? What's wrong with your free will? It's tainted. Is that what you said? Yes. It's in the context of a sin nature. So you as a fallen person apart from Jesus have the ability to choose what you want. because you're always going to choose according to your greatest desire at the moment of choice. But what you want, what any fallen man wants, ultimately, is sinful, his way, not righteousness on God's terms. Let me illustrate that with this English setter. If you offered this little doggy a choice here, he's got a free will choice between, guess what, a steak and an onion, which one's he going to choose? Why is he going to pick the steak every time? Why? He's got a biased, a natural inclination towards steak. He doesn't like onions. My dog, sometimes we'll give him leftover soup, like maybe chicken soup or something. And it's so funny. It's all the stuff in chicken soup or whatever I want to put in there, you know. He eats and eats and eats. And when he's done, there's this perfect pile of like English peas. They'll just be there. Like that's all I put in the plate was English. And somehow he picks around every little pea. He leaves them. Why? He doesn't like English peas. He likes the chicken part. And so does the dog have a choice? Yes, did he make a free will decision? Yes, but we already know every time what he's gonna pick because he's a dog and he likes steak. He's biased and so you as a lost person, any lost person, he's got a choice and he's got a free will but he is bent towards sin and every time he's gonna pick sin. Jesus to him is an onion. Y'all understand? So the problem with free will is, like that gravity and you jump off the Sears Tower, you don't really have free ability. Free will, but not free ability. And that's why lost people don't have any use for Jesus. Now, as a Christian, if you're a Christian, you have the Holy Spirit, the power of sin is broken in your life. Still a battle, but the power is broken. So even as a Christian, Whenever you sin, you can't say the devil made me do it. The only reason you sin is because your desire to sin is greater than your desire to obey God. All right? Free agents always act according to the strongest desire at the moment of choice. So you just remember that. With the Holy Spirit, you don't have to sin. And whenever you sin, it's because you're really saying, I love my sin more than Jesus. But lost guy, he doesn't really have that option. He doesn't have the Holy Spirit. And so he's gonna make the wrong choice every time. Unless what happens? Unless what? But God, unless the Father grants it and draws him in. And remember, for by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not of yourselves. What does the this refer to, that pronoun? Grace, salvation, faith, all three. I'm gonna argue even your faith is a gift of God. And in that sense, regeneration precedes faith. It's not like you believe and then God regenerates you. That would never happen. The Holy Spirit regenerates you first and bang, maybe a split second later, then you believe. because He enables you to do it. Now, He doesn't, in that sense, you know, we talked about drag, meaning it's a hard word to compel, but God doesn't force you to believe, He enables you to believe. He causes, He makes you willing in the day of salvation. Ultimately, you do believe, you do decide, but it's because God has empowered you and led you to do that. They say, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. You know, that's not true. How could you make the horse drink that water? of his own free will. She said shove his face in it. That's called drowning. No, if you put salt in his oats ahead of time, he will of his own free will drink the water. So what God does to the elect is he salts their oats so that they want Jesus and he gives them the ability to believe. Okay, so let's go back to my favorite thing The time tunnel. I'm gonna misuse the word foreknowledge. We're gonna talk about foreknowledge later. But if foreknowledge means that God looks down the tunnel of time to see who would one day believe of their own free will, what he would have seen is that left to ourselves, nobody would believe. And he didn't like what he saw. So, despite foreseeing ill will, out of pure love, out of mercy, God decided to save some members of the human race. And he so works in their lives as to cause them to believe. So, it's not that he looked down the tunnel of time to see who would believe and then responded to that. That's not how it worked. Somebody said, It was illustrating it. Let's say that's heaven over there through that room, that door, that over the door to heaven it says, whosoever will may come. And even though that's not in the Bible, it is true. Whosoever will may come. And then once you go through the door and you turn around and look on the other side, it says, we're chosen before the foundation of the world. Well, you could change that to whoever believes we'll have eternal life. That's right, whoever believes we'll have eternal life. But the only people who are gonna believe are those who are chosen before the foundation of the world. See how that works? Jesus said, whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. Anybody who comes to Jesus will be accepted by Jesus. But the only people who are gonna come are those that the Father gives to Jesus. Nobody else has any interest in him. They freely choose not to come to Jesus. As an aside, I will say there are also many false Jesuses out there, false Christs. And so a lot of people, oh, I believe in Jesus, but we started asking them about it. It ain't the Jesus we know, it ain't the Jesus in the Bible, it's just some imposter named Jesus. So you have to factor that into it. And there's a lot of false believers who sincerely maybe think they believe in Jesus, but eventually they fall away, which shows they never really believed. They're like Judas. One pastor I know used to say, the faith that fizzles before the finish had a flaw from the first. And what that means is it's not that you lose your salvation. You never had it. Part of the proof that you've got it is what? We're saved by grace through faith for? Good works. If you don't have the good works, you don't have the faith. And if you fizzle out before the finish, you also don't really have the faith. So there's a lot of sincerely false believers, and there's a lot of people who worship a false Jesus, but you have to take that into consideration. But true believers only believe and only come because of God's sovereignty and work in their lives. All right, now, let's talk about what this is called theologically. But before we do, here's our question to you. Can just anybody believe in Jesus? Can they do that? No. Can just anybody believe in Jesus? No, not at all. Theologically, we could call this radical depravity. The extent of our wickedness is described theologically as radical depravity. What does the word radical mean? extreme or going to the root, yeah, radical depravity. First, our dead, natural flesh condition, and we've looked at a lot of these verses right up here. That's what it's talking about, that we are radically depraved by sin. This is important. It does not mean we are as totally bad as we possibly could be. because there is obviously relative good among sinners. So let's say you have a Hindu mama with a little baby, and some vicious dog comes and attacks them. Well, you know, she's going to turn her own body, her back to that dog to protect the baby. She'd sacrifice herself to save the baby. Well, that's not evil. That's not bad. That's good. That's good that she does that. See, obviously, she's not Christian. Doesn't matter. There's relative good among sinners. Jesus talks about that. So radical depravity doesn't mean you're as bad as you could be, otherwise we'd all be Hitler. We're not. He's badder than we is. There's a different word for radical depravity. It's called total depravity. Well, I don't like total depravity because it sounds like you're totally as bad as you could be. Radical means it goes to the root. That sin has so screwed you up, your heart, meaning your mind, your will, and your emotions, that when it comes right down to it, you're gonna pick your way instead of God's way. So that's what it means. Sin has defiled every part of our being, mind, will, and emotion, so that no one seeks God. We are not able to understand the things of God, and no one can come to Jesus. What's the alternative word for radical depravity? What's the alternative? Total, okay. So you're gonna hear people say total, but what they mean by that is radical. This doctrine of the extent of our wickedness is one of the root doctrines of the Reformation, that you really do need to be saved by grace. It's just by grace, and it's totally a gift from God. The whole salvation process, including your faith, because if it wasn't by grace, you'd never get it, you'd never make it. This message was produced by the New Testament Reformation Fellowship, reforming today's church with New Testament church practices. Permission is hereby granted for you to reproduce this message. You can find us on the web at www.ntrf.org. May God bless you as you seek to follow Him in complete obedience to His Word. May your faith in the Lord Jesus be strengthened and your daily walk with Him deepened. Okay.