Back to our study. Here's the introduction. We're going to continue in the study, so you want to get it out. I think we're on page 7. I believe we finished talking about and looking at verses for Article 3 last week. Does that sound right? Okay. And So far, the first three articles are largely repetitious from things that we studied when we were studying the Trinity about Jesus being one of the three Persons of the Trinity, truly God, co-equal with the Father and the Holy Spirit. And Article 3 had introduced the idea that he has two natures united in one person forever. And Article 4 picks that up and takes some of the language out of a couple of the creeds to insert into Article 4. And if you see Article 4, top of page 7, it says, we affirm the hypostatic union that the two natures of Jesus Christ are united in one person without mixture, confusion, division, or separation, we deny that to distinguish between the two natures is to separate them." So this is where we start to define and describe and talk about the two natures of Christ in more depth. And the term, if you like underlining or highlighting theologically, is the hypostatic union. Hypostatic is related to the word hypostasis, which is that it's sort of a philosophical Greek term that talks about something that has substance. So a hypostasis is something that's in reality has substance. When you talk about a hypostatic union, it's the union of two different realities, two different substances or realities combined into one. What are the two realities, the two natures is the word that they use, rightly so, but what are the two natures that are united in the Person of Jesus Christ? God and man. Thank you. So, yeah, these are the two natures, right? It's the God nature, His deity, and that nature is combined with a real, true human nature. And so there's more affirmations about details of this point, but Article 4 introduces the term. And the words that come out of the old creeds is the Chalcedonian definition, the Athanasian Creed, are these terms that he's one person, united in one person, without mixture, confusion, division, or separation. And so these terms in and of themselves, when you combine them all at one time, you end up talking about something that's kind of a paradox. How can it be true that there's no division, but yet there's, you know, one person? But the natures themselves are separate, but not divided. Not separate in the way of, like, He's sometimes one and not the other, but they're united in one person. To where Jesus is now, then and always, since the Incarnation, always, the combination of the truly God nature and the truly human nature. There's no mixture. It's not like a 50-50 thing. When He's doing miracles, it's not like He increases the God nature up to 95% and minimizes the human nature down to like 5% to make 100%. Some of the younger generation know that the old Shai Lin did the rap thing about the hypostatic union. He says, Jesus is both God and man. He's two 100 percents. He's not 200 percent though, right? He's fully divine and fully human. Totally in that way. And so there's no confusion between them. particularly in the mind of Christ, right? He's never uncertain about how He's operating. Am I God or am I man? There's nothing like that. There's no division. They're not so divided that He's one or the other. This is the way that we would tend to think that it must be. Right? He's either one or the other. And some will teach something about the incarnation like Christ the Son of God set aside His deity as if He divested Himself of the divine nature. As if He became only human and wasn't simultaneously fully God. That's one of the heresies. And so we don't distinguish. The denial is we don't distinguish between the two natures in such a way that we separate them. But we distinguish between them. Hopefully this will work itself out in the Scripture. Two separate natures, not confused or mixed, but not separated from one another. I mean, like I said, there's the paradox. United but separate, not separate but, you know. Got it? Are we good? What's that? Yeah, united but not separated. Something like that. Yeah, did I say that right? Yeah. So, at the bottom of the page, footnote 4 gives us a bunch of these scripture references, right? They wrote out the entirety of the reference from Matthew 16, 16. And Simon Peter said, "'You're the Christ, the Son of the living God.' And Jesus answered him, "'Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.'" He's the Christ, the Son of the living God. He's the man, Jesus Christ, who is anointed, the anointed One of God. He's a man, but He's the Son of God, the Son of the living God. Not like we are, born, created as sons, but He is God the Son and always has been and always will be. And when He's born, He's incarnate. He adds the entirety of the human nature. So, did Peter fully understand that at that time? It's not super clear what they understood at the time, but I think they recognized that He was more than a mere man. And proclaiming Him to be the Son of God recognizes His deity really. And so that way they were sort of understanding. So, thoughts or questions? Or should we read some verses? Okay, verses then. Yay! Somebody want to look up Luke 1 and read a couple of verses there? Dina, thanks. And then we'll go from there to John 1. 1 Matthew. Maybe, Matthew, if you want to try to jump through the book of John, you can read all the John stuff. And then Acts 20-28, Ivan, thanks. And somebody want to plan to read all the Romans passages there, Pauly? And am I running out of volunteers? 2 Corinthians 8-9. Caleb and Mandy. Colossians. And then we'll see where we go from there. Or something. I'm losing track, so I've got to stop. Because I don't even know who's going to read first. Dina. Dina, you're going to read first, right? The angel answered, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God. But why am I so angered Yeah, so that's Elizabeth talking to Mary, right? So Mary is really the mother of Jesus, right? And Elizabeth, inspired evidently by the Holy Spirit, identifies her as the mother of our Lord. Who is that? Well, Jesus, right? Jesus is the Lord. She identifies Jesus as the Lord. The angel identifies that Jesus is actually the Son of God, right? This is who Jesus is. Does that make Mary the mother of God? Mother of Jesus, right? Mother of Jesus our Lord, but not the mother of God. She's not the supreme over the deity. But she is the actual, real, physical, biological mother of the Son of God. Where does Jesus get His human nature from? Evidently from His mother. Not that God couldn't do it without that, but he chooses to make this a sign that the Virgin will conceive and give birth to a child, right? And this is how it happens. That's what's sort of revealed. Is there something beyond what we can understand fully there? Probably, but we can at least understand that, well, we got the wrong idea if Mary is God giving birth to God somehow. that it doesn't work like that. So, that's the beginning. Other verses we go on with. And John... It seems like these verses are emphasizing that part of the human nature or the God nature. But John 1... Is that you, Pauli? No? Matthew. Sorry, thanks. I knew I was going to get confused. Thanks. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not made anything that was made. We almost always have to add v. 14 to clarify who the Word is. It's the One who became flesh. Came and dwelt among us. The Son from the Father full of grace and truth. So, in the beginning, Jesus is God. He is in the beginning only God. He doesn't have the human nature. Not until He's conceived in the womb of His mother Mary. This is who He is and has been and continues to be. God in every way. Everything's made through Him. In Him, v. 4 even says, in Him is life. Life that comes to all men. So, there's the beginning of it. John 8, v. 58. Now who's He claiming to be when He says that? Before Abraham was, I Am. He's claiming to be Yahweh, right? He's God. That's His claim. And they understand that full well, right? They pick up stones to stone Him just a few verses later in verse 59. Why are you upset with me? Because you, a man, claim to be God. Well, that's only heresy if it happens to not be true. Like the testimony of the angel, the few verses we've already seen give us the testimony that it's true. Alright, John 17.5 when Jesus is praying. This is a nice verse because it clearly identifies that Jesus has an existence before creation. Therefore, He can't be merely of the creation. He's not the first born in the sense of being the first one to be born, the first one created. Who's the first man created? Not Jesus, it's Adam. Right? The Scripture's clear about this. But for him to return to the Father is to return to the glory he had before because of that divine aspect of his nature. Acts 20. Yeah, thanks. So we have to do a little bit of thinking with this verse, but it's interesting how it works. It's not so much about the message of Paul to the Ephesian elders about how they're overseers appointed, but who appointed them? The Holy Spirit made them overseers for the care of whose church? God's church. You've got the Holy Spirit appointing them as elders over God's church. It ties the Holy Spirit and God together, but what's the definition of the church that He then says? How do I identify the church? That it was bought with His own blood. Who's the His blood that was shed to purchase the church? But it's God's church, right? But it's His church. But it's the Holy Spirit's church. See, the quick thought is that they're conflated with one another because they're one. It's a Trinitarian verse, but it speaks to the divine nature of Christ in that when He dies and sheds His blood, is that even possible for God? To die? God have flesh and blood so that He should die and bleed? No. But the man Jesus Christ does, and he really did die. So like I said, two natures, right? It's just one of those kind of verses. Okay. Cool? Romans. Paul, are you reading in Romans? Did I finally get to pick you? concerning his son who was descended from David according to the flesh. Remember when we did this in the earlier part of Matthew? And several years ago when we went through Luke, there's these genealogies, right? Why are those included in the Gospel? Yeah, yeah. It shows that he's in this line of David. He's the fulfillment of the promises. And not only the promises to David, he's the fulfillment as the seed of Abraham too, right? He's the one that God promised Adam and Eve all the way back, that one day one of your sons would come and crush the head of the serpent. He's the fulfillment of all of this, but the genealogies demonstrate his full humanity. He actually has like an historic family lineage that can be traced. because he's born as a man. And so this is something of the same thing, right? That Jesus was descended from David according to the flesh. We could translate that a little bit differently. I don't know that the words work, but we can understand it, interpret it to mean that in his human nature, he's a descendant of David, just like every other descendant of David. in the way of being human, every way, just like Solomon. Except for the sin part. Important distinction. But that's what we see in the verse. In Romans 9.5, Pauly. "...to them belong the patriarchs, and from their race according to the flesh is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen." This is like the poster verse for the hypostatic union, really, in many ways, in my opinion. Like Paul's writing to the Romans explaining, who are the patriarchs? What's the race that Jesus is born from? What ethnicity is He? He's Jewish, right? He's an Israelite. He comes from the line of the patriarchs. You can trace it all the way back. And like I said, you actually can see the names of many of the people in his ancestry, speaking from the human perspective. But who is he? Oh God over all, forever. Forever meaning from before the foundation of the world clear out, past the end of eternity, as if there was such a thing. Right? And so it's both. Paul and the rest of the writers of the New Testament are just pretty much unapologetic about, like, yeah, this is how it is. So we see the statements like that and try to figure out how they work. So Ephesians chapter 1. Boy, oh boy, oh boy. Somebody planning to read that or is this where I stop? Oh, Samantha? Thanks. Yeah. Oh no, sorry, I skipped down to the next group. 2 Corinthians 8. You have that, Caleb? Okay, Caleb's already got it. Sorry, thanks. So what riches is he referring to? Jesus inherited a lot of land from His dad. Is that what that's about? The riches that He had is the spiritual riches. The reality of possessing heaven and earth and all creation. He steps away from all of that as if He's taking a sabbatical or something, but He makes Himself poor. How poor? Yeah, like a slave, right? Paul writes about it in Philippians, that he becomes obedient, all the way obedient to the Lord as a man, all the way obedient even to death. So that in his poverty, when he dies on the cross, we actually can become rich spiritually and receive all these blessings of heaven, the spiritual reality. So, that's how Jesus accomplishes that. Colossians 2.9. Okay, darling, thanks. So, do you see the combination? What are the two natures in that verse? In Colossians 2.9, which says... Yeah, yeah. In Him, meaning Jesus, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily. There's the two natures. And it's not just an empty shell bodily. The fullness of deity dwells in a fully human man in the Incarnation. That's where we see it. Alright, 1 Timothy 3.16. Dina, thanks. was vindicated by the Spirit, was seen by angels, was preached among the nations, was believed on in the world..." Yeah, this mystery of godliness, as Paul wrote to Timothy, is the mystery of godliness in Christ, in Jesus, right? The Holy Spirit actually wasn't manifested in the flesh and didn't vindicate Himself. The Father's not the One who was believed on and taken up into glory. I mean, He's believed on, but sort of through the testimony of the Son. It's the Son that this is talking about. Great is the mystery of godliness. Not only is He God, but the first thing is that He's manifested in the flesh. He becomes a man. It's the incarnation, this union of the two natures. Just a couple more. 1 Peter 3.18. Samantha, thank you. Cool. So, the real proof of His true humanity, I think, is seen in the dying, the flesh. Right in the flesh, He's put to death. and made alive, however, in the Spirit, that God is raising him from the dead. Who raises him from the dead? God raises him from the dead, and sometimes, most often, the Father, but the Spirit's involved too. And by the way, He also kind of raises Himself from the dead. Because God never died. He didn't die. Jesus Christ the God, the Son of God didn't die on the cross. The Son of God didn't die on the cross. Who died on the cross? The man Jesus, right? But they're the same. They're united. They're not the same. Right? If there's ever any sort of separation that might be there at the cross, It's a bit uncertain, but if Jesus is a man, then he has a human soul to be fully human, and the soul doesn't die. The soul continues to live. So even then, the days in between his crucifixion and his resurrection, how's he operating? He still has two natures, just the body part's dead. The flesh. That part of the human nature dies physically, because that's how it works, under the penalty of sin. But then that part's also raised, reunited somehow. Christ still operates this way. Caleb? Yeah, there's a distinction in the natures, but not really a separation. This is the way that Jesus is ever since the Incarnation continues that way. So, something of the description of it in Revelation 1, verse 8. Jesus says, I am the Alpha and the Omega, who is and was and is to come. Is that the only verse they gave us there? 18 and 17. Verse 17, it says that John said, When he saw him, he fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying, Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and Hades. It's Revelation 1, 17 and 18. You combine them in there together. Jesus is self-identifying after the resurrection as the one, the living one who died and has been raised from the dead. But he's the Alpha and the Omega. He's the one from without beginning and without end. He's God in every way, yet he confirms this thing in his own words, like, I died and behold, I'm alive now again forevermore. So he's telling us, he doesn't quite say it like, I've got two natures and let me explain the hypostatic union to you, but this is the reality of what he says is true, even without necessarily describing it in the way that we're trying to get the understanding of it. Something similar way at the end in the last chapter of the Scriptures here, in Revelation 22.13, he says the same thing, right? I'm the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Nobody really gets to claim that unless they're really God. No man born at a point in time, some thousands of years later after the Garden of Eden and stuff, you don't get to claim that. You start claiming that and I throw the book away. Right? But Jesus gets to claim that because it's actually true. And so, this is what we see. And these and other attempts at trying to make clear these statements that are just mostly said about when Paul is describing who Christ is without actually taking up the topic and trying to explain what He means. It's just the foregone conclusion, the way that it's written in most of the New Testament, is that this is how it is. Jesus is really God, and yet He died as a man. He suffered as a man. In His flesh, He has descendants, forefathers. He's a descendant in a human line. yet in his power and his majesty and all these other things that the declarations not only of him and the apostles but the angels and you know God from heaven when he's baptized and stuff everything testifies to him being God and so this is what we have in Christ two natures united not confused. And so this helps sometimes when we're trying to read places in the Scripture and we're trying to understand how is it that Jesus says that He doesn't know something? Have you ever looked at that? Jesus says, I don't know what's happening next. I don't know the future. Right? But then earlier I remember he was talking to a couple of the guys when he's calling them to be apostles, and he says, well, over there I saw you sitting under the tree. Right? Is it Nathaniel that he was talking to? I saw you sitting over there. And I know you. I know you're like a real serious Hebrew guy. Right? How does he know that? How does he know what people are thinking? When the Pharisee is going, if only Jesus knew what kind of woman this was, He wouldn't let her touch Him. He didn't say that out loud. Jesus knew exactly what He was thinking. How is that happening? It's not a magic trick, right? Sometimes Jesus is operating in one nature and not the other. Even while He was dominating, His ministry on earth Many would say maybe kind of dominated by Him operating in His human nature. He wasn't exclusively operating that way. And so the only way to explain this in many ways is this. Either that or you just got made up stories about all of His deity and He was just a man. Or He's not really a man. We'll get to this about why it's important that He's both. Theologically, it's very important. But Caleb? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is one of those mysteries like the Trinity. Our option is to... we can dive into it like we're trying to do, really get as good an understanding as we can to firm it up, but it's something that we either have to agree to and affirm, or it's something that we deny to our own eternal damnation. So, it's not something that we get to say that God owes us an explanation before we accept any of it. Right. Sort of one of the early emphases of faith. Faith requires something like this. I can see that it's stated and it must be true, but I can't explain how it works. Good? Mandy? The way you were describing it, it makes it clear why Jesus had to pray. Sometimes I wonder that. Why did He have to pray? And ask for the Lord's will. Yeah. Because if it's mixed up, or Jesus is just a phony human and not really a man operating as a man, Him praying doesn't make any sense whatsoever. He's talking to Himself. sitting on the mountain babbling nonsense to himself. It wouldn't make any sense. And so, this makes sense. Jesus is operating as a human. He's reliant on the Father. He wants to experience the presence of God the same way that we do. He has this yearning in His soul after His Father the way we are supposed to if we weren't so dominated by sin. And He goes and prays. He prays for stuff all night for wisdom about like, so, who are the 12 guys that I should pick? to be the apostles. Do you think that as God, he didn't know that Judas Iscariot was going to stab him in the back later? Somehow, as a man, he seems to almost be ignorant of that. He's got two minds. that operate independently without being separate from each other, right? We try to figure all that out. Why is it important that he's both fully God and fully human? Why is that important? It's not in this article, but we've got to say it today because we're running out of time. Yeah, so in order for him to be an appropriate substitute for a human being, what does he have to be? He has to be a human being, because the blood of bulls and goats, while commanded by God, never forgave any sin, never affected any actual redemption. That's not the appropriate ransom for a man, is a donkey or a bull or a goat. They never sacrificed donkeys, but a bull or a goat, right? A lamb, birds, grain, whatever, none of it's appropriate. It's all symbolic. It's all a picture of the one who would be an appropriate sacrifice. In order for Him to actually pay for my sins as a man, He has to be a man. Same thing for a woman, but you know what I mean, right? That's the acceptable sacrifice. It's a one-for-one. But why is it important that He would be God also? Okay? Born in sin from two human parents, you have a sin problem. You inherit that from Adam. He doesn't inherit that from Adam because who's his father? God's his father. That's one thing. Now, if one man's sacrifice is appropriate to pay for one man's sins, how do you pay for everybody's sins? One man's not appropriate. if he's only a man. Oh, but if he's the eternal God, can he as a man somehow pay for more than one sin? Yeah, so he can maintain his sinlessness because of the God nature. He can pay for more than one because of the God nature. And if you're a mortal, how do you pay an eternal debt? You've got to be eternal, right? You've got to actually possess infinity, especially to pay off an eternal debt for multiple, Lord willing, multiple millions of people in a three-hour period on the cross. No mere man could do that. Even if he could die for one man's sin, he can't die for everybody's sin. And he can't make the payment that's eternal. And so these things become, there's application of this doctrine in the reality of how this is even possible that Jesus could pay for sin on the cross. He has to be a man. But one man couldn't pay for all that. He's got to be God. Well, then what do we read in the scripture? I mean, that's like, it's like an implication that we roll out of these things. What I just said, I'm clearly not opening up the Bible and quoting some verse. In order to pay for man, you add it all up and you put it all together. You try to study this. We'll see some of this. It becomes more specific as we go through the document thing here. Both of these natures of God are contained in the one man, Jesus Christ. It's the only way, in the language of 1 Timothy, it's the only way that He's an appropriate mediator between God and man. Right? He's the man, Christ. The man, God, Jesus. The man, Christ. The anointed King. Jesus. He's the only one. He's the only one like that, the only one who could be like that, the only one ever to be like that, and He continues to be like that on into eternity. So those natures operate that way. It helps us to read the Bible a little bit in understanding it. But they continue that way in this way that they're not mixed up. It's not some phony thing. You get all kinds of false doctrine when you start coming like, well, Jesus clearly demonstrates that He's God, but He's not actually in the flesh. He's just like a spirit. Because the Bible says God's spirit, right? So Jesus is spirit. He doesn't have flesh. Well, Paul addresses that. John addresses it, right? If you deny that He comes in the flesh, then you are of the Antichrist because you're against the real nature of Christ. What's the real nature of Christ? Oh, He's born. A real baby. There was no confusion by anybody about whether He was a man. They had to learn that He was God, but Mary might have known that pretty early because she knows how He was conceived, sort of. Matthew? Is it because, like, how, I'm trying to understand how one man pays for all of humanity, because Christ, because sin entered the human race through one man, like Paul says, and therefore, because of that, Christ paid for Adam, and by extension, the rest of humanity. Yeah, yeah. Yes, that partly. When we bring Adam into it, we talk about the representative nature in Romans 5, that Adam is the first representative, and so when he falls, his sin is attributed to all of us by that way. In the same way, the one act of righteousness of Christ is applied in a representative way. But only God could actually make that... He's the only one worthy to make that quantity of payment. Sam. Yeah. But then all the other guy burning in hell. So because of the value of Jesus, how much he's worth, when he died on the cross, that's more valuable than everybody else who's ever been damned or saved or carried more weight. Because who is? Because of those two natures. Who is? Yeah. If He were merely a man, the best He could do is pay for another man. Right. Right. Right. But it is. It's tied to the... I mean, what's the value of God the Son? More than all the souls in hell, like you said, like Spurgeon said that in response. Hopefully that clarifies minimally at least. Caleb? but it's also important to note that his death was not just for Adam's original sin. Right. Yeah, it's not it's not the Armenian heresy that his death was only effective to undo the curse of Adam and Now we are brought to a place of neutrality and we save ourselves by our choices or whatever like none of that's true either Right. It's his death is fully effective to pay in full all of the debt of everybody who comes to him And by the way, it was effective enough to pay for all the debt of the people who don't come to him, too He just doesn't apply it there But if He could have? If He wanted to? He could. I mean, it could be just the most complete universal atonement of everybody regardless of faith or not because of the infinite worth and value of Christ Himself in His nature as God. So that makes it necessary that He possesses both natures. Andrew. Alright, let's see. No. Because of his divine nature. essentially. But the question, if you didn't hear it, was, is Jesus under the curse of Adam? No. So Romans 5 tells us that he is the second representative who, like Adam, is born not with a sinful nature. Adam's originally created without the sinful nature. That's something that becomes the curse upon him. So another reason why it's important that Jesus is not only born of Mary, if he's born of Mary and Joseph, then yeah, he's born under the curse. And if he's born under the curse, even before he commits his own sin, it's too late. He's by nature a sinner, according to Romans 3. Romans 3, 9 is that we're all under sin. He would be just like us. He couldn't do a thing. He couldn't even pay for one guy, let alone everybody. And so he has to be born in a different sort of way as a man. And Romans 5, I think, is one of the best explanations of he's born in this way as the second Adam to come and to be the representative. And so by the one disobedience of Adam, we all became sinners. So by the obedience of Christ, we all become righteous. because he doesn't have that curse of the nature. If he had the curse of the nature, then he would be bent towards sin and he would be just like all the rest of us. And as being bent towards sin, by nature a sinner, he would necessarily sin. Yeah, that's what we teach about total depravity is we have that because of the curse. Is it true then, because I've heard this, that the sin nature is transferred? No, I mean you can't really Yes, no. I mean, the sin nature originates with Adam. So is the sin nature transferred through the father and not the mother? I think anybody who would say that is trying to figure out some way that Mary's not a sinner and she's immaculate. She doesn't have any sin of her own. And so women are like that until something, something, so that Mary is the mother of God and not just the mother of Jesus. Yeah Yeah, I guess so and so if it's attached to the the small reproductive cell as they would say. I've sort of said that, and it's not perfectly right. I always back out of it. But it's something that we inherit from our parents, but it's a spiritual inheritance. But it is a little bit like it's attached to the DNA. But it's in the mom's DNA, so-called. It's just the same as the dad's. It's not like the mom's perfect or something and women are better or something like that, at least not the ones I've met. Well, that's one of the reasons the dad Yeah. Right. Right. I only ever try to use that as a bit of an imperfect analogy, and then explain, you know, it's not really a physical thing. Even though the Bible describes it as, you know, we inherit the flesh, and there's this, this corruption in us, and groaning under the weight and curse of sin and stuff, but it's really the spiritual reality. But it is something that we inherit, but it's not only something that's inherited from the dad. You can't get that out of the scripture other than Adam is evidently the first one who sinned, but it's not like Eve wasn't cursed alongside him. So she's also a sinner based on the fact that she's cursed simultaneously with him. And so even if you want to take it back to Adam, he's the representative head and the head of the family and all this sort of stuff. He bears a greater responsibility. But she becomes a sinner, same as him, because they're both equally cursed and thrown out of the garden. And then they have kids, and then they start murdering each other right in the next generation. It's pretty bad. of sin is what Christ is paying for. He's paying for, like, sure, we sinned and we threw out, but we all have sinned. I think we could accurately say that it's both. He's paying for the original sin because it is the sin of Adam, but He's also removing the curse that comes off of that sin, under which we're all cursed. He's removing the curse. He's paying for the sin. Adam's sin, original sin, reversing my nature, cleaning all that up, and paying for all my sin. It's like such a powerful thing that just about anything you could figure, He's paying and reversing it. You're guilty all on your own. Someone will argue this thing like it can't be true about the sin nature thing because then God would throw people in hell for Adam's sin. No, you have your own sin, but you commit sin because of the explanation of your father Adam. Right? That's the explanation about why you sin is because you have a sin nature. It's not that I get out of it because I never sinned and it's only Adam's sin like nonsense. You were sinning before you were even aware that you were doing it. So... Sam? It is taught that way in Romans 5, right? When Adam sinned, we all sinned. Right. It kind of, it probably kind of is one of the hardest things. Yeah. When Adam sinned, I sinned. I wasn't born yet. I wasn't there. I didn't eat the fruit. I don't know what it tastes like. You know, all this sort of stuff. But when Adam sinned, I actually committed sin. The best, I don't remember if it was Luther or not, but for me, one of the best explanations is, if that's not the way it is, then the vicarious righteousness of Christ can't be yours either. Right? When Jesus obeyed, you obeyed. That's the flip side. And if you, so it's unfair. Yes, it's unfair. Fine. But I want the unfair side of Jesus. When he obeyed, I obeyed. That's what, I'm happy with the unfairness over there. No. Right. That's not the final chord of figuring out what's true and right. It's can we logically reason it out? The Lord sort of mocked that almost. Like, yeah, your ways aren't my ways, and you're not going to figure it out. As somebody said earlier, our thing is that what's put to us is this is how it is. Do you believe it? And submit yourself to Me in light of it. And so are we going to worship and serve the Lord as He's revealed Himself to us? Or are we going to make something up in our own image that we can reason through? And if we do that, you know, someday we're going to show up and He's going to look at us and go, well, away from me, I never knew you. Right? Well, Augustine thought that God does these things to us to show us that our own reasoning can take us so far. Right. Right. Right. He does. And he kind of says so. Paul says so in 1 Corinthians, right? That he does it to confound the wisdom of the wise. So that, you know, those who are thought to be foolish by the world are the ones who actually are on the right track. So, yeah, the Lord seems to run it that way. So, do we believe these things that in our own reason seem paradoxical? Sure, no problem. I just gotta realize I don't know everything. Right? All I gotta do is humble myself and go, okay, I don't know everything. Which is the easiest thing in the world for an arrogant sinner to do, I guess, right? It's the same, it's a pride. Yeah, it is. It's truly amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Amen. Yeah. Yeah. This is the perfect end of why are we doing this? Why are we trying to get this? Because it's that. It results in that for those who love Him. It just increases that, right? And it's amazing. And I'm more awestruck by salvation than I was yesterday. It's a good reason for us to do it. So, praise the Lord. I'm going to end there. I don't even want to know if there's more questions. I was like, perfect. So, Lord, I thank You for the morning here that You've given to us. We thank You for all of the greatness of who You are and what You've done. These things that we can seemingly barely scratch the surface of. You've revealed great and marvelous things to us. The wonder of it, Lord, should fill us with awe and praise to You and Your glory. I pray that that would be the result of this in every study that we do. that we would, it would, it would, it would give us more information to worship you better. I just thank you for the time together here, the resources you give us for giving us not only your word, but your spirit to help us to settle into accepting and believing and really staking our whole eternity on things that we can't yet fully comprehend. I doubt that we'll ever be able to fully comprehend, but we can sure enjoy You and know enough about You to worship You. Pray that we would do so together today here, that we would love You and worship You. Pray that You would bring more of the reality to us today. In Jesus' name, Amen.