gonna be gone vacation stuff like that but we'll have it recorded on our YouTube channel and so hopefully you can catch up on that but I want to mention one thing about Mexico and that is one day we were taking a car to a village to a little town Yanga to look around well the car didn't have enough seats so Gunnar and I said well we'll just walk it was like it's like two kilometers so it's not that big a deal so Gunnar and I walked and The path we took, which I'd been there before, so you're like, you're walking by yourself, but I knew where I was going, all that. But the path we took, every, I don't know, 50 yards or so, 100 yards maybe, there's a little box in front of people's houses. In that box is a statue of, do you know who? Mary. And before the statue of Mary are little candles where people light. And so these things, you may not see these things a lot, but worldwide, these are a big deal. And then Gunnar and I, and also Pastor Jacob, we went into the Roman Catholic Church there in Yanga. And it was like I had a conflict in my heart because on one part of me, I was like, You look at the beauty of the architecture and those things, and you're kind of taken aback. You're like, wow. And on the other heart, you're like Paul when he was in Athens. You remember? He saw all the idols, and he was grieved. And so it's kind of simultaneous. You appreciate the beauty, and then you look at these things, and you're just grieved. And one thing, some things are just baffling to me. But if you go around this corner in this particular building, They had a, I don't even know what material it was, but it was Jesus laying in like this casket and he had the crown of thorns and all, but he's like laying in his casket and the casket is see-through so you can see through it. And I don't know what the purpose of this was. And so maybe sometime somebody can tell me. But you put money in it. And so you put money in there. And I don't know what that does. But anyway, that was there. So if you think, well, these things aren't that big a deal, I'm trying to make the argument that they are. So tonight. we're going to look at the nature of sin in the Roman Catholic Church. So unless we be accused of not understanding what Rome teaches, we're going to read directly from the Catholic catechism. And we'll do that in just a moment. What I hope to show you, or what I think you'll see, is that this stuff is dark. It's enslaving. It's hopeless. And so before getting into all that, let's start with a breath of fresh air. And we'll start with the scriptures. So let's start in Hebrews chapter 10. I'll read Hebrews 10, verse 14. Hebrews 10, verse 14. For by a single offering, He, that is Christ, has perfected for all time Those who are being sanctified. That's a beautiful way to put it, right? Because in one sense they're perfected, and in another sense they're being sanctified. Who is this talking about? It's talking about believers. Believers are perfected. How are they perfected? Because of the single offering of Christ. Because Jesus has perfected them by putting their sins away, because He's propitiated those sins in Himself. and by procuring for them a righteousness." Alright, so they're perfected even as they're undergoing sanctification. You also know 1 Peter 2.24, you can look this up, but I think maybe we memorized it back at Christmas time, but, "...he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness." But listen to the last part, "...by his wounds you have been healed." You have been what? Healed. not will be healed or might be healed or whatever, but you have been healed. And where's he citing from that? Peter's citing from Isaiah 53. And so even like we would push back against the prosperity gospel here where some people would actually cite Isaiah 53 and say, Jesus heals us of our sicknesses. So if you're faithful enough, if you have enough faith, you'll never be sick. Well, That's not true. You can still be sick. I'm sorry to say. But when he says you have been healed, what's he talking about? Your soul has been healed. You've been cleansed. You've been purified because of the finished work of Christ. So keep all that in mind now. Keep the truth in mind, the hope in mind, the light in mind. We've got to delve into the darkness. So let me read. I'm going to read, not that you going to look this up but this is recorded so I'll just put where this is coming from. I'm going to read paragraph 1854, 1855, and 1856 together from the Catholic Catechism. Alright, so it says this, sins are rightly evaluated according to their gravity. The distinction between mortal and venial, so keep these two words in your mind, mortal and venial. Sin, already evident in scripture, became part of the tradition of the church. It is corroborated by human experience. Next paragraph. Mortal sin destroys charity in the heart of man by grave violation of God's law. It turns man away from God. who is his ultimate end and his beatitude by preferring an inferior good to him. Venial sin allows charity to subsist even though it offends and wounds it. Next paragraph. Mortal sin, by attacking the vital principle within us, that is charity, necessitates a new initiative of God's mercy and a conversion of heart which is normally accomplished within the setting of the sacrament of reconciliation. When the will sets it, well, I'm not going to read the rest of that. I think you're fine. You get the gist of it, okay? So two categories you need to keep in your mind. What are they? Categories of sin. Do you remember? Mortal and venial. So venial is from the Latin word, that means pardonable, okay? And mortal obviously means... So a venial sin we call pardonable. Maybe that's one way to look at it, although a mortal sin can be pardonable. Anyway, we'll talk about that in just a second. But mortal means what? Death. So you have venial sin and you have mortal sins. In the Roman Catholic system, the venial sins do not destroy our justification, okay? Maybe I should back up. A Roman Catholic receives initial justification in their baptism. So the baby is justified. If you commit venial sin, you don't lose that. If you commit immortal sin, you do lose that. So the first thing I want to ask is this. Be careful how you answer this. I'm going to kind of throw it out there a little bit vague. Is all sin equal? Think through this and let's just talk for a second. Is all sin equal? Yes or no? Okay, so Nathaniel says all sin is mortal. I agree with that statement. Okay, that's good. What else do you think? Is all sin equal? Yeah. Yeah, that's good. It's just a spiraling effect. So if you're talking to a Roman Catholic, I just don't want you to get tripped up. And they bring something up like this. you know, mass murder the same as stealing a piece of gum from the store? Well, it depends on what you mean by that, right? It depends on what you mean. So, you know, if somebody came to our church and they said, hey, listen, I have a dark past. When I was 18, I stole a piece of gum from a store. We'd be like, OK. And, you know, we'd deal with that. But if somebody came to our church and they said, I have a dark past, I used to be a mass murderer. Okay, that hits us a little different, right? Or we could go through other sins. So from the human perspective, we understand that various levels of sin exist, right? We understand that. That's obvious. We understand that in the criminal justice system. We understand that just between even you and your spouse. You know, if you forget your spouse's anniversary, that's a different level of sin, if you will, than if you, you know, break your marital vows, right? We get that. So in terms of our relationship with one another and in terms of the consequence of sin, we need to acknowledge that there are different levels of sin in that way. Okay? Because some people out there today, even in evangelicalism, they say things like this, which I think are erroneous, but they say, well, you know, all sin's sin, doesn't matter. Well, hold on just a second. Yes, all sin is sin, and we'll talk about that in just a second, but yeah, there are different varying degrees of sin, so we get that. However, in terms of what Nathaniel brought up, and that is in terms of our guilt before God, all sin is mortal, right? Because all sin is worthy of condemnation. And this is, you might call, there's no little sin when we consider who we've sinned against. Does that make sense? We sin against an infinitely holy, wonderful, and good God. So just keep that in your mind, and we'll talk about that more in just a minute. But one thing I need to turn to 1st John so they bring this up and they say well, this is obvious It's obvious that there are venial mortal sins because of 1st John chapter 5. So let's just read that ourselves This is the beautiful thing about having the Bible in your own language Someone cites a passage you can go to yourself and you can read it. So 1st John chapter 5 Verse 16 so how do we deal with this? If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask. And God will give him life to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. There is a sin that leads to death. I do not say that one should pray for that. All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that does not lead to death. Okay, so what's going on here? We could probably spend a whole lesson just walking through this passage, but I'll just give you, you know, the gist of it. And that is, I think, those different opinions, like some people say it's actually talking about physical death, but I would argue that what John is teaching here is the sin of apostasy. And that's not that you lose your salvation, but the sin of apostasy is you never had it, and you show yourself to be apostate when you deny the gospel. And the reason I would say he's talking about that is because the context of 1 John, right? The context of 1 John. He is writing to teach against the heresy of Gnosticism, okay? We could get into all that, but that's the point. Now, the reason I know, for one, that this is not talking about mortal and venial sin is because if this were talking about mortal sin the way that the Roman Catholic Church is teaching it, then what does it say? It says you should not pray about that, right? Implying that implying that their whole system of a redo with the mortal sin is a complete fabrication here of the text of what it's saying. But I think the text is talking about apostasy. Curtis Vaughn says, the gist of the words is that when sin unto death is involved, no assurance can be given that prayer will be efficacious. So the idea is when we have a brother or sister sinning, We should pray for them and we should be confident that God will restore them. And we could talk about even the context of church discipline and all that. But when you see someone apostatizing and you pray for them, you don't have the confidence or the assurance that they're even a believer. It looks like they've abandoned the faith altogether and they've sinned, the sin of apostasy. So I think 1 John 5, Granted can be a little bit complicated, but I think that it's clear that it's not able to be forced into the category that Rome tries to with venial and mortal sin. Let me read the next four paragraphs. 1857 through 1860. Okay. For a sin, so what is mortal sin? For a sin to be mortal, three conditions must together be met. I'll work through these again in just a minute, but just listen the best you can right now. Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent. Grave matter is specified by the Ten Commandments corresponding to the answer of Jesus to the rich young man. Do not kill, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and your mother. The gravity of sins is more or less great. Murder is graver than theft. One must also take into account who is wrong. Violence against parents is in itself graver than violence against strangers. I'm reading from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, just remember that. 1859. Mortal sin requires full knowledge and complete consent. It presupposes knowledge of the sinful character of the act. of its opposition to God's law. It also implies a consent sufficiently deliberate to be a personal choice. Feigned ignorance and hardness of heart do not diminish but rather increase the voluntary character of sin. Final paragraph here, unintentional ignorance can diminish or even remove the which are written in the conscience of every man. The promptings of feelings and passions can also diminish the voluntary and free character of the offense as can external pressures or pathological disorders. Sin committed through malice by deliberate choice of evil is the gravest." Okay, that's a lot. Let me boil it down for you. Three conditions for mortal sin. Number one, So we're talking about the difference between mortal and venial sin. Mortal sin, you lose the grace of justification, okay? So how do you know if a sin is mortal? Number one, the Catechism of the Catholic Church says it must be grave, okay? So, and they specify it, breaking the Ten Commandments. Number two, It must be committed with full knowledge. Okay, so they give a little leeway there for ignorance of a command. But they also talk about, but everybody knows, you know, murder's wrong or whatever. And then three, it must be committed with deliberate consent. So they give themselves an out. So like, their idea would be if you hold someone at gunpoint and cause them to sin, that they're not liable. Okay, does that make sense? Now I have a few replies to all this. But the first reply I need to make is going to go in a direction you're not probably expecting. So I'm going to come back to this. But the first reply I'm going to make is I'm going to go behind the scenes for a second. And I just want to remind you of something because I think this shows a glaring problem in their issue of authority. So Roman Catholics, by the way, this is all over our YouTube page. If you want to go look and look at the debate and read the comments, they have been hammering these kind of things. All right. So they claim that their false system is superior because they have the magisterium, they have the church to give the infallible interpretation of scripture, and all you poor Protestants or non-Catholics, you don't have that. You have to rely on yourself to interpret the scriptures. Now, this is false. Because we do not believe that individual Christians, so let me just hammer this home in your heart. We do not believe that individual Christians are the final arbiter of interpretation. You remember the old adage, and we're against this as a church, right? You remember the old guess adage is okay but the old adage and you're sitting in a typical evangelical Sunday school room you open up the verse and you read it and then you go around the room and you say what what does this verse mean to you right guys I'm just very kind here but it doesn't matter what it means to you right it doesn't matter well what what what matters what matters is what it what means period okay so it's not like I Liz gets an interpretation, Pop gets an interpretation, Miss Virginia gets an interpretation, and you just get to go out there and have whatever interpretation you want. That's not what we believe, okay? We believe that the final arbiter of interpretation, that the final authority is what? The Scriptures, right? The Scriptures themselves are the authority of interpretation. And, listen to this, we believe that God, A, has invented human language so that mankind has the capacity to communicate to one another in a way that we can understand. Meaning, this is such a, this is such like a liberal type thing, it's like, where you start theologically liberal, and that is we start saying, well, how do we even know what we know? And people try to say all that, but they write this 10,000-word essay explaining how we can't really know anything, except they write it expecting that you what? You read it and what? Understand what they're saying. You understand that's how human language works? God knows that's how human language works. B, God knows how to use human language. Do you believe that God, okay, let me put it to you this way, simple illustration. Are you understanding what I'm saying right now? I hope you are, but do you understand, what was the old movie? It was like one of the rush hours, I think. It was like, do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth? Like, do you understand what I'm saying? Do you understand words? Of course you do. And Joe's like, sorry, Joe. You understand, to an extent, you understand what I'm saying? Okay. Do you think that I know how to speak more clearly and authoritatively and sufficiently than God? No. So the question is, if you can understand the syntax and the grammar and the words and the vocabulary, if you can understand the words that are coming out of my mouth, why do we think that God communicates in riddles? Right? No, God in his word communicates in a way that is clear and sufficient and authoritative. Alright? But listen, the other issue Rome has, listen very carefully to this, because if you have discussions with your friends, family members, I want you to be able to talk about this. The other issue that Rome has is that when they say the church is the interpreter of scripture, then here's a question that we have to ask, and I thought, I think I brought this up last time. Who interprets the church? Right? So the church interprets scripture. Well, who interprets the church? Well, they might say, well, the church. And then they have a twofold problem. First, their reasoning in a circular manner, which they accuse us of doing, but any appeal to the highest authority, you're going to have to deal with that issue. But I'm fine, actually, staking my claim on the Holy Spirit, which never contradicts himself, opposed to their stake of the claim of history, which constantly contradicts itself. But the second issue Rome has is, when you say, who is the interpreter of the church, it does practically put it into the hands of individual churches within Rome, and I'm going to make the argument this is very evident when it comes to the issue of mortal sin. So again, listen, mortal sin, what were the three requirements? One, it has to be a grave matter. Two, it has to be done with full knowledge. Three, it has to be done with consent. Now that is vague, and then it leaves enough room for interpretation which is left up with individual priests. So if all the priests in all the Roman Catholic parishes agreed every time that this sin was mortal, okay, that would be consistency, but they don't. So someone would say, well, this is mortal, this is mortal, but we don't know, we're not sure, and well, you better treat it like a mortal sin. It's a terrible system, okay? Now, the Council of Trent, which some Roman Catholics apparently don't understand, the Council of Trent is an infallible authority for Rome, okay? And this is what it says, Session 6, paragraph 14 and 15. As regards those who by sin have fallen from the received grace of justification, they may be again justified when God, exciting them through the sacrament of penance, they shall have attended to the recovery by the merit of Christ of the grace lost. For this manner of justification is of the fallen, the reparation, which the holy fathers have aptly called a second plank after the shipwreck of grace lost. So let me put it to you this way. You commit a mortal sin. You lose your justification. Can you get it back? They say you can get it back. They have a second plank. So imagine a ship floating in the ocean. The ship is destroyed, but there's a plank you can grab onto. What is that plank? It is the plank of the sacrament of penance. I'll talk about that in just a second. Session 6, Chapter 15, the received grace of justification is lost not only by infidelity, whereby even faith itself is lost, but also by any other mortal sin, whatever. Okay? So, mortal sin, we don't have a great definition, grave matter, full knowledge, done with consent. If you do that, you lose your justification. Okay? And it can only be regained through the sacrament of penance. I'm going to explain that in just a second. Before I do, let me go back to that analogy, the shipwreck analogy and the plank. If you commit a sin, you know the plank you need to grab onto is not the plank of certainly not sacrament of penance. It's not even the plank of repentance. Just be careful about this and think. You think that if you commit a sin, if you repent well enough, you're brought back into the graces of Christ. But actually, yes, we must repent. Of course we must repent. But remember, the plank is not repentance. The plank is what? It's Christ. It's the gospel. You need to be reminded when you sin, you need to be reminded again of the work of Christ. You don't lose your justification. If you've been justified, you never lose it. You don't lose your justification. You don't cling to your works now in order to get it back. And I'm just telling you guys, if you're not careful, I'm going to work through penance in just a minute. But if you're not careful, you will live a kind of penitential. That's not right. Let me rephrase that. You'll kind of live a life where you operate by penance. So you'd be like, OK, well, I messed up. You know what? I messed up, so I'm going to go to church. I'm going to make sure I go to church early this week or something, right? Or, you know what? I really messed up this week, so I'm going to give an extra $100 in the plate. If you're not careful, you'll live with this kind of mindset, and you'll try to make up for your sin. You understand you can't make up for your sin. If you've wronged someone, You should repent, like if you steal their car, you should be like, well, I can't make up for it, so I'll keep the car. But hey, I'm sorry. Well, no return the car, make a restoration. Right. However, you can't make up for your sin against the holy and righteous God. That's why we need Christ. Only Christ can do that. Right. You understand? I hope you understand. OK, so what is penance? I'm tired of reading their stuff. Let me just summarize it. It's 1446 and 1447. Talk about penance. But let me just say this. The Catholic Catechism in 1447, not the year, the paragraph, admits that penance used to be handled one way, but now it's handled in a different way. used to and I don't know if people still do this but I know in church history people would like take whips and like whip themselves and like walk through or penance would be have you ever heard about you had to go to these steps and you had to walk up the steps on your knees and stuff like that well that's the kind of stuff that they would do Now, the catechism admits they kind of scale back from that, but there's three elements of penance. So you lose your justification because you committed a mortal sin. How do you get it back? The sacrament of penance. Okay, what's penance? It has three elements. Number one, contrition. Contrition. I'll read from their catechism here. Contrition is sorrow of the soul and detestation for the sin committed together with the resolution not to sin again. All right. So number one, you have to be sad for your sin and you have to be sad. I'm never doing that again. OK. There's more stuff, but I'm going to skip it. 1452, 1453, they have categories of perfect contrition and imperfect contrition. It's a mess. All right, number two. You have to have contrition. Number two, you have to have confession. Okay, I'll read again. 1456 is the paragraph. Confession to a priest is an essential part of the sacrament of penance. So number one, you have to be sorry for your sin. Number two, you have to confess your sin. To who? To God? Well, I'm sure. That would be good, but in the Roman Catholic system, it is essential you confess it to who? To a priest. And then thirdly, satisfaction. All right, so let me say this, 1459 says this, absolution, paragraph 1459, absolution takes away sin, but it does not remedy all the disorders sin has caused. Raised up from sin, the sinner must still recover his full spiritual health by doing something more to make amends for the sin. He must make satisfaction for or expiate his sins. This satisfaction is also called penance. I'm going to read the next one, 1460. The penance the confessor imposes must take into account the penitent's personal situation and must seek his spiritual good. It must correspond as far as possible with the gravity and nature of the sins committed. It can consist of prayer and offering, works of mercy, service of neighbor, voluntary self-denial, sacrifices, and above all, the patient acceptance of the cross we must bear. Okay, so you understand? Maybe you don't understand because it's confusing, but you lose your justification. You've committed moral sin. Okay, but you feel bad about it. Good. That's step one. Now you've got to confess it to the priest. That's step two. If he looks at you and he says, okay, I think they're repentant enough, I think they're repentant, I think they mean it, then he'll absolve you of your sins, but that's not enough, then he'll give you an act of satisfaction. And that could be, okay, listen, you know, you've done this thing, now you need to say three Hail Marys. Or you've done this thing, you know what, you need to go, why don't you go mow your neighbor's yard or something. Or why don't you, here's a good one, give another $100 to the church, okay? Stuff like that. You commit a mortal sin, you work your way through all of this, enough contrition, confession, satisfaction, guess what happens? You get to be re-justified, okay? Now, did you know, by the way, we should talk about mortal sin. Did you know that missing mass on Sunday is a mortal sin? Did you know that? In the Catholic system. The reason I find that surprising is because I know a lot of Roman Catholics. And one of the things about Roman Catholics that I find crazy is like, or at least some of the ones I know, they don't ever go to church, you know? And I'm like, but do you understand? Now, if you're sick, it doesn't count. Or if you have like a sick child, it doesn't count. They have some things. But if you just like don't go to mass on Sunday, you've committed a grave sin. What happens when you commit a grave sin? You lose your justification, which means what? Just to be clear, in case I'm talking too fast and outside, you're lost. If you commit a mortal sin and you die in that state, you don't go to, so this, we're gonna get to purgatory eventually, not tonight. I mean, you know I don't mean physically you're gonna get to purgatory one day. I mean in the teaching. So, purgatory has nothing to do with mortal sin. If you die, okay, purgatory has to do with venial sins. We'll get to that. But if you die in a state of having committed mortal sin, you go where? You go to hell, right? You understand? So maybe if I wasn't clear, you understand. You commit a mortal sin, you lose your justification, and if that's not restored, you go to hell. Well, then it's like, well, what is a mortal sin? As long as I don't commit adultery or mass murder, I'm okay, right? No, if I miss mass, And it's not for a good reason. I've committed moral sin. But then you might have this priest will say, well, that reason is allowable. But this priest said, well, that reason is not allowable. It was just convoluted mess. OK, anyway, theoretically, you could gain, lose and regain your justification over and over and over a hundred hundreds of times in your life. It doesn't matter, by the way, how many times you go to mass, prayed the rosary, gone to confession, any of those things, they won't keep you from committing a mortal sin. You can still commit a mortal sin. And you lose your justification, even at the end of your life, having gone through decades. I don't know if you're at the debate or watch the debate, but Miss Sarah from our church, Sarah Koulis, asked a really great question, you know, about this elderly lady. her grandmother, who's struggling, or actually, I think it's Colton's grandmother, who's struggling, and she's practicing Roman Catholic. Can you give her assurance? And the response was, well, you know, after age 30, we lose 2% of our brain. But by the way, if you just do the math, so if somebody is 30, and then they're 99, and every year they lose 2% of their brain, It's do the math right. Your brain's gone. Like, boy, I don't know. So enjoy Barry's wit while he's got it because his brain's about to be gone. Just do the math. But anyway, but there's no hope. There's no hope. In fact, even Rome frowns upon assurance. And I think there's a reason they frown upon assurance. And that's because if you have assurance, they believe that assurance takes you away from doing all these things. Well, guess what? It kind of does, right? Because our assurance is Christ. All right. So last few minutes, let me close with this. Don't be afraid when I say I'm going to give you three points. They're going to be real quick. All that was introduction, and now the two, no. Just three reasons that we have to reject this teaching from Rome. I'm being kind of cute with the alliteration, okay? So I'll give them to you now. Subjective enigma, sufficient expiation, sovereign election. Why do we have to reject these? That's why. Okay, so number one, these are just real quick. Number one, we reject it because subjective enigma, and this is what I mean. Rome's system, I think by design, because it is demonically influenced, leaves people constantly guessing. Am I in or am I out? And Rome creates false categories of sin that leave you in a hopeless puzzle. Now this was said at the very beginning by Nathaniel, but I'm going to biblically defend his point that all sin is mortal. You can look at this later, but it's James 2.10. James 2.10 says, whoever has offended the law in the least, in the least, is guilty of how much of it? All of it. All of it. Now, he's not teaching that if you, you know, if you illegally trespass on someone's land, well, you might as well just go kill them now. Like, that's not what he's teaching. He's teaching that the least offense of God's law bears the entire weight of the guilt of God's law. You say, well, that doesn't sound, well, you say Rome's system sounds terrible. Actually, that sounds terrible. No, no, no. It doesn't sound terrible because it points us to what? The Gospel. 2 Corinthians 5.21. For our sake He made Him, who is that Jesus, to be sin on our behalf. So that in Him, we might become the righteousness of God. So what is Jesus doing on the cross? He's taking all of our sins. The big ones? Yes. The little ones? Yes. All of our sins upon Himself. And the wrath of God is satisfied in Jesus as our substitute. This is the good. No, I don't have to worry now. What's this? Am I in? Am I out? Am I in? No, no. I rest all of my insecurities in Christ. It's in Jesus. And that leads us to our second point, sufficient expiation. And I would add here propitiation, but that didn't work with the alliteration. But on the cross, Jesus both expiates and propitiates our sins sufficiently, sufficiently. So that's why Paul can say things like this in Romans 5.1. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have what? Peace. We have peace with God. Why? Because Jesus has given us a sufficient atonement. And I'm just going to beat this drum, John Blue, in the face just so you understand. If Jesus is sufficient, if his atonement is sufficient, then it brings us to where? Heaven. Right? If you say, yeah, I need Jesus and this, then you understand that Jesus' atonement is not sufficient. Right? Because you need Jesus and what? Something else. So by definition, it's not sufficient. But what we preach is Christ alone. Not that we're not changed, not that we're not regenerated and do good works because of a changed heart. We can get to all that. And all that's true. But we're talking about our right standing before God is in Christ alone. That would be a title of a good song. Someone should write that. In Christ Alone. And then thirdly, I just mentioned this. It goes with it. It's very important. Sovereign election. Just turn here and just think about, they try to drive a wedge into Romans 8. So Romans 8, just real quick here at the end. Oh yeah, we're doing good. Romans 8, verse 28. This one, you know, a lot of people. Oh, I'm in 1st Corinthians for some reason. I was like that's not right. OK, Romans 8. Everyone knows Romans 828, but they should love the rest of it too. Romans 828 says. And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of a son in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And here's the chain. Now this is the chain. And those whom He predestined, He also called. And those whom He called, He also justified. And those whom He justified, He also glorified. How many people justified? Give me the percent. You give me the percent. Look at verse 30 and give me the percent. What percent of those justified are also glorified? Glorified meaning you make it to heaven, you enter into that eternal state. What percentage of those justified are glorified? A hundred percent. All those justified will be glorified. It's 100%. So you get down to verse 33 and it says this, Romans 8, who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. God justifies. So if you have a system where people who are justified then become unjustified and then they're not glorified, that drives a wedge into Romans 8 30. And Paul should have wrote some of those justified will be glorified. But that's not what he said. He said all those justified will be glorified. Rome, brothers and sisters, ultimately has faulty categories of sin. And I would argue they have faulty categories of sin because they have faulty categories of the holiness of God. And because they have faulty categories of sin and faulty categories of the holiness of God, they have faulty understanding of the atoning work of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And we study this, again, to have compassion toward them so that we might know the truth and so that we can give them the truth and we can disdain the false teaching of Rome without disdaining its adherence. Meaning, if you have friends or neighbors or people that you are acquainted with that are in this system, you should care about them. And you should be able to articulate what they believe and why it's wrong. And then also, I hope that this strengthens you. Now we haven't really talked positively much about our position on these things, although that's kind of been woven in the whole night. But you should be thankful that God has given you not a man-made religion, a biblical religion He's given you, but a relationship with Christ. Not this, does he love me? Does he love me not? I'm picking the daisy, you know. He's given you full assurance in Christ. He's given you his word. He's given you his son. And all these things are yours, Paul says in 1 Corinthians, right? All these things are yours in Christ. So rest there. And with that, we'll stop the recording. And then we'll have questions if you have any or comments.