Church Matters
Church Matters
Everyone’s Basically Good? Recovering the Doctrine of Sin
Ligonier did their 2025 study on American evangelicals and their beliefs and a stunning key takeaway was that a majority of Americans have a flawed understanding of the doctrine of sin. Listen as we unpack this important doctrine and recover a beautiful and orthodox view of sin and the holiness of God.
NOTES:
Ligonier Study: https://thestateoftheology.com/
"Holiness of God" by R. C. Sproul
Ligonier Holiness of God Youtube Series
Ligonier does a study of American evangelicals called the state of theology. It almost always has some interesting results, and this year's study has had a key takeaway that shows that most American evangelicals have a flawed understanding of sin. So listen up as we unpack the right doctrine of sin and why it's so important to get right for followers of Jesus. You're listening to the church matters podcast, a ministry of Redeemer church.
R. C. Sproul:It terrifies me in our culture that people do things like abortion and say they have the moral right to do it. If I know anything about God, I know God never has given anyone the moral right to do something like that. And I shudder to think of what will happen when a person stands before God and said, I had the right to do that. Where did you get that right? In the slightest sin, never mind a heinous sin like abortion, abortion in the slightest sin, what we would call a peccadillo. In that thing, I defy the authority of God, I insult the majesty of God, I challenge the justice of God. But we are so accustomed to doing that, and so careful to justify our disobedience that we have become recalcitrant in our hearts, our consciences have been seared, and we think it no serious matter to disobey the King of the universe. I call it cosmic treason.
Gabe Davis:Well, that was the indomitable. RC Sproul, I have bad news. He is not on the podcast today.
Riley Forrest:Not bad news for him, AI. RC, Sproul, no,
Gabe Davis:he is with Jesus. He's having a much better time than being on church matters. But welcome to church matters, a podcast designed to help the church understand and apply a biblical worldview to all of life. That is why we're doing this. And so RC Sproul is kicking us off today because and so if you skipped past the intro and you need to go back and what's wrong with you, who's wrong with you? People perfect. It is a excellent setup to what we're talking about today, which is the doctrine of sin. And the reason we are talking about the doctrine of sin and why it's even appropriate for us to share that clip of RC Sproul is there was a study that came out recently that maybe some of you have read. It's done by Ligonier and Lifeway, I think right, isn't it? Lifeway? Who does that too? Do you guys remember? I'm pretty sure it's Ligonier and Lifeway. They do it every year, and it is called the State of the State of the church, or state of theology, state of theology. And so the one that they did just this last year, 2025, there was a couple of things that I think should make us pause. And here are the two stats that we're really going to be kind of unpacking and which have prompted this episode. Here's what they said. 64% of American evangelicals. This is what they found in this in this survey, believe that everyone is born innocent in God's eyes, and that over half of people believed that we are basically good by by nature. And these aren't non Christian people. These are people who identify as Bible believing Christians. They clarify that the people that they're actually serving here are evangelicals, and they they define an evangelical this way. So somebody, in order to be defined as an evangelical in the survey, they had to affirm these things. They had to say the Bible is the highest authority. Evangelism is essential. Jesus's death alone removes sin, and salvation is by faith in Christ alone. So, so these are, these are our people. We consider ourselves evangelicals, and so we're not trying to just dunk on other people in this podcast. We're here to kind of address things that are going on in our own tribe, so to speak, and want to make sure that people in Redeemer are rightly equipped to think about this stuff. Because truly, if the church gets sin wrong, then it will get everything else wrong. And so a couple of things want to address is, what does this reveal? What are these stats this survey? What does this reveal about our discipleship and theology? What does Scripture actually say about human nature, and how do we recover a a right, a biblical understanding of sin, so that we can love Grace rightly? Okay, so guys, 64% believe that everyone is born innocent in the eyes of God, and most people are 53% believe that most people are good by nature. Why do you think so many people in the church believe this?
Riley Forrest:Poor teaching, poor teaching,
Gabe Davis:sentimentalism. Sentimentalism. Unpack. Think we'll start with poor teaching. What are you talking about?
Riley Forrest:Riley, yeah, I think the gospel is offensive. What the Bible says is sometimes offensive to our our sin nature especially, and so we don't want to hear it. And if your people in your church are telling you they don't want to hear something, and you want to be liked by your people, and you want your church to grow numerically, and you want to be successful and well loved, then you tell people what they want to hear, which is what we're warned against by, by Paul's letters. And so I think that's one symptom of this is a symptom of that poor teaching.
Jerod Harper:Jared, yeah, sentimentalism is just, you know, when you think of people around you and you don't want to think of them, you know, in a poor light. So it can be either friends or relatives, but oftentimes it's, you know, children, you know, Oh, they're so sweet. They're so innocent. And then I just say, you've never had a kid, have you?
Gabe Davis:Yeah? But yeah, optimism, the optimism toward people, where you just, well, they're trying to be a good person, right? A lot of sincerity.
Riley Forrest:It's really, it's informed, if we go philosophical with it, like it's informed by the rousseauian kind of notion of the noble savage, which essentially says that, that if you just left people alone, eventually they would all work out and be harmonious, and everything would be, you know, good to go.
Gabe Davis:Maybe one that I care about a lot, just because I started out, you know, kind of my professional life originally, as a marriage and family therapist, and so I saw this a lot in the therapeutic world. But is, I think, just the influence of therapeutic thought on the the mind. On the church, etc, where sin gets reframed as simply brokenness rather than rebellion. And there's kind of that shift. So you get faith, gets sin rather becomes something that's not just so much about repentance and redemption becomes about healing and self fulfillment. So it's not that the Bible denies human brokenness, it absolutely affirms it, but scripture defines that that brokenness as the results of sin, not the essence of it. And so I think that kind of that therapeutic world, sometimes everybody is you talk about people primarily as those who are hurting and confused and wounded. And so God loves you and wants to make you feel whole again, right? And so the whole problem gets framed emotionally or psychologically, and therefore the solution is comfort or affirmation or personal renewal, as opposed to we're rebels, we're enslaved. We're under judgment and and so the problem is moral and spiritual rebellion, not just a need of of healing, confused, hurting, broken people. But I think that that the therapeutic world has shifted our our thinking on some of that stuff. But yeah, I mean certainly sentimentalism, positive view of people, generally, poor teaching, fear of calling people out, of not wanting to sound legalistic or harsh. And so I think sometimes that we get a lot of like self help messages or encouraging messages, and that's kind of the main thrust. Is like, okay, let's the goal of the sermon is that everybody should leave here feeling really, really encouraged, which certainly we don't want people to feel discouraged. I don't, but encouragement shouldn't replace repentance, right? So, yeah. So, so what do we think the the diagnosis is here? What do we think is, is going on? What? What's the I read one thing related to this that said that really what is happening is this is just Neo Pelagianism reborn. The short version of Pelagia is that Pelagius taught humans were morally neutral, right? And so we, I want Pastor Jared to give us a little more explanation on that. In a little bit here, we'll come back to that. But just when you just when you hear that this idea that this is kind of an a NEO Pelagianism, what I want you to think is, okay, this isn't something that is brand new. This is this kind of thinking, this kind of reduction of sin, and the reality of how sin impacts us is is not new. It's been around for a little bit so, so let's actually get to what the Bible says. So what does the Bible actually teach about human nature, apart from grace? Okay, so we've got those two statistics. Everyone is born innocent in the eyes of God. 64% of people would say that. Of evangelicals, 53% would say most people are good by nature. And what we're saying as pastors at Redeemer church is that's not a biblical worldview that right? This podcast is designed to help you understand and apply a biblical worldview to all of life. Well, this is one of the most important places for you to get this right. This is anthropology, meaning. This is talking about human beings and who we are, and and, and so every. Thing is, is going to be related to what we actually think about ourselves? Do we think that we're basically good people that just need a little boost from God? Do we think that we're people that are, you know, only broken, or do we think there's something deeper going on? So what does the Bible actually teach about human nature apart from grace? So we're going to look at a handful of texts here. As always, we'll have links to the main scripture that we go through in the show notes, if you want to check those out. And because I know sometimes you guys are listening to this in a car or whatever else, or while you're busy, you don't necessarily have time to look all these up, but we're going to look all these up in the ESV, starting with Psalm 51 five. Can when you guys grab that
Riley Forrest:yeah, I got that one. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin. Did my mother conceive me?
Gabe Davis:Okay, so what do we learn about sin from that passage?
Riley Forrest:It's at the beginning. Yeah, it's at the start. He was brought forth. He was iniquitous,
Gabe Davis:yeah? So it's not learned, right? Yeah, it's from the very beginning. Okay? It's innate, innate in us, innate, and by very beginning, you mean from the womb? Yes, right, right? So it's, it's inherited, right? It's this thing that is, is from the beginning of your life, when you are first created and you are in your mother's womb, you are brought forth in iniquity, okay? Romans, 310 when you guys grab that, I got it.
Jerod Harper:Romans, 310, through 12, through 12, all right, as is written, none is righteous. No, not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside together. They have become worthless. No one does good, not even one.
Gabe Davis:By that, you mean that some are righteous.
Jerod Harper:How many are righteous? I mean,
Gabe Davis:you're saying is that, basically, most people are pretty good. Am I catching that summary? Yeah, I'm really good.
Jerod Harper:Yeah, no one is no one is righteous. No no one seeks for God. There's nothing just as sin is innate, there is no desire that's innate for us to search for God.
Gabe Davis:So there's no such thing as spiritual neutrality. There's no one who is and it's wide reaching. It's wide reaching. There's no spiritual neutrality. None is right. None are righteous, okay? Ephesians, two, one through three,
Riley Forrest:and you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind. And were, by nature, children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
Gabe Davis:So you were mistaken in your sins. You were just slightly broken, yes, just you just had a cold, yeah? You were just a little sick. No, what does Ephesians say? You were dead in your sins, right? And children of wrath, children of wrath. So
Riley Forrest:that's explicit, too. You were by nature, children of wrath, right? Yeah, getting more at that like it's not something that we learn. All three of us have children. We did not have to teach them how to lie. They don't know how to lie.
Gabe Davis:Yeah, yeah. So you were dead in your sin, so unable to respond to God, and you were by nature, that means your very makeup. Here to say human nature. Another way of saying that would be your human nature is such that you were a child of wrath. That is who you were. And okay, Jeremiah 17 nine. Oh, you threw another one in there. I know I gave you some of these, but then Jared
Jerod Harper:was trying to work
Gabe Davis:ahead. Yeah, you stay on the Romans one or Jeremiah 17 nine.
Riley Forrest:Jeremiah 17 nine, the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick. Who can understand it?
Jerod Harper:Okay, so we should follow our heart.
Gabe Davis:Oh, nice. We're getting some singing now. Okay, so this is for rock for his birthday. We got him a shirt from a really cool there's like a reformed website that does apparel, and they have a shirt that says, don't listen to your heart is desperately wicked or something. It's like a little heart that looks all cute and the skipping and but okay, so what does that mean? The heart is deceitful above all things. What does that what does that mean? Guys?
Riley Forrest:Well, when we are talking about this word, the heart in Hebrew text, especially, it's referring to, like, the innermost part of
Gabe Davis:talking about cholesterol, right?
Riley Forrest:Or even just like your feelings, it's talking about like your inner being. And so Jeremiah is saying your inner being is the thing that is deceitful above all things and is desperately sick. Yeah, it's, it's all encompassing again, in your being, yeah, the part
Jerod Harper:of you that is like about decision making and desires and those kind of things that's all,
Gabe Davis:yes, yeah, your affections, your all of that, that it is desperately sick and it's deceitful, okay? Now Pastor Jared, Romans, 512, through 19,
Jerod Harper:both of 19. Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin and. So death spread to all men, because all sinned. For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given. But sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the One who was to come, but the free but the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the great have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace that of that one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man sin for the judgment following one man's trespass, one's trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification for if because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man. Jesus Christ, therefore, as one, as one trespass, led to the condemnation for all men. So one act of righteousness, let leads to the justification and the life for all men. For as by the one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience, the many will be made righteous.
Gabe Davis:What if I don't like the word all in there, then you don't like the Bible? Oh, there you go. Okay, so just that in a nutshell is, I think that that passage right there Romans 512, through 19. I've used that a lot, even recently, in talking with folks about Jesus. And I think, in a nutshell, what it's saying is that humanity always stands under one of two heads to one or two representatives, either Adam or or Christ. And Adam. There's guilt, corruption, death in Christ, there's righteousness, Grace, life. Those are your two representatives. The illustration I can't I feel like we've maybe shared this on the church matters podcast at some point, but the illustration I always like to give people is because we have kind of a tough time understanding this concept. We're not a very like covenantally minded society. But if you were to picture having a king, but even a king, you know, the closest we have to a king is maybe a president, right? And unless you're not trying to be controversial, yeah, in England, that's true, but they're more like a figurehead, but I mean somebody that. So in our country, if our president decided we're gonna go to war with whatever. You know, we're gonna go to war with Russia, and he hits the nuke button and sends nukes. Well, then guess what? It doesn't matter if you say, Well, I really like Russia. I don't want to go to war with Russia like you are now at war with Russia. Well, why? Because if you voted for the guy or doesn't matter if you voted for the guy, doesn't matter if you like the decision, hate the decision doesn't matter. You are now at war because your representative, you're the head, made that decision to go and do that thing. And so now you are at war. You're not going to be able to just travel into Russia as an American citizen and be like, no, no, guys, it's okay. That was just the president's decision, not my decision. Like you yourself are are now at war, right? And so that's Adam. Adam's decision affected us because he was our representative head. And so in Adam, when he is your representative head, then that means that everyone who is in Adam, every human being, which means every human being is born with him as your head, and that you are born in guilt, corruption and death, okay, yeah. And then the only way to go from from that rep, that country, to stick with the metaphor, the only way to go from that country, country, or to leave that Representative head, is to go to a new country with a new head, right? And so kingdom of God has a different head than Adam. And so Jesus becomes, through faith, a new representative of a different country. And so you don't stand condemned any longer. Now you have righteousness, grace and life before God, right, right? So theologian Sam storm says that if Adam can't represent us in the fall, then Christ can't represent us on the cross, which I think is pretty good. He's pretty good. He's getting at this idea that for some people, they don't like that idea of of being guilty because of the actions of another, but then, as Christians, we all like the idea of being made righteous and being forgiven because of the actions of another, right? So you can't have it. You have to take it both ways, basically. So let's just hit four doctrines that are really key to this conversation. The first is this total depravity. So guys, what is total depravity? And then maybe a little bit what is? What is total depravity?
Riley Forrest:Not? Yeah, total depravity. I'll start with what it's not. It's not what we would call utter depravity, which would be that you are so corrupt that there is no, no part of you that contributes anything good at all to God's creation. As bad as you possibly could be, possibly could be, not that that's not what total depravity is. Total depravity is saying that there is no aspect of you or your life that is not some in some way marred by sin. There's not some way corrupt. Led by sin,
Gabe Davis:your mind, your emotions, your will, all of it is shot through with sin. Yeah, your ability, like, you cannot come to Christ, yeah, yeah. I think that's really good distinction, that we're not as as bad as possible. Because sometimes people will be like, well, sometimes people think that's what you're talking about when you talk about total depravity, and it's just saying, No, there's no part of us that is somehow unaffected by sin. So our affections are affected by sin. So when we go, Well, it can't be bad because I love that thing, it's like, well, your your love, is affected by sin. Well, it can't be bad because that thing makes me feel really good. Well, yeah, your again, your love, you know, your emotions, your mind, all of it is shot through with sin. But it's not that utter depravity idea where it's like I am. All of us are just, you know, serial killing, animal torturing, you know, we're just all that's all of us all the time, just that's all we can ever think about. And apart from the grace of God. That's not what utter depravity is. You know, that's not what total depravity, rather, is. That's utter depravity, which we would say goes too far further than the biblical text does. So that's, that's one doctrine, total depravity. The second would be original sin. So what is, what is that?
Jerod Harper:That by that, by nature, as soon as we come into the world, we have a sin nature. That's the psalm passage where David says, right, yep, yep. And that there's, there's not anybody who'd born without that, except for one.
Gabe Davis:So we're guilty in Adam, right? We're all guilty, and we're all born corrupted from the beginning. It's not just that we do sinful things, therefore we get corrupted. But rather we do corruptible things because we are already corrupted. So the bad things that we do come out of our nature, not that the bad things we do made our nature Right, right? So again, going back to that, we are children of wrath by nature, right, okay, and then third kind of category is moral inability. Jared, you talked about this a little bit, but what is, what do we get at when we mean, when we talk about moral inability? Actually preached on this a little bit from John 12, oh, hopefully I don't get it wrong. Then yesterday morning, the inability
Riley Forrest:not to sin is that we're talking about, yeah. I
Gabe Davis:mean, just like moral inability is we, we can't, we can't come to God. Apart from, yeah, right? Like, that's simply like we, we are called to come, yeah. But apart from new birth, we are the, as the Ephesians passage said that you read, we are what dead in our treasure, right? So you can call a dead man to come like lots of people, if, if Lazarus, when Lazarus was in the grave, lots of people could go up to it and say, Lazarus, get out and but they didn't have the power to draw Lazarus out. Right? Lazarus was dead, and Lazarus didn't have the power to come out himself.
Riley Forrest:Have you heard voting back on little, little, little rant on this, he talks about how you've heard some people say it's like you're drowning in your sin and somebody throws you a life preserver. Yeah? And that analogy doesn't work, because Dead men don't grab. Yeah, right. You can't grab the life preserver because you're dead. Dead men don't grab. And that's that's that moral inability,
Gabe Davis:right? Exactly. And then the last category, federal headship, which we were talking about that a little bit. But what is, just give that in a nutshell, these are the four key doctrines, total depravity, Original Sin, moral inability. Fourth federal headship, which
Jerod Harper:is that that we have either our head is either Adam, or our head is either Jesus. And if you if your head is Adam, then you're in you're lost in your sin and you're dead, or you've been raised to life because Jesus has applied his grace to you, and now because of what he did, it gets applied to us. So like you were saying, just like if you were living in the country of the king, and that king goes to war, you're now at war. Jesus went to war. He won his victory. Is our victory now,
Gabe Davis:right? So I mean going back to those key stats, that's right. Going back to those key stats, everyone was born. 64% of Evangelicals saying everyone was born innocent in the eyes of God. Hopefully you can understand why that would be problematic, and 53% say most people are good by nature. Hopefully you can understand why, why that would be problematic. So let's talk a little bit about what sin is then so RC sproll, who is again at the beginning of the podcast a clip, he talks about sin as cosmic treason, which I think is really helpful. But he has these three categories that I want us to just kind of talk through a little bit, that I think are great ways of understanding sin. The first one is sin as debt. He says, we owe God perfect obedience, but we defaulted. So talk about that a little bit. What? What does it mean? And how should we think of sin as as debt?
Riley Forrest:Well, I mean, fundamentally, in the concept of debt, it's that there's something that needs to be paid, right? There's a price that needs to be. Repaid, we, because of our sin, are unable to pay it, right? I think that's kind of what that's getting at, mostly.
Gabe Davis:So what is God owed obedience? Right? Right? He's owed perfect obedience, right, not just like half hearted obedience, but he's owed perfect obedience, and we fail to perform it, and therefore we incur debt, and so that point, God becomes a creditor. He's the one that we owe a debt. That's why we sing the song. Jesus paid it. All right, all my sins have been paid by Jesus. This is why we would, we would talk about sin as as a payment. It's because, in one sense, sin is a a debt. Sproul says this. He says, this. He says, it's one thing to be in debt and be able to pay it by means of a debt retirement program, whereby we pay off our debt a little bit at a time, but the indebtedness that we have with respect to obedience to God is impossible for us to pay back by installment plan or any other means. Why? What is the ethical obligation that God imposes on us His creatures? How righteous are we required to be. How moral are we called to be by divine mandate? We are required to be sinless. Nothing less than moral perfection is required. So that's he's he's saying, there's this going down a little bit. Then he says, so how does, how does Christ help me with my debt? What is the role that he carries out in his work, is our Redeemer, and the New Testament has word for it. Christ is our guarantor. Guarantor. Am I saying that right? Guaranteer? Guarantor? That's a weird word. It's an economic term, just as debt is an economic term. And so he's he's talking about sin is debt. We owed God perfect obedience, but we defaulted. And so then the question would be, well, how big of a debt do we incur? And it's like, Well, we continue to sin first of all. So we continue to keep spending the credit card. We're not going Dave Ramsey, we haven't had up the like. We continue to sin and thought, motive, deed, right? And and so we are continually placing ourselves in debt. And the the cost of an individual sin, if you want to put it that way, is of eternal significance, because the the of the seriousness, the more the holiness of God's command and what He expects of us. And so when we disobey that the debt that we're actually incurring is is weighty. Okay, so that's one category. Anything else you guys want to add to that? Okay? Second one, sin as enmity. What does that? What does that mean?
Jerod Harper:Getting behind the the idea of that while we were enemies, Christ died for us, then that our sinful state makes us enemies of God, like we have, we have, we have transgressed his law. It's not that we just did something bad. We did something bad according to what he defines as good and bad, and so therefore we've broken His law, and we've, we've been, you know, he is the offended party in this, right?
Gabe Davis:Yeah, that means that our sin and our actions aren't neutral, right, right? That it's actually, this is the cosmic treason. Thing is that it's a active offense against God, right? It that for us to be described as enemies of God, which is also how we're described in our sinful state, apart from Christ. It means that our sin doesn't leave us neutral, but that really it places us at war with God, right? Okay, third one, sin as crime. How should we think of sin as a crime? Obviously, sometimes sin literally is a crime, but sometimes we do an illegal act, and that's a crime, but,
Riley Forrest:right? It's an illegal act and a crime because it's transgressing the law of the government that we're in, right? And so when we talk about sin as a as a crime, we're transgressing God's law. We're transgressing the order that God has made his creation to to function in, yeah.
Gabe Davis:I mean, God is a judge, right? And so one way to think about sin is you are standing guilty before a a judge, which means that sin is a crime again. Sproul, I think, is helpful here. He says, God is ultimately the judge in all matters of justice. He is the ultimate standard of righteousness. His own character is the ultimate standard of justice. He functions personally as the judge of heaven and earth. Christ, in the drama of the Atonement, does not function as the judge. He is elevated to the role of Judge at his ascension, however, and that is significant by contrast in his descent to the world, Christ comes under judgment, and his role here is as priest victim. He comes to be judged on our behalf. So it's getting a little bit to the gospel there. But so if you could start to think of sin in those three categories, I think that would be really helpful. So even when we say sin is crime, that's also another way of saying. Sin is lawlessness, right? It's a breaking of the law. Sin is enmity. Is that sin is a hostile act toward God. That it is an act, a declaration of war against God. It's actually something that directly puts us into conflict with God. And then when we think of sin as debt, that it's actually we were called to something, and yet we have, we have not obeyed, and so we've incurred a moral debt as as a result. So talk about, if you guys can, like, let's just talk for a minute about how does that differ from how people we've kind of hit on this a little bit already, but how does that differ from how people typically think about sin? Like, contrast that with how the culture tends to talk about sin and or think about sin or human nature, or that, that sort of deal.
Jerod Harper:But by culture, you mean the evangelical
Gabe Davis:culture, you kind of like, turn popular level culture, you know, like, typically, I tend it might be evangelicals because they're the ones. Some of them are the ones obviously showing up in that statistic. So, yeah, maybe the way that they might be thinking about it instead of the way that the Bible talks
Jerod Harper:about it. Yeah, I mean, at large, I think that the culture tends to deny it that, I mean, they're going to deny that God has the right to impose any kind of understanding or on how to live and which ways to live. And so therefore, if God is not able to impose some things, the things that he believes are right and wrong in the world, then there's no thing as sin for them. Like you can't sin against something that is your own. Like everybody wants to say, You do you, you know. And so you have to operate by the things that you hold. And so you can only sin against yourself, right? So if you hold yourself to say, this is what I believe is right or wrong for me, well then the only thing I can do to sin is to do something that I myself have declared that I shouldn't, yeah,
Gabe Davis:which undercuts the idea of like, a moral debt, right? Because, or even you're the judge, yeah, because you're the judge, right? And the only person she would owe anything to is yourself, right? You're like, I forgive myself.
Jerod Harper:Yeah, that's actually language you hear a lot that you need to learn how to forgive yourself. You need to learn how to love yourself.
Gabe Davis:Yes, you need to learn how to discharge your own debt. Yeah, you need to learn how to when you stand before yourself as Judge, let yourself go. Yeah, right.
Riley Forrest:Basically, pardon thyself, pardon itself.
Jerod Harper:I think, I think, as as for the evangelical culture, or at least the American Christian culture, too much has been placed on that sin is the action and not the underlying grounds of that action as well. Too many times it's like, Oh, you, you stole something. And so it's like, well, as long as you make restitution, or as long as you to return the item, well, then you're okay. But there's a heart issue that's going on in that that you have to go deeper down into that and say, oh no. Like, sin is a much, much greater thing than just that one action. Yeah,
Riley Forrest:story time I did Awana as a kid, and Awana falls into that problem pretty squarely. I still remember the definition of sin that I was taught in Awana, which was, everything you think, say or do that displeases God, which, in one sense, like, yes, that is part of what sin is, but it's also not what you're talking about Jared, which is the deeper heart issue that it lives inside of you. You are, you are totally depraved. In the language of the reformers,
Gabe Davis:slow down on what you said. You said, everything you think, say or do, right? Okay, so the good of that is that does capture, like when we talk about sins of omission, commission, all this that captures some dimension of sin. The piece that it is missing, as you said, the deeper part, is that those things arise from some place that
Riley Forrest:weeds that grew from the root, right, right. Exactly. Describe the root. Yeah. Describe the leaves.
Jerod Harper:Yeah. As Jesus talks about it, a good tree will bear good fruit and a bad tree will bear bad fruit. But if all you're doing, is taking fruit off the tree, you've changed nothing
Gabe Davis:of the tree. And so what can happen then is people think, well, if what makes you a sinner is the bad things you do, so stop doing those bad things, and then you end up not really. You end up with a lot of behavior modification, do the right things, think the right things, and not a lot of heart level, nature level need,
Riley Forrest:and you end up with shame and guilt ruling your life, because you continually try to not do the things that displease God, and you continually fail. But you're like, where are these things coming? Why does this keep happening? Like, this should be so simple. Be wrong with me.
Gabe Davis:Someone told me, someone told me to do the right thing. Yeah, I know what the right thing is. Why do I keep doing the bad thing? Yeah, yeah. So, yeah. I think the other way that sin gets distorted, even in the church, but certainly culturally, is it gets downgraded to just mistakes. Yeah, right, which is kind of like, when people say, Well, you know, I mean, it could be as like, we're all on, we're only human, you know, like, Oh, it's just, it's just, like a human problem, it's just, and it's like, well, yeah, of course, we're human that desperately sick and dead. But like, that's not what they mean. What they mean. Is just like, we all make mistakes. We all kind of Oopsies.
Riley Forrest:Nerve effect, yeah, what is that? Nobody's Perfect, nobody's nerve effect,
Gabe Davis:wow, that was a dad joke from the office. That's hilarious. No, I mean, that's but that it's that thinking, right, like so that we are, our sin isn't cosmic treason against God. It's just an oops, Oopsie daisy. Yeah, it's a little mistake. So Okay, now let's just talk about how this doctrine doesn't just shape theology and kind of stay in the realm of this abstract like, Okay, we were getting our systematic theology right, but, but how does it show up? I want to talk about how it shows up in three categories, just really practically parenting, evangelism and counseling. Okay, so how does this doctrine if you get it wrong, how does it affect parenting?
Riley Forrest:We'll do kind of what I was just talking about, where we just try to behavior modify our kids, yeah, so they just do the right things, and we don't teach them the truth of sin as a pervasive issue in their heart that needs to be dealt with by by the gospel.
Jerod Harper:Yeah? I we went to a parenting conference one time with one of the trips. I can't, probably Ted. Probably
Riley Forrest:Ted. Yeah? You went on a trip with the trips? Yeah?
Jerod Harper:And he talked about, like it was really interesting, because at that time, we just had one child, and so I think it was just one child and and it was just like, oh, that's everything we're doing. We're just trying to, like, not do these things. He's like, You have to get down, like, on there, like, eye to eye with them, and then you have to ask, like, heart questions, okay, why did you throw the toy? Like, yes, you threw the toy. We don't want you to throw the toy. That's a good thing. Don't, don't throw the toy and hit the other kid in the head. But you need to, like, think about, like, what was it inside of you that did that? What caused you to, like, get angry? What? What? What's the root of those things? And that's a lot harder parent thing than it is to just go, don't throw things, or don't head button or don't draw on the walls, but like your open rebellion to your mother and I that's a that's a heart issue.
Gabe Davis:Yeah, we're not, we're not ultimately, just trying to curb behavior, or curb, you know? Yeah, we're not trying to just curb behavior. We're trying to confront nature. Yeah, right. And that is a difference. If you're just trying to curb behavior, then you end up trying to primarily be about raising well behaved, polite, moral kids. But the problem is, is polite, moral, well behaved kids, without regeneration, just ends up producing little Pharisees, right? So we're actually trying to confront their their natures, and say, you need a new heart. What's going on in your heart? How am I getting to these deeper level places in thinking about your your actual nature, and what you believe in, what you're worshiping in all of this? Right?
Riley Forrest:So another way I think it's going to change, or it affects parenting when we view this wrongly or Riley, is we have to recognize, as parents that we're not the Holy Spirit, like we can't save our children. It's not like we can do we can follow all these steps that we need to follow for our child to then believe that's God's job, right? Yeah, like we're called to be faithful with our children, absolutely. But we we aren't going to be able to, we aren't going to be able to carry the salvation of our children ourselves. That's not on us.
Gabe Davis:Yeah, I mean every correction, particularly, I mean this, you know, I don't mean this with necessarily, although, sure, like little minor things that a kid maybe does. You know, maybe they're bouncing the ball in the house. You don't have to, like, let's have a gospel heart level conversation, per se. You might just go, Hey, stop throwing the ball at the window and move on. That's okay. But I think it's like particularly deeper kinds of correction, deeper kinds of things, you know, and I think to every parent, those moments are obvious, and they look different when they're little kids versus when they're older, but that ultimately our correction is meant to be pointing them to the gospel, not just to better manners. Yeah, right, right. And, and that is, that's tough, but that's where your doctrine of sin actually will show up in this. What are you primarily aimed at? Are you just primarily aimed at getting them to think, you know, say, do the right activity? Are you primarily aimed at getting them to correct a few mistakes because they're relatively, you know, they're just basically a good person. Or are you trying to continually confront the sinful nature that is driving all of these various sins, just like it is in your own heart, right?
Jerod Harper:And if you do the greater work, it has way more benefits later on, yeah? Because if you get to the heart of the issue, well, that heart of the issue affects other areas. Whereas if you're just dealing with the things that they're just going to have to start keeping a mental catalog of in this house, we don't do these things, yeah. Whereas if I go, Hey, let's, let's correct the heart, and then they can automatically, on their own as they're growing up, go, Oh, if, if that's what my heart's supposed to be. Well, then all of these other things are off the table.
Riley Forrest:Yeah. And that what you just said, there is the Pharisaical mindset in this house. We don't do these things, and we keep tacking on the things that we're not supposed to do to keep us from doing this thing that we're actually, really, truly not supposed to do. But we've added all these other rules onto it, so we've now we've got to keep all those in line. Yeah, yeah.
Gabe Davis:Okay. What about evangelism? How does this? How does your doctrine here affect evangelism? Doctrine of sin.
Riley Forrest:It gives me some urgency, because if I have a if I fall victim to some of those cultural lies we talked about, like downplaying sin especially, and thinking like, yeah, you know what? Most of these people that I'm talking to out here today are pretty good people and like, Isn't God loving? He'll probably, like, he'll be okay with this. He'll let him in, yeah. But when we view sin rightly, and we see that it truly separates humans from their loving creator, then it drives us to tell them the good news,
Gabe Davis:yeah, really, is there really a war against God, right? And he feels a certain way about that, which is judgment, eternal judgment, and they are spiritually dead, you know, like, if you were to show up at Belle college and there's just a bunch of dead bodies laying around that God is like, I'm going to judge them. But you have been commissioned to go and to speak in such a way that there will be life that actually is given to those people that puts a little bit of a different urgency, a little bit of different priority importance on you actually telling other people the good news, right words of life,
Jerod Harper:yeah. And in one way, if, if sin is not as like, hard, difficult, ugly. Then my Jesus becomes like, just a self help guy, yeah, to help you to get if
Gabe Davis:you want to try him. Yeah, you know this would be okay for you, if you don't mind
Jerod Harper:if you're coming when, one way you're like, Jesus is just this kind guy who just wants to walk with you through life and help you. The other way is Jesus is coming on a white horse with a tattoo down his thigh, with a sword in his hand, and he's going to judge you, and if you do not follow Him, He's going to send you to hell. Yeah, and
Gabe Davis:every person apart from Christ stands in in in danger or is going to be struck down by this judge, this judge that's coming on that white horse, he is coming to fight you, yeah, right? That is a different kind of weight than Jesus knows that you're not perfect and that you've just had a rough life, and he would like to improve it. Yeah? That is a totally different kind of compulsion that we we should feel. And so it's like, which one is right? Is it just that Jesus would like to help you out? And I guess I'll turn it it's like Jesus is saying I can get you a cheaper rate on your car insurance, you know? Yeah, that's okay, Jesus, I don't feel like signing up for something new. Or is it like you are going to be judged eternally and you are at war with the A holy, perfect God, yeah. So there's a different way in which sin gets viewed, depending on what you what you do with these doctrines, right? Okay, what about counseling? How does it show up in counseling? I've definitely got an idea of this one, but I'm curious
Riley Forrest:what you guys think, why
Gabe Davis:don't you tell us counseling guys? I mean, the quick one would just be, I think that people, if they don't recognize the pervasiveness of sin and the seriousness of sin, then they think everything is just about getting healthier behaviors and help, which is related to the parenting thing too. But healthier behaviors would typically be the way that that got labeled, or they just are. It's only a dysfunctional thinking, or it's just a family problem that they've kind of inherited and that they're reenacting, or it's just low self esteem, or it's it's just kind of these other things. And so you never really call anybody the repentance, like there's never any Hey, actually, the way that you're operating is is against God, and the cure isn't just, you know, pills or more therapy or loving yourself more, the the cure here is actually repentance. I'm not saying that none of those things are ever not the case. I'm just saying that that the therapeutic world tends to never deal with sin. Actually being at the core of any of your problems, sin is not what's driving
Riley Forrest:technically right, like it's either a problem with individual sin in our own hearts or it's a problem with cosmological sin in the created order. Yeah.
Gabe Davis:Yeah. Anything else in that category? Yeah. I mean, we don't just that your counselor is a sinner too, yeah? And we don't just need affirmation of self. We need redemption from self, right? Yeah. And so some kinds of counseling can just actually make us more self centered and and so we don't we just fall. All deeper and deeper into that way of thinking of I need to forgive myself. I need to love myself. I self, self, self and and so when you diagnose the wrong disease, then you're going to get the wrong treatment, right? So Okay, next. How did we How did we get here? I alluded to Pastor Jared asking you to kind of give us the quick five minutes in church history. Just Riley, seriously, no, I mean, just, just give us kind of a snapshot I mentioned, kind of Neo Pelagianism, and how, in some ways is that just repackaged, Pelagius repackaged. But give us a little bit of a historical sketch here, Pelagius and Augustine and all that kind of stuff.
Jerod Harper:So in the three hundreds and early four hundreds, Augustine was Augustine actually made a comment that God grant what thou commandest And command what thou dost desire. And Pelagian got all upset with that, because he was like, wait, you think that we need grace to be able to do what God commands us? Because Pelagian thought that
Gabe Davis:so, really quick. So Augustine, early church father, right, writer, theologian, Pelagius.
Jerod Harper:He was a monk from Britain in the fifth century.
Gabe Davis:So they were, they were living around the same. Pelagius was living a little bit after Augustine.
Jerod Harper:No, I think Pelagian was older, older, okay, if I remember correctly, gotcha. But so, like, they, like, at first, Augustine didn't know if he had a severe disagreement with him, but eventually he was like, Oh no, this is a very big, severe disagreement, not only with me, but with, like, the whole entire church. And so he just showed that what Pelagian was saying was basically that instead of Adam as our federal head, we all come into it our own man, our own person in it. So I don't answer for any of Adam's sin. Nothing of that was was passed on to me. The only way that we become sinful is actually when we do act on sinful enticement. So
Gabe Davis:he said, Everybody's born innocent, innocent. You don't have a federal head, right? So all those four kind of key things, he's like, nope, nope, nope,
Jerod Harper:nope, nope, yeah. And at one point in time, he even said there's a possibility that someone could lead sinless life, yeah? Which everyone was like, wait, what? And so they actually did a council and figured out that, like that this was no, this was, No, this was, this is heresy, and he was, he was condemned as a heretic. The problem was, is that people then took what he was saying and then it became what's known as semi Pelagianism, or Neo Pelagianism, which is, okay, well, we're not that, but we're not also not Augustinian. So it's kind of like that middle path between Pelagian and Augustine. And so what semi Pelagian ism says is that we're not we're still not dead, but we're not fully, like, alive, so we're just kind of, like, sick, mostly dead, slightly alive, yeah. And so what it is, in their understanding of how this happens is that God comes to us and he's like, I've done half the half the work of getting to you, you just have to take the other half and come to me. And so I think one of the ways I've heard Tom nettles talk about it is like it's like a sick man in his bed and someone says, Hey, I've got this shot that will completely heal you. I'm gonna put it right. Here. You go for it. And they just have to choose to accept it, take it and give themselves the show.
Gabe Davis:Going back to the life preserver analogy, it's this is a person who's splashing around in the water and going help, help. Yeah? And God throws you a life preserver, and you have to just decide to grab it, right? And then he'll pull you in, yeah? And you'll help him. You'll kind of swim in doggy paddle too, yeah? But, but that's how that's semi Pelagian, yeah?
Jerod Harper:And so, but then this is
Gabe Davis:while, while Pelagianism, full Pelagianism, would be. You're standing on the shore. You were okay. You weren't drowning at all, yeah. And then through your sin or stupidity, you dove into the water and realize you couldn't swim very well, right? Or that you could just like, hey, I could. I'm just totally fine. I'll just hang out on the shore. I won't go swimming. I just never been, I've never been a sinner like, so, so it's so semi Pelagianism agrees that we start in the water drowning, right? But it just doesn't think we're all that bad off, like we, we need God's help to get out of the water, right? But it's this cooperative thing. Yeah,
Jerod Harper:you do. It's a 5050, kind of split kind of thing between you and God. But this has come in it. While Pelagianism was condemned as a heresy, semi Pelagian has, like, left its mark throughout the church, even up till now, like we see it still at work all the time, even in preaching and evangelism. So like, things that we were just talking about, like with evangelism, it's, you know, here's the gospel message, all you have to do is just choose to accept it. You have to choose. But like Jesus is saying, I'm the king of the world, you have to bow to me. You know, that's a difference of understanding what the will is and all of that. But we, I mean, even. Songs that we sing, songs that I grew up singing I did not realize, like some of the semi play, like I have decided to follow Jesus, yeah, exactly. Sing it Jared. But like the singing episode and it was, it was also made very common and very like out there by Charles Finney, Billy Sunday, Billy Graham, like that. That was the theology that undergirded it. It's an Arminian kind of theology, like semi Pelagianism became Arminianism and and, like, that's how it just began to spread throughout, throughout all of, all of our, our,
Gabe Davis:yeah, evangelical world. I mean, I grew up with that theology, and I think what happens is the person is, I don't think it's wrong. I mean, we see this, like, choose this day whom you will serve. Obviously, we have that kind of language in the Bible. We have Jesus, people, the apostles, and Jesus saying, Repent and believe, right? And so, so people sometimes think that, well, if you that that the problem is that they're calling people to make a decision, like even that song I have decided to follow Jesus, there's sort of, like, the most charitable way you could hear that and and the the negative way. And it's probably the negative way, it's probably, it's probably what we're talking about, the semi Pelagian way. But I mean, truly, a person does say, I I'm going to follow Jesus, right? I'm going to choose him today. I'm going to raise my hand and make that decision. I'm going to pray that prayer. I'm going to do that. The question is, when you did that? Did you do that as a person who grabbed hold of the life preserver that God had thrown you and got pulled in, or did you do that because God, the only reason why you responded to God in faith was because he brought you from death to life, right? And so that's all going to have to do with your doctrine of sin. Do you think that we are only mostly dead? Well, then a mostly dead person is also still a little bit alive, and so can go, yeah, right, the mostly dead person who's also partially alive, then can say, I need help. God, please help. Right? The dead person can't do that and is totally dependent on God to act on him. And then he can do all sorts of things, including saying, I'm going to raise my hand, I'm going to pray that prayer, I'm going to walk that aisle, I'm going to decide to follow
Jerod Harper:Jesus, right? One of the things that I think that we see this, even even in Reformed churches at times, is in the assurance of faith. Because if we, if we fall back into that semi Pelagian, I there was something that I did to save me. Well, then I'm there's the assurance of faith that you go, Oh, wait, maybe I did something to get myself out of it, or maybe I actually didn't do enough to get in. Like, maybe I just thought I did enough to get in. And so I think you see
Gabe Davis:that you decide your way in, then it can feel like I can decide my way out. Yeah, meanings, right? So if it was, like mostly, or at least 50% on you to get you to the shore. Then it's it can also play very well into, well, then what if I decide to jump back into the water again? Won't I just start drowning again? You know? And so you run into this, this loop where you pretty soon are thinking, well, look into my life, and there's a lot of sin and junk in here. And so do I need to get saved again? Do I need to get baptized again? And so this is sometimes even where the language of recommit your life to Christ comes from, instead of just repent, yeah, it's like, well, recommit your life to Christ. It's kind of a little bit of a cleaned up way of saying, like, again, decide to grab a hold of the life preserver and get dragged in. Because, yep, you're you're right back there again, right back drowning, and you need to recommit. And instead of just like no repent, repent of the fact that you are walking away from Jesus, and instead turn toward Jesus. So it, it shows up in all of that kind of stuff. But it's very rare that you're going to run into full on Pelagianism, where somebody just says, we're born innocent, right? There's, there's no sin inherent to us, but semi Pelagianism is rampant, yeah, I think it's probably, in a lot of ways, the default evangelical theology around the
Jerod Harper:doctrine of sin. I don't remember who said it, and I tried to look it up, but I couldn't find Yeah, but there's a common quote that said that, the guy said, it's not the ghost of Pelagian that I fear it's the ghost of semi Pelagian, right? Because it's just everywhere.
Gabe Davis:Yeah, right, good. Thank you for that five minutes in your history. Jared, so how did the Reformation then speak, speak to this stuff? How did the Reformation try to help us? Because Augustine, right, is sometimes called a proto reformer. He wrote in the three hundreds or so, and so he's writing before the Reformation in 1517 Yeah, so he's he's doing some work where he's writing and saying, Hey, I think our doctrine of sin is is needs to be corrected. And here's how we should think about some of these things. But you know, in the Reformation in the 1500s there was a real recovery of graceful. Alone, right? So like when we talk about the five Solas, we talk about sola scriptura and sola fide and Solas Christus and soli del Gloria, but we also talk about sola gratia, which is grace alone. And so that's actually what they're doing, right? They're interacting directly with that idea that we're not all that bad, but that we can only be saved by grace alone. We can't be saved through our works. We can't be saved through our through meriting it. We can't be saved by cooperating with Grace like we can only be saved by grace alone.
Jerod Harper:Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, like I said, the the semi pelagians Never died out. And actually they took another form of Jacob arminianus, who Arminius, who then was like writing along those same lines, and was denying things of like Orthodox faith. And so then you had his followers, who were the remonstrance, who came up with their their five articles of about election, atonement, human nature, grace and perseverance, which is what the if you ever think of Calvinism and tulip that those, those things are actually in direct response to the five articles of the remonstrance, yeah. So that's how the the Reformation connects to those kind of
Gabe Davis:things, yeah. So I think that is and that shows up in modern evangelicalism all the time. Yeah, like I said, I mean, that's what I grew up, grew up with and I grew up in the Assemblies of God denomination, and that was a common way. I think they, they wouldn't have realized, or even necessarily use that language, but I think semi Pelagianism was, was actually rampant through the way that the doctrine of sin was taught. Yeah.
Jerod Harper:I mean, semi Pelagianism leads to the ability, like we've already been talking about of the potential that you could lose your salvation, right? And so like, that was why, I mean, that was one of the five points of the remonstrance, which was why they wrote the the article, and the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. Like, that's not about like that you will thankfully there's enough grace to like help you get there. But it's like God gives you the grace, like, because God has you, you can't be lost, and so, like, there's much more assurance of of salvation in that.
Gabe Davis:Yeah. Okay, well, we've talked about several different things here, but I want to kind of bring it to why does this matter for for the church? What? Let's make this a little bit more concrete. Why does this actually matter for the church?
Jerod Harper:Because it makes the gospel beautiful, like, you need to know what you're saved from, to know exactly the extent of how great the gospel is. Like, the reason why we seeing that it's amazing grace is because there was nothing of it that we could actually do. You know, the only thing that we bring to sin is our need for it, or the only thing we need to we bring to salvation is our need for it, like we don't bring anything to it, like God doesn't go, Hey, I need your help on saving you where he's like, No, you're dead. I'm going to save you. I'm going to raise you to the to life. I think that when we get sin wrong, when we get we have a wrong understanding of what is at stake, then we lose how beautiful that is. That's good, yeah.
Gabe Davis:I mean, I think the only thing I would add to that is it also makes holiness kind of optional, right? Like, if you're like, well, it's not that bad. It gets to the idea that we were talking about before, of Jesus kind of being like an add on, and so fighting your sin becomes less important, putting it to death becomes less important. It's just it's not as big of a problem as it actually really is, because even as a Christian, then when we sin, what we should see is when we're sinning, we are actually echoing our old man like Christ has made us alive. And yet we are acting, still in defiance of him. When we sin like it's not as though, when you become a Christian, those things, the quality or the character of sin changes, right? So when you sin, even as a Christian, it's still a act of offense to God. It's a it's a statement you're making about God. It's a debt that you are incurring. It's it's a law that you're transgressing. It's still all of those things. It's just that Christ's blood has covered you, and he's paid for that, right, he's paid those debts, and he's reconciled you permanently, and you're secure in him and all of that. But that still means that the the character, the nature of the sin that you are committing is still seen that way by by God. And so therefore holiness is something that we ought to pursue so that we are not as God's children acting in opposition to God. Yeah, right. And so, yeah. I mean, I think what you said that if we don't have the right doctrine of sin, then the gospel becomes, you know, doesn't become amazing grace. It becomes cheap grace. It becomes a minor kind of grace. The Gospel doesn't feel all that necessary, yeah, I think it does. Ultimately, our a low doctrine of sin will impact the way in which we marvel or don't at the gospel, right? Right, okay, and then yeah.
Jerod Harper:Then you think of the verse, He who knew no sin right, became Right, yeah, on our behalf, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. That transaction now is not just like a small sum, it is a huge transaction, right?
Gabe Davis:I mean, this is why we catechize, why we preach through books. This is why we talk about sin and Grace every week. It's it's because we think these things really do matter. So let's just talk briefly. We've talked about this a little bit throughout the podcast, but let's just talk briefly about the hope of the gospel in light of this kind of sin, the reality of what sin really is. Ephesians, two, four through five. Some, somebody read that? Yeah,
Riley Forrest:I got it. But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace, you have been saved. You can grab the life preserver now you've been made alive in Christ.
Gabe Davis:Yeah. So these these three categories, monergism, union with Christ, imputed righteousness. Let's just talk through those really quick to kind of wrap up the podcast. So monergism, that's a term, mono, one, one. Okay, so what do we mean when we say salvation is monergistic? Well,
Riley Forrest:like you said, mono means one, and think Ergo is the other part of that. Word ergism is like work or or agency. So it means one one work or one agent. And so we're saying that God is the sole agent of salvation. We don't contrast that to that would be synergism, where man's will cooperates with God's grace. Modernism is no God's grace is the sole agent in the salvation of his people,
Gabe Davis:yeah, which, if you have the right doctrine of sin, then you go, of course, how could it be? Exactly, I'm a child like I'm I've incurred a debt I cannot pay. I am dead, and I'm at war with God, yeah, how do I get myself out of that situation? Right? You can't. You're dead. You don't have the ability to reason your way out. You have a debt that you cannot pay. You do not have the resources to pay it like you are in deep doo. Doo like you are in trouble
Jerod Harper:until Jesus comes in, that's right, captures you and then takes you back to his
Gabe Davis:kingdom, but God being rich in mercy, right? So, and working alone in salvation, Christ alone, grace alone, right? It's it. All we're doing is saying, I have faith that you have done that work, and that you are doing that work, and that you will save me. It's right. So
Riley Forrest:this is the singing episode. Yeah, we sang. Sing a song this last Sunday called, I am one of those, okay, which has the second verse of it says, I am one of those who is dead and fully buried, and I still bear every stigma of decay. There's no way I can hide just what I've been through. Because when Jesus called, I came fresh from the grave, is dead and fully buried. That that was our state before, but God called us out of the grave. God made us alive through Jesus or
Gabe Davis:Jared. Why don't you sing? It's God who saves next one, union with Christ. What is, how does that relate to this thing we're talking through here?
Riley Forrest:Yeah, I mean, I'll just, I'll read from Galatians. 220 is the verse that came to mind to me, which says, I've been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me, in the life I now live in the flesh. I live by faith, in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. So union with Christ is the doctrine that we are now indivisible with Christ. We are with him. That's what union means, right? It's a unity that's true of him. It's true of us, right, yeah, so we get all the the benefits of the Son of God because, because he saved us through His righteousness,
Gabe Davis:as as before, we were united with Adam, yeah, so what was true of Adam, right? Is that he was guilty. So we are. We had his inheritance, we had his inheritance, but by faith, we are united with Jesus. We have union with Him. And so it's true of Him, His life, His death, His resurrection is is true of us, not I, but Christ, who lives. I was crucified with this. That's my there's another song. Do you guys know that one? I don't know that's an old hymn or not, but I can't remember now, crucified with Christ.
Riley Forrest:And yeah, one by Bill Drake. He's not a very well known I was
Jerod Harper:thinking of one by a guy that Billy foot
Gabe Davis:the bill. Yeah, I don't know, okay, but it was basically the Galatians. Oh, yeah. So, okay, third category, imputed righteousness. What does that mean? We don't often use the language imputed. So what does that mean? And how does that relate to this doctrine?
Riley Forrest:Yeah, imputed means, like, mapped onto or given essentially. And so when we say imputed righteousness, we just mean that we are given the righteousness of Christ. We don't go to ourselves. We don't come to our salvation with our own righteousness. We know. Of Christ's righteousness. I think you quoted this verse earlier, Jared, second, Corinthians, 521, for our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. That's the idea of imputed righteousness. Is that we now have, we're credited his righteousness on top of our own dirty rags.
Gabe Davis:Luther called this the great exchange, right that our sin is credited to Christ and His righteousness is credited to to us. Yeah, that's the great exchange, yeah. So this, that's the hope of the Gospel, is, is that that Christ is rich in mercy, that he's our our new head, that we are united with Him, that salvation is of him. It's of grace. It's by grace. We have imputed righteousness. So this, but none of this is as beautiful or good as it really is meant to be. None of it is as good a news as it's meant to be if we get our doctrine of sin wrong. So that's why we need to get it right. Yeah, so that's, that's kind of the the podcast. Anything else that you guys want to hit before we close?
Jerod Harper:No, I can't think of anything. But, man, now I want to go sing some songs. Yeah?
Riley Forrest:I mean, I think the the one thing that jumped out to me, I think I almost stepped in and said this earlier, but we were too far on the other side of the conversation then, but just the idea that God's nature doesn't change throughout this redemptive plan, like God's the same yesterday, today and forever, and he judges sin in the same way that he's always judged sin. The Sin is dealt with, whether it's dealt with in you being a children of wrath and experiencing the judgment of God on the last day, or Jesus experiencing the wrath for you?
Gabe Davis:Yeah, yeah. We are debtors who can't repay. We are enemies who can't reconcile. We're criminals who can't defend ourselves. But Christ is our guarantor, our mediator and our substitute, and so that is, that is the hope of of the gospel. So maybe a couple of resources I wrote down that that would maybe be helpful for somebody who wants to look at this a little bit more. One would be the holiness of God, by RC Sproul. I think that book is, is so excellent. And if you're wanting to kind of just get, if you've never read anything by RC Sproul, start there, that book is, is so good. It's, it's, truly is a life changing kind of book. I don't say that often about a lot of books, but that was a heavily impactful book to me. Highly impactful book to me, the holiness of God by RC Sproul.
Riley Forrest:And if you're not a big book person yet, and if you want to kind of just dip your toes in it, Ligonier Ministries like RC Sproles, did he start Ligonier? Yeah, they have a bunch of his old lectures and talks on there as well, often on a lot of the stuff that he wrote, too. Yeah,
Gabe Davis:and state of theology website, if you just look up state of theology, Ligonier spelled L, I, G, O, N, I, E, R, but we'll also put it in the show notes, maybe Riley, yeah, you can kind of peruse the survey results and be as depressed as I was when I first looked through it,
Riley Forrest:yeah, holiness of God in the resource center. I don't remember.
Gabe Davis:I can't remember. I thought we did it first, but I'm not sure we need to get it
Jerod Harper:either if you do want to learn more about plagiarism, yeah, the we do have a book on that, the heresies book, oh, yeah,
Gabe Davis:yeah, yeah. He references Pelagius in there, for sure. And then Romans, 321, through 24 go study that and go study Ephesians, two, one through five. Those are great passages to study related to this as as well. So hopefully this podcast was helpful to your Redeemer. We want you to have a right doctrine of sin in part so that you would have be amazed at the good news, be amazed at the gospel. So thanks for listening. You.
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