[Sunday School] How Sinful Are We?

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Well God uses metaphors, so we can use them too. Alright, good morning everybody. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for these brothers and sisters in Christ. Thank you for your word. Thank you for the tradition that's been handed down to us, that leads us more deeply into your word. We pray, as always, that we wouldn't study the catechism for its own sake, but for the sake of better understanding what you yourself have revealed. Lord, help us this morning as we think about sin and the way in which sin has spread to humanity. Lord, as we've prayed several times and will continue to pray, help us to understand the bad news so that we can glory all the more in the good news and communicate it to others. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Okay, so here's a little thought exercise. Imagine you are experiencing some symptoms, and you go to the doctor, the doctor runs the tests, and he finds out you have cancer. But you know, he doesn't want to uh upset you, so he doesn't tell you. Now, what do you make of that doctor? Is he a good doctor?

SPEAKER_05 1:48

No.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

No, he's not a good doctor. What's the elasie waiting to happen, right? Yeah. James is over here licking his chops.

unknown 1:58

What's the name? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

I'm gonna have to defend this guy's voice. Yeah, he's gonna have to defend this guy. Yeah, yeah. I'm not a Billboard lawyer.

SPEAKER_05 2:10

Defend his work.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

But that doctor would be hard to defend, right? Yes, I would settle that case immediately.

SPEAKER_02 2:21

Well, sort of seriously frustrating. So doctors we've talked to, and we have some other issues that come up, and they all just go on to the next step. I mean, it won't tell us what's beyond the next step. When she went to cancer thing last year, that's how it was. Yeah. And and uh and so it's kind of like snow, you know how deep it's gonna be until the storm is over. You know how long this is gonna be, or who are you gonna have to see, or how expensive it is. So it's really frustrating. And I think the folks do get just so they don't get sued.

SPEAKER_01 2:54

Yes, that is that's an issue. Right.

SPEAKER_02 2:57

But anyway, to answer your question, the stereotype it's frustrating talking to professionals when they want to tell you what's going on.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

Right. Right. It's you can't really deal with the problem unless you know what the problem is. You can't deal with the problem unless you know the depth of it, uh, the extent of it, the nature of it. So when we're thinking about sin, sin is very much like the cancer that has affected the human race individually and collectively. When we hold ourselves up to the analysis of scripture, the prognosis is rent. And we can't pretend about that, we can't sugarcoat that, we have to look that square in the face. And it's only then, when we truly understand what the disease is that we can appreciate the provision that God has made for it. We won't understand why the medicine is what it is, and we won't take the medicine unless we understand what the disease is. So that encourages us as we continue to think about sin, to think about it clear-eyed, to think about it biblically, to think about it well and not to shy away from it. So, in terms of how we're working through the catechism, we're gonna shuffle things a little bit. I'm you know following Williamson's lead, that little book that I handed out for as a study guide for the shorter catechism. If you didn't get one, see me after the class and I'll be happy to give you one because we have extras. So last time we talked about how sin entered the world. In this week, we're gonna talk about how it's spread to mankind and all the effects that it has on us. So for that, we'll look at questions 16 and 18. And next week we'll do questions 17 and 19, which focuses on the misery of our fallen condition and its ultimate consequences if God doesn't rescue us by his grace. So we'll we'll talk some about eternal conscious punishment. So original sin and its effects. That's what we're talking about today. And just to recap, in question 12, we talked about the covenant of works or the covenant of life, which is that special act of providence where God entered into a covenant of life with man upon condition of perfect obedience, forbidding him to eat of the true the tree of the knowledge of good and evil upon pain of death. Alright, we've talked about that a couple times. I'll even talk a little bit about it in the sermon today. There was a covenant relationship between God and man, with Adam representing the human side of that covenant. So Adam was a public person in the covenant of works. Every human being who existed then, which is Adam and Eve, or ever would exist, which is us, was included in and with Adam. And so that's why we can ask and answer the question 16: Did all mankind fall in Adam's first transgression? And the answer is the covenant being made with Adam, not only for himself, but for his posterity, all mankind descending from him by ordinary generation sinned in him and fell with him in his first transgression. So all mankind descending from Adam by ordinary generation. Now, why is it important we make that qualification? That mankind is included in Adam's sin, except, right, only those who have come by ordinary generation. What exception are we wanting to make there?

unknown 6:18

Jesus.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

Because scripture is clear that Jesus was sinless. Jesus was not born with a fallen human nature. There's a bit of an argument about that amongst theologians, but we won't get into that. Jesus was born sinless. He was born a human being as human beings were created to be.

SPEAKER_04 6:39

Yes and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to me seems hugely significant in that and and in that God wanted good to be associated only with him and nothing less. And to choose a good, I think this is in Milton's Paradise Law, to choose a good that is not God is to choose something less. So you're you are choosing, so that's why I pause a minute on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which doesn't show up in the in Revelation at all. I am choosing a system of ethics, so now I'm talking talking, teacher talking. And I'm talking of you know a system of good and evil that is not God. He didn't want them to have that. And that you know, that just to me makes the wickedness and the sin and the fall so even blacker.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

Yeah, and I think the sin is even more meta than that, in the sense that when you look at the Old Testament, the um the language of knowing good and evil, it's it's kind of a way of expressing, like exercising moral discernment. So, in partaking of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve were actually putting themselves in a place where they could judge between good and evil. And God didn't even want them to do that. God said, just me. Just trust me, just listen to me. You don't need to make those kind of meta-ethical decisions about what's the source of good and evil and right and wrong and so on and so forth. Just listen to me. Just follow me, and you'll be good. And that's why, you know, consequent, they're eating of the tree, the fruit of the forbidden tree, then they saw that they were naked. The thought did not, and then they were ashamed. The thought had not even entered their mind to consider clothes or not clothes, shame or not shame. It's only when they took upon themselves that kind of moral ethical prerogative that God hadn't given to them that they realized, oh man, this is a thing we should be thinking about. So it's crazy. But moving onward from the actual commission of the sin and its spread to all of humanity. The big theological word for that is imputation. Adam's sin is imputed to our accounts. And to see how that's so, let's open up to Romans 5. Specifically verses 12 through 21. Would someone read that for us? And then we'll ask some questions about it. Romans 5, 12 through 21.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal. Wait, I'm sorry, five, right? Five, sorry. 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 gift is not like the trespass, for if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man's sin, for the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. For if, because 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 trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification in 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. Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. So that as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness, leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

SPEAKER_01 11:17

Alright, so let's ask and answer some questions, relatively basic questions about this passage. How did sin come into the world? Through one man. Through one man, and through how what about him? He's just like a bad-looking dude who disobedience. Yeah, through his disobedience, right? Through the sin of Adam, right? Was there death in the world without sin?

SPEAKER_02 11:40

No.

SPEAKER_01 11:41

You said no.

SPEAKER_02 11:43

There was no death in the world. In fact, some would say it includes the Adams.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

Yeah, I mean that's an argument about whether the fall brought death full stop into the world or simply human death. Right? And that is an argument that we don't need to get into right now. But death is in the world because sin is in the world. So what does the universality of death post-Adam tell us about the universality of sin? And we all have sinned. Yeah. If everybody dies, that means everybody sins. And was there sin in the world before the law of Moses? Yes, there was. It wasn't counted. Right? What he's saying there is that, well, kind of the logic of it is like sin is not counted against people where there is no law. But people have been dying. And we know that for people to die, they have to have sinned because death is the consequence for sin. So what conclusion do we draw from that? That there was actually a law in place against which sins were counted even before the law of Moses was given. So this is part of Paul's argument, right, in Romans, where it's like, Jews, you have the law of God. He wrote it with his very finger on Mount Sinai. You have it. And you've sinned against that. And you are dead because of it. But guess what, Gentiles? You have a law too. It's a law that's written on your heart. And you've sinned against that law. These things aren't fundamentally different, but one is the law of God articulated for a particular person, uh particular people. There is a law for everyone. We know it on the heart. We know at an existential level that murder is wrong, that theft is wrong, all these things are wrong. It's because the law of God is written on our heart. We suppress the truth and unrighteousness because of our sin, but we know. We have an innate sense of right and wrong. Imperfect, needs the word, needs to be educated, all of that. And so that's what Paul is saying. It says this law exists in the world. And because the law exists, and we are all by nature lawmakers, we all sin, we all die. Okay, how is that the case? That's the case because the one man, the federal head of all humankind, the first Adam, he sinned. He disobeyed. And through him, many were made unrighteous. You know, what's it is that fair? What do you think? Is that fair? Does that sound fair? Does that feel fair?

SPEAKER_02 14:10

It's just not for us to question whether God is fair.

SPEAKER_01 14:13

Good question. Or I mean good answer, right? Because, you know, at a gut level, you're like, wow, that that really does feel unfair. But consider the positive side of this. Because he's talking about the first Adam and how death enters the world through the first Adam. But why is he talking about that? To make everyone feel bad about themselves? Or to explain better the gospel? Because unrighteousness comes through the first Adam, righteousness comes through the last Adam. Death through the first Adam, life through the last Adam. So that's what he's setting up. These two covenants, these two ways in which humanity might exist. You can either exist as a lawbreaker in covenant with the first Adam, or you can exist as a law keeper in covenant with the last Adam. Not because you keep the law, but because he kept the law on your behalf to the nth degree. So you can't have, again, using that big word imputation, you can't have Adam's, or you can't have Jesus' righteousness imputed to your account. You can't affirm and hold that if you're not also willing to affirm and hold the bad news that the first Adam's unrighteousness is imputed to your account. You can't have one without the other. So if you want to have Jesus' righteousness extending to all who put their faith in him, you have to accept the shadow side of that reality, where if you don't have that, then all you have is unrighteousness extending to you from Adam. It's hard for us to grasp that because we come at this with a fundamentally individualistic sort of frame of mind. When the Bible and the thought of the world of the Bible is just so much more communal, so much more connected. Our sins never stand alone. We are not moral beings unto ourselves. When we do the wrong things, it hurts the people around us. Whether we can see that explicitly or not. And when we do the right things, it blesses the people around us. Again, whether we can see that explicitly or not. And all throughout scripture, we see the corporate nature of moral consequence, good or bad, especially that. Like in the Bible, when uh Korah's rebellion in number 16, and Korah's not the only one to get judged for that. The sin of Achan and stealing the devoted things from Jericho and Joshua 6 and 7. What happens? Israel gets defeated the very next battle, and people get killed. And then when Achan needs to be judged for, and it's not just Achan, but it's his tribe, it's his people, it's his family. David, the census in 2 Samuel 24, when the devil incites him to take account of the people in Jerusalem. What happens? Or the people in Judah, Israel, I forget. What happens? He's judged. A pestilence comes over Jerusalem, and 70,000 people die. All the kings throughout the Old Testament, as go the king, as goes the king, goes the people of God. I mean, we can recognize this in our own lives, like as a father, if I'm falling down my responsibility, if I'm sinning against God and against my family, I'm not the only one who's going to bear the consequences of that. My family is. Or as the pastor of a church, right? And we all have analogous things in our own lives. So we just can't escape the fact that sin and its consequences, it's a corporate kind of dimension.

SPEAKER_02 17:45

Now, a corporate thing we run into when we travel. So it's just in America that we run into as an individual thing pretty much, but when we talk to some other people, other countries, it's all about corporate. Not all countries, but some of them we talk to. Yeah. And so it's like, you know, if you have a bad pastor, then they feel that that reflects upon the community, and the whole community comes together to pray and not the church. And that's not a kind of a thought process we would have here in America. We would ours is like we just leave that church and find another as an individual. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 18:26

Even the communal thing can have what Lewis would call a characteristic rot. It's like when I was teaching in Uganda, the students told me our biggest problem is tribalism. It's like my tribe, right or wrong. And I said, I thought, well, that's where communalism, it has its good side, and it has its, there's nothing about any human way of thinking that cannot be turned into something dark and horrible.

SPEAKER_01 19:00

Right. Yeah, that's why there's a sense in which individuals from the tribe don't need to be converted, but the tribe itself look in acts and the fact that when people are getting converted, it's not just them as isolated individuals, it's their households. Right? That's and that that that's that goes hand in hand with the just whole covenantal principle of scripture. God isn't just dealing with us as isolated individuals. He's dealing with us as individuals who are part of communities. The most basic community being the family, but also the tribe, the village, the estate, the nation, uh, the church, of course. So let's think some more about, you know, so we've talked about the imputation of sin, the spread of sin to all humankind. But what exactly does that mean, right? What does it mean to be sinful or to have Adam's sin? And the catechism question is this wherein consists the sinfulness of that estate whereinto man fell? And the answer, the sinfulness of that estate whereinto man fell, consists in the guilt of Adam's first sin, the want of original righteousness, and the corruption of his whole nature, which is commonly called original sin, together with all actual transgressions which proceed from it. So you actually have a number of things wrapped up in there. You have a guilty status because of your sin, your status before the Lord, and we'll unpack each one of these. You have corruption, we have corruption in terms of our constitution, and we have corrupt acts which flow forth from that, the rotten fruits from the bitter roots. So thinking about that status, it says, the guilt of Adam's first sin, the want of original is righteousness. So on account of original sin, we are guilty before God. Romans 6.23, the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Ephesians 2.1, Paul talking to believers but reflecting on their previous status before they came to faith in Christ. You are dead in the trespasses and sins. And we can go on and on with these kind of proof texts. You know, Jesus is in John 3.16, for God so loved the world that whosoever believes in him might not perish but have eternal life. And then if you read on in that passage, Jesus is saying, Hey, I didn't come to condemn you. You already are condemned. So believe in me so that that doesn't have to happen. So we uh apart from grace, before grace, we stand condemned in the courtroom of God's justice. We're judicially condemned, right? So that's a legal declaration, irrespective of whether we feel like it or not. We lack righteousness, we lack a right standing with God. And that's an important distinction to make. There's a being guilty, and there's a feeling guilty. And the two of those things don't always necessarily overlap. Like you can stand condemned before God but not feel that way. Your conscience is seared, you uh you do what you do, and you have all your justifications for it, and that innate sense of guilt is all but suppressed. It'll creep out from time to time, but not usually. And the flip side of that is you can be innocent in the sense that you've been forgiven in Christ, you've had his righteousness imputed to you, you're good with God, and yet you don't feel like it at all. Or you continue to feel as though you're still guilty. And I've met plenty of believers like this, people with. Tender consciences, people who just for whatever reason they don't have the grace of assurance. So they're just obviously Christians to everybody who knows them. They love Jesus and they act like it and they talk like it. But you sit down with them and they're like, I keep struggling with this one thing. I'm not even a Christian. They just feel the weight of it, they feel the guilt of it. That's why it's important to maintain this kind of distinction in terms of sin and righteousness. There's a judicial declaration involved, which is true, irrespective of whether your feelings match up with that objective reality. So that's important for how we talk to people. Folks, coming back and thinking about sin, folks are not always aware of their sinfulness. So part of our job, humanly speaking, is declarative. It's declarative and it's persuasive, right? Helping people to see things that they don't necessarily feel. So you can't always appeal to the conscience. Think of Augustine's conversion story. Anyone familiar with this? He was in a garden and he was uh I think he was just hanging out, he was resting, he's meditating, and he hears the voice of children. And whether they were actually there or not, he doesn't know. It might have just been something God blessed him with. And the children were playing and they were chanting, Taliban, take up and read. And so Augustine hears this and he picks up a Bible and it just kind of opens to Romans 13, and it's the passage that talks about, you know, sexual license and all of these sins and vices that will, you know, if you persist in these things, you will not, you will not be saved. And Augustine's like, that's me. That's me. That's what I'm doing. His conscience wasn't really afflicted before that, but when he was confronted with the Word of God, just the Holy Spirit illuminated him in that moment. And he's like, Whoa, that's me. So sometimes that's the case when we're talking to people and we're talking about sin. Uh they might not be in the dumps where their conscience is afflicted. They might just be living, right? And with great wisdom and with great grace, we might be the one that God puts before them to say, Well, have you considered what God said God's word says about what you're doing? Have you considered whether that stacks up or doesn't? And actually bring them face to face with their sin and see what God does. See how God convicts. That's part of the declaration. Now, as we talk about each aspect of original sin, it helps for us to think about how grace heals it. So I've been talking about our guilty status before God. What does grace do to deal with that guilty status that we inherit on account of original sin? Don't overthink it, Roy. I think you got it. What does God do about it in the gospel?

SPEAKER_02 25:39

Well, he gave us Christ, and all we have to do is believe on him and trust in Christ's death, and that covers it right there.

SPEAKER_01 25:46

Okay. In what sense does Christ's death cover? What does God do to deal with our guilty status?

SPEAKER_02 25:52

Christ was uh his father per se is like the Holy Spirit, you know. So he comes from God versus someone who does from man, so these uh the imputation is not inherited in Christ. And so he died for all sin of mankind.

SPEAKER_03 26:11

He takes away our sin and gives us forgiveness. We get grace. Yes. He takes on our sin.

SPEAKER_00 26:22

There we go.

SPEAKER_01 26:23

We're getting there.

SPEAKER_02 26:24

And and those who believe that they have to work for their salvation don't. So, like, if they did, then why would Christ die?

SPEAKER_01 26:36

This is all true. What I'm trying to push us toward is thinking specifically about the forensic or judicial aspect of our salvation. Justification. The material, the material principle of the Protestant Reformation, that we are justified by grace alone through faith alone, and Christ alone, to the glory of God alone. Justification, that act of God's free grace, wherein he accepts us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us and received by faith alone. That is the judicial, that's the legal, that's the forensic aspect of our salvation. Where we were guilty of sin, literally. We stood condemned, guilty before the throne of God's justice. In Christ, in an act of double imputation, he takes our unrighteousness upon himself and he grants us his righteousness instead.

SPEAKER_04 27:31

He declares us not guilty.

SPEAKER_01 27:33

He declares us not guilty, not because of anything in us, but because of everything in Christ. So 2 Corinthians 5, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

SPEAKER_04 27:47

Jesus say in Romans, uh he is our he is our righteousness, which is very offensive to the Jews, and our wisdom, which is very foolish to the Greeks.

unknown 28:03

He is our wisdom, he is our righteousness and our wisdom.

SPEAKER_00 28:08

The Lord set up the payment plan in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus. He set up the payment plan, and then he paid it.

SPEAKER_01 28:17

Right. And we get into that when we do the cleansing of our corruption. So there's something legally that happens, right? We were guilty. God proclaimed, pronounces us innocent. We had a lot of red in our ledger. Jesus wipes it out. He makes, although our sins were like scarlet, he makes us white as snow. That's the legal aspect of justification. It deals with our guilty status before God that we inherit on account of original sin. So now if you are in Christ, you are no longer guilty. Again, this objective, subjective thing. You're gonna screw up, you're gonna sin just like I'm gonna sin, and you're gonna feel bad about it. The Holy Spirit is gonna bring conviction. But don't confuse that conviction with condemnation, because Romans 8 tells us there is no condemnation now for those who are in Christ. So the Spirit will bring to awareness what's going wrong within us and how we're walking up step with the gospel, how we're not living as the innocent people that we are. So you have to maintain this this is a big mix-up with the Roman Catholic Church where you have a melding together of justification and sanctification. Justification isn't just a declaration of your innocent status because of Jesus. It is an actual change that happens within you. You're being made more just and you have to act more just or else you're not actually just. And so when you screw up, you have all kinds of reasons to doubt whether you've actually been proclaimed not guilty. For Protestants, we're like, no. Objective declaration. Jesus says not guilty, that's it. That's the legal status. But now the next thing that needs to be dealt with is the corruption. Or the Protestant scholastics would use the term the habitus to deal with our habit. We have a corrupted habit that refers to our corrupt nature. And so because our nature is corrupt, we can produce no good. If you understand good as being the right action originating from the right heart, oriented toward the right end, which is the glory of God, if we're dead in our sins and corrupt in our nature, we can't do that. Psalm 51,5. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Jeremiah 17, 9, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it? Romans 8. If we're in the flesh, the heart said in the flesh cannot please God. It doesn't want to please God because it's corrupt. So a corrupt habit. Well, let me ask you this question. Why do we do the things that we know we shouldn't do? We don't want to do.

SPEAKER_02 31:11

Momentary lapse of reason.

SPEAKER_01 31:14

A momentary lapse of reason, that's an interesting way to put it. Because it presumes that reason is in the driver's seat all the time. Or even most of the time. Or even some of the time.

SPEAKER_03 31:27

Because it's in our nature.

SPEAKER_01 31:28

It's in our nature? What do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_03 31:32

And that's we were born in sin. And without being regenerated. We won't even have the conscience to navigate.

SPEAKER_05 31:40

Self-gratification.

SPEAKER_01 31:42

Self-gratification.

SPEAKER_04 31:46

It's because we're still in the flesh. We have spirit. I mean our spirit, we're still in the flesh, and we're being sanctified every day. So we're continually having to deal with the old nature.

SPEAKER_01 32:03

Yeah, all these are good answers, and all these get at the truth. Something we don't often think about enough is the power of habit. Say you've got some sort of vice in your life. Whether it's alcohol, whether it's, you know, uh pornography, whether it's uh like those cheap$3 romance novels you get in the grocery store checkout, or some stupid show on Netflix, or you know, fill in the blank here. You got some sort of vice that you reach for. Uh when you're feeling stressed, when you're feeling guilty, when you're feeling X, Y, Z. You don't run to that thing because you make a conscious choice. Right? Sure, you're conscious for it. I'm not absolving anyone of anything. You run to that thing because you condition yourself to run to that thing. We're creatures of habit. And we know that if I do this, if I watch this, if I listen to this, I'm gonna feel some kind of momentary relief. And that's gonna help me with my problem. And sometimes it's just kind of a reflex. That is the power of habit. We are habitual creatures, we are habitual beings. And when we have a corrupt habit, when we have a corrupt nature, we're gonna just reach for all the things, right? And even after, we we talk about this, it's definitely biblical, we talk about it in our in our confession, but even when we're regenerated, even when we're Christians, yes, we're dead to sin. The sin nature is dead in us. Yet we retain vestiges of that corrupt habit and those corrupt desires. So all those, the muscle memory, right? The moral muscle memory, all the things that we used to reach out for, unless we actively put those things to death, they keep reasserting themselves. Unless we take those thoughts captive to the obedience of Christ, and unless we engage in a grace-filled spirit-empowered act of renewal, like we go to war with the sin in us. If we don't do that, the corruption continues to assert itself.

SPEAKER_00 34:10

And you'll be blessed. You'll be blessed through obedience. You'll be blessed when, I've told this before, you know, that you know, I'm eating lunch by myself in whatever city, and you know, rather than scroll on my phone, I just go to my Bible app. And the Lord will pour it out when you make when you make that right decision and um smack on the face, you know, it dreams effort. It just dreams effort. You can't put your Bible, and I'm talking to myself now, but you can't put your Bible under your pillow and sleep on it. You know, and and it's a you know, the act sacrification, the the mutual working together, it's it it the blessings, the it's just incredible. So effort is a big thing for me.

SPEAKER_01 35:00

Yeah, yeah, as long as we rightly understand effort. Dallas Willard said, um, you know, uh I'm reaching for this. Grace is opposed to earning, it's not opposed to effort. Alright, so sanctification. I mean, we're the question I was going to ask is how does grace deal with this aspect of our original sin? And the question that we've already telegraphed and we're answering now is sanctification. But even before that, regeneration. God taking the heart of stone and replacing with the heart of flesh, writing his law on our hearts, implanting in us a new spiritual and moral principle and habit. And then in sanctifying, continually cleansing us of that corruption that was caused by our sin, making us new people, so that the good tree might bear good fruit. Right? This is this is not, you know, this is not the same thing, yet it is intricately and integrally related to justification. In justification, God declares us righteous, and sanctification, God makes us righteous to match the declaration of justification. That declaration isn't based on that transformation in us, the transformation is based on the declaration that flows from us, Ruby.

SPEAKER_04 36:19

So I'm thinking of Joshua, which I um I understand now, but um there were pockets of pockets of foreign tribes left in Canaan that God left them so they would learn to fight. So the ones, so the generations coming after Joshua would learn to struggle and vanquish this. We know how that story went. Sometimes it went okay, but a lot of times those male worshippers actually trapped the Israelites into their foreign worship. So that's kind of how where I start when I think about the Christian life. There are things left in me. I'm not 100% sanctified yet. Because the Lord wants to teach me to wrestle with, engage in spiritual warfare with the residue of rebellion against him, there are there are little pockets of rebellion left in there, and he wants me to learn to in the power of the spirit and by faith, because we are sanctified in the exact same way we're justified by faith in him and in his power.

SPEAKER_01 37:41

Yeah, by grace through faith. Yeah, God told the Israelites to you know drive out all the people of the land, otherwise they would become what?

SPEAKER_04 37:51

Snares.

SPEAKER_01 37:52

Snares or thorns. Yeah, and Paul prays in 2 Corinthians that God would take what away from him? His thorn and God doesn't take it away. My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. So that's that's in the mystery of it and in the wisdom of God. You know, he suffers the sins of his people and the sins of other people in order to afflict us both from within and from without. But even that is part of the plan for our sanctification. You know, even that is how he brings about part of how he brings about our glory. So the sanctification piece is really important because you know in the in the corrupt status we have because of our original sin, we know that sin is a legal thing between us and God. In the corruption of our nature and the corrupt habit, we know that it's not just a legal fiction, like what a lot of Roman Catholics will say we believe in terms of our doctrine of justification. No, there's actually something that's broken in us. It's not just a legal thing, it's an ontological thing, it's a metaphysical thing. There's something broken in us that needs to be fixed. God fixes it definitively when we are saved, in the sense that, you know, the Bible talks about sanctification in two senses: a positional sanctification and a progressive sanctification. Hebrews talks about us being once for all sanctified, sanctified by the blood of Christ. We are set apart. That's part of what it means to be sanctified. That is something that happened. When you become a saint, which we all become saints by way of grace through faith, at our conversion, right? When you become a saint, you are sanctified, you are set apart. And yet there is this ongoing process by which the Holy Spirit conforms you to the image of Jesus. That's progressive sanctification. He's making you better and better every day. That's the promise. It might look like one step forward, two steps back, it might be highs, it might be lows, peaks, valleys, all of that. Right? There might be backsliding. But sanctification is the promise that he is continually making you more and more like Jesus. And that is dealing with the corruption until finally either you go to be with him or he comes to be with us. So those are the two aspects so far, but remember a third I mentioned, the Acts. The catechism question or the answer says that part of sinfulness consists in the actual transgressions which proceed from our corruption. One time uh we were in, so uh we were in a we used to go to a megachurch in Nashville, like when we were baby Christians, or I was a baby Christian, and there was a snow day one day, or something like a snow day, and the senior pastor couldn't get in for the evening service, and so they just tapped the campus pastor and said, Hey, can you preach a sermon? Ah, okay. And uh he, you know, he he trotted out like his go-to lines and stuff, and he stitched it together into the sermon. But he opened it with the question, how many sins does it take to send you to hell? How would you answer? How many sins does it take to send you to hell?

SPEAKER_02 41:08

No, because we've already there.

SPEAKER_01 41:10

We're okay, that's an interesting answer.

SPEAKER_04 41:16

You say no because we're already there.

SPEAKER_01 41:19

That's that's actually pretty close to the right answer. I think it's kind of the right answer. Because, you know, the the presumption was that we'd say one, right? One sin is enough to send you to hell, which is true, but it betrayed, and uh just this was the vibe in this kind of church, a kind of voluntaristic big word, a kind of view that, you know, the problem with sin is that there are scales. The requirements are up here. When you sin, you you fail to meet the requirements. And so your sins get weighed in this the scales at judgment day, and you know, if you've got too many sins in there, then you're cooked. Uh which, you know, is true in a certain sense, but it got it doesn't get deep enough. It doesn't go to the core of the issue. And the core of the issue is what we've been talking about. We have a guilty status because of our original sin. We also have a corrupt nature because of our original sin. So the tree brings forth bad fruit because the tree itself is bad. We aren't sinners because we sin. We sin because we're sinners. So, you're not a liar because you lie, you lie because you're a liar. You're not a murderer because you murder, murder because you're a murderer. You under you understand what I'm saying with that? Right? It all proceeds. Out of the evil treasure in our hearts, we bring forth evil. These are the things Jesus talks about in Matthew 12 and in Luke 6. Uh Matthew 7, 17 through 18. Every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. So the issue, you know, the core issue, the heart issue, is the heart issue. You, and this is a subtle mistake that we so often make, especially in churches where the moral vision is like, you know, what is Christianity? Love God, love people, do right, get your stuff together, follow your Bible, keep the rules, dress right in church on Sunday, use the right words, not the wrong words, so on and so forth. All of those are good things. We believe in all of those things, right? So long as they're tethered to Scripture and they're expressed rightly. But if that's it, right? If you just, if your view, if the problem with sin is we have sinful acts, and the way to deal with sin is to clean up our acts, and maybe God will give us some grace to help with that, then you're not going deep enough. It's like, okay, let's say, let's say you deal with the acts, right? Let's say you clean you get your act together, you stop drinking, you do all the stuff you're supposed to do because they told you in church you're supposed to do it. Guess what you've just become? Not a Christian, but a Pharisee. You're a whitewashed tomb. You look great on the inside, but on the outside, but inside you're full of dead bones.

SPEAKER_04 44:25

The passages on pride and Buddhist clear Christianity are really really good for me. Because pride, he said, is a totally spiritual sin. It is the anti-God state of mind. And Ruby is anti-God in her natural self. I am, and no matter how religious or how much I know, is that anti- Paul Paul and the preacher talks about being enemies of God. We are anti-God because we are pro-less. And that's that essential self-worshipping peace that can be very, very that to me is the ultimate sin. And I can be morally, you know, upright and everything, oh, well, she wouldn't say that word if her mouth was full of it and all that stuff. You know, it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. If I am, if I have the slightest liver of not being God's total creature, and he is God and I am not, if there's the slightest hint of that, that is the darkest sin that there is.

SPEAKER_01 45:39

And everything proceeds from that. Augustine called the pride the pregnant mother, which gives birth to all the other sins. Look in the garden. That's at the heart of what's going on with Adam and Eve, taking fruit for themselves, pride. We think we could be like God.

SPEAKER_02 45:58

I read that kings and societies and governments of old and even through today like to push the Ten Commandments and the good behavior because that supports the kingdom and builds the community.

SPEAKER_01 46:17

And so ahead.

SPEAKER_02 46:26

So it's hard to explain that it's uh God's law that we are violating man's law.

SPEAKER_00 46:37

Yeah. Against you, you alone have I sinned. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:43

So how does grace? We got a couple more minutes. How does grace heal this aspect of our original sin? The acts which proceed from our fallen nature. How did you answer that question? Yeah. We should get our acts right, right?

SPEAKER_04 47:11

Right, but you just claim for me. May you have sinned a dumb cure. Yeah. Save me from its guilt and power.

SPEAKER_01 47:19

Yeah. That's a great answer. Because you can't deal. Grace, Grace only deals with the acts. Grace only heals the acts by healing the status and healing the nature. These three things have to go together. Because again, you can deal with the acts. You can find some sort of program of behavior management. You can put covenant eyes on your phone. You can get an accountability partner. You can do all the stuff that you're supposed to do. But if that's not coming from the right part for the right purpose, then you are just trading one set of sins for another set of sins. And it's going to lead you to one of two places. It's going to lead you to pride if you're pretty good at it, or it's going to lead you to despair when you're honest about how bad you are at it. So we need all these things working together. If we're doing the wrong things, should we call that out in one another lovingly and in grace? Yeah. Should we bring the Bible to bear in the way we're living? Yeah. If uh, you know, if James catches me cussing up a storm at the pub down the road, he should have a conversation with me about that. Right? And we should do that. We should, that's uh the Hebrews 3, exhort one another all the more as you see the day approaching that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. That's what it likes like to exhort each other. So we ought to be challenging each other, admonishing one another. This is the kind of stuff that Ephesians 4 and 5 and Colossians 3 says we ought to be doing with one another. But if we divorce that from grace, we're just playing a legalistic game. Because it has to come hand in hand with the fact that Jesus kept the law, Jesus lived for you, Jesus died for you, Jesus has forgiven you. And so now the call to live in light of that is truly a call to live in light of that. Walk in step with the gospel. Be who you already are in Christ by God's grace and in the power of his Holy Spirit. So we're pointing each other back to the source again and again and again and again at the heart of it.

SPEAKER_00 49:30

And the obedience goes from mine to the heart. You know, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. And that's just, it isn't keep the commandments, and then I'll know you love them. And you know, because this love, right? I said before, you know, I love Kenny, so I don't want to hurt Kenny, right? And and when you sin, you you you you grieve the Holy Spirit. Yeah. So it's out of love. You want to obey. Right. It's not a burden.

SPEAKER_01 49:57

Right. So right. Right. So, you know, this there's so much more we can say, but this really does cut to the heart of a behavior modification sort of quasi-gospel, Lendy.

SPEAKER_03 50:09

One of the things that um just keeps coming to mind is when um a woman is washing Jesus' feet with her tears, her hair, and anointing him. Um Jesus says about her because the disciples wanted to send her away. But Jesus says about her that much was forgiven, so there's a deeper love, and I think that is so true in that she is her heart is changed, and you can see that in her eyes.

SPEAKER_01 50:51

Yeah. The heart needs to change. Uh, when we're dealing with each other, that's uh that has to be in the core of it. And also when we're talking to people who, because you know, so many people from the outside looking in and you ask them what Christianity is, what's Christianity about? Oh, you're a bunch of people, like you got your moral code and you follow it. Also, you're a bunch of hypocrites. Yeah. Yeah, there's always room for one more. Come on. Yeah, but you know, it it helps us, it helps us to come because that's the you know, that's that's the popular understanding. The default mode of the human heart is works righteousness. So if you don't know the gospel, you're just gonna assume that's what Christianity is. And it's like uh you if you if you have this more comprehensive view of sin, then you're gonna have a more comprehensive view of the gospel and how grace works with sin, and you can actually have a better conversation with people about like what we think the problem with you, me, and everyone else actually is. And again, you know, yeah, you're not perfect, and neither am I. You do sinful stuff, I do sinful stuff, and I don't pretend to be any better than you. You might have your life on the outside, you might have your life more together than I do. I'm it's it's not about us. It's not weighing up how many good things and right things or bad things we do. It's about Jesus. And him getting in and dealing with our hearts. And then that just completely changes the paradigm, completely changes the game. Alright, our time is gone. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for the fact that it tells the truth about us, that it's not sugarcoat things, that it's not bashful. But like the good doctor, it tells us exactly what's going on inside of us so that we can know where to find healing. Lord, thank you for that, for providing that healing for us in Christ. As we come to worship, help us to sing of his beauty and to partake deeply of his grace and everything we do. Lord, bless us this morning as we worship together and as we enjoy fellowship afterward during our Palm Sunday lunch. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. All right.