Apologetics Session 13 - Soteriology - Part 1

Lord, you've touched a lot of hearts in this room, Father, and pray that you touch a lot more tonight,

Father, as Matt teaches. Thank you for Matt, and we pray that, Lord, you would be with him through this whole session of teaching,

Lord. And, Father, you would remind us of the precious words of grace and redemption.

And, Father, just your love, your tremendous sacrifice, propitiation, all the terms that we're going to hear in regards to salvation that you decided to step into time,

Lord, and lay your life down so that you could redeem a people for yourself, zealous for good works, Father.

We're so thankful, Lord, we can be here tonight, and we're so thankful you save us by your grace,

Father. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. All righty, so start off.

Just as a warning, you guys should all have Bibles or phones or whatever it is you're going to use, because there's going to be a tremendous amount of scripture that we're going to be going through today.

Because of the fact that this is one of the first few pieces of doctrine that we're going to be going through,

I was very careful not to root a lot of this in my own opinions or feelings or beliefs as much as what does the

Bible say, what does the Word of God say. And so that's what we're going to spend a lot of time actually talking about, which is what does this scripture say or that scripture say, and we'll go through that.

So to start off, I wanted to give some background. When I took on soteriology as a topic,

I was looking for good resources. I found a number of good resources, but one of the sort of mainstay resources that I used in preparation for this was a 52 -hour soteriology seminary class that was done by Dr.

Andy Woods. I only went through seven hours of it, but it was 52 hours long if you go through the whole thing.

I picked seven of the one -hour sessions to go through. Now Dr.

Andy Woods is not what I would call reformed in the reformed kind of idea.

He is very much not a Calvinist. He has certain beliefs that I agree with and certain beliefs that I don't agree with, and so I'm going to point out some of those disagreements as we go through this, but a lot of the teaching that he had was rock solid, and I actually think it was a blessing that, you know,

I think the Lord led me to his teaching because it challenged me to actually do more research and to think more about what it is that I actually believe because I came in with a certain sort of bias or presupposition as to how

I was going to study and what content I was going to pick, and him saying certain things challenged me, and so I thought it was actually really good for me to kind of go through that.

I even bounced a couple of things. Pastor gets to cheat a little bit because I bounced something off Pastor as well about some of what he said, but I took the seven hours of teaching that he gave, that Dr.

Woods gave, and contrasted it with other folks like John MacArthur and R .C. Sproul and some other apologists that I listened to, some of which are, you know,

I think they're all believers. The ones that I listened to anyway are all believers, but they do have differing opinions on parts of soteriology.

I would say that we don't disagree on the poor parts, but some of the other parts we may have some differences on.

So I think Dr. Woods was doctrinally sound in his teaching. I just think that there are some pieces of the doctrine that aren't necessarily poor that we have some differences with.

So the first question to everybody, what is soteriology? It's the doctrine of salvation.

Thank you. So it's the doctrine of salvation, specifically the

Christian doctrine of salvation, and in systematic theology, right, it naturally follows hemarteology,

I think I'm pronouncing that correctly, which is what Drew covered last week. So we started out this entire apologetics series covering some foundational topics, right, truth, faith, the

Bible, the historicity of it, the archaeological and manuscript evidence for it. We talked a lot about why is it reasonable for us to be

Christians? Why not be Muslims, or why not be Buddhists, or why not be atheists, right?

What are the sort of underpinnings of why we should be Christians at all?

And so that naturally leads us into the doctrines of Christianity. So once we say it is reasonable to believe in things like the historicity of Jesus Christ as a man, the historicity of his crucifixion, his resurrection, and so forth, you know, now we want to get into what does it actually mean to be a

Christian, right? What do you have to believe in order to be a Christian? And so this will be the, well, just to talk about hemarteology a bit, there's a saying that I heard which

I thought was interesting, you have to get someone lost before you can get them saved. I think this is actually something that, when

Christians evangelize, they get wrong a lot of times. They start with, Jesus died for your sins. What they don't start with is, you're a sinner, right?

And I think, what's the, Ray Comfort, I think he does a really good job, if you've ever watched

Ray Comfort YouTube videos, he is doing like street evangelism, and he always starts with that.

He starts with, you think you're a good person? Why do you think you're a good person? Have you ever lied? Have you ever stolen?

Have you ever cheated, right? He goes through those things to sort of show people that they are, in fact, not good people from a perfect and holy perspective.

They may be better in comparison to someone else, right?

But that's sort of relative, that's not absolute, right? All right, so why is it important,

I'll ask the audience here, by the way, there's going to be a lot of interaction here, I'm going to be asking you to read scripture and I'll ask questions, so be ready, but why is it important that we understand the doctrine of salvation?

About what salvation? Say that again, Russell? What did you say?

I said, why is it important that as Christians we understand the doctrine of salvation?

About salvation, okay. It's an easy one, guys.

It is the core belief of Christianity. Without soteriology, without the doctrine of salvation, what are we doing, right?

Like, that's the whole point, right? It gives us a view. Say that again,

Russell? It gives us a view as to where we could or could not be going.

Exactly, exactly. It determines where you're going to spend eternity, just like Russell said, right?

Are you going to spend eternity in heaven or are you going to spend eternity in hell, right? As much as people don't want to believe in hell or that a good

God would judge anyone to hell. So it's a really big deal, soteriology, and I think it's emphasized in Galatians 1, 8 through 9.

Does somebody want to turn to Galatians? Go ahead,

Phil. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed.

As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you have received, let him be accursed.

Right. So here Paul is basically saying there is a gospel, a teaching about how to be saved, that if anyone else were to preach something different, even if an angel were to show up supernaturally and teach you a different gospel, let him be accursed.

And that word accursed comes from the Greek word anathema. Some translations may even have it there as anathema, which is not just saying, like, we don't like you.

It's a condemnation to hell, right? Let him be condemned to hell, right?

So it's really important. Paul emphasizes how important it is to get the gospel right.

And when I read this, like, it was a weight, right? Because I'm going to sit here and teach.

And so it's a weight to make sure that there's no error in that teaching, which is why I rely very heavily on scripture to do the teaching for me, as it were.

So Paul is clear that getting the gospel wrong comes at a cost, which is why

I was incredibly careful in preparing for this study.

Later, and there's a slide here that I, there was sort of the

Hamartiology, Christology, and Soteriology, which is, this is just a neat graphic that I saw that had, you know, the transfers or imputations.

So sin came into the world. Christ, you know, came to take that sin away.

And then Soteriology is how we can be saved. Later in the apologetic study, though, we're going to cover some other religions and cults.

So Islam, we'll cover, you know, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witness, and some of the sort of,

I'll call it bigger, biggish religions and cults. We'll even cover some things that appropriate Christianity, like when you think of like progressive

Christianity, some of the deconstruction movements that are going on there. We'll probably talk a bit about those, because they do a good job of appropriating

Christian terminology without it actually being Christian. So we'll cover some of those, but I thought it was really interesting in, when you reference

Galatians 1, 8 through 9, that it talks about even if an angel from heaven were to come down, because Mormonism claims to have come from an angel,

Moroni. Joseph Smith claimed that Moroni, who was an angel, who was a guardian of these golden plates that contained the revelation of the

Book of Mormon, that Moroni came down and gave him this revelation. So clearly

Joseph Smith wasn't actually heeding the words of Paul in Galatians when it said,

I mean, assuming that Joseph Smith is sincere even in his belief that an angel gave him that and he wasn't just sort of making it up for himself, he certainly wasn't heeding

Paul here. Similarly, Gabriel supposedly came to Mahomet near Mecca, which is where the process of the

Quranic revelation began as well. So both of these religions were supposedly imparted to their prophets by angels, you know, in direct contrast to what it says in Galatians.

And Satan is a supernatural being, right? Satan is a fallen angel, he's a supernatural being, and he can certainly use supernatural means to deceive us if we're not careful.

And so it's particularly important that we recognize what the Bible says about salvation and how to recognize false gospels so that we're not led astray.

So let's talk a little bit about Greek. This is something that I didn't expect to do in this apologetics series, which is look so much at Greek words.

It's so important though, I found it to be, you know, just so important to look at the original

Greek words, their meaning, their context. And so we're going to talk a little bit about that today as well.

So we talked about, when I covered the manuscript stuff for the historicity of the

Bible, we talked about the New Testament, you know, being written primarily in Greek. And so it's, you know, super important to understand kind of the

Greek words and their meaning because the translated words, even if they're accurately translated, sometimes don't convey that same meaning.

You know, so this is not a knock on, like the ESV is a very little translation, but even in those scenarios where scholars have taken the time to accurately translate those, you know, there's differences in the way that we use certain words.

So even if they're accurately translated, we may use them in different ways. So inspiration was one that I talked about when we were talking about the

Bible, was that we use inspiration a lot of times to mean, like, that was an inspired book or was an inspired song.

Whereas, you know, the Greek was talking about it being God -breathed, right?

So there's a difference in the way in the English language sometimes we use it and it doesn't carry the same emphasis as it does if you look at it in the original.

So anyway, the Greek word for soteriology, soteriology meaning the doctrine of salvation, it derives from the

Greek word sozo. Sozo is a verb, it means to save. Soteria is a noun which means salvation.

Soterion is also a noun that means salvation, and soter is a noun that means savior, right?

So this is where the word soteriology comes from. Now this word itself is not theological in nature, right?

It's a word that would have been used in Greek. It doesn't always convey a theological meaning.

So even in the Bible it's used in non -theological ways. When Christians use the word saved today, like when we talk about it, we're generally talking about salvation through belief in Jesus Christ, right?

That's just, are you saved, right? But this word, and again going back to understanding the

Greek and the context of these things, it's important to know when we're talking about salvation and when we're just talking about something else.

So somebody turn to Matthew 9 21, I read 21 and 22. So I'm just going to cite a couple of non -theological examples just so you can see them in the text.

Anyone, first one to get to it, just pop it out.

We got a lot of these, so you got to be a little fast. Matthew 9, 21 and 22.

This is before she said to herself, if I only touch his garment, I will be made well.

Jesus turned, seeing her, and he said, take heart, daughter, your faith has made you well. And instantly the woman was made well.

Right, so the word made well also comes from the root word, sozo. Right, so this is a passage of scripture where they're talking about being saved from her physical ailment, right?

Turn to Luke 8 36. This thing's going to go to sleep on me,

I just know it because I don't have as many slides. And somebody else turn to that scene that told them how the demon -possessed man had been healed.

Right, so again the word healed comes from the root word, sozo. I'll go ahead and read

Philippians 1 19, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, this will turn out for my deliverance.

The term deliverance comes from the root word, soteria, or salvation. In John 12 27, it says, this is

Jesus saying, now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father save me from this hour, but for this purpose

I have come to this hour. So here Jesus is saying save me, again a word coming from the root sozo, but clearly he's not using that in the theological sense because Jesus had no need for salvation, he was perfect.

And so there's other passages where the word is used in a theological sense. So Matthew 1 21, somebody want to turn to Matthew 1 21?

And then somebody else to Luke 19 10. So Matthew 1 21, she will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name

Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. Right, so again the word savior being used in a theological sense,

Jesus saving his people from their sins. Again the root sozo there.

Luke 19 10, for the son of man came to seek and to save the lost. Right, so again, clearly this is

Jesus talking, that he clearly was using that in a theological sense.

And then lastly 2 Corinthians 2 15, where we are the aroma of Christ the

God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. Right, so this is

Paul, and Paul is using the word saved in a theological sense, and it also originates from the word sozo.

So the word can both be used in theological and non -theological sort of senses, but how can you tell the difference?

Context, right? What's the first, Brad, what's the first rule of real estate?

Location, location, location. Right, the first and third rule. So in here we could say it's context, context, context.

Right, so we're basically, we need to be careful about the context.

There's a saying that I've used in the past in this apologetics class, right, I can do all things through a verse taken out of context.

Right, so that's obviously coming from, I can do all things through the one who, yeah, you got it.

So the thing that you'll see a lot of times when you're having debates with Christians and atheists is they will take verses out of context and then try to weaponize those verses against you.

But a lot of times what you can do in those situations, and when we were going through the Bible class, when we were going through the history of the

Bible class, I showed you Bart Ehrman talking about, you know,

Mark's portrayal of Christ's journey to the cross and how he tried to say that they were contradictory,

Luke and Mark's gospels were contradictory. And it was, there was a lot of taking things out of context that was done in that.

And so that's a common, that's a common way that folks will try and twist the

Bible to mean whatever they want it to be. Right, they take a singular, you know, passage, they'll take a singular verse and try and twist that to mean something that it doesn't actually mean in its full context.

And we're going to talk a lot about context when we talk about next week, when we talk about doctrine of election as well, because, well,

I'll save that for then. But I think context plays a big part in that whole debate as well.

Matt, can I just add one thing to that? Yeah, go for it. So when we spoke earlier about hermeneutics and exegesis, the verses, that becomes a critical connector to what you're talking about in terms of making sure that everything's lining up between the

Greek translation and what was actually the context of that towards that. Absolutely.

And that's, a lot of times that's, you know, rolled over. Yeah, it's particularly dangerous, and theologians are guilty of this too, you know, people who are far more learned than probably, well certainly

I am, will, if they come in with a particular theology that they want to read into the text, they can usually find a way to do that, right?

They usually find a way to kind of twist things around and use certain things and read their own theology into the text rather than reading their theology out of the text, which is a very different way of approaching it, just let the word speak rather than trying to force the word to say something.

Right? So yeah, enough about that. So one of the cool things,

Dr. Woods had a table on here, talked about the tenses of salvation.

I thought it was a pretty cool, so if you guys can start looking up those verses, I think it's a pretty cool way of looking at salvation overall.

So there's justification, right, which is being justified or reconciled to Christ, which is sort of the past, so it saves you from sin's penalty.

There's sanctification, which is sort of present tense, it saves you from sin's power.

And then there's glorification, which is future tense, which saves you from sin's presence, right?

So effectively, when you're justified, when you're saved, when you believe in Christ, right, and you've given your life to him, you are justified, right?

You are saved from the penalty of sin. Christ's blood covers your sins and saves you from that penalty.

And then throughout your Christian life, you go through a process of sanctification.

So this is a deepening of your theology, a deepening of your knowledge, a deepening of your faith.

And then eventually, when either the Lord comes back or you die, right, you will be glorified.

And this is where we're going to, in a second here, we're going to read some scripture, but in a second, we'll get to the first kind of disagreement that I had with Dr.

Woods. So somebody has Ephesians 2, 8 through 9? Grace through faith, that not of yourself, it's a gift of God, not of works listening,

I suppose? Right, right. So this is, you know, talking about your justification, right, the grace that Christ gives you through his death on the cross, and that it is actually a gift that you have nothing to do with.

It is not you that does it, it's Christ that does it. And this is one, this is one that we're going to, again, get into next week.

I'm having a hard time not going there, especially since Pastor preached on it this Sunday. I'm having a hard time not going there, but we're going to get to verses like these and to some of those topics.

Somebody have Titus 3, 4 through 5? Titus 3, 4 through 5.

He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the

Holy Spirit. Right. Again, this is talking about that justification, right, the fact that Christ saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness.

This is so key, right, because there are other faiths out there. You can think of some big ones off the top of your head,

Catholicism being probably one of the biggest, which preaches Christ and, right?

It always preaches Christ and, and it's the and that's the problem, right? The minute you add anything to Christ's propitiation, his sacrifice on the cross, you've created a new thing, you've created a new gospel, right?

It's not the same gospel anymore. All right, Philippians 2, 12. Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence, but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

This is, this is a, this is one that always, that always gets me, and it's that last phrase, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

What, what do you think that means? Well, it's the personification within yourself that you are not worthy of having, having this gift, and that's the, as you dwell deeper into your, your path of sanctification, as the

Holy Spirit opens up your mind and lightens your, your mind more and more of this, instead of being more bold and arrogant, you actually become more humble, and that humility is, is part of the, the fear that they're talking about here is not a sense of trepidation.

The fear is a sense of glorification of, of, of who Jesus is and who God is in your life, and that's, and that's what that, that's the verse right next to this says, it is

God who is willing, is working, and according to His will, is doing these things in your life, and then it says, work out your salvation with fear and trembling, and it's, it's the

Spirit of God within you being born of Him, as it said, washing and renewing of regeneration, as in Titus, that now

He is moving in your life, and according to Romans 6, it's who are you going to yield to now?

The Lord wants you to do certain things according to His righteousness and His, His desire for your life, but you still have a nature that's pulling you in the other direction.

Which one are you going to yield to? Right. Yeah, and there's an interesting saying that, years ago, a mentor of mine said that justification is not behavior, and it's a very, very important concept to put in the back of your mind, and it goes back to what you're talking about, in terms of religion and works, it's not behavior.

Right. It is a, it is a gift, it's an absolute gift. Yeah, so. Yeah, the fear and trembling,

I also, like, I think through your justification, you actually get a true picture of what your sin is, and how

God looks at that, and you get a picture of who God is, and how holy and perfect and righteous

He is as well, so I agree with everything that's said, but it, but it's like, you also have this sort of, this, this sort of, like, realization of, of truly what, what

Christ did, what God did through His son Christ. So Romans 5, 9 through 10.

This is glorification. Since therefore we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God.

For if while we were enemies, we the reconciled of God by the death of His son, much more now that we are reconciled shall we be saved by His life.

Yes. Yeah, so glorification, right?

We'll be united with Christ, we will be, you know, freed from the presence of sin, we will no longer have a desire or to sin, we will just be forever worshiping

Him. So another way to look at this is, justification is, I have been saved, I've been justified in the eyes of God.

Sanctification is, I am being saved, right? I'm being sanctified and made more holy, set apart, not sinless, but sinning less, and growing,

I'm sure that you guys have heard that before, and growing more Christ -like in the eyes of God, right?

And then glorification, I will be saved, one day I will die and be saved from sin's presence and have no desire to sin at all.

So that's kind of a quick summary of, you know, have been saved,

I am being saved, I will be saved, right? So here's where we get to sort of the first disagreement between me and Dr.

Woods. So let's read Romans 8, 29 -30, and then

I'll get into it. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his

Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined, he also called.

And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified. What's missing?

What's missing? Sanctification. So in this passage, sanctification is missing.

It's talking about justification and glorification, right? So Dr. Woods posited that justification, once you've committed your life to Christ, you know, is a past act, and therefore, you know, sort of guaranteed, your salvation is guaranteed through that act.

And that glorification is the guarantee for the Christian, that all you need to do is die or Christ come back, right?

And glorification is a guarantee. But that sanctification is not a guarantee. It's something that might happen, it's something that might not happen.

So for sanctification, right, there are things that you're doing, right?

You're in a church listening to, you know, preachers exposit the

Word. You're studying, you're learning, you're trying to obey, right? You're, you know, you're repenting for your sins, right?

Dr. Woods makes a leap from this particular scripture that sanctification itself is not guaranteed, though, that is a possibility for a

Christian, but not a guarantee. So he believes in something called a carnal

Christian. So just for a point of clarification here,

I think it's the next slide, you've heard Ivan, I think, say it a lot. I think Drew said it.

We talked about sort of the two kinds of people, right? There's the those not in Christ, those in Christ, right?

I think you can probably break it down to three kinds of people, but he broke it, Dr. Woods broke it down to four kinds of people.

There's unbelievers, that would be first category, not in Christ, right? And then there's those in Christ, which breaks down into sort of two categories, two subcategories, which are spiritual believers and infant believers.

What's the difference? The only real difference here is an infant believer or someone who has just saved, is just like an infant being born, being a newborn, you're newly born again, right?

And so those Christians are new and they haven't had an opportunity to grow in the faith quite yet. And then there's more spiritual believers.

I don't really like the term spiritual believers, it's his term, but I think of it more as mature believers, right?

So these are Christians who are maturing and growing, have some maturing and growth already done.

And then he adds a fourth category called carnal believers. So these are Christians who still live for the sin nature.

And so, needless to say, I scratched that one off the list.

And so, I'm not sure that I agree and we can start having a conversation here about it, but I don't actually think the fourth category is a valid category.

We'll talk a little bit later about something called lordship salvation, which is something that,

I don't know if I'd say Dr. John MacArthur pushes, but it's come up in some of the conversation.

We'll talk about some of the disagreements that Dr. Woods has with Dr. MacArthur on this whole lordship salvation topic and some of the reasoning that Dr.

Woods gives around that. But Dr. Woods believes that you can have an authentic faith in Christ, but continue to live in a sort of willfully sinful way.

And I don't want to confuse carnal

Christianity with just Christians that sin, because every Christian sins. Every Christian sins most days, right?

Every Christian still has the sin nature and still has to fight against that.

And through the power of Christ and his Holy Spirit, he helps you to fight through that by taking away some of those sinful desires and helping to convict you when you do sin.

I think there's a verse that explains this pretty good. Go for it. I know there's a verse in Hebrews that says, without holiness we will not see the

Lord. But another verse is, for they disciplined us, this is earthly fathers, for a short time which seemed best to them, because all children need correction.

But it says, our heavenly father disciplines us for our good that we may share in his holiness.

He wants us to share in his nature, his holiness, and walk as you're talking about in sanctification.

And if we stray from that path, as a loving father, he's going to correct us. So he won't let us continue that way.

I agree. I agree. Go for it, Ivan. Yeah, and so to piggyback on that, in Philippians very clear,

Paul says, you know, do nothing for selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourself, which is a clear evidence of true sanctification.

That's where that momentum is going towards. And so a carnal believer is basically, if it's such a thing, called a narcissistic

Christian, if you can say that. Yeah, so like what

I wrote here, and I'll give you all the Word document that I'm, you know, basically is my notes from this whole thing, but you know, as Christians we sin because it's part of our fallen nature.

We still live in a fallen world, we still have a fallen nature, we still are tempted by, you know, to do the wrong things, and so that's, you know, that's part of, you know, trying to live a

Christian life, which is impossible to do outside of the power of Christ within us. But there's a difference,

I think, and this is where I'm going to qualify with what I think, and I think a lot of you agree with me, but there's a difference in kind between sinning, like slipping up, right, and, you know, someone who willfully, continually, knowingly, as I put it here, not out of ignorance but with clear -eyed resolve, right, have determined that they are going to live a sinful lifestyle.

And for someone like that, I have a real problem believing in the authenticity of their confession, right.

They may walk around saying they're a Christian, but there's lots of people that walk around saying they're Christians, but I have a hard time believing that their commitment is, you know, their, you know, their belief, their faith is actually authentic.

One of the proof texts that Dr. Woods used for this, though, is 1 Corinthians 3, 1 through 3, and I'm careful to go through the text, but I also want to give the proof texts from the other side as well, because we have to contend with what the

Bible does say, regardless of how we think about it. But somebody want to read 3, 1 through 3, 1

Corinthians? But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ, I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it, and even now you are not ready for it.

You're not ready. Should I keep going? Yeah, 2 through 3. Yeah, okay. For you are still of the flesh, but while there is jealousy and strife among you, you are not the flesh and behaving only in a human way.

So the claim here is that since Paul is using the term brothers, that he's talking to Christians, right, which he clearly is talking to Christians here, but he refers to them as infants in Christ and people of the flesh, right?

So infants in Christ, we've talked about that, right, that's infant believers. And then there are people of the flesh.

What do you think he means by people of the flesh? Unbelievers living for their fleshly desires.

Right, and so the context here is that he's talking about, is he talking about unbelievers, or because he used the term brothers, is he talking about Christians who are living for their fleshly desires?

I think the letter is definitely to a church, right, to a group of believers, but he realizes there may be those that are calling themselves believers that aren't.

And at the end of 2 Corinthians, after he's had, you know, many, many things to talk to them about, about getting drunk, about his sexual immorality, a lot of things, and he says, test yourselves to see if you're in the faith, examine yourselves, or do you not recognize this about yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you, unless indeed you fail the test?

Right. So he's warning them. He's warning them, yeah. And so I don't agree, again,

I don't agree with Dr. Woods that this is really a proof text saying that there can be such a thing as a

Christian who is carnal and willfully, with clear -eyed resolve, intends to live a sinful lifestyle.

I don't think that, as Drew rightly said earlier, that, you know, that God would, you know, infuse someone with the

Holy Spirit only to, you know, be ignored, to not be convicted. Now, I do think that there are

Christians who may fall away for a time, for various reasons, right, a hardship in their life, death of a loved one, something like that.

But I believe that the Holy Spirit, if that person is truly a

Christian, will bring that person back, that that person, while they may for a time fall away, will not, you know, completely go away.

But I do believe that there are people that walk around professing to be Christians that aren't, right, whether it's because of what's termed as cultural

Christianity, where they grew up, and their parents took them to church, and they went to church, and, you know, they don't really, you know, they don't really, they're not really sure about the inspiration of the

Bible, they're not really sure about, you know, Jesus being God, or whatever, right? They can walk around, and they just, they appropriate, you know,

Christian terminology. I think also to what you first started with talking about, that people need to be shown that they are lost before they can be saved, so somebody might have just been presented,

God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life, and you're like, oh, I want that, so they consider themselves a

Christian, but they not really have that true heart repentance, so they're not truly saved. Totally, and having grown up in the church myself, my dad being a pastor, you know,

I can totally see how easy it is, while it's a blessing to have

Christian parents, you know, the one, I guess, downside you can think of is the fact that you hear it on repeat, constantly, and because you grow up in that sort of culture, it can be easy to miss the whole,

I'm an individual sinner, right? Me, it has nothing to do with my parents, my parents don't save me, them bringing me to church doesn't save me, me continuing to go to church doesn't save me, that there's a, you know, that there has to be a point at which

I am saved, right? Go for it, Jack. Really, the definition is just an oxymoron, a

Christian that lives for sin nature, Jesus said that you cannot serve two masters, you're a slave to sin or you're a slave to righteousness, there's no in between, you can't do both, so it just doesn't make any sense at all.

And John 1a says, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us, so it is clear that, you know,

Christians do sin, but I just don't believe that you can live.

And some really good proof texts to counter this are 2 Corinthians 5 .17, we are getting short on time so I'm going to probably read this, 2

Corinthians 5 .17, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.

So when you're saved, when you're justified, when that happens, you're different, you're changed, you are a new creation, they call it born again for a reason, right?

Because you are a new, it's like you're a new human being, right? And James 2 .14

-18, what good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works, can that faith save him?

If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food and one of you says to them, go in peace, be warmed and filled without giving them the things they need for the body, what good is that?

So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, you have faith and I have works, show me your faith apart from your works and I will show you my faith by my works.

Again, this is, although this is probably a text that, again, could be taken in a way to try and prove a works -based salvation, what

I think that this is saying is that the evidence, the fruit of your salvation is demonstrated through your works.

Not that the works themselves save you, but that evidence is there. And similarly with this whole idea of a carnal

Christian, the evidence of their lifestyle, the evidence of how they live their lives will be a marker, right, a signal to those around them that they are in fact saved.

And again, this is not to say that Christians don't slip up, this is not to say that either out of ignorance or just out of, you know, a failure to resist temptation that Christians don't slip up.

We do, all the time. And then we have to go before God and repent for their sins.

So these are, you know, the first proof text was from Paul, these are also from Paul, so clearly

Paul was not teaching that a true Christian can be saved and yet willfully live a sinful lifestyle.

I think there is a difference in kind between sinning and willfully living a sinful lifestyle.

Were you going to say something, Troy? Yeah, yeah. Well, and it goes back to what Drew was bringing up in terms of church

Corinth, and when Paul was going to Ephesus and what was happening in Ephesus in the church, and then you had the

Judaizers that were in there, and so you have many, many infant believers that were being taught different type of pathways to what salvation is, or maybe not even understanding the concept of justification, based on the fact that these man -made building blocks that had nothing to do with salvation.

Isn't it funny that we haven't really gone too far away from that today? Seriously, because it is amazing how many churches in the

U .S. do not talk about justification, and they do not, and it is based on these other things that are there, the latest being the woke and CRT and all kinds of things like that, the nature there.

So, there is a lot of people that I would have to say are probably not either infant believers in majority, and they have never moved away from that, and on a cultural context, that is where their platform is at, the cultural context, instead of what the

Word of God says. Or they are just not believers. As you and Drew both know, that was really the foundation of why we wanted to do

Apologetics. At least it was for me, was the fact that churches that I have been in, where my father was preaching, churches elsewhere that I have been in, you see it a lot, where Christians, they know the basics.

They know Jesus was born of a virgin, they know he was

God made flesh, they know that he had disciples, and that he taught how to live a good life, and he died on the cross for our sins, and he was raised on the third day, and that he ascended into heaven.

They know the basics, and yet, if they are challenged by a well -informed or prepared, whether it be a cult leader, somebody who maybe appropriates

Christian terms, whether it is a Mormon, whether it is a Jehovah's Witness, whether it is an atheist, they are unprepared.

I was unprepared for years and years. They don't read their

Bible, they don't understand really what it means to be a Christian. That was really the whole basis of doing this as the next topic, was to try and at least build some of that knowledge up, so that we are not all going to walk out of here as seminarians or scholarly theologians, but we will have some ammunition, we will have more than just the basics under our belt, and so that was kind of the foundation for why we wanted to do this entire apologetics series in the first place, was to basically arm the men and through the videos, everyone in our church with the knowledge of why it is reasonable to believe what we believe and what are the actual doctrines of the

Christian faith. All right, so we only have about 12 minutes. I'm going to probably go a little bit over today, but I want to cover the atonement.

This is tough. We may end up going three weeks, I don't know. We'll see. So atonement.

Anyone have a definition for what the atonement is? Atonement is the means of salvation, right?

It's the means of salvation. So we know what salvation is, but how does it work, right?

This is where we get into atonement, right? So a simple definition of atonement is a reparation for a wrong or injury.

That's like a Webster's dictionary. It's reparation for a wrong or injury.

So in a Christian context, we talk about atonement through Jesus' atoning sacrifice. The reason why the atonement was necessary is because as sinners, we deserve

God's wrath. So Jesus essentially stepped between the wrath of God and us and absorbed that wrath.

It is substitutionary in nature. So we're going to talk about what you basically must believe to really call yourself a

Christian, because there are lots of people, again, that are appropriating Christian terminology that don't believe some of these things.

And Isaiah 53, I'm going to go through, it's three through six here. Isaiah 53 really articulates this substitutionary act.

So Isaiah 53 through six is, he was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows acquainted with grief.

And as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised and we esteemed him not.

Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions. Mind you, this was written hundreds of years before Christ. He was pierced for our transgressions.

He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace. And with his wounds, we are healed.

We like sheep have all gone astray and have turned everyone to his own way. And the

Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Hundreds of years before Christ came. How can anyone read these things and not see how all of the books of the

Bible are telling one story? So Jesus substituted himself for us and through faith his righteousness is imputed to us.

So he has paid our debt, right? But before we go further into the atonement, what are some false views of the atonement?

Because we sort of take it for granted that there's a clear -eyed understanding of it, right? That there are systematic theologies that define all of these doctrines.

And this wasn't actually always the case. It actually took the church a while to define the doctrines that we believe.

And usually it was in reaction to some heretic that came up and was preaching some false gospel.

And so things like the Nicene Creed were created. It was specifically created around 325

AD. And it was really to codify the doctrines of the

Christian faith so that we could have something to benchmark what other heretics were saying.

So in the Nicene Creed there's a phrase that says, begotten not made, consubstantial with the

Father. Anybody know why that's in the Nicene Creed? Begotten not made, consubstantial with the

Father. I know this is this is tough stuff. Are you getting into Christology?

I'm getting a little bit into it but I'm not going to go very far into it. So this was specifically because of a heretic called

Arian. And this is not the white supremacist Arian, but this is a different Arian.

That whole thing with Hitler is different. So Arian was a heretic that taught

Jesus was a created being. This is very similar to what Jehovah's Witnesses believe. Jehovah's Witnesses believe that Jesus was the first created being of God.

And that he's actually Michael the

Archangel brothers with Lucifer. And so he's a created being.

And Arian was a heretic that preached also that Jesus was a created being. So in the

Nicene Creed they say begotten not made. So he wasn't a created being.

He was born of a virgin. That's how he became flesh. But he was not a created being.

So this this was an example of how how like some of this systematic theology or doctrine came into being and why it came into being.

That's as far as I'm going in Christology. I'll leave it to you. But there are several false views of the atonement.

And we'll hear a bunch of these in different things like pop Christianity and progressive Christianity as well. So I think it's important it's as important to study some of the false views as it is to study the true view so that you can recognize false views.

Because and I was watching actually a video with Jeff Durbin today where he was talking to a Mormon. And they were talking about how if I spent and he said if I spend five seconds with you talking theology we may walk away from this conversation thinking we believe the same thing.

In that amount of time I'm able to say that Jesus is God. That Jesus is the

Son of God. That Jesus died for our sins. And we walk away we think we believe the same thing. But when you actually dig a little deeper you find no we actually don't believe the same thing right.

Spend 15 seconds with you and I might run into something that we don't agree with. So the first false view

I'm going to try and run through these because we've got you guys don't mind if we go about 10 minutes late today. The first I didn't ask.

So the first false view is that Christ's death was a ransom to sea. So this particular false view theorizes that Adam and Eve sold humanity to Satan in the fall.

And that God had to pay a ransom to buy us back from Satan to free us from Satan's clutches.

And it further theorizes that God tricked Satan because Satan didn't realize that Christ could not be held by death right.

And so Saint Augustine wrote the following to explain this theory in the

Catholic Encyclopedia of the Doctrine of the Atonement. So this is Saint Augustine. The Redeemer came and the deceiver was overcome.

What did our Redeemer do to our captor? In payment for us he set the trap. His cross.

With his blood for bait he, Satan, could indeed shed that blood but he deserved not to drink it by shedding the blood of the one, in caps this is

Jesus, who was not his debtor. He was forced to release his debtors. So this is a theory that Christ's death was a ransom paid to free us from Satan.

And this is clearly a heretical view right. This theory both demeans God and demeans Satan at the same time right.

Satan being an angel would have known the triune God. Would have known who Jesus was.

Would have known that death could not hold him. God being God he could not be beholden to a created being like Satan to pay any kind of ransom.

He was the all -powerful creator of the universe. But here there is a grain of truth and a lot of these false views have like a little grain of truth you know wrapped in a big lie.

And the grain of truth here is that Christ's death was a ransom or a payment but it wasn't to Satan.

It was to appease the wrath or the just punishment of a holy God for sin.

That's the truth of it but then this false view kind of paints a you know wraps it in this lie.

The second false view is the view of moral influence. And this one theorizes that Christ's death is simply an expression of God's divine love that should soften our hearts towards him.

That Christ died to show us how much God loved us so that we would say oh doesn't

God love us so much let's let's follow him. And while Christ's death is an expression of God's divine love towards us this view doesn't go far enough and talk about the act of divine that why the act of divine love was necessary.

So this theory was actually propagated by Abelard in AD 1079 through 1142 who was a

French philosopher and it's also clearly heretical. False view number three is moral example.

This is very much like the moral influence view that Jesus' death was an example of how we should live our lives laying our lives down for for our friends that we should live a self -sacrificial lifestyle.

This theory was developed by Faustus Sosinus in AD 1539 through 1604.

He was an Italian theologian who developed a non -Trinitarian theology called

Sosinalism based on his last name I guess. This is also a clearly heretical view by someone who is obviously a heretic.

Very similar to Buddhism. Yeah it's very very much yeah and it it has a view of the atonement again

Christ's death is an example to us right it is an example of of living a self self -sacrificial lifestyle but but that's not only what the cross was right and so you'll hear a lot of current day progressive

Christians use social justice and the social justice movement with sort of this in mind that Jesus' example should drive us to live you know a self -sacrificial life lifestyle and that we should be fighting you know social injustice.

So this is another one. False view number four is I didn't really understand this one when

I first read it but it's called the governmental view. The governmental view theorizes that Christ's death was to show us how serious

God takes sin and promote respect for God's law and this view arose actually in opposition to the other heretical view of Sosinalism and was written about by Hugo Grotius in AD 1583 through 1645.

The goal was to show that God couldn't just overlook sin as Sosinalism said the grain of truth here is that God in fact does take sin very seriously and he can't overlook sin but it doesn't really capture the true need for a substitute in Christ.

So given all of that the right view of atonement is the last view that we'll talk about and so what do we believe about it about the atonement then?

So in a sentence we believe in the vicarious penal substitutionary atonement. Big words right?

Vicarious means in the place of another. Penal means as a punishment right so Christ died in our place paying for or taking our punishment.

Substitutionary is again another way of saying in the place of and then let's see and you'll also hear

Pastor Jeff talk about Jesus dying as a propitiation for our sins. So propitiation actually the definition means the action of propitiating or appeasing a

God spirit or person. That's again Webster's definition of propitiation.

So in our Christian context Jesus is dying to appease

God's wrath right for our sin. So that's why he uses the term propitiation in Pastor Jeff.

Believe it or not it was one of the first times I heard it was from Pastor Jeff propitiation. I've heard of vicarious penal substitutionary atonement before but my dad was a pastor so I cheat.

So this gets us down to the role of the blood in the atonement right?

So Jesus's gift to us is free right? It says all over the place it's a free gift right?

But it didn't come with no cost right? And we should as Christians appreciate the cost of our salvation and this is exactly why we celebrate the

Lord's table. This ordinance is actually what Jesus commanded us to do to remember the cost and I'm not going to read it but it's a first Corinthians 11 23 through 26.

This is what Pastor John did, what you'll hear what you know

Drew do, what you heard me do a couple weeks ago when we do the Lord's table this is the the passage that we talk about right?

And the New Testament mentions Christ's blood multiple times. So first in Acts 20 28 it says pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the

Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for the church of God which he obtained with his own blood right?

Romans 5 9 since therefore we have now been justified by his blood much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.

Ephesians 1 7 in him we have redemption through his blood for the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace.

Ephesians 2 13 but now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

Colossians 1 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things whether on earth or in heaven making peace by the blood of his cross.

Hebrews 9 12 he entered once for all into the holy places this is a reference to the tabernacle not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood thus securing redemption.

So we're going to talk a bit about the old sacrificial system we'll probably talk next week about the old sacrificial system and the tabernacle and why in Hebrews it talked about him entering once for all into the holy places.

Hebrews 9 22 indeed under the law almost everything is purified with blood and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.

And there's a bunch of other verses here. First Peter 1 2 according to the foreknowledge of God the father in the sanctification of the of the spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ for the sprinkling of blood may grace and peace be multiplied to you.

John 1 7 but if we walk in the light and he is in the light we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us all from sin.

And then there's a couple of verses in Revelation as well but Jesus's blood plays a pivotal role in salvation.

The entire sacrificial system of the Old Testament is a foreshadowing of Christ's death and sacrifice.

There were several illustrations of the Old Testament pointing to Christ. The first was in Genesis 3 21.

This one I never thought of this. I never thought of this like not I thought of this before studying for this but like growing up I never thought about where the skins came from.

Genesis 3 21 and the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skin and clothed them.

What had just happened in the garden? Right? They had just sinned. They had just sinned and they realized their nakedness right?

And so what happens it says in the Lord God made for made for Adam and and his wife garments of skin and clothed them.

What had to happen for that to occur? An animal had to die.

Blood had to be shed to cover them up. It's like a metaphor for covering you know for covering their sins right?

I'd never thought of that before but an animal had to die for those skins to be available to clothe

Adam and Eve. There's I'm probably gonna gonna

I'm gonna get to this last section and then we're gonna table it for for next week but think about Abraham and Isaac.

So when God was talking about Abraham in Genesis 22 and it was talking about taking

Isaac your only son right? The parallels here your only son.

Didn't Abraham have another son? Ishmael right? God here clearly is saying he doesn't recognize

Ishmael as his son because he wasn't the son of promise right? Isaac was his one and only son just like Jesus is

God's one and only son. They took three days to go up the mountain.

Sort of like a metaphorical three days where where Isaac was like we didn't know was Isaac gonna be dead or not dead right?

And so he takes him to go he tells him to take Isaac up and go up to Mount Moriah.

This is the same mountain that a thousand years later Solomon would build the temple and a thousand years after that this was disputed a little bit

Christ wasn't actually sacrificed on Mount Moriah but very near Mount Moriah is where is where Golgotha was.

So same place right? This sort of metaphorical sort of parallel to to Christ.

Abraham had total faith in God right? God had said through Isaac it wasn't through one of the sons that I'm going to give you it was through Isaac right?

He was going to bless the nation and so Abraham had to have faith that if he took

Isaac up there and killed him that God would raise him from the dead right? So he knew God was in control.

He totally trusted and had faith in God and so did Isaac. Isaac was old enough at this point that if he wanted to say sorry pops it's not happening he probably could have right?

But instead he carried the wood for his sacrifice. That's again a parallel to Christ carrying his cross right?

He submitted to the sacrifice right?

And so it's just such a crazy parallel when you actually start like digging into this stuff.

It's amazing when you think about again you know this stuff being written hundreds you know centuries millennia before right?

Before Christ it's just it's crazy to think about. And then another and so this was you know

Isaac and that whole story of Abraham and Isaac is a foreshadowing right of Christ's sacrifice on the cross and then there's the

Passover lamb in Exodus 12 and the Levitical offerings in Leviticus 1 through 5 right?

All of these are temporary offerings they have to be repeated over and over so people would bring sacrifices for their own sins and the high priest would enter the tabernacle once a year for this to pay for the sins of the nation right?

So that's where Yom Kippur comes from which is the day of atonement where the priest would enter the holy of holies to make atonement and was he

I can't remember but there the priest would wear these bells right and would have a rope tied around him because you if you entered the holy of holies

God could strike you dead and if the if the priest you know messed up or whatever and you know things aren't going well for him in there they had to have a way to pull him back out of the holy of holies and so you know he would go in and sprinkle on the

Ark of the Covenant would sprinkle the blood so that he could atone for the sins of the nation once a year but this had to be repeated over and over again every year whereas Christ's blood is once for all just in the the verse

I read before it was a once for all and this was the you know the the reference here about entering the holy places he entered

Hebrews 9 12 he entered once for all into the holy places not by means of the blood of goats and calves which is what they would use in the sacrificial system but by means of his own blood thus securing an eternal redemption once for all it's paid and we're going to get into more stuff next week about about the the finality of that I've got a session here on Jesus's once for all sacrifice and the finality of it and we're going to get in this a little bit of nerdy

Greek word stuff when we the t -shirts that we have to tell us that we're going to talk a bit about to tell us that and why that word which means it you know means it's finished why it's so important and why again going back into the original

Greek actually makes a difference I'll save that for next week but that but but it's it's really cool to to actually go back into the original language and look at some of the context and some of the tenses that they were using and and how it actually conveys really a different meaning than you know the words it is finished right or it is you know in the

English language so we'll pick up with the finality of the atonement I actually still have a bunch to go through we got to we got to go through the finality of the atonement once we get past atonement we'll go through the the condition for salvation and what you essentially must believe and then we'll get finally to lordship salvation a little bit to talk a bit about going back to that you know carnal

Christian discussion and then after that we will get to election and free will so so clearly

I have underestimated the amount of time it's going to take us to get through this stuff but I think this is a really important topic right this is the foundation right the the root of our faith not that the other doctrines aren't important right but the as Drew's going to cover and Ivan right we're going to cover things like eschatology which is end times we're going to cover

Christology we're going to cover pneumatology we're going to cover theology right all of these doctors about who

God is who the Holy Spirit is who Jesus is what do we believe about about end times all of these are important but soteriology right hamartiology which drew covered last week we're all sinners deserving of judgment soteriology what did

God and and through Jesus do to to justify us to save us from that sin those are like the underpinnings right of our faith and then we'll we'll get into you know the nature of God who

God is what do we believe about in times and then we'll get into other fun conversations about other topics like evolution and creation and origins and all that fun stuff so with that anybody have any questions or comments about any of this stuff well the only uh piggyback on what you're saying is uh because we are justified through Jesus Christ and we have the temple in us now yes and and so our

God does not recognize our sin because the propitiation of what

Jesus Christ did which is absolutely essential so he's not seeing our human sin in that sense he's seeing what

Jesus Christ has done right so so when we go meet him we'll be on the right right hand yeah the another way of putting that um well there's two other ways of putting that one was when