Radio Free Geneva: Reviewing Arminian Synergist Bruxy Cavey

I don't like Calvinists because they've chosen to follow John Calvin instead of Jesus Christ.

I have a problem with them. They're following men instead of the word of God. On top of my feet, standing on a stump, and crying out, he died. Those who elected were selected. First of all, James, I'm very ignorant of the reformers.

I think I probably know more about Calvinism than most of the people who call themselves.

Ladies and gentlemen, James White is a hyper-Calvinist.

Now whatever we do in Baptist life, we don't need to be teaming up with hyper-Calvinists. I said the other day in class that I don't understand the difference between hyper-Calvinism and Calvinism. It seems to me that Calvin was a hyper-Calvinist.

Right, I don't think there is typically any difference between Calvinism and hyper-Calvinism. Read my book.

And now from our underground bunker deep beneath Bruton Parker College, where no one would think to look, safe from all those moderate Calvinists, Dave Hunt fans, and those who have read and re-read George Bryson's book, we are Radio Free Geneva, broadcasting the truth about God's freedom to say for His own eternal glory.

Well, there you go, folks. The mighty Reform Radio Free what? Mighty Radio Free Geneva. Rich was telling me that all the emails except one were positive. And you sent the one off to Timbuk2, I would imagine.

I don't know what you did with those. All I know is that apparently this person is now contacting Martin Luther, who will be upset with us. Who will be filing a... I'm sure it's illegal somewhere. That's what's going on.

You bet. Welcome to Radio Free Geneva after the last program. So my plan is, actually, if possible, I haven't run this by you yet, but my plan is to do Monday, Wednesday, Friday this week. So we'll actually sneak an extra one in.

But good to have you with us. The cheese police are going to be very upset about that. Oh, moving all the cheese around? Yeah. The fact of the matter is we schedule this around my rides. That's just all there is to it.

When you live in Arizona at this time of the year, there's only a certain number of rides you can ride. And I've got a big one tomorrow morning, and it's going to be in the dark, and it's a long ways from here.

So it's just the way it worked out. So anyway, and lots of studying to do. Man, I'll tell you, all the stuff is South Africa, heading to Zurich and Kiev. And wow, every time I think about everything I'm supposed to be getting done and how slowly it's happening.

Last week, we introduced the new Radio Free Geneva theme. And I had been sent a link to, well, the video that we're going to see a few minutes of anyways. And, you know, I listened to it. I found it interesting.

There was at least an attempt on the part of this gentleman to try to substantiate the idea of prevenient grace, which I appreciated because the more people tried to actually substantiate it rather than just using it, the easier it is to point out, that don't work.

So I had it queued up, and I thought I'd be able to get to it. And as most of you know, I started preaching on the fellow from Pryor's SBC channel, and so we didn't quite get to it. So I was actually just going to sort of summarize something about Jewish hyperbole, Hebrew hyperbole, whatever, and just sort of go on from there.

Well, a lot of folks contacted me and said, no, we're not going to do that, because I guess there's a lot of dialogue and discussion up in Canada in regards to this situation and so on and so forth. So Bruxy Cavey, I actually wrote to him, and when I looked him up on Twitter, found out he actually follows me on Twitter.

So I wrote to him, and I said, how do you pronounce your name? Because I don't know. I can honestly say I've never seen that name before in my life as far as anybody else sharing that. So he wrote back and told me how to pronounce it.

He says, I'm a fan of your thoughtfulness, despite my Anabaptist background. Be gentle. Well, he certainly wasn't doing the Hindus, racists, and Catholics, so we can be a little more gentle in our response as well.

But it also is good, I think, one of the main things I took away from listening to the response that he gave here on some issues relating to Catholicism is, again, the importance of not only the context of Scripture, but following the argument being made by the author of Scripture.

And I think many times, well, let me give an example. I've often told folks that we Christians allow ourselves to be put on the defensive all the time by the cults. When Jehovah's Witnesses, when Unitarians as a group attack the deity of Christ, very often we find ourselves totally on the back foot, and we rarely require of them the same level of examination of the text that they're requiring of us.

And the result of that is that we'll be defending the deity of Christ and allowing them to get away with the presentation of a creaturely Jesus without giving a positive defense of the creatureliness of Jesus.

And so we might be working through, oh, one of the I Am sayings of Jesus or Colossians chapter. Colossians chapter 1 is a really good example. And we may be talking about Jesus as the creator of all things and trying to walk through that and giving a reason for that.

And yet, we turn around and say, now, you need to put your Jesus into this context and explain how your Jesus does not turn the Apostle's argument completely on its head. That's the problem with Jehovah's Witness view.

I mean, if Jesus is Michael the Archangel, Paul's argument against the Gnostics, the proto-Gnostics, full-blown Gnosticism comes later, but certainly the fundamental issues were present there. His argument against these people who are putting Jesus in this lower position turned on its head.

Because you're putting Jesus in lower positions. You're basically agreeing with the people he's arguing against. And so it destroys his argument. And far too often, Christians will not have a familiarity with what the flow of the argument actually is in a text.

Now, some texts, it's hard to establish that. I preached this weekend, starting Leviticus 20. And this Holiness Code series, a lot of people have been enjoying it, but it's not easy. It's tough because establishing any type of flow is pretty difficult in this section of Leviticus.

But in Hebrews, for example, that was key to so many of the texts, was tracing that flow, following that flow of argumentation. It was very frequently the exegetical key in those situations. So what we'll discover here in listening to this is exactly that.

That if you accept what is said here in regards to interpreting, for example, in Romans chapter 3, Paul's statements that there is none righteous, there is none that seeks after God. If you take that as Jewish hyperbole, which is basically just saying things are really bad out here.

The problem is the conclusion that Paul draws that then becomes the very foundation of his putting Jews and Gentiles in the exact same plane and saying that every mouth has been closed before God is destroyed.

I mean, it's the Apostle's own application that demonstrates the interpretation has completely missed it. And that's why we need to have a knowledge of the word that transcends individual verses, but takes into account the whole flow, the discourse of what is taking place.

This is just simply taking context seriously. It's starting with what the author himself intended to communicate. That's what's most important. So with that said, this was a sort of a Q &A thing. And in fact, remind me a little bit of when I spoke at L2 up in Denver recently, because at the end of my presentation, they were allowed to text in questions.

And then they put the questions up on the screen and a little bit like that, I suppose. But let's just start in here and we'll start and stop and respond to things as we go along. Again, this is Bruxy Cavey up in, what was it, Ontario?

I had it right there in front of me just a second ago. Sorry about that. But up in, it's in Canada. It's up where it's coded.

Yes.

So let's dive in here and hopefully this will work for us.

Arminian Synergism and the Meaning of Salvation

Now, I had a number of great emails from our Calvinist brothers and sisters who are in the church. We happen to be an Arminian church, for those of you new Christians. You don't know what Calvinists and Arminians are.

You don't need to know. But there are two different schools of thought that just have a...

Yeah. Okay.

Got to start the disagreements pretty early on here. I think you do need to know because it ends up having a fundamental impact on so many things. I mean, on worship, on how you counsel in regards to dealing with death, suffering, how you're going to do evangelism, how you can do apologetics.

Yeah, it's pretty important. It really is a little bit more important than that.

You know, we love each other, but we also just have different views about how salvation works its way out in our lives. So Calvinists then believe in what's called...

Yeah, sort of. But again, that's an Arminian view. I would see it from a theocentric perspective. It's not how salvation works out in our lives. But how God is ordering his universe and glorifying himself.

There is a... I've said it before, and my Arminian friends don't appreciate it, but there is a vast difference between theocentrism and anthropocentrism. And when you boil it all down, the fundamental issue of Arminianism is man's free will.

Not God's free will, but man's free will. And so it does have a pretty major impact along those lines.

Monarchism, that is that God solely does all the work in us and brings...

Now, I appreciate he used the right terminology, but we didn't hear it because I cut it off halfway through. He said they believe in monarchism. That it's God who is the one who by his own power saves perfectly.

The life, regeneration, rebirth comes first. Then we can have faith after that. It is logically after our rebirth our faith comes. And synergists, which is what we are, are...

Yeah, so, fairly accurate description of monarchism. Of course it flows from the fact that there is a divine decree. That God has determined the beginning from the end. And he is the creator of all things.

And he has a decree that he is working out all to his glory. It's all about him. We are just the very blessed recipients of his mercy and grace. His gift of life, etc., etc. And that monarchism, again, from our perspective, flows from the sovereignty and power of grace.

And a proper understanding of man's deadness and sin. But the Arminian is always coming from the man aspect, man's side of things. So it's, you know, grace plus this, grace working together. You know, just use the proper terminology.

We are synergists. Gotta give him credit. At least, unlike certain people I've debated in the past who thought that synergism was similar to the idea that there are many ways to heaven. Which is not what it was about at all.

You know, he's accurate in what he's saying. And it's nice to hear someone just unapologetically self-identifying their church as synergistic Arminian. But historically, that means that fundamentally, at the Reformation, he would be opposed to Luther.

He'd be on Erasmus' side. He'd be on Rome's side. I mean, unless he disagrees. But Luther said that you have put your finger upon the heart of the entire matter, the hinge upon which it all turns. And that was the difference between monergism and synergism.

That's what separated the Reformation from Rome. And a large portion of those today who are not Roman Catholic have returned to Rome's view of the grace of God and the will of man. And I think that's important to be able to point out.

We believe that God frees up our will to make a choice. And we choose to respond to God's gift of salvation. So His grace and our faith partner together.

So God frees up our will. Well, what is that? Is that regeneration? Again, I have to press my Arminian friends to be consistent here. Because it seems to me that they have a concept of partial regeneration.

It's going to be prevenient grace. We can talk about prevenient grace later on. But what is the nature of what this prevenient grace, whatever it is, as we'll see, there really isn't any such thing in Scripture.

It is a very weakly founded concept that ends up becoming absolutely central to everything that the sinner just says. It's got to be there. But it is not taught in Scripture. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

But what does it do? How is the bondage of the will ended if not by regeneration? When Jesus said in John chapter 8, he who sins is a slave of sin. So has sin been dealt with in that person's life before they believe?

The nature of this semi-regeneration without actually being regeneration by a grace never mentioned in Scripture type idea. It's what makes us Calvinists go, you know, I think y 'all are starting with some philosophy first.

And then sort of making it up as you go along after that. As far as a consistent situation goes. Just some of the questions that automatically come to my mind.

Emails from Calvinists working through that, because this comes right to the core of some of our differences. We both believe in the gospel, we both believe in Life 2 .0, we believe in the free gift of grace from Jesus.

I'll admit, I'm not sure what Life 2 .0 is. I missed that particular theological memo in seminary. I would assume it has something to do with regeneration or something. I don't know, I'll admit.

How does that get worked out into our lives? Next couple of questions then reflect that. So how can we choose faith in Christ? How can we choose faith in Christ when Paul says, no one is righteous. And there is no one who seeks God.

No one who seeks God. So how can you talk about spiritual seekers? What's interesting is Jesus does, right? Jesus says, if you ask, you seek, you knock.

That's going to come up over and over again. But who is Jesus talking about? Is he talking about unregenerate people? He's not even addressing that issue. This is a real mixture of contexts. When he talks about seeking and finding, are those instructions to people who have already been touched by God's grace?

Who are already seeking to do God's will? Because God has first moved within them? Or is that, the assumption is that this is a statement to, this is a statement that implies universal capacity and ability on the part of everybody.

And what you're going to end up doing is trumping Paul with Jesus through this Jewish hyperbole thing. But there's no, there's absolutely no necessity for doing that whatsoever. Giving instruction does not imply capacity on the part of all people to be able to follow instruction.

When the Bible gives instructions for the high priest, does that mean everybody can be a high priest? Or are those instructions for a specific people? When you have specific instructions given to people to where it's right there, you are followers of Christ, therefore do these things.

Does that mean the unbeliever has the capacity to do what the believer does, who's indwelled by the Holy Spirit of God? When the scripture gives guidance to those who will, by the Spirit of God, be born again, it does not follow that everyone has the capacity to do those things without first being born again.

There's just a basic category error that is very prevalent in synergistic thought by trying to say, well, you know, it looks like a contradiction here because there really are righteous people apart from grace.

That's almost a Pelagian statement when you go that far. But yeah, there really are righteous people and there really are seekers. Now the big problem is going to be when we look at this here, we'll get to it right here in a moment, but it's going to totally overthrow Paul's argument.

But still, the motivation for it really comes from this overriding dedication to a category of confusion, and that is God is God, we are creatures. God's will will always exist on a level beyond that of the creature.

And creaturely freedom and divine freedom can never be on the same level because there is an ontological difference between them. One is derived from the other. And yet synergism actually puts them on the same level and in fact subjugates God's will to man's will.

And that's where you get the wild, wacky interpretations of 1 Timothy 2 .4 and 2 Peter 3 .9 and Matthew 20 -37 and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, where you have a conflict between the desires of God and the desires of man, and God has decided to make man ultimately sovereign.

And this ends up creating just black holes of incoherence in New Testament theology and exegesis.

It really does.

It's very problematic.

Paul says, well, nobody does. So who is this? Is it Jesus or is it Paul? And what we find is that in the scriptures, often bold statements are made that are what we would call Hebrew hyperbole. Hebrew hyperbole is a bold, big statement to tell you that the situation is bad, but we as Goyim, we as Gentiles often read a Hebrew document that is filled with imagery and hyperbole, and we try and fit it into a systematic framework that is really more of a product of how we think than how the writers of Scripture think.

And so...

Now, it's a very, very common... I mean, you're going to find so many ministers... This was common when I was in seminary. This was the approach. We're really contextualizing things here. Well, the problem is you're not.

Let me switch the feed here. I guess I fired up the Accordance program after I did here. All right, should have Accordance now. Let's take a look at Rome's chapter 2 and see if this is, in fact, Hebrew hyperbole.

Hebrew hyperbole. We come to an extremely important portion of Paul's argument. He has been spending the last half of chapter 1 and all of chapter 2, and now into chapter 3, establishing the bad news, the universal sinfulness of man.

So he says, What then, are we better than they? Not at all. We have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin. Now, I'm the first one that recognizes that Pantas, paspasapan, can have all sorts of delimitations.

But those delimitations are provided by contextual reading, not merely by saying, well, all never means all, because sometimes all does mean all, and sometimes all only means a certain group. Well, who's the group outside of Jews and Gentiles?

And what has Paul's point been, and what is he trying to accomplish? Well, one of the things he's trying to accomplish here is demonstrate there cannot be a Jewish church or cannot be a Gentile church separated from one another, because the ground is even at the foot of the cross.

This is going to be central to how he establishes justification by faith. We all have to be justified by faith, whether Jew or Gentile. There's only one entrance into this tremendous salvation that has been provided by God, and it is by faith.

So how does he go about demonstrating this? Well, there can be no two different ways, because all Jews and Gentiles, everybody, and it's totally inclusive here of everybody, all of sin comes short of the glory of God, is going to be the statement that's made.

So he puts together a catena of passages. Now, what he's going to do is he's going to go to Psalm 14 and try to come up with the idea. Well, see, later in Romans 14 it talks about the congregation of the righteous, but why are they righteous?

See, the idea is, well, see, this is just hyperbole. It just means things are really bad, but there really are people who are righteous, and then you need to fill in righteous how. How has anyone ever been made righteous?

Well, if you ask Paul, his answer is going to be pretty straightforward, because he says, as it is written. So here's his biblical basis for saying both Jews and Greeks are all under sin. As it is written, there is none righteous, not even one.

There is none who understands. There is none who seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become useless. There is none who does good. There is not even one. Their throat is an open grave.

With their tongues they keep deceiving. Is there anyone that's not true of apart from God's grace? Just ask in passing. The poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.

Their feet are swift to shed blood, destruction and misery in their paths, and the path of peace they have not known. And he finishes the Katina passages, verse 18, there is no fear of God before their eyes.

Now, is that just a hyperbolic statement of the general badness of sin that still allows for an entire congregation of the righteous, who are righteous in and of themselves? Well, let's see if that's how Paul interpreted it.

Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that how many mouths? Han stama, every mouth may be closed, and how much? Has hakasmas, all the world may become accountable to God.

All the world.

Not with major exceptions, not with entire groups of righteous people, not with entire groups of God-seekers that are out there, that would completely undercut the entire point of the apostle, and that is so that all the world may become accountable to God, because by the works of the law, no flesh would be justified in the sight, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin.

So there can't be a Jewish church separated from a Gentile church. There can't be multiple ways, because we're actually all in the same boat. Mere possession of the law, as Paul had said in Romans chapter 2, will not justify anyone.

You have to do all of it, and no one's done all of it. That's the point. So this big theme is right there in the center of what he's saying, and it even plays out in his presentation of justification.

But now apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ, for all those who believe, for there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

That all have sinned, which we all know. I mean, it's probably one of the few verses that almost everybody has memorized. In context, it's talking about Jews and Gentiles, and the basis of the whole argument is that the reason that faith in Jesus Christ is the one and only way of justification is because we are all in the same situation as fallen rebels under the wrath of God.

So you turn what he's presented in verses 10 through 18 into Hebrew hyperbole, and you've just taken a shotgun blast to justification by faith. You've just drilled it full of holes. What do you do with the people who are righteous apart from faith in Jesus Christ?

Is that what you're suggesting there are? There are people who are righteous. Well, it's this prevenient grace thing. Prevenient grace is a man-made construct that is the Elmer's glue that holds synergism together.

It reminds me of the fact that I am not, even to this day, I'm a lot more patient than I used to be, but I am not the most patient man in the world. And as a kid, my parents would tell you that I really was not patient.

Now, part of that was good. In second grade, I think, there was this reading system that we had. This was back in Pennsylvania. I was really taught to read well, and I would always race this other fellow in class by the name of Sean, and we would race each other to see who could get each assignment done first.

And I didn't do as well as I could have because I wasn't as careful, but, man, I'll tell you, we ended up reading at college level by like fourth grade or something like that. So it did have a positive aspect to it, too.

But I got into making models when I was a kid. You know, model airplanes. Had for years the USS Arizona that I made long, long, long ago. But I was not patient. And when you read the instructions, it would say, glue such and such to such and such, and set aside to dry.

Well, it takes time to dry. And, well, so I thought, well, I'll just hold it together for now with scotch tape. I'll glue it, but I won't let it dry. I'll hold it together with scotch tape. Let's just say that my models did not look as good as they could have.

I'm not the most patient man. I will confess to all of that. And I'm not really sure what that has to do with anything. I guess it was just time for self-confession or something along those lines in regards to that.

But anyway, I try to go back to get back on the road here in some way, shape, or form. And once I start this, I'll remember what point I was trying to illustrate with all that. Anyways. Oh, where were we?

Paul, yes. Romans 3, run, hut, hut, hike. Here we go.

Example, maybe this. What?

What? What?

Oh, well. Well, you can hear him anyways. What are you doing in there? Tell me.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Romans 3, verses 10 to 12. We read this. Romans 3, 10 to 12. There is no one righteous. There it is. There's no one righteous. Not even one. There is no one who understands. There is no one who seeks God.

Why did Jesus say we should seek God? All have turned away and they have become worthless. There is no one who does good. Not even one. So does this, do we pit this against what Jesus says? Jesus says when you ask, seek, and knock, then you will be given the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Not given the gift of the Holy Spirit so that you can ask, seek, and knock.

Now, again, completely disagree that the audience of Jesus' words are, is supposed to be understood as unregenerate individuals who remain in their sins, rebels against God, in whom the Spirit of God has not brought life.

But again, this is what, oh, that's what I was talking about. This is, this is where the prevenient grace stuff comes in. It's the, it's the Elmer's glue, scotch tape. When you don't have exegesis, you just use, you throw prevenient grace in there.

And you never have to worry about proving it. Because you can't. It's not there. And it's going to come up here. And that's one of the things that's really useful.

Which is it here? And what we, so let's go to the context. We look at Romans 3 that says there's no one who seeks God. We realize, wait a second, he is quoting Psalm 14. So what does David say in Psalm 14?

And in Psalm 14, David says that very same thing. There's no one who seeks after God. There is no one who is righteous. That's in verses 1 to 3. And then you read a little further. And in verse 5 of Psalm 14, it says that God is present in the company of the righteous.

So he just said there's nobody who's righteous. And then he says, but God is with the righteous.

All right, let's, let's just pop over here for a second. And let's point something out. All right. Talking about, there's got to be a faster way of doing this. But for now, it's the best we can do, I guess.

Um.

The fool said in his heart, there is no God. They are corrupt. They have committed abominable deeds. There is no one who does good. Yahweh has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God.

They have all turned aside. Together they have become corrupt. There is no one who does good, not even one. Do all the workers of wickedness not know who eat up, what? Who do they, who do they, they eat up?

Right here. Ami, my people. Now, how are the Jews, the people of God? By their merits? By the fact that they chose? By the fact they were good? The fact they were mighty? The fact they were righteous?

No.

I chose you to glorify myself. All the way through. Didn't choose you because of who you were? You're hard-hearted, stiff-necked people. So, there's been a shift between those first verses and verse 4.

You have the workers of wickedness, do they all not know, who eat up my people as they eat bread, and do not call upon the Lord? For they are in great dread, for God is with the righteous generation. Who's the righteous generation?

His ami. His people. Why are they righteous? Intrinsically?

No.

So, I'm sorry. Right there.

Boom.

Immediately. Total misuse of Psalm 14. Just exegetically, just contextually. That's completely missed. The shift and then the contrast between the workers of iniquity and the people of God who are such, not because of their own goodness by any stretch of the imagination, but solely on the basis of God's grace.

And so, when we look back at the list that is provided here in this freeze frame, these are, again, these are standard texts that, for example, Dave Hunt used. And I would hope that Bruxy would make a strong differentiation here, but whether it could be a consistent differentiation is another issue.

But these are Pelagian proof texts. These are texts that Pelagians use. And there is, obviously I'm not saying every Synergist is a Pelagian, but most Synergists are not overly concerned about making the proper differentiations so as to not fall into the categories of Pelagianism.

So, Genesis 6 -9, Noah is a righteous and blameless man.

All right.

So, what does that mean? Does that mean that Paul was wrong? That Noah could have had a right relationship with God in a different way than other people? Or was Noah a righteous and blameless man because of the very extension of the grace of God that we depend upon today?

You see, if Paul's argument in Romans 4 is correct, that Abram was justified by faith just as we are justified by faith, that he was made righteous by faith and that's always been the only way that anyone's been made right before God, then we're on good grounds for knowing why Noah was a righteous and blameless man.

That did not make him sinlessly perfect as what happened after the flood proves beyond all shadow of a doubt. And you know, some people might say, Ah, you're just picking on the Armenians again today.

This is important. There are Muslims watching this program right now. There are Muslims who listen to every single thing I record. And they end up reposting half of it, which I think is just absolutely wonderful.

Because they get it to an audience I couldn't get it to any other way. And they're always looking for something they think is inconsistency. They think it's horrible that the Bible records what happened with Noah and the drunkenness and his daughters.

They think it could never happen. Because they have a very Pelagian view of human nature as well. They don't see how God can use sinners. How Noah can be called a righteous and blameless man in his generation and yet fall into sin.

They just don't see how that's possible. I think that's a tremendous weakness in Islamic anthropology, which explains why you have ISIS, to be perfectly honest with you. It's part of it. I've not yet met a Muslim who had actually figured that part out yet.

But I will someday. I will. So I think it is important that we recognize that Noah was a righteous and blameless man, but that was not an intrinsic righteousness and blamelessness that came forth from his own fallen nature.

I would be really interested in listening to Bruxy's exegesis of Romans 5. And Federal Headship and how he makes heads or tails out of that text. Because as we've found so many times, that's where synergism just crashes on the rocks of exegetical reality.

Job was a blameless and upright man. Again, same comment.

Why?

Was it because he was intrinsically that way? That it was a goodness that came up within himself? Or is it of grace? Or has it always been of grace, ever since Adam fell? Cornelius's good deeds are an offering to the Lord.

Okay.

Why did Cornelius receive God's grace rather than somebody else? Was it because Cornelius was better? This is where the rubber meets the road. Are you really ready to go to the point of saying, Yeah, Cornelius is a better guy, and so God responded to his betterness.

And this is why I always say, The difference between a God-centered view of the gospel and a man-centered view of the gospel, it's going to be seen that final day. And when you see one group bowing before God, worshiping Him from the heart, and one group in absolute rebellion and hatred toward God, cursing His name, the only difference between the two is a five-letter word called grace.

That's the only difference between the two. In a synergistic system, no, the difference between the two is found in them. It's not external to them, it's internal to them. They were better. They were better.

Spiritually more sensitive, spiritually more intelligent, something, but they were better. It's the only difference there can be.

The only difference there can be.

You realize, oh, this is typical Hebrew hyperbole. Nobody's righteous, and it's a really bad state out there, but there are righteous. And then we see other examples, of course, throughout Scripture. Noah is said to be righteous.

Job is said to be righteous. Acts 10, Cornelius, his good deeds ascend to heaven as an acceptable sacrifice to God. Doesn't mean that this is enough. These people still need the gospel. Cornelius still hears the gospel.

But to say that there's no one who's righteous, there's no one who's...

Okay, so if it wasn't enough, what is the nature of this goodness? So this is a new righteousness. This is a different kind of righteousness. It's not the righteousness we have in Jesus. It's a lesser righteousness.

These are questions that have to be answered. Was it a righteousness that would be sufficient to avail before God? If not, then it is just simply a high moral standing, but still reprehensible in God's sight, right?