21 - Man's Sinfulness, Part 1

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September 17, 2019

Striving for Eternity Academy's School of World Religions This is a class in the SFE School of World Religions. This lesson covered the topics of the creation, sin nature and total depravity of man To become a student of the Striving for Eternity Academy: http://StrivingForEternityAcademy.org

22 - Man's Sinfulness, Part 2

00:29: Welcome to the Striving for Eternity Academy. This is a ministry of striving for eternity.
00:35: This is where we provide some classes for you to get some training on things, well really all things related to Christianity.
00:44: I will be your instructor today. My name is Andrew Rappaport. We are in a school of world religions, so we're going to have several different classes within this school.
00:54: This particular class that we are dealing with is an Introduction to the
01:00: Major Western Religions. This lesson is really in part two where we're going to be dealing with the nature of sin.
01:09: The nature of sin, man, his creation, his sinfulness. Now in part two we're really trying to answer, okay, we looked in part one at several different religions, six of the major western religions.
01:21: We looked at six different doctrines that they had and looking at those we explained what they all believe from within their structure.
01:29: Now we're going through what the Bible says and kind of saying this is what the Bible says now comparing it to each of those in general, those six religions, and seeing where it is that they agree, disagree with what scripture actually says.
01:42: We're kind of answering now, we answered originally what they believe, now we're saying basically what does the
01:48: Bible teach. If you have a syllabus, now would be a good time to get it out.
01:54: You can get a syllabus at the website at store .strivingforeternity .org or just strivingforeternity .org
02:01: and go to the store. Syllabuses are $25 each. That helps us pay for these classes so that you can get them at, well, if you're watching it for free then you're getting it for free, right?
02:14: But grab a syllabus. The advantage of a syllabus is really so you have things, not only can you take your own notes in it, you'll get the fill in the blanks we have, you have the notes that I'm going to teach from, you also have a handy reference.
02:27: Now most of the first class that we looked at is based off of my book, What Do They Believe? That's something else you can pick up while you're at the website,
02:34: Striving for Eternity. What Do They Believe is a systematic theology of the major Western religions.
02:41: Now let's get into this lesson. This lesson is going to be one where we're going to deal with first the creation of man.
02:51: And that's going to be the first thing I would like us to address is how was man created? Now I'm not speaking of Adam and Eve, well we will get into some of that.
03:01: But we get into more of how we were created and what implications that has and how that relates to some of the other religions that we saw.
03:11: Then we're going to look at man's sinfulness. What does it mean when we say he's got a sin nature? So let's begin. With the creation of man, we see that the
03:19: Bible teaches that man was directly and immediately created by God on the sixth day of creation with an appearance of age in God's image and likeness.
03:32: Now, that's packed and we want to break it down, we're not going to have time to break it fully.
03:38: But the fact that we're saying that God was created directly and immediately by God means that there was no evolutionary process.
03:47: It's not what the Bible would teach. It doesn't allow room for evolution. That it was on the sixth day of creation and that Adam and Eve were created with some appearance of age.
04:01: They weren't created as infants needing to rely on their parents because they didn't have any.
04:06: They were created fully grown. When I was a child there was always the thing of the chicken and egg, what came first, the chicken or the egg?
04:16: That's a problem for evolution, isn't it? That's an evolutionary dilemma, which came first, the chicken or the egg?
04:24: You had to have the egg to produce the chicken, but you needed the chicken to produce the egg. Evolutionarily, that's a problem.
04:31: That's not a problem for Christianity because we know God created the chicken. God created male and female with the appearance of age.
04:40: Even though they were one day old, they looked like they were maybe 14, 15, 20, don't know.
04:47: Now, the other thing about that early creation is that man was created free of sin and with a rational nature of intelligence, volition, that means will, self -determination, and a moral responsibility to God.
05:07: Let's look at some verses there. Let's look at Genesis 2, 7. Actually, we have a couple of verses on that.
05:13: If we look here, we see, "...then the
05:18: Lord formed the man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature."
05:29: That's Genesis 2, 7. You see, this is showing that man was created directly from God.
05:36: It is a direct and immediate thing. It was immediate, meaning that it didn't happen over time. James 3, 9 says this, "...with
05:45: it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God."
05:54: Now, we don't have time to go into all of Genesis 2, but we're made in the image of God.
06:01: We're going to get into what that means in just a moment, so hold on because you may have those questions. But, what we see there is that we are made in the image of God.
06:10: In His likeness, in some way. We're going to get into the question of, do men become angels?
06:17: Those are things that we're going to discuss in just a little bit. These are the sort of things that come up when we talk about the creation of man and the constitution of man.
06:29: But, life of all men begins at conception, and that's your blank there, conception.
06:35: Now, let me specify this. Actually, a friend of mine mentioned that life doesn't begin at conception.
06:42: He said life continues, but the spirit begins at conception. This is where we do get into something that's not in your notes, but there's two different views of what happens.
06:53: Really, the question is, when does a person, that immaterial part of a person, when does that begin?
06:58: How does that begin? This is something the Bible does not speak to. The Bible does not explain the creation of the soul.
07:09: But, what we have is, really, we have two different views. We have a view that says that God creates, out of nothing, a new spirit for a person at conception.
07:19: And, He interjects that spirit into them at conception. Now, with that one, some would argue that maybe it's not at conception, but at birth.
07:28: Now, that argument people make does allow for abortion, by the way, because then they're not really a human until they have that human aspect, that immaterial part of them.
07:40: And so, some would argue that then it's okay. It depends when that is given. Some actually say after eight days, after birth.
07:48: And so, some try to argue that's why the Jewish people do the circumcision eight days after, why the
07:53: Catholics will baptize. The idea some have is to try to argue that that's eight days after. There's really nothing in Scripture that says either way.
08:02: I actually hold to what's called a Traditionary View, which is the idea that God created Adam and Eve with all the makeup for life, so that at conception, life continues.
08:13: It doesn't actually begin. But that spirit, that immaterial part of us, is part of the creation, or part of the procreation, conception process, shall we say.
08:27: So, in some way, and I don't understand it, but it would be that when man and woman produce a child, that that child at conception would have a spirit, and that's part of the makeup.
08:39: The only reason I hold to that is because I think when it says God rested from His work, Barah, His creation out of nothing,
08:46: He's finished with that. And I would say that then He's not creating spirits out of nothing.
08:52: So, He must have it within the makeup of man and woman, that that's part of the process.
08:59: I don't know. I'm not going to really get too hung up on it. But the point that's of interest there is that we talk about life.
09:07: Life continues. Man and woman, male and female, are living beings that produce another living being.
09:15: So, life just continues at conception. But really what we're talking about is this is where they become a human.
09:22: They have an immaterial part of them at conception. The reason it's important to understand conception is this is when we would say, we speak scientifically, right, of life.
09:32: Life begins at conception. It becomes another being. It has separate
09:37: DNA. You have a baby conceived in a womb. That mother has grown within it something that has a completely separate
09:45: DNA. It's a completely separate person. But the importance of this, of pointing it at conception, is not so much the abortion issue.
09:54: That's an ethical issue that is an outworking of it, but really it's the point that the spirit of man does not exist prior to conception.
10:02: And that is, either of the two views that I mentioned would hold to that.
10:08: So that the importance there, as you see in Judaism, in Mormonism, you had this idea that God created all the spirits at one time and puts them into bodies.
10:21: And we wouldn't hold to that. We don't see that in Scripture. Now, one of the things is man is distinct from animals.
10:28: I know those evolutionists, they keep telling people that they're nothing but animals and then they can't figure out why people act like animals.
10:38: You've been convincing them they're nothing more than an animal. But men are, you know, human beings are distinct from animals.
10:44: Men were made in the likeness of God and animals were not. Men have attributes that animals do not have, such as a
10:53: God consciousness. Animals don't create a religion. Animals don't know about God.
11:01: They don't have a consciousness of God like we do. Man doesn't create God to fill some
11:06: God -sized vacuum in their heart, as some argue. Everywhere you go in the world, every tribe, culture will have a view of God.
11:18: Why? Because we have a consciousness of Him that makes us distinct from animals. If evolution was true, we wouldn't be making gods to worship to replace the true
11:29: God that we know exists. Okay? We have a self -consciousness. We are aware of ourselves.
11:35: We set up things like 401Ks so we can take care of ourselves. We set up health care systems so we can take care of ourselves.
11:41: We're aware of our own consciousness, where animals work off of instincts. We have a world consciousness.
11:48: We know where we fit within the world and a relation there. That's why we would hold signs that say,
11:55: Save the Whales. You've never seen a whale holding a Save the Humans sign, right? We need saving.
12:00: Why? Because they don't have a consciousness of where they fit within the world. We do.
12:08: We can make moral decisions. We have a will.
12:13: Now, making moral decisions is something that we have to realize that somewhat arguable animals can do that.
12:23: We have vampire bats. Vampire bats, for example, or you have the emperor penguins.
12:30: There's a thing of community, and if they don't share within the community, they're pushed out of the community. People say that's a moral system.
12:36: Some will try to argue that's their justice system. You don't see them setting up a justice system like we have.
12:44: That's more of an instinct -based thing. You don't see them discussing what those rules should be and whether they should do that.
12:52: Man has some of the attributes that animals have, and that's one of them, but when man has them, man's attributes in these areas are far superior, such as intellect, emotion, communication.
13:04: Can birds communicate? Yes. Do they have a grammar? No. That's the difference. We have languages. We have a grammar.
13:10: Animals can communicate with one another with single -word -type sentences. Man was created to have dominion over the animals of the earth.
13:21: We see that in Genesis 1, 26 -28. Then God said,
13:28: There you see created in the image of God. God created man in His own image.
13:47: In the image of God, He created him. Male and female, He created them. God blessed them and said to them,
14:09: When we say that we're made in the likeness of God, we have attributes of personality. If you want to look into more detail on that, go to our class on Systematic Theology, the intro class for that, the very first book where we talked about the attributes of God, and we looked at the attributes of divinity, those attributes that are only true of God, attributes of personality, those that are true of all people.
14:30: Angels are people. We are people. God is a person. Well, three persons, technically.
14:37: So, what you have there is the idea that we're made in His image and that we have personality, we have an intellect, we have an ability to reason, we have a
14:48: God consciousness, things that animals don't have and that which we do have. Some can be shared with animals and also have some level of intellect, but we're superior because we're made in God's image.
14:58: Okay, that's what it means to be made in the image of God, that we share some attributes that God has given us.
15:03: Now, men are distinct from angels. That's your blank there, distinct. So, we see that we're distinct from animals.
15:11: We're not evolution. That doesn't work. We're distinct. We're also distinct from angels in that they are a race, they are a race, or we are a race,
15:24: I should say, in the sense that we're not, we're a separate race from angels.
15:30: Okay? So, men are distinct from angels in that they are a race and angels are not.
15:37: This means that men cannot become angels and angels cannot become men.
15:44: Why does that become important? Well, first, yeah, I know, it kind of wipes out many of the genre of TV shows that would, you know, where someone dies and becomes an angel.
15:54: That's not true. But it also means that when Jehovah Witnesses argue that Michael, the angel, became a man,
16:03: Jesus, that wouldn't be true. They're two separate distinct groups or races.
16:10: Men are distinct both from angels and from God and will be for all of eternity.
16:16: Let's take a look at some passages. Let's look at, I'm just trying to look for a good passage we want to look at.
16:25: Let's look at, do we have the 1 Corinthians 1 .6? I don't know if I gave that one.
16:32: Okay. So, we could look up 1 Corinthians 6 .3
16:40: is what I meant to say. Do we have that one? No. Okay, we don't have the 1 Corinthians 6. All right.
16:46: Hebrews 1 .14, Hebrews 2 .6 -8, and Hebrews 12 .22
16:53: -24. Those are all passages that you could look up to see some of this where you see this distinction between angels and men.
17:02: Men are similar to angels in that we have personality, but we're limited more so in power and ability.
17:10: You see this in Hebrews 2 where we have that one. Okay. So, let's put that one up.
17:15: Oh, we do have, no, that does have the 1 Corinthians 6. There we go. See? Oh, it's just mislabeled. Okay, I labeled it as Hebrews 2.
17:22: Okay. It says here 1 Corinthians 6 .3. Do you not know that we are to judge the angels how much more than matters pertain to life?
17:33: Now, the reason this is important is because if we're going to be judging angels, we cannot become angels.
17:42: Okay. The idea there is that we're going to judge the angels because we're separate from them.
17:48: Hebrews 2 .6 -8 says, or the
17:57: Son of Man that you care for Him. You made Him a little lower than the angels.
18:04: You have crowned Him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under His feet. Now, in putting everything in subjection to Him, He left nothing outside His control.
18:15: At the present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to Him. So what you have there is the fact that you see that the angels are, we're under angels right now.
18:29: They're more powerful than us, even though there will be a time we will judge them. So you've seen that there's that distinction.
18:35: God's intention in the creation of man was that man should glorify God, enjoy
18:40: God's fellowship, live his life in the will of God, and by this accomplish
18:48: God's purpose for man in the world. We see this in Isaiah 43.
18:55: Verse 7 says, So God made all of us.
19:05: Colossians 1 .16 says, All things were created through Him and for Him.
19:20: So everything that's created, God created everything for His glory.
19:26: Revelation 4 .11 says, Notice, everything that was created was created to give
19:42: God glory. That's the purpose of man. The purpose of man is not to glorify himself, but to glorify
19:49: God. Now, we see here so far in the creation of man that we are created initially, directly, and immediately by God.
20:00: Through procreation, we continue that life. We are formed at conception.
20:06: That's when we become a person. We're distinct from animals. We're distinct from angels. We're created for the purpose of giving
20:13: God glory. Now, the other question that sometimes comes in is, are we all God's children?
20:18: God does not call every human being a child of God. All people are not
20:25: God's children. That's your blank there, not. We're not God's children. The children of God are only those who put faith in Jesus Christ.
20:34: Can I support that? Because I know you look at Mormonism, and they will teach that everyone is a child of God.
20:41: Jehovah's Witnesses will sometimes speak this way, but John 1, 12 -13 says, but to all who receive him, receive
20:51: Christ, who believe in his name, he gave them the right to be called the child of God, who were born not of blood, nor the will of flesh, nor the will of man, but of God.
21:01: So not everyone has the right to be called the child of God. The only people that have a right to be called the child of God are those that receive
21:08: Christ. You see that? Now let's take a look at Romans 9, 7 and 8. That says,
21:16: And not all are children of Abraham, because they were his offspring, but through Isaac shall your offspring be named.
21:28: This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.
21:45: So this says that when we say someone is a child of God, it doesn't mean that they are made in the image of God.
21:52: It means that they are adopted into his family, that they have been accepted by God into his family as his child.
22:02: It is not a thing that all humans are children of God and therefore are made in his image. Well, you're going to see this have major implications when you look at some of the
22:10: New Age notions, more the Hinduism and Buddhism. Why? Because they're going to say we're all part of God.
22:17: We're all God's children. There's part of God in all of us. And yet what we end up seeing is that that's not the case.
22:25: What we end up seeing is that only those who put their faith in Christ have the right to be called a child of God.
22:34: Not everyone that was born of Abraham's seed was God's children.
22:40: In other words, not all the Jewish people were God's children, but those who received, those who believed on God, who were adopted into his family, they had that right.
22:51: Okay, so as we look at the creation of man, again, let's reiterate. We see that man was created initially directly and immediately from God with the appearance of age on day six of creation.
23:04: We see that man was created separate and distinct from the animals, that though we may have some similar attributes as animals, we have them in a superior way, but we also have attributes that animals do not have.
23:17: This is what makes evolution impossible because we have an immaterial part of us that animals do not, and that is what gives us an ability to reason, to know truth, knowledge, have a morality, to have a system of justice, to be able to apply the laws of logic.
23:36: All these things are things that men or persons, people can do. Animals cannot.
23:42: So we're separate and distinct from the animals, but we're also separate and distinct from angels, even though angels have personality, they have attributes of personality like intellect, like a will.
23:53: They have that, and you can look in our systematic theology classes on the lessons we did on angels, and we get into more detail on that.
24:00: But in there, what you end up seeing is that though we have some similar personality attributes, we're separate and distinct.
24:09: We as men or women will never become angels, angels will never become men. There's two separate races.
24:18: So what we see is that we have God, we have angels, we have humans, and we have the animals, and then we have plants.
24:25: That's basically what we see. Plants are not considered life, by the way, in the
24:30: Bible. Life is considered having breath. So that's how the
24:37: Bible would define it. All right. So let's take a look next.
24:42: That's the creation of man. Now let's get into the more difficult issue, and the issue many have real problems with and want to fight against.
24:51: This is a difficult doctrine for many. I'm saying this up front because I want people to see this.
24:59: It is the issue of the sin nature. The sin nature.
25:04: And when we look at the sin nature, let's be aware that this is a difficult doctrine for people to accept.
25:13: The problem with this doctrine is that people don't want to believe it. Really, because they don't want to believe it applies to them.
25:21: People want to believe that they're born spiritually and morally good. That's your blank there. They want to believe they're born spiritually and morally good, or even neutral at worst.
25:31: In other words, not good or evil, but they can choose. Most people want to think they're born good. We talk about children being innocent.
25:40: We're going to get to that, whether that's actually true is part of their condition. It is the desire to disbelieve in a sin nature that makes
25:51: Christianity so difficult for many to accept. This is the reason why you see that all the false religions and the cults believe that works are necessary in some form for salvation.
26:03: And that people, if they're going to be able to do good works to earn a right state with God, they have to be born good or at worst neutral.
26:14: They can't be born sinful because if they're born sinful, they can't do good works to earn it.
26:20: And that's what people want. People want to depend on their own good works. That's why I say there's only two religions in the world.
26:27: You look at all those religions we looked at, and you will see every one of them except Christianity, teaches that man can get right with God or go to heaven based on works in one form or another.
26:37: Even if you have Roman Catholicism that says faith plus works, there's still an element of works in there. If you're going to look at Mormonism, they're going to say
26:46: God did what he did and you go to heaven after all you could do.
26:52: In other words, after you do your good works. Every one of them have an aspect. In Judaism, it's doing the law, doing
26:59: Torah. In Islam, you don't really know if you're going to be in a right standing with God, but your works are going to determine it.
27:07: God's going to have mercy based on your work. Well, that's not really mercy then. That's you earning it, right?
27:12: If it's based on your work, then you earn it. Salvation is something we can't earn.
27:18: We're going to get to that in the next lesson. This is really important to lay that foundation though because if you understand this, then the lesson on salvation makes perfect sense and that's what makes it clear.
27:30: This issue is so hard for people to accept because they want to trust in their own goodness because they want to compare themselves to someone that's worse than them and therefore they're really good.
27:40: The sin nature is a reality that sin has been imputed, that's your blank there, imputed directly from Adam to every individual since Adam except for Jesus since he was without a human father.
27:55: We're going to get into this in more detail, especially next class, but let's look at Romans chapter 5.
28:01: This is a key passage here. Romans 5, 12 to 19. And this is key because this gets into the detail of this idea of imputation.
28:09: That the imputation of the sin nature means that each person possesses a sinful nature that was passed on from Adam to each generation.
28:21: So by this nature is why we say all men are guilty, but let's look at what it says in Romans chapter 5.
28:27: Romans chapter 5 and it says in 5 .12,
28:34: Therefore just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.
28:45: For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law.
28:57: Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who had come.
29:11: But the free gift is not like the trespass, for many died through the one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of the one man
29:28: Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man's sin, for the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following the trespass brought justification.
29:48: For if because of one man's trespasses death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man
30:05: Jesus Christ. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.
30:17: So as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.
30:28: So what you see in that passage is you see there that by nature all men have a guilt that came because of our federal headship with Adam.
30:42: And that's something you have to understand. Federal headship is this idea that because of what
30:47: Adam did, he was our federal head, he affected all of his offspring.
30:53: Think of a federal headship, I usually liken it to a kingdom with a king, or in our case a president makes decisions, a president in Congress can make decisions like make an act of war.
31:05: We would be at war even though we didn't vote for it, we didn't choose for it, but those that are our federal heads chose for us.
31:13: And that's the idea here. So you have to understand some things about federal headship. Adam was our federal head, so what he chose to do affected all of us.
31:20: Because of what he did sin entered into the world and all of creation was actually affected by this sin.
31:30: The sin nature is inherited and each person is guilty of it at the point of conception.
31:36: Now this is passed on from father to child and the reason that becomes important is that's why
31:41: Christ did not have a sin nature. He had no earthly father to pass the sin nature onto him.
31:47: Each person has a sin nature and is totally depraved. Don't freak out at that word!
31:54: For some of you who are totally against Calvinism, give us time next class we're going to define what we mean by that and it's not the way some try to argue it.
32:04: But for right now until next class, just understand that we are totally depraved and what
32:10: I mean by that, just not getting into the detail yet, but it means that they lack the proper affection and love towards God and they do evil.
32:21: So it just means that we're conceived with a lack of proper affection for God. We'll get into that in more detail next class.
32:32: Total depravity, more importantly though, refers to the fact that man as a whole was corrupted by sin, including man's will.
32:45: That's your blank there. Including man's will. In other words, when Adam and Eve fell, their will, their choice was affected by sin so that they make evil choices.
32:55: They make sinful choices. And this is an area of contention because people say, and this is really when we talk about total depravity what we're talking about.
33:04: Was man's volition, his decision making, was it affected by sin?
33:09: If it was, then man cannot choose God completely on their own. And this is the argument some make is that man can choose
33:17: God. Well, if man can choose God, then man can do things like, and this is why we said in every one of those world religions we looked at, all of them don't believe in a sin nature and all of them believe that man can, by his own will, make choices that are honoring to God and merit salvation, merit a right standing with God.
33:39: What total depravity does not mean, it does not mean that man will be as sinful as possible.
33:45: Clearly there are some people that act more sinfully than others. There are some people that totally try to deny that God exists and they are morally, compared to other people, morally pretty good.
33:57: So let's not think that just because someone is not believing in God that they're going to be as sinful as possible.
34:05: And let's not think that someone that believes in God is automatically going to be an angel. They're not either. It doesn't mean they're going to be as sinful as they could be.
34:15: I mean, even Hitler could have been worse. But for the majority of unsaved people, you see they have some restraint on their sinfulness.
34:26: But that's usually pieced in selfishness. The reason why people restrain themselves is because they don't want to suffer the consequence.
34:35: They know we have this justice system that animals don't have. They don't want to suffer the consequence.
34:41: So for out of a selfish reason, they're not going to do certain things because they want something else in life or they don't want to suffer consequences.
34:55: This inherited sin addresses the nature of man where imputed sin addresses the reality of the nature of each person from Adam.
35:05: So we inherit sin from our fathers. So guess what?
35:11: Guys, when you're married, you have kids, they misbehave, and your wife blames you. She's right.
35:17: It's your fault that they're little sinners. You gave it to them. They inherited their sin nature from you.
35:24: But it was imputed through the federal headship of Adam. So Adam and Eve became sinners because they sinned where every person afterwards sins because they possess a sin nature.
35:37: Do you understand that? So after the fall, Adam and Eve committed sin and now they have a sin nature.
35:45: Now all of us have a sin nature because of that act. So when they sinned, they did an act of sin that brought about a sin nature.
35:54: We have that sin nature because we inherited from our father and because of that we do acts of sin.
36:03: Can we be sinlessly perfect? No, not this side of heaven. Because we are human.
36:08: We still have this sin within us, this sin nature. It's dead, and yet we still give ourselves over to it at times.
36:18: So the reality is that the difference of imputed sin and inherited sin is that imputed means that we have this sin nature.
36:27: It's part of our constitution now. And we inherit it through our father.
36:34: So in Adam's sin, in that passage we looked at in Romans 5, in Adam's sin of disobedience, his sin of disobedience brought sin into the world.
36:49: So man is in a lost state. They lost that state that Adam had of innocence. And they're now incurring, we are incurring the penalty of spiritual and physical death because we became subject to the wrath of God.
37:07: And we became inherently corrupt and utterly incapable of choosing that which is acceptable to God apart from God's divine grace.
37:18: You can look at Genesis 2. We won't put these up yet. We'll put these up at all actually so we can get through the lesson. Genesis 2, 16 and 17.
37:25: Genesis 3, verse 1 to 19. John 3, 36.
37:31: Romans 3, 23. Romans 6, 23. 1 Corinthians 2, 14.
37:38: Ephesians 2, 1 through 3. 1 Timothy 2, 13 and 14. 1
37:44: John 1, 8. All of those talk about this. The fact is that do we choose
37:51: God? We're going to get into this. Do we choose God? Did God choose us? We're going to get into that in the next lesson.
37:57: Probably two weeks from now, three weeks from now. But the point there being is that we have no powers within ourselves that enable us to recover ourselves from our state.
38:10: We are hopelessly lost because of this sin nature. Man's salvation thereby is holy by God's grace through the redemptive work of Jesus Christ and not any of our work.
38:24: That's what makes Christianity unique. Now there are some that argue, if you understand the terms Calvinism or Minianism, there are some that argue in there.
38:31: But even those that would hold to our Minianism argue that salvation is by grace totally a work of God.
38:38: When they jettison that and they start saying that we save ourselves by works, they actually have a new gospel and they're jettisoning the
38:46: Arminian position altogether and going for a view of Pelagianism, one that denies the sin nature.
38:55: But those that would say that the Arminians would be semi -Pelagian, they believe in a sin nature, they believe that salvation is a work of God, that it's by grace.
39:05: The question that they're struggling over and Calvinists are struggling over is did man choose God and then
39:10: God gave the grace? Did God choose man and therefore man had an ability to choose God? We're going to get into that in the lesson on salvation.
39:17: We look at that, but the point here being is we see that what separates Christianity from all those other religions is that we see the sin nature and that sin nature puts us in a state where we're totally dependent upon God completely and utterly for being in a right state with God.
39:32: We cannot trust on ourselves. That's what makes Christianity unique. Because all men are in Adam, a nature that's corrupted because of Adam's sin, because of his disobedience.
39:44: It's been transmitted to all people throughout the ages except for Christ because he didn't have a human father.
39:50: He had no sin nature. Therefore all men are sinners, all people are sinners by nature, by choice, and by divine declaration.
40:00: So men are sinners by nature. That's imputed to them.
40:06: Their inherited sin means that they do it by choice. We choose to sin, yes, because we have a sin nature, but it's also a divine declaration.
40:18: God declares us sinners. You can look at Psalm 14, the first three verses. You can look at Jeremiah 17, 9.
40:25: Romans 3, 9 to 18. Romans 5, 10 to 12.
40:32: All talk about this. Now the result of Adam's sin was a threefold death.
40:38: First is physical death. That's your first blank, physical death, which is the separation of the body from the spirit and is the particular penalty of imputed sin.
40:54: So because of this sin, we are guaranteed we are going to physically die one day. We're going to be separated from our body from spirit.
41:03: Second is spiritual death. That's your next blank there, spiritual death, which is the separation of the spirit of God while living on earth.
41:14: This is particular to inherited sin. This is a state where men are born.
41:20: We're born because we inherit this sin. We're born spiritually dead.
41:25: We're born as enemies of God. We're going to look at this next week, next class. We're born in a state where we're enemies of God.
41:34: We have a sin nature. We are sinners. That is a spiritual death. That's why we need to be born again.
41:41: We need to be regenerated from spiritual death to spiritual life. If you remain in spiritual death and then physically die, you experience the third death, which is eternal death.
41:54: That's your third blank there, eternal death, which is the separation of the body and spirit from God.
42:01: This is the particular and final penalty for depravity, for living a life and dying in a state of spiritual deadness.
42:10: Eternal death is a penalty for all unforgiven sin, inherited, imputed, impaired, committed, or omitted.
42:22: This is the final stage of all unbelievers. All right, so let's look into, we probably will not be able to finish this, but let's look at depravity of man, the depravity of man.
42:37: We'll at least start with this if we can. The depravity of man refers to man being completely and totally corrupted by sin.
42:48: That's your blank there, totally corrupted by sin. This depravity includes the will of man,
42:57: John 8, 34. Jesus answered them, Everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.
43:06: Why is that important? Because that slavery is what the issue is. We sin because we are a slave to it.
43:13: It's our master. We can do nothing but sin. Even when we do good acts humanly, most of us do it because of sin, because of selfish pride, because we want something or we want to avoid something, but it's for selfish reasons that we do it.
43:30: So again, as I said, the depravity of man is a total depravity, not partial.
43:37: The idea of being there is that it's our full nature. Some people argue that it's part of us.
43:43: Our actions and our emotions were affected by the curse of sin, but not our will.
43:49: That's what we're talking about when we talk total depravity. Our complete being is affected by the curse.
43:56: As I said, this does not mean that an unsaved individual is going to be as bad as they possibly can be, but they have no disposition or tendency to do good in God's eyes.
44:12: Can they do good compared to men? Yes. Will that good be something that merits them a right state with God?
44:20: No, and that's what that specifically means. So this is why I say when I talk about total depravity, they freak out because of how it's being misunderstood.
44:29: It's speaking specifically of us being in a state where we cannot do things without God doing the work.
44:36: Without God doing something, we cannot do something, make a decision that's going to earn us a right state with God or give us a disposition to earning or pleasing
44:49: God in a regenerative way. A depraved sinner is not without some pleasing or religious qualities.
45:00: You can see Matthew 23, 23. You could look at Mark 10, 21. A person is totally depraved.
45:11: They're not prone to committing every possible sin that they can commit. No sinner is going to be as intense in their sin as they could be.
45:20: People can be far more intense in sin, but they do have some restrictions they put on themselves.
45:26: Depravity is properly understood that a sinner is destitute of true love for God, elevates to some lower affection for God, prefers self to God, is at enmity with God or God's enemy, that's
45:49: Romans 8, 7, corrupted in every faculty, 2 Corinthians 7, 1,
45:55: Ephesians 4, 18, Titus 1, 15, Hebrews 3, 12. Every faculty that we have is corrupted by sin.
46:03: It's affected and can do nothing that will fully please
46:09: God. Isaiah 64, verse 6, Romans 3, 9,
46:15: Romans 7, 18. We cannot please God. So you see here what we're saying is this idea of total depravity means that we're destitute from a love of God.
46:25: We end up having a lower affection for God. We prefer self to God.
46:32: We're God's enemy. We're corrupted in every faculty. And we can do nothing to earn
46:39: God's full approval. And then lastly, we have a prevailing tendency toward greater depravity.
46:47: Total depravity is not total inability. Now, I'm saying that, but I'm saying that in a specific way.
46:56: I'm not saying that when it comes to salvation. We are totally unable to choose
47:02: God completely of ourselves. But we do have an ability to choose morally good things to do compared to other people.
47:11: It doesn't mean we're unable to do good morally. It's we're unable to do good salvation -wise.
47:20: A sinner is restricted but is still sovereign over that which
47:26: God has placed over man. A sinner is limited and unable to change their course of life.
47:35: Preferring God to self. We can't change our style of life and prefer God over self.
47:41: Neither can we live above sin apart from God. We need the
47:46: Holy Spirit indwelling us to be able to not sin in that way. We're not capable of doing acts that are fully acceptable in God's sight.
47:57: So, we've covered the creation of man. We've covered the sin nature of man.
48:02: And we've covered the depravity of man. The next class, what we're going to look at is the origin of sin.
48:09: The extent of sin. The imputation of sin. And then we're going to answer some objections.
48:14: That's where we're going to end up going in the next class. If you have questions about this or any of the classes.
48:21: Please feel free to email us at academy at striving4eternity .org Again, I just want to remind you if you want to get a syllabus for this.
48:29: You can go to the store at store .striving4eternity .org You can pick up the syllabus.
48:35: While you're there, you can also pick up my book, What Do They Believe? And you can read about the other religions that we looked at.
48:41: Also, while you're there, I encourage you to consider hosting a Bible Interpretation Made Easy Seminar. It's one of our seminars.
48:48: We come into your church for a weekend. We will train people how to interpret the Bible in the course of one weekend. We will give you an intense study on what's called
48:55: Harmoneutics. The art and science of interpretation. So you can handle God's Word rightly. Lastly, what
49:00: I want to bring up is Ohio Fire. Coming up soon, April 8th and 9th, 2016.
49:07: We'll be in Columbus, New Jersey. Sorry, Columbus, Ohio. Columbus, New Jersey. What was I thinking? Columbus, Ohio.
49:14: I'm really excited about this. It's a great lineup of speakers. Phil Johnson, Thomas White.
49:21: Two of the most excellent speakers that there are. We are going to be talking on the topic of the
49:26: Word of God. Registration is open right now. I should also say that registration is open also for Jersey Fire.
49:34: Ohio Fire, you can go to OhioFire .org. Jersey Fire, you can go to JerseyFire .org. Jersey Fire will be July 8th and 9th in Toms River, New Jersey.
49:42: There is a change of speakers. James Warner Wallace will not be there. We may have a replacement.
49:48: We're working on that. Justin Peters will be. We will still be having that conference.
49:54: We'll still be talking on the topic of the Word of God. Until next lesson, next class,
50:00: I want to encourage you to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.