Total Depravity, What We Believe, Part 22

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Once we start with a sin nature, we realize that there are no people that can have this proper affection and love toward God.

Because they have a sin nature. And that's why it says all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Every one of us is in the category that we don't have the proper affection and love toward God. So that first way is not an option.

That's why Christ had to come and die. Because the law can't do it.

Because we don't have that proper affection and love toward God. Welcome to The Rap Report with your host,

Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of striving for eternity and the

Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Welcome to another edition of The Rap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rappaport, the President and Executive Director of Striving for Eternity and the

Christian podcast community, joined by the one and only Bud the Wiser, host of The Bud Zone.

So welcome, Bud. Well, thank you. I'm the other guy that doesn't have a title, and I'm the face on Zoom as we record these that Andrew talks at.

Well, actually, you do have a title. You do have a title at Striving for Eternity because you are Editor -in -Chief.

So you can start notifying that because, you know, all the blogs go through you. So if there's anything wrong that people find in our blog articles, blame

Bud. Please. Anything really good, you could just say it's because I hired the person to do the blogging.

Yeah, whoever wrote it, they deserve the credit. That's good. Yeah, that's about the only thing

I could take credit for with the blogs. So today what we want to do is talk about a topic that is, well, in some circles, hotly debated.

It is one where there's a lot of misunderstanding. Right now, we have a lot of people who think that what we're going to talk about today is heresy.

Now, let me just give a warning before we get into this. Please do not throw the heresy label out too quickly.

I find on social media, Bud, I'm sure you've seen this, social media, if you disagree with me, you're a heretic.

No. I mean, that's happened. Yeah. I know that I've been, the first time that I was on Matt Slick's radio show, he had me on and he asked whether I was a

Calvinist. And I said, well, all I know is I've been told I'm a heretic because I'm a Calvinist.

And I've been told that I'm a heretic because I'm not a Calvinist. The only thing that everyone seems to agree on is

I'm a heretic. No one seems to know if I'm a Calvinist or not. Well, Andrew, brother,

I love you. I'm here to snatch you from the flames. So let's carry on with it.

Yeah. So what we're doing, we're continuing in our series, What We Believe, which is basically we're going through, if you go to strivingforeturning .org,

you go to the About section, and in there is our doctrinal statement, What We Believe. We've been working through this.

We've already covered our view of scriptures, God, angels, and now we're discussing the doctrine of man.

And as we discuss this, we're going to get into the topic today. I'm going to mention that awful

T word, total depravity. What is it not?

What is it? Is it biblical? Should we believe it? What should we believe about it?

And so that's what we're going to cover today on The Wrap Report. I'm going to ask

Bud to read the section we're going to cover, I believe we're only going to get one paragraph, and we've already said this is really closely tied to the next paragraph.

And so you are going to want to listen to this one and next episode. However, I'm really going to say you need to start at the beginning of the series and just listen to all of them.

If you find this series helpful, I encourage you to share it. If you listen online, please follow the podcast.

When you subscribe to it or follow, you subscribe for free. It doesn't cost anything. But when you do that, that actually gets us higher in the rankings and that helps others to find us.

So please subscribe, please share and encourage others to subscribe or follow. Bud, let's get into this next paragraph we have, which starts with every person has a sin nature.

Now, we discussed that already. So this is building on what we've discussed the last several episodes in this series.

So let's pick up there. Okay. It reads every person has a sin nature and is totally depraved in that they lack the proper affection and love toward God and do evil.

Total depravity also refers to the complete man having been corrupted by sin, including man's will.

The inherited sin is the nature of man, while the imputed sin is the reality of that nature imputed to each person from Adam.

Adam and Eve are sinners because they sinned. Every person afterward sins because he possesses a sin nature.

After the fall, Adam and Eve committed sin because they then had a sin nature.

So as we look at this, we've already discussed the sin nature, the imputed sin that we have from Adam.

We did that in the last episode in the series. Well, actually, technically two episodes ago in the series, because the last one in the series, you and I did a behind -the -scenes.

Oh, that's right. And I was talking with Jim Osmond, and basically it's one of those conversations, bud, like we had said, we have these conversations, we wish we had hit record.

I wish I had hit record on the conversation with Jim. We were talking about a theological topic, maybe we'll get into on an episode, is can

God die? Lots of different views on that. Because Jesus had to be God in order to pay for our sin, and he died.

But what is that death? And we got into a lot of interesting things because, no, God can't die, but God can die.

It all depends on the definition of die. And so definitions are important. And he said some brilliant things as well,

Jim Osmond always does. And so because of that, I was like, I wish I hit record because I wanted to go back and remember,

I could not write fast enough in the conversation as I'm taking notes. But we're saying here every person.

So right off the bat, what we're saying in the statement, and a doctrinal statement, a good doctrinal statement, says what we believe, but in that, it's also saying what we don't believe.

I know there's a lot of people that say, well, doctrine divides. It does. It divides falsehood and error from truth.

That's the purpose. If you don't have a good doctrine, if you just want to say we all believe the same thing, let's just get along, you won't actually get along.

What you're going to do is you're going to suppress the truth or what you really believe for the sake of getting along, but you're not really walking in alignment.

And so we want to say that what we're going to say is true for every person, except for Christ.

And I've mentioned that in the paragraph before, as we looked at, when we talked about the sin nature, we had just built, building off of the fact, the reality that we have a sin nature that we covered in the previous episode.

We're saying every person has a sin nature and is totally depraved.

So the sin nature is biblical. We looked at it, Romans 5, 12 to 19 to 12 to 21.

You can look at that. That was that the sin nature is passed on from Adam to his children.

And so that would be a thing that we end up seeing. That is something that would be biblical.

But we're saying here that, and is every person is totally depraved. Now, hold on, bud. I'm going to,

I want to do something really quick. All right. I just did a search in my logos. I looked for everywhere in the

Bible, bud, everywhere in the Bible where total depravity exists. I didn't find a single one.

Therefore we can say that total depravity is not biblical because it doesn't appear in the Bible. There's no

Bible verse that has the word total depravity. So it is not biblical. Correct? Well, you're sitting there at your computer.

See if the word Bible pops up. How many times do you get a count on the word Bible in the Bible? Okay. Let's look.

Oh, but we got a problem here. Bible doesn't appear anywhere. Yeah. There you go.

So the Bible is not biblical. I guess not. So total depravity is clearly not biblical.

It doesn't show up. Well, you know, and we've talked about this before with regards to the Trinity. You always run into the

Jehovah Witness and Trinity. No, no. The fact that the word or the phrase

Trinity, Bible, total depravity, they don't appear in scripture, worded in our way of communicating, does not mean that the idea or the concept is not there.

And that's the first argument that people will make often when they want to say it's not biblical.

It doesn't appear in the Bible. And as Bud just said, neither does the word Bible or Trinity or many other things.

I forget what, it's one of the omnis. I think omnipresent is the one, I think, the idea is there, but that word is not.

Yeah, but I mean, you know, I like the Westminster uses this phrase. I'm not sure if it's in any of the other confessions, but the implication is by good and necessary consequence.

So as we read scripture, we can deduce by good and necessary consequence that this reflects truth.

So when you say total depravity is not in the Bible, which also is not in the

Bible, it's evident that it is a biblical doctrine. And we've deduced that by the narrative of scripture that the

Lord has given to us. Now that's your Westminster confession. That's your Presbyterian wannabe coming out.

John Owen used it. So I kind of, I remember it from there, but I do remember it from the confession, yeah.

Well, let's start with what total depravity is not. Because one of the things we want to do when we define things is clarify what it's not.

Because a lot of people will make arguments and they're straw man arguments. They're arguments that aren't what the word actually means so that they can easily knock it over.

So what we have here is total depravity does not mean that a person is as depraved as they possibly can be.

It doesn't mean that someone is going to be as wicked of a sinner as they could possibly be.

You think of the worst person that you could think of in the world, whether you want to think of Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, name the person you think is the worst person in the world.

And they were not as depraved as they could have been. They even held back from their wickedness.

No one is totally depraved in their actions. And that's how many people assume this to be.

The response people have is when you talk about total depravity is, well, I know people that are good.

See, that's not the thing. And we're saying this is true for every person. We're saying every person has a total depravity.

So if it's true for every person, if you're defining it by their actions, it means that every person would be as wicked as possible all the time.

And nobody is that way. There's not a single human being that is that way.

Yeah, I mean, I think, wouldn't you agree with this? Maybe, maybe not. We're here to talk.

So when you think about the doctrine of total depravity and its application to every person, what you really need to do is back up and distinguish it not by their actions.

We're really talking about an ontological. This is our constituency. And just a simple definition of that,

I think, would be that we lack original righteousness and we possess positive evil.

And like you just said, it doesn't mean that every person, an individual is going to commit every possible sin or that they are as wicked as they can be.

But it does mean that ontologically we are depraved in every aspect of our being, our mind, will, emotions, everything.

Yeah. And what we end up seeing with that is the fact that we're defining in here very specifically what we mean by the total depravity.

Right? We're saying every person has a sin nature and is totally depraved in that they lack proper affection and love towards God and do evil.

Now, we're not saying they do evil all the time. We're not saying they do all the evil they could do.

It's just that they do evil. But the first part of this, what we're saying total depravity means is that they lack an affection and a love toward God.

The doing evil part, I think, is clear. I think that many people know we do evil.

You don't believe that, go turn on the news. But there is some debate on this idea, do we lack the proper affection and love toward God?

There are many people who will say that we're born neutral. We actually can have the right and proper affection and love for God apart from God doing anything.

Now, this is not as commonly believed in Christianity as many think.

There's many people who do not believe in the doctrine of total depravity, though often they don't have a proper definition of it.

I've found that out. If you want, go to Apologetics Live and watch my debate with R .A. Fuentes on Calvinism, where he said

Calvinism is useless and dangerous. That was the topic of debate. And what we ended up revealing in the cross -examination is that he is a

Calvinist. Very strange to be arguing against Calvinism when you're a

Calvinist. But what was the problem? He had wrong definitions. And so his definition for total depravity was that we would do evil all the time.

And this is what you end up seeing. He argued that we could have a proper affection and love toward God right out of the womb.

What that means is that we could turn to God. We could do things that are pleasing in God's sight.

Now, I want you to think through this. What is salvation? Salvation is

God coming to earth, Jesus Christ dying on a cross to offer to us the forgiveness of sin.

Why would he have to die if we could do this on our own? This is the argument that Paul makes in Galatians 2, in verse 20 and 21.

He says, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

The life that I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me.

I do not nullify the grace of God. For if righteousness comes through the law, then

Christ died needlessly. What's he saying there? If we could show the proper affection toward God and love toward God through the law, then

Christ didn't need to die. So if we have that proper affection, there would be two ways of salvation.

I could do it through my own goodness. I could do it through having that proper affection, just carrying out the law, being a good person, never violating

God's law, or I can be saved by what Christ did. So the argument would have to be that Christ came to die for those people that didn't do it on their own.

But now do you see why we tie this to the sin nature? Because once we start with a sin nature, we realize that there are no people that can have this proper affection and love toward God because they have a sin nature.

And that's why it says all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Every one of us is in the category that we don't have the proper affection and love toward God.

So that first way is not an option. That's why Christ had to come and die because the law can't do it because we don't have that proper affection and love toward God.

I think the interesting thing, and there's just more to it than we're going to discuss here, certainly when

Paul in Galatians is talking, he is talking about really the moral law of God, the Mosaic commands from Sinai, 10

Commandments, and that there is no possibility for salvation.

You know, you go to Romans and he talks about, you know, the law reveals sin. It's intended to point you to your need for a savior.

A lot of people have a wrong understanding that in the Old Testament, the Jews, Israel, was saved by obedience to the law, an individual

Jew in the New Testament. Well, that's completely wrong. They were saved by grace through faith just as we are.

But even if you back up from beyond the existing and necessary moral law of God, Sinai, the 10

Commandments, the first great commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, all your mind.

We violate that because of a depraved nature. So if you want to dismiss the law, which you shouldn't do, you're still in violation of the very first great commandment.

I mean, Christ talks to the, you know, the lawyer comes up in Matthew and ask him, what's the great commandment? All the

Pharisees trying to trap him. And he answers with that. Now, of course, we understand the implications.

This is like a summary of the first table of the law of the Mosaic commandments. But yeah, our sin nature, we can't even obey that.

And that's what you've indicated here, a proper affection and love towards God. We can't do it.

Even regenerated, we don't do it. Correct. We will in heaven. And that's why I look so forward to glorification.

So we're saying here is a very important next sentence here, because this is what the battle was.

And this is really the battle over total depravity. When we get into total depravity, and what I do when I ask people, if you see the debate

I had on Calvinism with R .A. Fuentes, what I do is I don't use the term total depravity.

I ask a question and I go through all the five points and try to understand whether someone believes what's behind the term total depravity.

That's what we're talking about. Total depravity doesn't appear in the Bible, but does the concepts of total depravity appear in the

Bible? Well, yes. So if that does, what I want to do is understand if someone believes that. My argument with R .A.

Fuentes was the fact that he said, Calvinism is useless and dangerous. And I said,

Calvinism is necessary because the idea, the thoughts behind the concepts of Calvinism are the

Bible, are the gospel. You can't have the gospel without the thoughts behind it.

Total depravity being that we do not have the proper affection and love towards God. But in that, where the debate came down is, people said the sin nature, the effect of sin is only on our mind and emotions.

And people were saying the will was set free from that. And that's why people can choose God. And what

I'm saying here is total depravity also refers to the complete man having been corrupted by sin, including his will.

In other words, the way that I ask this question of people is, do you believe when Adam and Eve sinned and a curse came upon the universe from God because of Adam's sin, do you believe your mind was affected by sin?

Yes. Do you believe your emotions were affected by sin? Yes. Do you believe your will was affected by sin?

Yes. That's the idea of total depravity. It is the fact that our sin nature affects our mind, our emotions, and our volition.

This is what total depravity means. This is the debate of it. When you say you believe in it or not, it's how far reaching is our sin nature?

Does it affect the complete man? In other words, does it affect his thinking, his emotions, his volition?

If the answer to that is yes, then you believe in total depravity.

You may not believe in some of the false notions of how total depravity is defined,

I get that, but guess what? I don't either. Why? Because they're not true, right?

So you got to deal with the way that terms are defined. So when I use the term total depravity, I mean that in our thinking, in our emotions, in our volition, we lack the proper affection and love towards God, and we do evil things in his sight.

That's what I mean when I say total depravity. So what you end up seeing with this is total depravity is a doctrine that is very closely tied to the sin nature.

It is saying how far reaching is our sin nature? In other words, our sin nature does not just affect our thinking and our emotions, but it affects our volition or will also.

Now, notice I'm saying will and not free will. We've dealt with this before, but repetition is very good because A, you may have not listened to the previous episode.

Shame on you. Go back and listen. We're building off of what we've said in the past, and that's why this is helpful to listen to the whole series.

But we do not say free will. We say will. Why? Because the sin nature has affected the will.

That's what total depravity means. We do have a will. We have a volition.

We make choices. When people say free, they mean that it is free from influence. In other words, we can choose to love

God and have affection toward God, and we can choose things that would be pleasing in his sight apart from him, apart from him changing our nature.

The doctrine of sin nature says we cannot do that, that we've been affected by sin.

If that doctrine of sin nature affects our will, then we are not free.

What Romans 5 says, Romans 6, we are slaves to sin. If we are a slave to sin in our volition, then it is not free.

It's enslaved to sin. I believe we have a free will when we are regenerate and the

Holy Spirit indwells us. And now by the power of the Holy Spirit, we have the ability through the

Holy Spirit to make good choices. But we've always had choices.

I'm saying that because many people confuse will and free will.

Once you add the word free, it has a different connotation. So we believe in a will, an enslaved will until salvation, and then a free will.

Yeah, the problem is that people don't understand that when they argue an issue of free will, what they're really talking about is autonomy, and no one is autonomous.

You are bound by your passions, by whatever. You're either in the kingdom of lightness or the kingdom of darkness.

And those are the things that are gonna influence you. You're free within that realm to make the choices that you make.

But you cannot choose to seek obedience to the first great commandment until you're in the kingdom of light, until you are regenerate, until you're born again, born from above and indwelt by the

Holy Spirit. Now you're, it's only the believer who seeks God. The unbeliever doesn't seek

God, you know, Romans three. So yeah, no one's autonomous. We don't have autonomy.

But many people think that they do, because in our limited experience, it feels like we have autonomy.

It feels like we can make decisions. Feelings, by the way, can be deceptive.

Well, I was gonna say, your emotions have been affected by the fall. Most people agree that. Jeremiah says our heart's deceitfully wicked.

We shouldn't trust our feelings and our emotions over the clear teaching of God's word.

And so what I would challenge, if you disagree, listener, if you're listening and you're saying,

I disagree with your view on total depravity. I don't think that the sin nature has affected our will.

My challenge to you is gonna be this. It's not me saying it. This is from Jeremiah.

Our heart is deceitfully wicked. This is from Paul saying that we're enslaved to sin. I mean, you go through the scriptures and you are gonna see throughout the

Psalms, throughout Paul's writings, that it's very clear that we, every one of us are sinners.

That every one of us in our choices are enslaved to that sin. And so when we look at that, we know what we experience.

Look, I've been clear when it comes to this whole issue of, do we choose God or did

God choose us? Experientially, I chose God. That's what

I experienced. And apart from scripture, that's all I would know. I know what

I experienced and I experienced that. But what I don't know is what God's doing behind the scenes.

And what scripture says is God chose me. And now we have to figure out how do we reconcile those two.

Well, we will reconcile those two when we get to doctrine of soteriology, which is the doctrine of salvation.

But there is a way to reconcile those two without any problems. And I'll give you a hint.

We've talked about it in the past, the doctrine of superintending, that God works through people in such a way that the very choices they make are exactly as God intended them to be, such that God gets 100 % of the credit and we get none, even though we do the act.

We see it in the doctrine of inspiration. We see it in doctrine of sanctification. I see it in the doctrine of regeneration.

So before we move on, bud, I think it is time that you need to wash your face.

You do. I can see your face is a little bit dirty there. And you've been so upset with this talk of depravity.

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With that bud, let's get back to this whole idea of sin. The next part that we have here is we say in here that as we've kind of concluded, right?

The sin nature is tied to total depravity. We get into the question of what really is sin. We've talked about this a bit before, but we're saying here now, the inherited sin is from the nature of man while imputed sin is the reality of that nature imputed onto each person from Adam.

So there is a difference here, a distinction we're making between that sin we inherit and that sin which we impute, okay?

So this is answering a question, why do we make this distinction? Well, this is answering the question that some will say,

I am not responsible for what Adam did. Now, is that true that I am not responsible for the sins of others?

Well, I just opened a can of worms, haven't I there, bud, in that question? In our culture, many would say, well, yes, yes, you are responsible.

You're responsible for the sins of previous Americans that enslaved blacks. I mean, this is the big issue in social justice, is it not?

To argue that we are responsible for the sins of others. And some will go back to the

Old Testament where God will say that I will remember the sins of a father to the second and third generation, or third and fourth generation, actually.

What you end up seeing there is people say, well, see, you're responsible for what your great -grandparents do.

Well, each of those passages that we look at, we look at in context, what God said is he would remember the sin.

It didn't mean that he would punish someone else for what others do. And so we all commit sin.

The reality is when God judges, based on the sins we do, is

God righteous? Or let me ask it this way, would God be righteous if he took every human being's life the moment they first committed a sin?

Yeah, he could do that. And he'd be perfectly righteous because we violated his law. The fact that he's long -suffering, people think somehow that God has to be long -suffering that he has to only judge on a certain way.

In other words, when you see in the Old Testament that a whole family is gonna be killed because of the sins of a father, father does something, does that mean that children were innocent?

No, they were guilty too. It's just that God decrees. In those rare times that God decrees something like that, he's decreeing it for whatever purposes he's doing.

But he's still being just because they're not being punished because what their father did, they're being punished for what they did.

They're gonna be guilty. Now, in some of these cases, do we know if the children, and everyone thinks little kids, but maybe the children were adults, were they involved in the sin of the father?

Sometimes they were. And so there's a responsibility there. Did they cover up for it? Did they know about it?

These are things that scripture doesn't answer. So we don't always have all the information with some of the charges that people make against God with this.

But when we talk about this, what we're trying to answer is the fact that there is a sin that we pass on from Adam to his children, from his male children to their male children, and so on and so on, so that I pass them on to my children.

We inherit that. That is the sin nature. That part of us that's in the creation of us, when we procreate,

I believe that that is part of the creation of a spirit, the immaterial part of us.

And in that, the sin nature is passed on from father to child. That's the idea of inherited sin.

The idea of imputed sin is the reality of what's inherited.

So that is the fact that Adam, and we've talked about this in the past, as our federal head represented all of us, in that when he sinned, he brought the curse of sin into the universe, into mankind.

And because of that, there is an imputed sin that we have.

So are we responsible for what Adam did? That's the inherited sin when people are asking that question.

But we are in an imputed way. So let me give an illustration for this so that it may be easier.

When we live in a country, we have a leadership, whether it be a king, a parliament,

Congress, president, in our case, it would really be a constitution. When we look at this, if in our country in America, if the

Congress declares war, we are at war. Did you vote for that war?

No. Your federal head voted on that war. Now that you're at war, you are, whether you like it or not, at war with someone that maybe you got along with before in another country.

But now you're at war. Not because you had anything to do with it, but because your federal head did, because they represented you.

You live in a family. Your parents are the representatives of the family. So when you have young children, the parents make decisions for the family.

Oh, what am I saying? But I'm sorry, this is 2022. I'm so sorry.

It's not the parents who make decisions. Two -year -olds can understand their gender and the parents should not have any say in it.

What am I saying? Yeah, you see how nonsensical that sounds? That two -year -olds make decisions for the rest of their life that we would say, we would say they can't have a gun.

We want to push that. They can't own a gun until 21 because their minds are not smart enough.

Can't figure out the danger of a gun, but they can figure out their gender and the parents shouldn't be involved.

Why do people do that? Why do people remove the parent's decision? Because the parent is the federal head.

The parent is the one who has the responsibility to care and protect for the child. Adam was our federal head and he blew it.

And there are times where a federal head as a parent blows it and does bad for the kids.

That happened with Adam. And so we have sin that's imputed to us, to each person from Adam.

And this occurred when Adam, because Adam and Eve are sinners, we're saying because they sinned. Let me, before we get to that, let me just ask you,

Bud, if you have anything you want to add to the imputed versus inherited sin. No, no,

I think you've covered that. I think it's important to realize that the sin nature that we have that has been imputed to us, we've got that because of Adam's representation of us and God got to choose him and create him as our representative.

So if you don't like it too bad, take your quarrel up with the Lord. It's your argument, it's not with me, it's with God.

I had that this week. You know, I asked you if you have anything to say on it and you say no, and I'm like, you know that the reason

I asked you is because I got to drink my coffee. I'm glad you picked up on that and continued. Well, it's just, you know, we have to understand everyone has this.

You cannot, because we believe in total depravity, you can't take impurity and produce purity.

You're never going to get it. It's not going to happen that way. So yeah, this is a generational thing that Adam, he blew it.

Now, I would say this, the whole, what I consider mythological error of people saying, well, his sin was that, you know, he ate the apple.

No, no, I mean, I'm from the deep South. I would not have done the sin,

Adam, because I couldn't be tempted with an apple. Now, if you toss a peach at me, then yeah,

I would have probably been guilty of that. Well, there you just made a mistake because we don't know what type of fruit it was.

I know, but that's what I'm saying. You know, most people say, oh, you ate the apple. No, it doesn't say. It had to be a peach.

See, I know what that fruit was though, okay? We have this debate in my household all the time because I know it was an apple because I know what it was.

There is a fruit that tastes like sin. It's called grapefruit. It is of the devil. I'm convinced of it.

It is the worst tasting thing in the world. And my bride, for some reason, loves it.

And I just keep trying to convince her that this was the fruit in the garden that caused sin. I mean, it tastes like it.

Yeah, yeah. You probably need to deal with some headship and submission issues to get that going on. Well, I did once try.

I put out a post on Facebook, a poll. I said, okay, who likes grapefruit? And unfortunately, like 60 -some percent liked grapefruit.

So I was in the minority and my wife was very happy. One of those things where you go, okay, as a joke,

I'm going to show you that you're wrong and it backfires. You know,

I was recently debating with someone on Twitter about the fact of they were claiming that they're a pastor and they're

Christian, they're gay all the time. And I'm like, no.

And so we got into the discussion and ended up being that they were like, well, so you just have a problem with, you know, because it would end up being about women preachers as well.

You have a problem with women preaching. I said, no, I don't. God does. Bring it up with him.

I don't care. I really don't. People come up to me and ask me about homosexuality. I don't care.

It doesn't really affect me personally. But God does care about it.

And so when people ask me, what do you think about homosexuality? I go, I don't care. I recently saw a video that popped up on Facebook from years ago where I was at a gay pride parade, not for the parade.

We happened to set up an evangelism event and we were just there that week that they had the parade. So people were like, you know, what do you think about homosexuality?

I'm like, I don't care. What does God think about it? What do you think God thinks about it? They go, God says it's a sin.

I agree. Then they accuse me of hate speech. I go, what did I say? You said God said it's a sin.

Or they'll say, you said it's a sin. I said, no, you said God said it's a sin. I never did. And they're like, well, actually, no, not at the gay pride parade.

They were just in mob mentality. It's funny because when I got done open air evangelizing and I stepped down from the box, all of a sudden four of them come up to apologize for their behavior.

Because they knew the whole time I was being respectful to them and the crowd was not being respectful to me, and they saw that.

And it caused them to come up and apologize, though they still disagree. That is how we should behave as Christians when we're evangelizing, right?

Because we represent Christ. That's off topic. Sorry. No, no, it's all good.

We got the rabbit. So when we look at this, we're saying here, Adam and Eve are sinners because they sinned.

Now this is trying to answer something specific that we're saying here. Because after this,

I'm gonna say that every person afterwards sins because he possesses a sin nature. Adam and Eve were different than you and I.

Adam and Eve did not have a sin nature at creation. They became sinners because they sin.

You and I have a sin nature, and we sin because we're sinners.

That's the distinction we're trying to make here. You and I sin not because of our environment.

It's not because of we're taught to sin. Any of you parents, did you teach your children to lie?

No. I don't know a single parent that trained their children at one and a half years old, two years old, whatever, to lie.

But as soon as they can speak, they start telling lies. And if they could have spoke earlier, they would be telling lies.

It is part of our nature. Why? Because we have a sin nature, we will sin.

Adam and Eve were different. They became sinners. They got that sin nature because they sinned.

So as we would talk about God being the uncaused cause, they would be the unsinned sinners, right?

The unsinners sin, right? They were the first ones. They didn't have that sin nature causing them to sin.

You and I do. Now, Adam and Eve committed sin. And once they did, they then had a sin nature.

So we're saying here after the fall, Adam and Eve committed sin because they then had a sin nature.

So the sin nature was part of the fall. Adam and Eve, sinless, they sin, that brings a fall.

By the way, remember that fall occurred with Adam and not Eve because he was the federal head.

That's why he passes it on. That's why Christ didn't have a human father. But what you end up having is sinless.

They sin, the fall occurs, a sin nature is now given to them. And they pass that on.

And every child after Adam inherits that sin nature, except for Christ.

Why? Because he didn't have a human father. So we inherit that sin all the way back from Adam, but we're imputed with the sin of Adam because we have that sin nature now.

So we will continue in sin. We sin because we now have that sin nature as part of us.

And so when we talk about total depravity, this is all that's really wrapped up with this is that our sin nature affects every part of our being, our thinking, our emotions, and our will.

And all of it is because we inherited it from Adam, but we also imputed it from Adam. But guess what, folks, there's some good news because there's something else that can be imputed.

And that's the righteousness of Christ. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, 21, that he who knew no sin became sin, that we might become the righteousness of God.

That's the idea of imputation. Our sin was imputed to Christ.

Did Christ actually sin by going to the cross? Did he actually sin? No, that sin that we did is counted toward Christ.

And then his righteousness is counted toward us. This is important because when people want to deny the imputed sin of the first Adam, they're denying the imputed righteousness of the second

Adam, Romans 5, 12 and following. If we don't have the sinfulness of Adam, then we can't have the righteousness of Christ.

Because if we deny the imputation of sin, then we deny the imputation of righteousness.

And if you deny that, then you are dead in your sin and going to be judged by God in hell for all eternity.

Do you see now the implications of this? This is not just a subtle thing. This carries a lot of weight to it.

If we are not in Adam, we cannot be in Christ. How did

Christ take that sin? He didn't inherit it. So it was imputed on him.

It was counted on him. He paid that price that we owe. And we get his righteousness.

Do we deserve his righteousness? Nope. But it's imputed to us because he who knew no sin,

Jesus Christ, our sin was imputed to him. And in doing so, we receive his righteousness, his righteousness imputed to us.

For all who would believe. I mean, we're talking about the three great imputations, the imputation of Adam's sin to us, the imputation of our sin, meaning really the sin of those who would believe to Christ, and then

Christ's imputation of righteousness to us. So those are the three great imputations.

The benefits that we have in Christ are by grace through faith. So we don't argue universality here.

And that's, I know when we get to soteriology, you will address that. But Christ's imputation of righteousness is limited to those who would believe.

And that's why the call of the gospel is repent and believe. So I'm going to make a distinction.

This is going to be one of the areas that you and I disagree, right? Because you mentioned three imputations and we agree on two of them.

So here's the difference. You just described three. Yeah. Well, here's the difference. This is where some people will say,

I'm not a Calvinist. It depends on your definition, right? We both agree that sin was imputed from Adam to every human being.

Agreement. We agree that Christ's righteousness is imputed to all who believe.

However, we disagree is whether Christ, his death on the cross that our sin on him was imputed for all people.

So I believe that when we look at 1 John 2, 2, and he himself is the propitiation of our sins and not ours only, but also those of the whole world.

Now people get into the question of, okay, what does it mean world? The different views of world and it's whole world.

So it's qualifying all around the world. Is that all the nations? Is that the real issue is who's the us or the hour?

He's a propitiation for our sin, not our sins, but so it's not just us.

It's the other people. So the question is who's the us. And I've seen many people that will try and say, this is

Jews and Gentiles. That doesn't fit by John's time. That distinction wasn't there.

John's writing to Gnostics. And so this would really be those that he's saying are the, you know, the Christians versus the

Gnostics. That would be an argument that could be made. But I would say that Christ on the cross, all the sin of all the world was imputed to him.

Now, some people will say, well, then, then that means that his atonement wasn't limited and he paid it all.

And I go, no, see, now this is where I make a distinction. However we go, we're going to get into the mystery of God, things we can't understand.

And so I would say that all of our sin was imputed to Christ on the cross. I think he did.

He was a propitiation for the sins of the whole world, not ours only, but also of the whole world.

I think that he is a propitiation for all. However, the righteousness of Christ is only in, as you said, limited in its atonement, limited in its application only to those who believe, because that's what brings about that atonement is the fact that he applies that righteousness.

And so now how do you reconcile this with a 2

Corinthians 5 .21? Because that seems to be that there's a connection there.

And that's where I would say it seems to be. So it's either one of two things in these passages, either the us, the our sins that John's referring to is speaking to Christians and he's making the, who's the not us, it would have to be those

Gnostics that do actually believe. I don't think that fits with everything that John was saying.

And so this is where my struggle is. And this is why when we say we have to be people of the text, not people of the theology system, because a system is easy to argue because we understand that.

There's some mystery here we can't understand. And so I'm one of those people that will say, I believe

I can say Christ died for all people. That doesn't mean all people go to heaven. It doesn't mean all people have a chance to go to heaven.

It only means that those who believe it is limited in its application. So I think the offer can be given to all.

I can share the gospel with everyone and they can believe that's the work of God.

Now, this is a distinction. I know that a bunch of people I probably just triggered, including Bud, but this is a distinction that I'm making that many don't make because I'm trying to reconcile different passages of scripture in their context.

Now that does create problems with theological systems. I recognize that. And that's why when people ask me if I'm a

Calvinist, I usually say I'm a Rapportian. My last name is Rappaport, right?

I have my own beliefs and I get them from scripture. Am I going to be wrong in areas?

Yep. Just not the areas that Bud and I disagree. In any area Bud and I disagree, I'm right.

But there's other areas that we're both wrong. I thank you for that qualification and I will make a note of it and proceed cautiously from henceforth.

But yeah, so this would be a difference. So we would be dealing more in the arena of soteriology and what is implied by limited atonement because that's where this issue would speak to.

Yeah, and these are things that, as we're getting into this, this is really specific minutiae.

Though it's important, does this break fellowship? No. Does this mean one of us is a heretic?

No. What are we both really appealing to is the nature of God, the mystery of God, things we can't fully comprehend.

And so there's going to be areas that we end up just having to say, we're going to find out when we get to heaven.

And so I try to reconcile the scriptures as best I can. There is a point where I go, God's incomprehensible.

I can only understand what he reveals to me in his word, not in any other way. He doesn't talk to me.

He has no whispering, but in his word, I have to be accurately studying the word of God to see what his word is saying.

And so, yeah, folks, you may find that you have differences with other folks, but we have to know what they believe, how they're defining things and work within that framework before we say that they're wrong.

So, Bud and I agree two -thirds of the way. Don't worry, when we get to eschatology, we're going to have a lot more fun. I think

I'm out that month. I'm not sure. No. But yeah, no, that's an important point. People need to know that neither position that we've discussed here on this particular very fine point, neither is heterodox.

They're both orthodox, historically orthodox approaches to that very particular idea.

For some folks who may not know the terms, I mean, I think more people would understand orthodox, but not as many people know the term heterodox, so define both of them.

No, well, orthodoxy is that stream of the faith once for all delivered that we would adhere to, that we would understand.

I mean, your doctrinal statement here is expressing an orthodox understanding of what that faith is.

When you get outside of it, your Mormon book, Jehovah Witnesses, these are heterodox.

They're outside. They're contrary. They're against what the historic stream of that faith once for all delivered represents.

Correct. So, I hope this has been helpful. This is really just a setup for what we're going to in the next in this series, because the next series we're going to get into, we're going to take everything we built off of here and start getting into what

Adam's disobedience means. We're going to look at all the ramifications of things. So, I want you to make sure that you don't miss that.

How do you do that? Well, make sure you're following the podcast so that it downloads next Wednesday when you are listening.

And so, again, please share this. I encourage you guys, go to strivingfortornier .org. Check out what we do. If you want speakers at your church on a wide variety of topics, you can go to our website.

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That would be a great help. If you can support us monthly, that would be good because, well, we have monthly expenses.

So, I mean, paying Bud is a lot of money, you know, for that editor -in -chief role. Well, I'm trying to get my seminar on eschatology all put together, and that's a lot of research time.

So, I'm kidding. I'm not doing that. How long does it,

I mean, seriously, how long does it take to make things up out of thin air? I mean, come on, Bud. Oh, we've got a whole host of, a cloud of witnesses that are just rolling over right now.

I'm just, folks, now I'm just, I admit I'm trying to guilt him in to that end times eschatology discussion that we're eventually going to have.

That's going to be thrilling. One of us is going to have to admit we're right, me. Yeah, well, it's the rap report.

You can come over to the Bud Zone, and maybe we'll have a different. And then you'll be right. Yeah, well, we should do it.

We should carry this discussion over to the Bud Zone on that one. That could be fun. All right.

I hope this has been helpful to you. I hope that you've learned a lot. I hope that you would consider sharing this with others. Let them know how much it meant to you, how much you learned from this.

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