John Samson Covers the TULIP Today on the Dividing Line

Hello and welcome to today's broadcast of The Dividing Line.

My name is Pastor John Sampson of King's Church in Phoenix. It's a delight to be on the show covering while Dr.

James White is away in Ukraine. And it's good to give a quick update.

He's okay. I've seen the text that has been sent to Rich. I've seen it with my own bare eyes, and he's okay.

Kiev is known as Kiev by the locals over there. I've actually been there four times to Ukraine, been to the square where all of the violence is taking place.

It's a very hostile situation. I'm told he's about 15 miles away, and in European terms, that's a long way.

That's outside the city, in fact, right on the outskirts of the city. It's very different over there, the way cities are built.

Very, very close buildings are, what shall

I say, they're very extensive right in the heart of the city, and then as the city spreads out, you are a long way from the city center where all the action is.

So as long as James keeps out of the city center, he should be okay. But please be praying for his safety, for his ministry over there.

It continues as of now. We're waiting for news from the State Department as to whether Americans should be leaving the environment there.

There's travel warnings, but as yet, there's been no decree saying just get out of the country.

So please be praying, but as of now, everything is fine. He's okay, although it's a very tense situation.

Wanted to give that update for everybody who's involved in praying for this ministry.

Please continue to pray for James and for his ministry over there. As I say, I'm Pastor John Sampson of King's Church, and I would request some prayer.

We're really looking as a church, just getting started in the Phoenix area, although I've been here a while, pastored a church and handed it over to someone else, now restarting a new church, and we're just meeting in a home situation right now, and we're looking for a location.

So would you pray that we'll be able to find a location on the west side where we'll be able to congregate?

It's a lot easier to invite people to a location that is more than a home, just looks better to the prospective candidate who might be looking for a church.

So please be praying for us in that. Today on the broadcast, we'll be taking calls, hopefully, if people are brave enough and willing enough to call in either with comments.

That's always encouraging when they are encouraging comments or questions or queries, and we're going to be looking at the tulip.

I want to just take us through the scriptures in the time today and hopefully next time as well on the subject of the doctrines of grace.

They're known as those doctrines of grace because they really tell us what God does in salvation, what he has done to save a people for himself.

We start off with the infamous acrostic tulip, and really it's not anything more than a memory device to help the

English -speaking world at least understand what was at the heart of the debate. Long after Luther had marched off the scene,

Calvin came along and then a gentleman by the name of Jacob Arminius really led protesters against the

Protestants, if you like. They were known as the Remonstrants. The doctrines that they had a big issue with were concerning vital aspects in their minds regarding what the

Reformers were teaching. They had five big objections, and the church got together in the

Netherlands at a place called Doort and came back with what they called the Canons of Doort, and in five articulated doctrines responded to the

Remonstrants. These are, in the English language at least, tulip, T standing for total depravity,

U for unconditional election, L for limited atonement, I for irresistible grace, and P for perseverance of the saints.

I want to deal with the first of these, knowing that Calvinism or the doctrines of grace is not everything

Calvin stood for. He never articulated his doctrine in five brief statements or five doctrines whatsoever.

These were certainly just a response to those that had some issues with what was being said by the

Reformers. Understanding that, that's the context in which these things are addressed.

T standing for total depravity. It's unfortunate that that really is the title given.

It works great as an acrostic, but I would prefer radical corruption to better explain the biblical doctrine.

I believe these things, not because I have some allegiance to church history, theologians.

Calvin is the guy of all guys, not at all. There are certain issues I would have with John Calvin, but in terms of these doctrines,

I believe they can be certainly attested to by Scripture, and I want to make that point very clearly.

Total depravity does not mean that man is as depraved as he possibly can be.

The total there is referring to every aspect of man, every component of man has been affected by the fall.

As the book of Romans chapter five tells us, when Adam sinned, it had dire consequences for everybody who followed after Adam.

Everyone in Adam died. We were born physically alive, but we were born spiritually dead because of Adam.

As in Adam, all die, Romans chapter five. So in Christ, all are made alive.

First Corinthians 15 also outlines that same truth. Martin Luther called the doctrine of the bondage of the will, in fact he wrote a book called

The Bondage of the Will, his most important work. For Luther at least, looking back on his ministry, he considered that this particular subject was the most important issue to grasp if you were ever going to understand the grace of God.

What total depravity means is that every aspect, every component of man, his mind, his will, his emotions, his body, everything about man has been affected by the fall to the point that man is incapable of coming to God without divine grace operating.

Man by his very nature is not a God lover, nor is he in neutral. He actually hates the

God of the Bible and needs divine surgery to remove a stony heart, as the

Bible would call it, and have a heart of flesh that beats now to know Christ, to know the true

God. He called his bondage of the will his most important work.

And to understand the soul, as we talked about last time, is to understand sola gratia, and a component of that is to see how bleak man's condition is outside of regeneration, coming to Christ, because he makes us alive spiritually.

Without that understanding, sola gratia has lost its teeth. The Reformation, magisterial reform is all understood.

Man is not sick, certainly he's not well. He's actually born dead on arrival, spiritually dead.

It was to the Christians at Ephesus that Paul wrote in Ephesians 2, you he made alive who were dead in trespasses and sins in which he once walked.

These were people walking around physically, but spiritually were dead.

Greek word nekros means dead like a corpse. And just as a jeweler in the store will always use a black velvet background to display the splendor of an exquisite diamond, so the intricate, dazzling beauty of the gospel is only fully seen when we understand what the

Bible says about man's radical condition outside of Christ. It's bleak, it's dark, but we have to understand that to see the brightness of what

God does in his grace. Only when we understand the immensity of our problem will we find the right solution.

Man does not need education to solve his problem. He needs a savior.

He needs a radical intervention from God. If we don't understand the problem, we'll come up with all kinds of remedies that don't address the problem.

And so it is, unless we understand how bleak our condition is, that we're spiritually dead before God, do not want the things of God, unless God intervenes, we'll not appreciate what

God does in saving someone. It's far more radical for God to convert the soul than to heal blindness, deafness, or make the lame walk.

God actually makes a brand new person when he converts the human soul.

That's why Paul wrote in 2nd Corinthians 5, 17, if any man be in Christ, he's a brand new creation.

He's a new creation. All things have passed away. All things have become new.

We need more than a moral pep talk. We need more than some medical first aid for our gaping wounds.

We need more than an oxygen mask to help us breathe more easily. What we need is a miracle. What we need is a resurrection.

And that's what God does for us in restoring man to himself, giving man a new heart.

In Romans chapter 5, I just want to read a few verses I alluded to just a few moments ago. Romans chapter 5, starting in verse 12, the apostle

Paul writing to the Christians at Rome said this, therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, talking of Adam and death through sin,

I believe the death that is spoken of here is spiritual death that resulted in physical death, death in all of its vile ramifications, death through sin.

And so death spread to all men because all sinned. How is that possible?

We were not there in the garden. How can the scripture say we all sinned?

Well, we have this doctrine of total depravity because we also believe in something called federal headship.

Adam was the federal head of the human race. And just as we might in the state of Arizona send representatives to Washington to represent our beliefs, our views, what we want to see happen in America, we send them there not so we can just do something with our time.

We do that because we want our views represented there. And if on occasion they are not representing us well, we can vote them out of office.

Well, it's not that in the Bible what happens is that God has chosen

Adam as the representative of the human race. And there in the garden, he was representing all of us.

And before you say, well, I didn't vote for him. The Bible is not a democratic system.

God actually picked the best possible candidate as our representative because he picked a perfect man.

No one who's ever gone to Washington has ever been perfect. But Adam in the garden was perfect in his moral pronouncements in terms of his he had no sin to speak of.

And yet he represented everyone who would follow after him. And so the Bible says when Adam sinned, we sinned with him.

By one man's sin, death spread to all men. Verse 14, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.

But the free gift is not like the trespass for many, if many died through the one man's trespass.

Talking of Adam's trespass in the garden, everyone in the human race died because of it.

Much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man. Jesus Christ abounded for many people say,

I don't like this idea of Adam representing me. And I get hit on the head and cursed and have spiritual death because of something someone else did.

Well, if you reject that, you also reject the other side of the coin, which is Jesus Christ living a sinless life, dying an atoning death and his death and his life counting for us.

So there are two sendings, if you like. There are two countings.

God counted everyone of Adam to be in Adam and all the things that Adam did resulted in the fall affecting all of Adam's progeny, anyone who came after Adam.

So Christ is the other federal head. And if anyone be in Christ, he's a new creation.

And everything that Christ has done, he achieved for us. Adam sinned on our behalf.

Christ lived the righteous life on our behalf, died the atoning death on our behalf.

And if we're in Christ, we get all of the benefits of Christ, not Adam. That's the message there.

The free gift is not like the result of the one man sin for the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation.

But the free gift following many trespasses brought justification, if because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man,

Jesus Christ. Verse 18. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, there it is in stark, plain terms.

Adam's trespass led to everybody in the human race being condemned. So one act of righteousness talking about the life of Christ leads to justification and life for all men, all men who trust in Christ.

For as by the one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners. So by the one man's obedience, talking of Christ, the many will be made righteous.

There it is in clear terms in our Bibles, the Bible reveals that according to God, there are two federal heads of the human race.

One is Adam. The other is Christ. Adam represented us, all the human race in the garden.

When he fell into sin, he plunged all of us into sin. Also, all mankind is naturally born into Adam, born of the flesh.

And because of that, all of us are born spiritually dead. Our problem is twofold, because a just and holy

God has witnessed not only Adam's transgression, but our own personal sins, the sins we've committed, as well as the sin nature that gives birth to them.

He who commits sin, Jesus said, is the slave of sin. We do not, we're not counted as sinners.

Let me get it right. We're not counted as sinners because we sin. We sin because we are sinners.

We're born with a hostility in our hearts towards God. And every parent knows this. You don't have to train your child to be naughty.

Now, little Johnny, I just want to give you this five minute brief talk on how to have attention in life and make everyone miserable around you.

Here we go. Let's go to the chalkboard. This is how you shout for things. This is how you take things. This is how you steal things.

This is how you make life miserable for everyone around you. Let me just go through. You don't have to do that. You have to train the child in the way he should go.

Foolishness is in the heart of the child. Rudder discipline will move it far from him. We have to do training because naturally speaking, we're all self -centered and we are not

God -centered. We do not want the God of the Bible. Adam, after he sinned, when he heard the sound of the

Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, what to do? He ran and hid.

And that's what men do. And he tried to cover himself, try to cover his own nakedness.

And every kind of religion is a type of covering of ourselves because we still have a religious bent.

We will worship something even if it's ourselves or our own thinking. Secularism is a religion of sorts.

Every kind of religion, if it's not the religion of the Bible, what God has revealed to us is an attempt to run from God.

A lot of people say, oh, this guy's really seeking. He's he was a Muslim. Now he's a Sikh. And he's interested now in becoming a

Mormon. We're watching this progression. This guy isn't seeking. He's trying every kind of covering available to run from the true

God. Only when someone comes to Christ is someone actually seeking him. Because by nature, scripture says

Romans 311, there is no God seeker. And what the doctrines of grace involve is looking at the scriptures and taking them seriously when they say there is no

God seeker. Well, I know someone who's seeking God. Well, that's because God has first sought them, because by nature we will not seek the

God of the Bible. We will seek everything else. We will make choices. Calvinism doctrines of grace do not say man has no ability to choose.

What we're saying is he will not choose the true God because by nature he doesn't want the true the true

God. We're not talking about a physical handicap that makes us incapable of choosing.

We're saying that our choices are tied to our hearts, tied to our nature.

And our nature is one that is in hostility towards God. Death itself is a consequence of sin.

And that's why even babies who have committed no outward sin die. Think about that.

Why do babies die? Not just elderly people who've committed a lot of sins, but people that are born within three hours, some of them die.

Why? Because there's death in this world. And man has inherited death from Adam, as in Adam, all die.

And so the sin of Adam is imputed, transferred, credited, counted to all those who have

Adam as their federal head. And you might not believe in Adam. But God says,

I do, and everything that happened to Adam happened as his being a representative of the human race.

Likewise, the obedience of Christ is imputed to all those who embrace Christ as Savior and Lord.

Paul said it this way, or wrote in 2 Corinthians 5, 21, For he, God, made him Jesus who knew no sin to become sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

So let me talk about radical depravity, total depravity. What is the nature of this death?

We could speculate and get a lot of answers that we make up for ourselves, but we don't need to because the

Bible has a clear answer to this. Morally, no one is righteous.

No one has ever kept God's law apart from Christ himself.

Romans 3, as it's written, None is righteous. Oh, is Paul just using a lot of hyperbole?

No, he continues. No, not one. None is righteous. No, not one.

No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside together. They've become worthless.

No one does good. Not even one. Oh, I know some people. They're good people.

Really? There are many Christians who believe the man is basically good and starting with the wrong premise, they end up with the wrong solution.

And they think, well, if man's basically good, all he needs is a moral pep talk, like a halftime team talk from a coach and say, come on, you can do better.

You can do better. Your performance can be raised. God is actually thrilled that you've turned out as well as you have.

You're doing great. All you need is some encouragement. Oh, I'm so excited you're here on planet

Earth. Wow, we were waiting for you to arrive. Look how good you are.

People think that's what people need. And yet the Bible says, no, goodness, there's not one out there.

No one does good. Well, excuse me, but I've helped 432 elderly people cross streets.

I've given to charity. I don't do anything bad, really. Have you loved God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength even today?

Have you? The throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive the venom of asps.

Snakes is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitten. Oh, no, I wouldn't perish the thought.

I'd never do that. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Oh, no, we're sophisticated.

In the sophisticated 20th century, we saw more people murdered than in any other century in human history.

And we did it with government approval. Something called abortion. Feet are swift to shed blood in their path of brewing and misery in the way of peace they have not known.

There is no fear of God before their eyes. These are not verses we like to put on our refrigerator, but they are verses that Paul is not only writing here, but he's quoting from the

Old Testament like a machine gun loaded. He's firing Old Testament verses at us and saying, everyone is under sin.

There are none righteous. No one is good and no one seeks for God and no one has done any good.

Well, well, isn't it better to build a hospital than to go around killing people? Absolutely.

But we're talking on a physical human level. But from God's perspective, no one has ever done a good work that is 100 percent all for the glory of God.

If we build a hospital, we want our name on it. We want people to notice.

Well, no, no, no. I was self -effacing. Yeah, you may have been self -effacing. If you get past that hurdle, you just wanted to bless people.

That's wonderful. But did you do it for the glory of God fully? Was it all for him?

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. God's standard is not how you're doing compared with the best sinner going to hell.

The standard is the glory of God. Are we doing all to the glory of God? Whatever you do in word or deed, do all to the glory of God.

And whatever is not a faith is sin. Are we doing it for God's glory? Are we doing it in faith?

If not, everything we do is tainted by sin, even our best ever efforts. And that's why

Isaiah 64 verse 6 says, all our righteousness is as filthy rags.

Hmm. So what is our condition? We're sinners. We're not righteous. We have a sinful mind.

No one understands. Romans 3 says the technical term for this is the noetic effects of sin.

N O E T. Noetic effects of sin. Our minds have been corrupted because we no longer think as clearly as Adam did before the fall.

Oh, that's why I'm thinking so, so, so unclearly. Yes, we've been affected.

We would all have got 100 % in every test we would ever have taken if it wasn't for Adam.

But remember, Adam was perfect before the fall.

This lack of personal spiritual perception and not merely a lack of human knowledge is our condition.

We don't know the truth. We have to hear his word. God has to reveal himself. We don't know

God by nature, not in a redemptive relational sense. We don't understand the beauty of the gospel.

We can't see it. Our mind is captive. There is no God seeker.

Our wills are captive to our nature. The reason why no one is jumping to the moon from planet

Earth is because we cannot. Our physical limitations put a barrier between us and the moon.

And so we can take a running jump all we like. And some might get a few feet further than someone else.

But in terms of jumping to the moon, none of us can do it. The Bible, that's God. The Father seeks those who worship him in spirit and in truth.

But in terms of our nature, we do not seek God. If you're seeking God, God has first sought you and has done divine surgery on your heart.

We only start seeking God at regeneration. The rest of the time, we're like Adam after the fall, running from him, putting up our coverings, trying to get by without the true

God we want. Oh, no, no, no. I know some people, they they feel guilty and they want to have their conscience cleansed.

And yes, they want the benefits of the kingdom. They just don't want the king of the kingdom. They want to have freedom from accusation.

Their mind is troubling them at night. They want to be free of that. They just don't want the God of the Bible unless and until God intervenes.

Man is not healthy. He's not sick. He's actually dead spiritually.

The reason, you know, the reason why salespeople don't go to the morgue or to a funeral home to raise sales when they're having a bleak month is because they're not going to get any reaction from anyone.

Sign on the dotted line. I'll give you the best offer completely. I'll make it even free for you for the first eight months.

Just sign it. They're not going to get any response because people are dead. So it is people will always reject, which is an active thing.

They will reject the true Christ because spiritually they are dead towards God. More than that, man is blind to God.

Jesus said, unless a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Second Corinthians for the God of this world has blinded the minds of those who do not believe.

It's not short sightedness. They can can see a little. Just can't see everything. No, they are blind.

You ever had a conversation with someone and they just can't see it. That's exactly it until the lights come on because they get new eyes.

And here's the point. When you have a blind person shining a torch, as they would say in England or a flashlight, you'd say over here in America doesn't help them.

Come on this way. Let me let me just shine a light. They're blind. They cannot see. And the entrance of his word brings light.

But light is not enough for someone who's blind to see. They need the word of God. They need it.

But what they need accompanied by the word of God is the Holy Spirit to give new eyes to the person so they can see.

When they see, they see the truth of God's word. And they say, why could I not have seen this before?

I've met many people who've come to Christ and they say, why didn't I come to Christ at age 20 rather than 70?

Simply because they couldn't see it back then. And now God has opened up their eyes.

We need more than to be wooed. We need more than the Holy Spirit's assistance. We need divine, radical surgery.

A heart of flesh instead of a heart of stone. Faith is actually the evidence of the new birth, not the cause of it.

Both repentance and faith are possible only because of the regenerating work of God.

Both are called the gift of God. Both of them. When we speak of depravity being total, we do not mean we do not mean utter as incomplete.

But we're saying every component of man has been affected by the fall. Romans, chapter eight, verses seven and eight.

Let's just stay in Romans for a while. Verses seven and eight talk about man outside of Christ.

And it says, verse seven, for the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God. That's what

I've been saying, isn't it? For it does not submit to God's law. Indeed, it cannot, cannot.

Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. No possibility whatsoever.

You, however, talking to the Christians are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if in fact, the spirit of God dwells in you, so everybody of Adam is in the flesh, cannot please

God, cannot submit to God's law, it's impossible. He's hostile in heart towards God.

But if we're in the spirit, God has already come to us and done divine surgery. We're not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if in fact, the spirit of God dwells in you.

Anyone who does not have the spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is life because of righteousness.

We're blind to the kingdom. We're deaf to God's word. John, 847,

Jesus said, whoever is of God hears the word of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God, not because you can choose to, but because you're not of God.

You're still in the flesh. You're still in need of divine surgery. You are not of God. That's why you cannot hear.

The reason why you do not hear, Jesus said, is that you are not of God, though the unregenerate can hear the sounds of the

Bible as it's spoken. To the person, even understand the words being said, there's a spiritual type of hearing they cannot hear.

They're blind to God's truth, deaf to God's word, enslaved to sin. John, 834, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.

So Paul, when he writes in Ephesians 2 and says, man, all of us were dead.

You, he made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all also used to walk.

He says, I was in the exact same condition, dead towards God. We're dead in trespasses and sins.

We actively practice sin. We're enslaved following the course of this world by nature, an object of God's wrath.

And then two famous words follow. But God not.

But man, realizing his last condition, realizing his need for the Savior says, God, help me know while man is spiritually dead.

God intervenes in the life of his elect to bring them to himself, to make them spiritually alive.

But God being rich in in in mercy, God being rich in mercy, according to his divine grace, made us alive when we were dead.

I hope you're grasping just how colossal grace is.

And in talking about the depravity of man, it highlights the immensity of what

God does to save us. He came and he breathed life into a dead corpse spiritually.

That's what he's done. That's what he's doing. Whenever he saves someone, man is capable of civic good, good on a human earthly horizontal plane.

But never on a vertical plane where God says, oh, that is entirely good.

No one does good. No, not one. No one is righteous. Never do we in our fallen state do actions for the glory of God alone.

All our righteousness, not some of it, all our righteousness is as filthy rags.

Now, there are three views on man's condition that you'll find throughout the history of the church. And we can label them because others have gone before us.

And the first is called Pelagianism. You might have heard that term, which basically has the idea of salvation being all his stance and raise himself up and he can get wherever he needs to go.

And the belief there is that man is well. This idea of Pelagianism was named after the British monk

Pelagius, who lived 354 through to 418

A .D. He believed that Adam's sin affected no one but himself. I don't know how he could ever read

Romans 5, but that was his belief. And that those born since Adam have been born into the same condition

Adam was in before the fall, neutral towards sin. And he believed human beings are able to live free from sin if they want to.

Now, he read one of Augustine's prayers, which greatly upset him. Augustine had prayed a simple prayer,

Lord, command what you will and grant what you command. And Pelagius thought that if God commanded something for him to remain just, man would have to have the ability to do what

God commanded, even without grace. There'd be no reason whatsoever for God to grant what he commands.

No reason whatsoever. There'd be no need for it. Augustine, though, defended his view that although God commanded, he needs to actually grant grace to us so that we can be empowered to do what he commands.

Now, Pelagianism is humanistic, man -centered. And while it presents a very positive view of man, it limits the nature and scope of sin and flatly denies the necessity of God's grace.

And Pelagius' view was condemned as heresy by the church, as it's no basis in Scripture whatsoever.

Yet that view never really went away. Even though it was condemned as heresy, it's still prevalent in our society today.

It's the air we breathe in America. You can do it. Be all you can be. You can be anything you want.

Pleasing to God? Oh, yeah, you can do that if you really want to. But the problem is I want to.

We do not want the God of the Bible to be like Christ by our own efforts or by our own will.

We're all born Pelagians at heart. That's the air we breathe. And we think we can do anything God commands or achieve salvation without the need for grace.

There's a second view. That's Pelagianism is the first. The second is Synergism, S -Y -N -E -R -G -I -S -M.

And that is speaking of the actions of more than one or cooperation. And here the belief is not a man is well, but seeing certain scriptures, they say, well, you know, we're not perfect.

Yeah, we're not perfect. Let's take that into account. And we must say we're sick in some sense, even mortally sick.

We're on the edge of destruction. But there's no need to call in the mortician yet. We're still able to make the right choice.

We're able to come to Christ. We just need the offer of the gospel. The problem with that is Jesus, Paul, John, Peter.

Ezekiel, Isaiah, right through the Bible, Bible passages that tell us that man's condition is one, not of neutrality, but actually hostility towards God.

I've got a note that I wrote down observing that if man was as healthy as the optimists say, then surely war, disease, starvation, poverty, and such problems we face today would have been eliminated by now since such problems have not been fixed.

Synergists conclude that something's basically wrong with human nature. Yet it's not hopeless.

It's not hopeless. It's bad. It's very bad, even maybe even desperate. It's not hopeless.

We haven't blown ourselves off the planet yet. No need to call the mortician. They would say human nature has been damaged by the fall.

The will is not enslaved to sin, but is capable of believing in Christ even prior to regeneration.

Although not entirely apart from God's grace, every sinner, they would say, retains the ability to choose for or against God, either cooperating with God's spirit unto salvation or resisting

God's grace unto damnation. Do I believe man can resist the grace of God?

Absolutely. He will. He will resist the grace of God all the way to hell until God intervenes.

Stephen in Acts chapter 7 says, you always resist the Holy Spirit. That's man's condition and his depravity.

We will continue to resist the Holy Spirit and the grace of God until God says, that's it.

You're coming home, son. I'm having you today. I'm having you. I will overcome your resistance by making my grace irresistible.

Election, they would say, the synergists would say, is conditional, determined by individual choice.

God chooses those whom he already knew would believe. The faith he foresees is not exclusively a divine gift, but partly a human decision.

Therefore, the ultimate cause of salvation is not God's choice of the sinner, but the sinner's choice of God.

Under this broad heading of synergism, we have two basic schools of thought. Semi -Pelagianism, which teaches that man initiates and then

God helps. The Elwell Evangelical Dictionary said this, its divine grace is indispensable for salvation, but it does not necessarily need to proceed of a free human choice because despite the weakness of human volition, the will takes the initiative towards God.

That's semi -Pelagianism. Then under that heading number two would be Arminianism.

It teaches that God initiates by offering grace and that mankind either does or does not cooperate with that grace.

This belief, though very popular in our day, would still be classed as synergistic because regeneration takes place through the cooperation of man with God's grace.

The third view, which I believe is the biblical one, would look at the scriptures and look with awe at Jesus walking up to the tomb of Lazarus and rather than interviewing him and saying, look,

I know you're dead, but I've got an offer for you. How about a few more years on planet Earth? Interested?

Sign on the dotted line. We can get this thing done. But remember this, I can't raise you from the dead without your cooperation.

Is that what happened? No. Jesus stood at the tomb, said, roll the stone away and said,

Lazarus, come forth. And he came third and won a bronze. No, no, no. He came forth.

He came forth alive because of a divine miracle without any cooperation. And that is the belief in the physical realm carried over into the spiritual realm.

Jesus stands at the door of the human heart and says, John Sampson, come forth.

Come forth. And I come forth and shocked to high heaven that I'm now alive, wanting what

I didn't want before, walking where I never walked before, wanting the word of God.

I remember seeing my father reading his Bible as a preacher at age eight and thinking, you'll never catch me doing that.

Things have changed. I love the word of God. What is the cause of that? Not something in me, but something in God.

God has come in the person of the Holy Spirit, regenerated my heart.

So I now want what I didn't want before. Augustinianism, you could call it the reformed faith.

Others call it Calvinism. And here's the belief. Man is dead. He's not well, like Pelagius would say.

He's not sick, even mortally sick, as synergism would say. He's dead. It's all over.

There is no hope. Outside of a miracle. God saves that by his divine power alone.

We would call this divine monogism, one power working. Each of the members of the

Trinity are at work in the salvation of sinners. God, the father, elects a people for himself to save.

Jesus, the son, redeems them in his atoning work on the cross. And then God, the Holy Spirit, regenerates them in time, bringing them to life.

Lazarus was a lifeless corpse in the tomb, did not cooperate in his own resurrection.

Jesus simply said, Lazarus, come forth. And he did. And this is the effectual call of God.

It's what we read of in Romans 8 that says, those whom he called, he justified.

There is the call that we hear with the outward ear, the call of the gospel. But the call that is spoken of here results in justification every time.

These whom he called, he justified. And theologians for centuries have understood that there are two types of call, the call of the gospel and then the inward call of the

Holy Spirit that makes man respond. I've seen people in the park call for their dogs and say, here,

Shep, here, Shep, Shep, Shep, Shep. And they keep shouting. The dog is oblivious, just does its own thing.

But there's a type of call that results in the dog coming, in the person coming, the call that always results in justification.

That does not happen in the preaching of the gospel. Not everybody I talk to responds in faith to the gospel.

But those whom the Holy Spirit calls are justified. Wow. That's a beautiful picture of Lazarus and of what

God does for us in regeneration. Once we're alive, we do the things we wouldn't ever have wanted to do before.

Augustinianism, named after St. Augustine of the 5th century, tells us this, grace works sufficiently to save.

The synergists would say grace is necessary, but not sufficient. The reformers would say, no, it's sufficient to save.

It does the work. It does all of the work. It does what we could not do by and for ourselves.

Man has a will, most definitely. But he never wants God without the direct and gracious intervention of God.

We're going to take some calls. And I'm encouraging you to call in with either comments or questions or queries.

And the number to call is 877 -753 -3341. That's 877 -753 -3341.

And we'll be taking your calls. Although right now, I'm not seeing any screen alive in front of me. They're all dead in trespasses and sins.

I'm not looking at anything that I can see in regard to operations. But in the dark,

I'm here. And my good man, Rich, is pressing things. Oh, we got that?

OK. How do I get this mouse working? Give him a trackball.

I don't think the birds know how to use trackball. Right there. OK, go for it. True. Is that Vincent in New York?

Not quite. Oh, hello. Hello. Is that Vincent? Yes. Hey, you're on the air.

Well, well done. I think you've been waiting a long time. Sorry about that. Oh, well, I love listening to you.

Great having you on the show. Oh, thank you. Yeah, you can call back anytime. Tough.

I don't know. I'm in a Bible study class.

First Corinthians. And this is going to come up, I'm sure, because I'm in a room full of Barminians.

Yeah. And this is... I haven't heard this one commented on before. It's 1 Corinthians 8, 11.

And it's in the passage where we're talking about Paul telling the brother not to be eating the food for idols in front of some of the other people in the congregation, because their conscience may be weak.

Yes. And he says, and so by your knowledge, this weak person is destroyed, the brother for whom

Christ died. Well, I thought if Christ dies for us, we can't...

That word destroy is really... I looked up the Greek for it, and it's only used one other time when

Jesus is talking about wine being destroyed. But it means utter destruction, as if condemned to hell.

So how do you read that passage? How should we look at that passage?

I would need to spend more time on it. Yet the actual Bible I'm looking at is a study

Bible, and it's got a note on that. And it's talking about that word destroyed and the strong language.

It says, suggest that these weak Christians are sinning, not because they think they are doing something wrong, but because they have fallen back into their idolatrous ways.

I don't believe the destruction here is talking of hell. It's talking about their conscience is weak.

And you think of Romans 13 as well, which addresses the conscience.

And it's a similar sort of thing that the apostle Paul is talking about your knowledge.

And so by your knowledge, this weak person is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died.

I think the word destroyed could also be pronounced or looked at as devastated.

He's destroyed. He's devastated by the fact that there you go doing something that to him would be sinning, even though you have a conscience that is entirely at peace with doing what you're doing.

The weak brother is devastated that you're doing it. And he thinks, well, how can this how can this be?

And this brother for whom Christ died is is absolutely devastated because his conscience has not come to the same level of clarity regarding the freedom we have in Christ.

Does that help? Yes, it may be. And it goes along with another factor there that confused me is that in verse 9 and verse 13, he talks about these actions being a stumbling block.

And the stumbling block isn't the end of everything. That word I looked up, the

Greek, it doesn't mean the end of one's existence.

It's not talking about eternal destruction. I'm looking at verse 7 as well. That seems to have a similar type of message.

Each food has really offered to an idol. Their conscience being weak is defiled, destroyed, defiled.

I think it's you can use those words, I think, interchangeably there. It's talking about a devastation of a weaker brother.

So so don't don't do something that's going to devastate someone who's who's whose conscience hasn't been shaped by the word of God.

He's called a weak brother, not because of anything physically wrong with him, but because conscience wise, they have yet to be exposed to the word of God or else hasn't haven't received it as as well as a stronger brother might have done.

But you're saying, nonetheless, he's been chosen. Yeah, I don't think I don't think the passage is even addressing election in that sense.

It's talking about our attitude to to those in the faith, even though we might be strong in a certain area, we need to bear with the weak.

It's, again, a parallel passage with Romans 13. Yes. OK, thank you very much.

And 14, chapter 14 of Romans as well. Right. You're welcome, Vincent. Thanks for calling in.

My pleasure. Bye. Bye bye. Talking about radical corruption on the broadcast.

Well, that's going to bring in the people I want to hear about a radical corruption. Radical corruption.

Yeah, we dealt with some of those things earlier in the show. I'm just looking at the comments that are being made.

Why do we sin? We sin because we're sinners. We sin because our will is bent on wanting our choices, which flow from an evil heart.

Man is basically evil. Knowing that means our parenting will be different than if we think man is basically good.

A lot of parents think man, children, they're innocent. There's nothing wrong with them.

If you start with that, then your education will be very different from a Christian education, which is trying to do a different thing than a secular education.

A secular education says, let's get the people together, tell them how good they are. Never put anything in front of them that would cause them to think anything negative whatsoever about themselves.

Let all of them have exposure to beautiful, wonderful comments.

You're so wonderful. You're so great. You're so awesome. And education will be very, very different.

Christian education says these guys by nature will do the wrong thing unless God intervenes, and they need training to know what the right thing is.

A lot of people say, well, you know, my five -year -old just does not want to eat nice, healthy food and prefers fries and hamburgers.

And so I just want to never do anything that would stunt the child's growth and make him think anything less than positive about himself.

And so I serve him the fries and the burger. This is prevalent in society. And yet, as parents, we need to say,

I know better than you. I've lived longer, and I've learned that that's not going to be good for your system as a child.

Foolishness is in the heart of a child, not wisdom. Foolishness.

And so understanding depravity has ramifications on so many levels. I want to jump in here,

John, because one of the things that I get, I get the phone calls around here. One of the things

I get a lot of is that kind of a call. Why do we sin? Why is what

Adam did relevant to me? Why does that matter? And I try to explain to them, this is like the genes that are passed down from your family, not

Levi's or Wrangler, but genes. This is who you are. This makes up who you are.

When our parents, Adam and Eve, fell in sin and we read about the fall, there were consequences to that fall.

Not just getting cast out of the garden, not just facing mortality, but their nature, who they were as human beings was changed in that fall.

And so oftentimes a lot of folks think about the concept of original sin as something being very

Catholic, and that's not the case. Original sin is a concept of that nature being handed down from Adam and Eve to their children.

And then we look at David in Sin Did My Mother Conceive Me. The point is that all of their offspring are by nature like genes, is what we are talking about here.

When you have a genetic defect that is handed down,

I, for instance, have horrible allergies. I've had horrible allergies since I was a kid.

I found out later, growing up, that this was something that my grandfather suffered with and died of a severe asthma attack at 43.

Now, why is that my problem that he had that and that that somehow finds its way down to affect me?

Genetics. In the same way, the sin nature was passed from Adam and Eve to their children, to their children, to their children, to their children, and on down to every human being.

We could call it spiritual genetics. Exactly. And the other side of that coin is that we look at the

Lord Jesus Christ and you ask the simple question, gee, why is the virgin birth so important?

The virgin birth is so important so that a man who can come into this world sinless and by nature, both man and God, and he is the unique, one of a kind, son of God, and he becomes our spiritual federal head by faith.

And that's where I like to lead people. This is why we sin. We sin because they sin and we all like sinning.

It is part of our makeup and who we are and we need to be saved from that.

And everyone in Adam is inheriting that sin nature. Everyone in Christ is inheriting a brand new nature that will, in time, leave everyone in Christ perfect like Christ is, having his

DNA, if you like. Spiritual dynamics and genetics and all of it will be like Christ.

Yeah. How much time do we have on the show? Well, you also get into the issue of adoption. Adoption, yes.

You know, why is it that there is a need for adoption? Because our biological father,

Adam, passed on that nature to us. We need to be adopted into the family of God.

Yes, yep. And by nature, we do not want that until God intervenes and gives us a new heart.

Absolutely. Unless a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Yeah, it's impossible for him to see with his nature as it was unchanged.

We need divine surgery. We need God, the Holy Spirit to show up in our evangelism as we're sharing the

Word of God. God uses means to achieve his ends. Let's get out there with the gospel, understanding that everyone will reject us unless God intervenes.

It's not going to be a surprise when they reject what we're saying, because they want everything except the God of the Bible. They might accept a religious message that says, try

Jesus, but they'll never accept the biblical command. Repent and believe the gospel unless God intervenes.

But that's what we need to pray for, a revival of true conversion in this land and throughout this world.

Let's get out there with the gospel, understanding that only God saves sinners. But he does so for his name, for his name alone, and for his glory.

I'm John Sampson. Thank you for listening. We'll be more on The Dividing Line next week.