Sunday School | Doctrine of Sin - Part 3

Introduction

All right, good morning everybody, he's doing all right. Hey, how many of you have been curious what I would be like if I were a 4 foot 11 woman? Does that ever cross your mind? Because if so, today's your lucky day.

My sister Robin is here with one of her million children, my niece Hope, and if you guys weren't here for the first service, my mom died this week and so Robin, her daughter, my son, who's not here at the moment, we're in town. But this is Robin, we were mortal enemies for about 20 years and then became very dear friends for the last 35 years and I love Robin, but she really is a 4 foot 11 female version of me. She might say I'm a 5 foot 11 male version of her because she came first, but you know, as you will.

But Robin, we're glad to have you, Hope, love you, glad you guys are here. We are in the midst of our long, long series on all Christian doctrine, we're in the doctrine of sin. Last week, we kind of had this little conversation get started that I wanted to chase a rabbit and so we're going to start with that rabbit and it doesn't exactly fit into a survey of the doctrine of sin, it touches on it kind of tangentially, but since it came up I just kind of wanted to finish what we started.

So if you have a Bible, go to Romans chapter 2. Anything, if you're going to do a biblical survey of the doctrine of sin, you've got to go to Romans, right? We're going to see the very nature of sin being an exchange. You might recall we talked about how Jeremiah 2:13 says that all sin is a double sin, it's a forsaking of God and a digging of something else, right? We reject the springs of living water to dig a mud puddle. And you see that just kind of like demonstrated with all these exchanges that take place in Romans 1. You have to go to Romans 3:23, you've got to go to Romans 6:23, right?

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus. All have sinned and fall short of the glory. Romans—I mean, you've got to go to Romans 7. There's a ton of stuff we're going to have to do in Romans and in the midst of looking at that we happen to cross Romans 2:6 and I want to look at this not because it's necessary to understand the doctrine of sin, but because it's very easy to misunderstand it.

So I want you to see what Paul is doing. It's a touch point in a much bigger and very important argument he makes.

Romans 2:6-16

He says this in verse 6:

God will give to each person according to what he has done.

To those who by persistence in doing good see glory, he will give honor, glory, honor, and immortality. He will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, they will have wrath and anger.

So one of the things that any Christian evangelist is going to battle against is people's very fundamental assumption that this is the Christian message: do good, go to heaven; do bad, go to hell. People have woven into their hearts a works righteousness framing.

If I'm a good little boy, then I'll get a reward; and if I'm a bad little boy, I'm going to get punished. And try though we might to communicate the gospel of the grace of Jesus, so what you're telling me is if I'm good, everything's great, and if I'm bad, everything is like—no, this is literally not what I said.

Here's the trouble. The trouble here is that seems to be exactly what Paul is saying, right? He says,

God will give to each person according to what he has done.

To those who by persistence in doing good see glory, honor, and immortality, he will give eternal life—i.e., go do it. Go earn it. Just go be good. Susan, clean up your act and everything will be fine, right? But on the other hand, if you're self-seeking, if you reject the truth to follow evil, let me be wrath and anger.

It seems very simple. This passage plays into the fundamental assumptions we have: be good, do good, and you'll get a reward. So what in the heck? Why is Paul making this so hard for us? Why would Paul, who is unmistakably the apostle of the gospel of grace, make an argument here that is going to be potentially confusing?

You understand the problem with trying to solve this? Okay. The reason he's doing this is because any act of persuasion has to begin at the point of agreement, right?

If I wanted to persuade you, if I wanted you to believe something that I do believe but you don't believe and I just come at it with a, "Hey, here's a tip. You're wrong. I'm right. Let's go," then you're just going to entrench and it's going to be a lot harder to pull you out of your position.

If I wanted to persuade you, I would start at the point of agreement and then step by step, step by step, bring you across the bridge to what I want you to see. And that is what Paul is doing here, okay?

So when he says this in verse 6,

God will give to each person according to what he's done, to those who by persistence in doing good see glory, honor, and immortality, he'll give eternal life—that's true. He's not lying. It's accurate.

And I would say to you right now, if all of your days from the moment of your creation—even we'll go back to the moment before you were even born—if your entire life were about the persistent doing of good, if every decision you have ever made, you have sought glory.

And by the way, when the Bible invites us to seek glory, it's never about seeking your own glory. It's about seeking His. Persistence is a big word.

Have you persistently, always, never not, had every decision you ever make, you ask the question,
"Will this redound to the glory of God? If so, I'll do it. If not, maybe not."

Is your life absolutely marked by honor persistently? Your whole life, every decision you've ever made, is the honorable choice? You always consider the needs of others as more important than your own? You've never done anything shady or selfish? You're not self-seeking?

His opposite line is—"But to those who are self-seeking," like anybody in this room, make the case that you've gone 24 hours without being self-seeking.

Hannah was my assistant for a year or two. She is the most selfish person I've ever met. No, I'm just kidding. You all are. We all are.

This is the ridiculous thing. Are you persistent in doing good? Are you persistent in seeking honor? Is every decision eternal life? Is your world fundamentally focused, not on this life but on the life to come?

What about a dollar in your hand? Are you thinking not about how do I enjoy it today but how do I invest it for the world to come?

If that is true, I will say to you, if by persistence everything you've ever done has been flawlessly focused on the glory of God, then I think there is a reasonably good chance that God will give you eternal life.

But I do not advise you to roll the dice on this because if you are at all paying attention, if you have any sense of self-awareness, you would realize you are much more like the other side, verse 8, those that are self-seeking, who reject the truth, who follow evil.

We are the ones for whom Paul will say in Ephesians 2, Paul answers this:

when he says here in Romans, there will be wrath and anger, the way he frames it in Ephesians 2 is, as for you, you are dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live and when you followed the ways of the world, the ruler, the king of the air, the spirit who is now working in disobedient, all of us lived among them at one time gratifying the cravings of person for nature following its desires and thoughts, like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.

So when you are in Romans 3 and he sets this thing up, if you live a perfect life, will God grant you eternal life? Yeah, I probably will, but you do not.

So what is the point of that? As he walks through, what he is going to do is he sets up this thesis, this theory, and then he begins to say this.

This is a really important line, skip down to chapter 2, verse 13. I am going to have you memorize this very quick; we're going to do a flash memorization.

Romans 2:13:

In fact, I want you to memorize this. It is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous.

When he says this, he is speaking to a Jewish audience. The Jewish audience—so one of the backstories of the church in Rome is that it was a mix of Jews and Gentiles.

He is trying to address both the Jews and the Gentiles. Think about this: Those of you that are coming from pagan worship, those of you that are coming from following the law, he got these two crowds, and he is talking to both.

He is speaking at this moment to the Jews. He’s like, you congratulate yourself because you have got the Ten Commandments. You even got them memorized. You know the expectations and you feel proud of yourself because we are not like those pagans. We have the Ten Commandments.

To which Paul says,

Yeah, well, time out, it is not knowing what it says that is meritorious. It is doing what it says, right?

It is not those who hear the law—"like congratulations, somebody read it to you"—but it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight, it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous.

So he is beginning with this audience saying, you know what, yeah, live a perfect life, everything will be great, and then throughout the next couple of chapters, he is just going to chip away at your confidence.

So you go from feeling proud, like, I got this, to realizing—wait a minute, wait a minute, because it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight, it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous.

He describes the days coming, verse 16,

when God will judge men's secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares.

Some of us might be able to snow the crowd for a little while on a good day. But does anybody think that if God put your secrets on that screen, that you are not going to find this to be a terrifying and humiliating moment?

The day is coming when God will judge men's secrets.

He continues on, he talks throughout the rest of chapter 2 about the Jews who brag about their relationship to God, that they know His will, and they approve of what is superior because they are instructed by it. It is all knowledge, right?

If you are convinced that you are a God for the blind, a light for those in the dark, an instructor of the foolish, the teacher of infants—because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge—if all of your merit is based on that, because maybe not because you are Jewish but because your grandfather was a Presbyterian minister, right? Because you have a Sunday school like little collection of stars for attending Sunday school, right?

You got all these little things like, well, what about that? And it doesn't ultimately work.

As he goes on, he is going to say in chapter 3 verse 10,

As it is written, there is no one righteous, not even one.

This is just pure theory. It has never been demonstrated.

All have turned away. They have together become worthless. There is no one who does good, not even one. And Paul strings together all of these Old Testament passages.

That is really what he is doing here. You could say this is a passage of harm ideology, the doctrine of sin. You could also say this is just anthropology—this is just what is the nature of humanity, right?

Now, if you go back to this passage I asked you to memorize, maybe you did. I am going to say it like five times so that you will memorize it.

For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight, it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous.

When Paul finally gets to the conclusion of this argument, take a look at verse 20.

Therefore, no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law, rather through the law would become conscious of sin.

He says early in the argument, it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight; it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous.

And then he says,

No one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law.

If you are really going to understand how desperately you need a Messiah, you probably need to go through this moment, through this phase, maybe through a season where you think you can do it, or even through the absolute arrogant presumptions that you already have.

We used to ask kids all the time, like, "If you were to stand before God tonight and ask him, why should I let you into my heaven? What would you say?"

And generally, people's answer is, what do you think? How do you think people generally answer that?

Jesus died for my sin.

Well, that's not how people generally answer it. What are you going to hear from people? Say, "I'm a good person, I obey the law, I've never killed anybody."

One time I had a kid who gave an honest answer, and the answer was,

Because I'm dead. Why should I let you into my heaven? Because I'm dead.

What else am I going to do, you know? We have this sense; it's not that I've strived for this, but I just—it's like, if so, fact though, I'm dead, I get to go, right? And we're wrong in all of that, right? We can't do it.

So, after Paul says,

No one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law, but rather through the law would become conscious of sin—that line, through the law would become conscious of sin—that means that you realize, oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no, I'm a dead man. I can't do this. I have no hope, and there better be, dear God, I hope there is, a plan B because if plan A depends on me, we're toast.

And there is, which is where Paul says.

But having brought—okay, everything in Romans leads us up to here. This is the part, I just tell you, Elijah, this is the part, this is the thing we're memorizing this semester, starting at Romans 3:21.

Having brought us to this point of despair, Paul then says,

But now, a righteousness from God, apart from law.

The prepositions are huge. Every religious system is about a righteousness to God, right? I'm a good boy. Look at what I've done. Here's my offering.

Christianity says, save it, keep it. It doesn't work. It is not a righteousness to God. It is a righteousness from God, to we who have nothing to offer.

To we who have nothing to offer, He gives righteousness. We have a righteousness from God.

It's apart from law. It's not related to our obedience. It’s not predicated on rulekeeping. It has been made known. The law testifies to it, the prophets testify to it, but it is a righteousness from God that comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.

And now we get to one of the highest points in Romans 3 doctrine of sin. It says,

There is no difference—that means between Jews and Greeks. For all have sinned, and as we said last week, the best way to translate 3:23?
Lack—it doesn't fall short, it's unhelpful. All have sinned and lack the glory of God.

Why do we lack it? Because we traded it in, we exchanged it. There is something we wanted more than that.

If we can come to the understanding that the doctrine of sin is not just some like theoretical reality, but it is like daily truth that my life lacks God's glory because I could have had it, but I wanted something more.

And now, finally, having come to the realization of the ruinous consequences of the decisions that I've made, I cry out to say there's got to be another solution.

And there is, we've intimated here in the first part of this, we're going to go deep into that when we finally start our next section, which would be on soteriology, which is the doctrine of salvation. And we'll have much more to say about that then.

But we're going to keep going on our sin survey. I'm going to save the salvation stuff for when we get there. So just live in suspense for a little while.

But that's what's going on in Romans 2:6. Lest you believe, oh, maybe there's a way that we can do this on our own, like, sure, try. Although, you've already got the last 40 years behind you, and so that didn't go that well, right?

And when we're still left holding the bag for all that, we need a Savior. We need mercy, we need grace. And when we become Christians, we're not just forsaking our unrighteousness, but our self-righteousness. For this will not depend on us. It'll be all of Him from top to bottom. Amen?

Application

Okay. Romans 2:6. Let's keep going.

All right. Doctrine of Sin, as you recall, we're walking through everything the Bible has to say about this. Category today, in my last 15 minutes, is what part of your life did sin impact?

Who's laughing? Dan is laughing.

What part of your sin, what part of your life did sin impact? What part of your life did sin not impact?

I had a pastor when I was in college, Phil Schmillen. I loved him. And he said,

If sin were blue, you'd be blue all over.

Okay? Doesn't mean it's the deepest shade of blue, right? It’s not necessarily the case that all you do is murder children. Okay? But it is necessarily the case that all of you is corrupted by sin.

And when I say all of you, maybe a convenient way to think about this would be your intellect, your emotions, and your will. It's probably the case that you have a tendency to think that really where sin impacts is the things that you do, right? Your will, your volition, your behavior, your activity.

That's certainly true, and that might be like the business end of this thing, but you've got to roll the tape back and see that very, it's very clear, both biblically and if you've ever been outside, that sin, if you ever had a conversation with another person, that sin affects your intellect.

So can you think of where, and I can rattle these off for you, but where does the Bible affirm this? That sin affected all of your life, and we'll just start with your mind.

You are literally stupider than you should be because you're fallen. Where does this show up? Robin?

Well, when Matthew doesn't, when Jesus is talking about that even just with your thoughts, you can have sexual sin, or you can murder, or just by being angry.

This is excellent. So Robin's taken us to basically Matthew 5, Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus says you've already said don't commit adultery, but I tell you that if you lust after a woman in your heart, lust after a woman, you've already committed adultery in your heart.

Now, I might move that, I might save that a little bit for more of our emotions than our thoughts, because lust doesn't tend to be like an intellectual calculus, it's more of an emotional desire, but you're moving us in the right direction that the, our internal life precedes our external life.

But we can get a little bit closer to the bullseye of our very, like, cognitive functioning being completely screwed up. Michael?

One word is imagination for, but it ended up Genesis 6, where every thought or imagination of their heart, so that, again, that's a, yeah, every thought or imagination, it's Genesis 6, every thought or imagination of his heart was only evil all the time.

Now, the only thing, the only thing that's weird about Genesis 6, is I'm not sure if it's fair to take Genesis 6 and apply it literally to all of humanity. That does seem like it's describing at a particular time where things were egregiously bad. It might have broader application, but it's certainly about a particularly, I mean, things are so bad that the only solution was to literally drown every living thing.

Fortunately, I don't think we're quite at that point at this moment, but yes, that has the sin of their minds, right? It was fundamental. Fetser?

Romans 12:2 says that we should be transformed by the renewal of our mind, and that assumes that our minds need to be renewed. Excellent.

So, Andy Sander, if Romans 12 says that we need to be transformed by the renewing of our mind, that suggests that there's something that our mind requires renewing.

Zach?

Solomon's words and Proverbs of the wise, and he doesn't follow me. There's a direct comparison of what one done on the other. So good, Zach. Proverbs absolutely links what we think foolishness, wisdom, and foolishness with moral attributes.

Let me get... Kelsey?

Oh, you already went over this, but Romans 1, they keep became futile, their foolish hearts were darkened. Yes.

That’s exactly right. Listen to Romans 1:21:

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

This is like the stupefaction of sin, right? He's going to say the same thing in Ephesians 4:

So I tell you this and insist on it in the Lord that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separate from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.

So sin is not just your behavior; it is your thought process. We are stupider by sin. And if you've ever done evangelism with somebody and you're explaining something and they just can't get it, right? Corinthian explains this:

The God of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the glory of God in the face of Christ.

It's like they can't, right? This is sin impacting, not just our behavior, but our very thought processes.

Rachel?

Go a little bit more. Take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ, just suggesting that every thought needs to go through the filter of me.

Excellent. Rachel's saying that when Paul exhorts us, "Take every thought captive," the implication is that our thoughts are unruly, right? And we have to get our intellectual house in order because sin impacted every part of us, including that.

Robyn? Yeah, but none of us can actually hear that or see that without God opening our eyes. I mean, there's nothing of our own that has made that possible.

Yes. I used to think that because of my faith in Christ. But I couldn't hear it, I couldn't see it. I mean, it's like, Robyn is saying, if I can't see it, if I can't hear it, it's going to have to be a work of God. And that's exactly right.

If you're covered with mud, you can't clean it. You want to use, scrape your muddy hands off with your muddy hands; you can't do it. You don't even recognize that you're muddy at some point in this whole thing.

So the solution is going to have to come from outside. If our very rational processes are not trustworthy in our sin, then we need somebody from outside ourselves.

Emotions and Will

So, how about emotions? Do you think your emotional life was compromised by sin? Do you think anybody else's was?

This is, you guys, do you know that this is one of the complete, this is such ignorance. So ridiculous.

Have you ever heard that all emotions are valid? Have you ever heard that?

So bonkers, such absolute absurdity. People behave as if, “Hey, you know, if you're sad, then that sorrow is justified. If you're mad at that man,” like as if our emotional life, like, you guys, when you got hit by the truck of sin, your emotions were probably standing in the front, okay?

Your emotional life is hopelessly compromised and incredibly untrustworthy. But there is an entire like therapeutic culture that would say all emotions are valid. And that is absolute lunacy.

Of course, have I ever been angry about something that God was pleased by? Have I? Yes, a thousand times.

Have I ever been sad but disproportionately sad? Have I ever been happy about something that God is not happy about?

My emotions are not a faithful guide to what is true or good or beautiful, right?

My intellect is corrupted. My emotions are corrupted. Where can you make the case for this biblically, do you think, that our emotional life has been damaged by the fall?

Johnny?

Part of the cover is this, where the heart is seeking good, but then the falling of the mouth. So your heart is looking for good, but sometimes you're persuaded and other things, so it doesn't come out well.

Yes, and that's a pretty charitable reading, Johnny, because sometimes our hearts are seeking good things sometimes. But very often, our hearts are deceitful; they will lead us astray. They'll lie to ourselves, they'll lie to ourselves—and never mind to others.

Taylor?

Great. Jonah's sorrow. He's sitting there, he's all sad, he's just crushed, he's grieving and he's broken-hearted because a weed has died. And God's like, you know, it's interesting; you're heartbroken over this stupid plant, but you don't give a crap that millions— I don't know, maybe thousands of people are dying.

Do you think maybe you're emotional, maybe you're a little out of whack? Maybe Jonah, you love worthy things too little and just maybe you love unworthy things too much.

This is what Augustine called about our disordered loves, right? That every one of us, we have to deck cards and they're stacked in a particular order and you love this more than you love that; you love this more than you love that. That is your emotional life.

And God's saying, yeah, I think you need to— we've got to rearrange some of these cards so that you might begin to love worthy things more and unworthy things less. And every one of us has a poorly shuffled deck, you know, for sure.

Carolyn?

Yeah, God can also use a prominent redemptive lens—like our emotions that are enrooted in our sin and fleshliness—to use us to point us towards repentance. And this idea of God affirming our emotions so that they can align with Him, because He is an emotional God.

Yes, and so I think there also can be hope in that, where I am right now in my emotions might be sinful, but God can point that towards this idea of how can my emotions align with His so I can experience them in a more redemptive way.

There you go. Okay, so what Carolyn is saying is that the fact that our emotions are disordered doesn't mean that emotions period are bad.

God is emotional. You're made in His image. God is emotional. Therefore, the fact that you are emotional is part of His good design, not part of the fall.

Just like God thinks He's omniscient and you think your thoughts can become corrupted, doesn't mean you should stop thinking, it means you should start thinking right.

The fact that your emotions are corrupted doesn't mean you shouldn't have feelings. It means that you should try to bring your emotional life in line with His—that we would love things to the degree and in the order that He loves them, right?

But all I want you to see for this moment is that something's wrong with all of you—your intellect, your emotions.

Another evidence is in 2 Corinthians when Paul talks about the difference between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow. Clearly, there's something in his mind.

Yeah, there's a version of sorrow that's unredeemed and unhelpful, right?

So in that same passage in Ephesians 4, where he says the ignorance in them, the hardening of their hearts—Paul goes on from that argument, not from the intellect but to deal more with this intersection of emotion and will.

He says,

Having lost all sensitivity, they've given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity with a continual lust for more.

There is an insatiability; our emotions demand gratification.

Or even in Exodus 20— and the Ten Commandments—one of the commandments is,

You shall not covet your neighbor.

That's the emotional desire, a longing for it.

It's not the thing you're doing, and so you're not even supposed to like want it.

Or how about this—Galatians 5—just listen—you can separate these things into intellect, emotion, and will.

Galatians 5:19:

The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality—which you might think of in the behavioral category but as we have seen it begins much earlier than that—in the mind, in the heart—impurity, debauchery, idolatry, witchcraft, hate, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, envy.

These aren't manifest; these are internal realities—intellect, emotions, and then ultimately it plays out in our will: envy, drunkenness, orgies and the like.

So when the fall happened, all of you, all of you, your whole being was corrupted.

Not beyond redemption, right?

If sin were blue, you'd be blue all over.

But there is someone who can wash you clean, and you can actually begin to use your mind—I mean, we are exhorted to love the Lord your God with your heart, soul, mind, and strength, with your heart.

With your strength, like—your intellect, emotions, and will have all been corrupted. But your intellect, emotions, and will can all be redeemed and must all be brought to Him. That's soteriology.

Again, this is all bad news. We'll get to the good stuff eventually.

Katherine?

Did you already mention the scripture, "Be angry, and sin not"?

I didn't mention that today, but so there is such a thing as righteous anger, just like there is such a thing as unrighteous happiness.

It's not that happiness is a good thing and anger is a bad thing. We should be happy about things that please Him and angry about things that don't.

But we tend to like check that out. See, that's the scripture that made me stop and think: I feel angry, but then I think about it, so it sort of put the intellect and feeling together for me.

Like, ooh.

Can I analyze this and maybe make a better decision?

The problem is analyzing my anger when I'm angry. Do you know what I always conclude?

I am right.

You guys have this experience, right?

How long does it take? Is it a day, is it three days?

Like, do you know what it's like? Three days later, you're like, huh, I was wrong, and it was impossible to see it at the moment. You know this, right?

Like, there's some chemical that's got to drain out of my brain before I'm able to be like, huh, that's interesting—it did not seem like that three days ago.

How about this? If it affects every part of you, does it affect every part?

Is sin, where would you go biblically to answer the question, is sin the universal human experience?

All of sin, and if I'll show her the glory of God: Romans 3:23. But we don't say that anymore. We say all of sin and lack the glory of God.

Yep, is it everybody?

Where else would you go?

What did you say?

The flood? Okay, we'll go to the flood.

If everybody drowns, they must have all been bad.

Yeah! That's a dark take, but it's accurate.

Judy?

Okay, oh gosh. Judy is taking us to the book of Judges. If you've never read Judges, go home and read it. But you know, get a donut or something because it's going to be a tough read.

The book of Judges is so dark, you guys. It's so bad. And the refrain is,

In those days Israel had no king, everyone did as he saw fit.

It is an exploration of what we are like. It’s Lord of the Flies, I mean Lord of the Rings—no, Lord of the Flies.

It’s what do we do when all restraint is held back?

If there is no king, if there is no controlling authority, what do we do? And it's like it just gets so bad. There's some really gross stuff that happens in that book.

So it’s a great exploration of this. It’s the biblical version of the Stanford prison experiment—if you know it.

The Stanford prison experiment, you get a bunch of college students, and you say, you’re prisoners. You’re guards. And then, boom, it spirals into madness because those who are entrusted with authority begin to abuse it.

It’s an unbelievable depiction of how pervasive this is.

I'll give you a couple more: For the second time, we’ll get a guy to get out here.

How about this? 1 John 1:8:

If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves. And the truth is not in us.

If we claim we have not sinned, we may come out to be liars, and his word has no place in our lives.

Or Ephesians 2, which I already read to you:

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins.

In which you used to live and you followed the ways of the world and the ruler, the spirit who is now working in disobedient.

All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.

And here’s an important one to remember for the rest of your life: somebody's going to disappoint you.

You're going to see somebody's sin flourishing, and you're going to think, what a loser. How do they pick a thing? Whatever their particular thing is, just be careful because tomorrow's coming, right?

All of us, also. The reason that one of the reasons we must be gracious toward fellow sinners is because we know how we are formed.

We remember that we are dust.

I just wonder, some of you might know the name Philip Yancey. He's a Christian author.

And my guess would be, Philip Yancey has been married to his wife for 55 years. And I would guess that, at some point, when he'd been married for 40 years, he saw some horrible Christian failure and thought to himself, what a loser. I can't believe that this person is just so dishonored Christ.

Well, this week, the news came out that for the last eight years, Philip Yancey has been having an affair with a married woman.

He'd been married for 55 years, so he'd been married for like 47 years.

You might feel like the tape is close, like, we've almost finished the race here.

He'd been married for 47 years, and he began an affair that lasted for eight years.

Now he's completely confessed, he's repented, and he's stepped down from ministry. He's vowed never to teach or write or do anything again.

But I just got to think—and what man? Like, good Lord, like the rest, we are by nature objects of wrath.

I remember my pastor when I was in college, and I was saying, you must live your life with a healthy sense of your own depravity.

We are frail, foolish, every part of us is corrupted by sin. And if we are not day by day, surrendering to Christ, and clinging to Him for the grace to stay in it—like, there's just no telling the stupid things that we're capable of doing, right?

Sin is pervasive. It is like a lion. It's crouching. It seeks to devour you.

And if we are not day by day, moment by moment, yielding to the Savior, all bets are off, right?

We'll talk more about salvation in days to come, and we're going to pause this class, as I said, in the first row. We’re going to pause this for a little bit of time to do this whole thing for the church. I think it's going to be really exciting.

And then we'll resume this. But we've got a few more weeks of this in January. I’ll tell you more of the details.

But I’m long on time.

Okay? All right, that's it.