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Renewing Your Mind
Dead in Sin, Made Alive in Christ
00:26:26
Unless God sovereignly changes our disposition, we will never choose to turn from our sin and trust in Christ for salvation. From his expositional series in the book of Ephesians, today R.C. Sproul describes the bleak condition of fallen humanity and...
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We still have the power to do what we want and to choose what we want, but the desires of our hearts are enslaved to sin. That is, the desires of our hearts are only wicked continually.
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That's far from the world's description of the human heart, isn't it? But even throughout history, there have been Christians who have failed to see the radical impact of Adam's fall in the garden and the and the incredible work of God to bring a sinner to saving faith. Don't go anywhere as RC Sproul will navigate what Paul meant when he describes Christians as those who were dead in trespasses and sins welcome to Renewing youg Mind on this Sunday as we close out a short series. In the early portions of Ephesians, we have considered predestination, the blood of Christ, what true saving faith is, and today the state of the human heart outside of Christ, and the miracles of the new birth. If you'd like to keep studying Ephesians with R.C. sproul for the final Sunday, you can request his expositional commentary when you give a donation of any amount@renewingyourmind.org before midnight tonight. And if you live outside of the US and Canada, there is a digital only resource offer available for you@renewingyourmind.org global. Thank you for fueling this listener supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. If you listen to many preachers today, it can sound like they are describing those outside of Christ as being sick. But Paul is very clear. We are dead in sin unless we've been made alive together with Christ. Here's Dr. Sproul to explain.
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We're going to begin with chapter two. I'll be reading verses one through ten. And 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, who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. But God, who is rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved, and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace and his kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. This brief passage is one of the most pivotal New Testament passages with respect to two extremely important doctrines in the history of Christian theology. In the first place, as I will endeavor to show in a few moments, this passage weighs heavily on the Church's understanding of the doctrine of original sin. And secondly, it also speaks profoundly to the controversial question of what is called the ordo salutis, or the order of salvation, that is, the order by which God works to bring us into a state of salvation. And so it is important that we look at this section of the Epistle very carefully, that we may be instructed by it. Let me begin by talking about the historical controversy with respect to original sin. First, the doctrine of original sin is a doctrine that is held and maintained and confessed by virtually every church in the World Council of Churches. However, the understanding of the doctrine of original sin varies significantly from denomination to denomination, from theology to theology. That is to say, the church historically, since the Plagian controversy of early centuries, has uniformly confessed that there is such a thing as original sin. But not everyone agrees as to its extent. Again, let me begin by saying that original sin ought not to be confused with the first sin, the sin that Adam and Eve committed in the Garden of Eden. Rather, the doctrine of original sin has to do with the consequences of that transgression and committed by Adam and Eve. Now, in the early centuries, the first great controversy over original sin erupted when a British monk by the name of Pelagius challenged the teaching of St. Augustine on this question of original sin. Pelagius argued that the fall of Adam affected Adam and Adam alone. It did not make any impact on the constituent nature of humanity. There was no change in human nature that resulted from the Fall. Pelagius argued against Augustine that though grace facilitates living a life of righteousness, it is not necessary, that is, that human beings, since Adam and Eve and since the garden experienced there, remain morally capable of living lives of perfect righteousness. And indeed, Pelagius argued that some have actually achieved that perfection without any aid from divine grace. One of the points that Pelagius argued was that since God requires moral perfection from his creatures, it would necessarily follow, according to Pelagius thinking, that we would have the moral ability to meet that requirement. Otherwise God would be unjust in requiring us to be perfect, when in fact we do not have the ability to be perfect. Now, Augustine, in response to this, argued that the sin of Adam and Eve not only had consequences for the rest of the human race, but that those consequences were radical. And I choose the word radical carefully. That is to say, the term radical comes from the Latin radix, which means root or core. Augustine is saying that because of the sin of Adam and Eve, subsequent humanity was affected at its core. And this core affectation has to do with sinful and immoral inclinations. In fact, Augustine went so far as to say that in the fallen humanity of human beings, the result of original sin. In fact, the very essence of original sin is that we are left in a state of moral inability. Moral inability. That's what defines the human condition that the Bible describes as being in the flesh. That our fallen sinful nature leaves every human being in such a state that no one has the ability in and of himself to incline himself to the righteousness required by God or to the things of God alone. That for human beings to be converted to Christianity and to embrace Jesus Christ, that would require an intervention by God, the Holy Spirit, to change the fallen inclinations of the human heart. Now, in the middle of that dispute, much of the controversy focused on the question of free will. And Augustine had argued that prior to the Fall, man had free will, a liber arbitrium, and also liberty, which he called libertas. Now, the distinction was this. He said, prior to the Fall, every creature had the ability to choose righteousness or unrighteousness, but the liberty was the ability to incline oneself to the things of God. After the Fall, Augustine said, what humanity lost was not free will or the liberium arbitrium, but liberty. That is, what was lost after the Fall was the moral inclination to do the things of God. Man still retained a faculty of choosing, that we were still volitional characters. And since the Fall, we still have the power to make choices. And we do make choices every day of our lives. The problem is, though, free will remains, that free will is the will of. Of a slave. That is, we still have the power to do what we want and to choose what we want. But the desires of our hearts are enslaved to sin. That is, the desires of our hearts are only wicked continually. So you might say, what kind of freedom is that? Well, we still have the kind of freedom, the ability to choose what we want to do. We still have the freedom to sin. But that freedom is at the same time a bondage, because our choices are governed and ruled by our fallen humanity, which is inclined only toward disobedience rather than to obedience. And when he says that the essence of original sin is moral inability, what he meant by that is, in our fallen condition, we are unable to do the things of God, unable to choose the things of God. We aren't even able, without the intervention of God's grace, to choose Christ. Now you can see what a tremendous dispute that has created over the centuries of Christian history. In between Pelagius, who was condemned by the Church as a heretic, and Augustine, there arose a man who tried to seek a synthesis between Pelagius and Augustine and his theology. John Cusanus is called Semi Pelagianism. And so I sometimes refer to Semi Pelagianism as being introduced by Pelagius, Cousin Semi, but that's not what it meant. Semi Pelagianism tried to take a middle ground and say that, yes, Adam's sin affected all of his subsequent progeny and it did change the constituent nature of humanity, and that there is such a thing as original sin and it is necessary to have God's grace in our lives before we can ever possibly be more redeemed. So all of those points, Cusanus was in radical disagreement with Pelagius, yet at the same time he also differed with Augustine, particularly with Augustine's doctrine of predestination and moral inability, saying that even though the fall is serious and it has powerfully weakened our ability to choose the things of God, there still remains a remnant of moral inclination to the things of God, so that when the Gospel is offered to us, we still have the power and the volitional ability to say yes or no to the Gospel. I might add, interestingly enough, that Semi Pelagianism was also condemned as heretical at that period in Church history, leaving room for the triumph of Augustinianism, which of course has been the classical view of Reformed theology. And we remember that Martin Luther, who was a monk in Erfurt, was of the Augustinian order, and no prior theologian influenced Luther as much as did Augustine. And so Luther's teaching on predestination, for example, and on the bondage of the will, which he wrote about more extensively than John Calvin ever dreamed about, was basically a consistent exposition of what Augustine had taught before him. Also, in terms of the theologians of antiquity, none influenced John Calvin more than did Augustine. So at their core, both Luther and Calvin were thoroughly Augustinian in their understanding, A of original sin and B of the moral inability of fallen humanity. Now, with respect to the order of salvation, or the Ordo salutis, which is the Other matter that is so vitally important to this text and is also inseparably related, though may be distinguished from the issue of original sin has to do with the question what comes first? And so on in the order of our salvation. Paul, for example, in Romans 8 gives us a partial order of salvation. When he talks about those whom he foreknew, that he also predestined. Those whom he predestined, that he also call those whom he called, that he also justified. Those whom he justified, that he also glorify. Now, there's an order there that goes in a sequence. Now, when we talk about that order of salvation, however, it's important to understand the distinction between a temporal order and a logical order. A temporal order means that one thing occurs before another in time. A logical order means one thing logically is dependent on another thing, though both may happen simultaneously. Let me explain the difference. We believe and teach the doctrine of justification by faith alone. And so, in terms of the order of salvation, we say that faith comes before justification. But how long does a person have to have faith before they're justified? It's instantaneous. So the order of faith's coming before justification is not an order in time. It's not a temporal sequence. It's a logical sequence. That is, justification logically depends upon faith. Faith does not logically depend upon justification. Am I going too fast? We got this. All right. Now, he says that prior to our regeneration, our quickening, our being made alive by God, the Holy Spirit, we walked according to this sinful nature that we have, and we were, by nature, our constituent nature, children of wrath. The idea is that being a child of wrath is not an accident of birth. It's the essence of our fallen humanity. Now, again, that flies in the face of everything. You've been taught from the time you were in kindergarten that we are all by nature children of God. But the Bible says we are by nature children of wrath, children of Satan. Very few times that I disagree with Calvin. But I differ with him on one point when he says newborn babies are as depraved as rats. I don't like that because I think it's an insult to the rat. The rat does what rats are made to do. They like to eat cheese and run away from cats. But newborn babies are born as children of wrath, dead in sin, born in a state of moral corruption, morally incapable of changing ourselves. We can no more change ourselves from our fallen condition than a leopard can change his spot. Now, again, this flies in the face of all of that, that You've heard that you are the one who has to make that final decision of whether you're going to be saved or not. But Paul says you were made alive, you were changed from this course you were on and from being under and living according to the power of the prince of this world. How in verse four does he say, but you, who finally came to your senses, exercised your free will, and fled to Christ to be healed by him? There's no you in this passage, but rather it's but God. I used to have a needlepoint thing in a frame that one of our ladies who came to our Bible studies in Ligonier 100 years ago, and it simply said, but God, Because I said this is the most important two words you'll ever hear in the Bible. Because what he is saying is that after this dreadful description of our fallen condition, he doesn't say, but you or but man, but it's but God. See, that which intervened in the course to which we were walking was God. But God, who's rich in mercy. This is connected to the whole first chapter, when he talked about the mercy of God, that great mercy by which we are saved because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. Now the question is, at what point did God regenerate us? At what point did God did God make us alive while we were dead, while we were utterly helpless, while we were completely morally unable to cooperate with the gospel or to respond to the divine summons? We first had to be made alive. And that is the action of God. We call this action of regeneration, the divine initiative. We would say that your regeneration, your rebirth, is an action that is altogether monergistic, meaning that there's only one actor involved in this activity. It's not a cooperative venture, a joint venture between God and you or God and me, but when you're reborn, it's the activity that God wreaks in our souls and God alone. And he does it while we're dead. As dead as Lazarus was in the tomb. When Paul in Romans talks about calling, he talks about all who are called or justified. He's referring not to the outward calling or the preaching of the Gospel, but those who are called inwardly. When the Holy Ghost quickens you from spiritual death to spiritual life, this is called an internal calling that affects what God wants it to affect, just as he called the universe into being. Just as Jesus called Lazarus out of the tomb, so the Holy Spirit called you to faith in Christ and he didn't wait for you to say, okay. And you know, when I first understood this and learned this, I look back on my own conversion and I said, wow, that's certainly true. I was as far away from the Kingdom of God and as hostile to the Kingdom of God as the Apostle Paul was when he was on the road to Damascus. I wasn't searching for truth, searching for Christ. When I came to faith, it was like God came to me, like on the road to Damascus, and opened these blind eyes and deaf ears and change the disposition of my soul. Unless God changes the disposition of your heart, you will never choose Christ. And when he does change the disposition of your heart, you will always choose Christ. Because what regeneration does is not put you back in a state of moral indifference, but the change in the disposition of your heart is radical. Where before you didn't want God in your thinking, you were totally disinclined to the things of Christ, now he changes the disposition and the inclination of your heart so that now what you want more than anything else is Christ. Now do you choose Christ? Of course you do. Do you exercise faith in Christ? Of course you do. But not until or unless God the Holy Spirit quickens you from spiritual death.
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And aren't we thankful for the life giving work of the Holy Spirit quickening us from spiritual death? Hi, I'm Nathan W. Bingham and this is the Sunday edition of Renewing youg Mind. Thanks for joining us. If you have missed any of these messages in Ephesians, did you know that you can go back and listen to past episodes of Renewing youg Mind on Renewing youg Mind's YouTube channel? Simply search for Renewing youg Mind on YouTube, hit Subscribe and turn on notifications and you'll never miss a new episode. Also, if you comment and like videos on our channel, you will encourage the YouTube algorithm to push these episodes to more people. So a simple like is an easy way to show your support and help spread trusted teaching. If you prefer to sit down and read at your own pace, all of Dr. Sproul's teaching in Ephesians has been brought together in his commentary on Ephesians. And for the final weekend, we'll send you the hardcover volume when you give a donation of any amount@renewingyourmind.org or when you use the link in the podcast show notes. So visit renewingyourmind.org and give your donation before this resource offer ends at midnight, but be quick as it won't be repeated next Sunday. And for those living outside of the US And Canada. We have the ebook edition waiting for you. Simply show your support with a donation@renewingyourmind.org global and we'll unlock the ebook as our way of saying thank you. Next time, we'll start a new sermon series from R.C. sproul. So I'll see you next Sunday here on Renewing your Mind.
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Sam.