Dale Partridge - Romans 3_9-12： Total Depravity： Why No Man Can Come To God

00:00:00.000 In this episode of Real Christianity, I teach on the doctrine of total depravity.

00:00:04.860 That is that I'll be expounding on what the Bible says about humanity. But more than that, 0.66

00:00:09.340 you will see that without God intervening in a person's life,

00:00:13.180 no man will choose to follow Jesus. All that and more coming up right now.

00:00:30.000 welcome to real christianity my name is dale partridge today's episode is titled romans 3

00:00:42.640 9 through 12 total depravity why no man can come to god now as you know this show is an audio and

00:00:49.200 video ministry of relearn.org if you're watching the video recording of this episode please be

00:00:55.680 sure to subscribe to follow along for more biblical content if you're listening from apple podcasts

00:01:02.240 or google play or even spotify thank you guys for your faithful listenership and if you want to

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00:01:15.120 and find me on those platforms also have you picked up a copy of my newest children's book

00:01:22.240 jesus and my gender it's a beautiful hardback book with wonderful illustrations where i affirm god's

00:01:29.360 design for male and female gender and the traditional family would you guys consider

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00:01:46.720 gender all right guys let's go ahead and get started into this episode over the past several

00:01:51.200 weeks, we've been seeing Paul's exposition of the gospel at the Church of Rome. Now, we learned

00:01:57.940 that God has revealed himself in nature, in the things that are made, essentially that we have

00:02:03.740 no excuse for atheism. God has left us no room for that, according to Romans chapter 1. We learned

00:02:10.080 about the impartiality of God regarding the universal condemnation of the moral law of God

00:02:16.040 for both Jew and Gentile. We learned that even though the Jews were born of the seed of Abraham, 0.61

00:02:24.100 even though they had the mark of circumcision, even though they had possession of God's law, 0.89

00:02:28.400 that none of these things would bring about justification before a holy God.

00:02:34.980 This is mind-boggling to a Jewish person at this time. Paul says at the end of Romans 2, 0.63

00:02:41.300 28 through 29, for he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is

00:02:49.260 outward in the flesh, but he is a Jew who is one inwardly and circumcision is that which is of the

00:02:55.280 heart by the spirit, not by the letter. And his praise is not from men, but from God. Essentially,

00:03:01.580 Paul in really Romans chapter one, verses 18, all the way through three, chapter three,

00:03:07.260 verses 20 is doing this systematic stripping away

00:03:11.340 of religious works, bringing about justification

00:03:14.820 before a holy God, meaning that you cannot earn

00:03:17.140 your salvation, you cannot obey the law sufficiently

00:03:20.540 because you've already broken the law,

00:03:21.840 you've been born of sin.

00:03:23.380 And this is the stripping away so that essentially

00:03:26.260 that Paul can lead them to the only means of justification,

00:03:30.120 which is faith in Jesus Christ alone.

00:03:33.100 Now, Paul anticipated the questions and the responses of the Jews that are in Rome about the reality that there are people who are in Israel that have the covenantal mark, that have the moral law of God, that have been born of the seed of Abraham, yet they're not justified.

00:03:51.080 So he's anticipating these questions. Essentially, if their covenantal relationship and following the law, if all these things were here, yet they didn't actually offer some sort of salvific advantage to the Jew, then what's the point? That's the question that a Jewish person would be asking.

00:04:08.560 If at the end of their lives, they essentially received the same guilty verdict as the Gentiles, then what was the benefit? Is there any benefit of being included in the old covenant with God? 0.78

00:04:21.480 And so Paul to that reminds them that there are outward covenantal benefits of being a part of God's people, that they were having some sort of inclusion in God's moral law, having understanding of what is right and wrong, having a better way to live, having obviously being chosen as the people that would steward the mystery of the gospel through time.

00:04:48.400 as the Old Testament is preparing us for

00:04:50.700 and pointing us to Jesus Christ coming.

00:04:53.620 And so there was some physical and material possessions

00:04:57.080 of lands and blessings there

00:04:58.700 about being a part of God's covenant people,

00:05:01.400 but none of those works

00:05:03.240 were going to bring about justification.

00:05:05.640 And this is really what makes the new covenant

00:05:07.160 so much better.

00:05:08.820 Not only is it bigger, 1.00

00:05:09.940 meaning that it extends to the Gentile world, 1.00

00:05:12.580 but it's also better in the sense that

00:05:15.400 The old covenant, God kept his side of the covenant

00:05:21.860 and man failed to keep his side.

00:05:25.420 We are sinners from birth, incapable of keeping the law.

00:05:28.680 Again, the reason we teach our children

00:05:29.920 the 10 commandments is to teach them quickly

00:05:31.600 that they cannot keep it.

00:05:33.480 And the new covenant is beautiful

00:05:35.220 because God doesn't just keep his side,

00:05:36.820 but he also keeps your side of the covenant deal.

00:05:40.020 This is what we call a covenant of grace.

00:05:42.160 And so the Jews struggled with grace.

00:05:43.820 They struggle with the idea of them not being able

00:05:46.600 to contribute to their righteous standing before God.

00:05:49.860 Mark Dever once said, quote,

00:05:52.600 every other religion in the world is the religion of do,

00:05:56.340 but Christianity alone is the religion of done.

00:06:00.700 But more than their struggle to rest in grace

00:06:03.940 was this struggle to believe that they are as unrighteous 0.66

00:06:08.660 as the Gentiles or as unrighteous as the pagan nations.

00:06:12.560 meaning that yes, they were holy in a sense

00:06:14.300 that they were set apart,

00:06:15.720 but they were just as unrighteous according to their ability 0.94

00:06:19.580 to keep the law as any other pagan nation. 0.95

00:06:22.600 And this really takes us into the start

00:06:25.220 of what we're gonna be reading today

00:06:26.680 in Romans chapter three, verses nine through 18.

00:06:31.200 It says, what then?

00:06:33.000 Are we better than they?

00:06:34.340 Not at all, for we have already charged 1.00

00:06:37.720 that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin. 1.00

00:06:40.520 As it is written, there is none righteous, not even one. 0.97

00:06:43.960 There is none who understands.

00:06:45.800 There is none who seeks for God.

00:06:47.960 All have turned aside together. 0.99

00:06:49.840 They have become useless. 0.97

00:06:51.380 There is none who does good. 0.95

00:06:53.320 There is not even one."

00:06:56.900 And so, just for a second, I wanna zoom out,

00:07:01.360 and then I wanna zoom back in.

00:07:03.320 We have to remember, again,

00:07:04.320 there's this Romans 1, verses 18,

00:07:07.200 all the way through three verses 20,

00:07:10.740 we see that Paul is producing a coordinated case

00:07:15.280 for pulling away any redemptive hope in religious activity

00:07:21.700 to produce spiritual security or justification

00:07:25.260 in a legal sense before a holy God.

00:07:28.760 And so he's pushing us to the only way

00:07:32.240 and the only hope that we have in being justified

00:07:35.380 is having the righteousness of Christ

00:07:37.820 imputed to us by faith,

00:07:39.240 which he's gonna go into in Romans 3, verse 20 and 21,

00:07:42.280 and leading into justification by faith alone.

00:07:44.500 So this is Paul's last ditch effort in this section,

00:07:52.040 this coordinated argument that he's making

00:07:53.660 to demonstrate the utter hopelessness of man.

00:07:56.880 So if Paul had, say, poured out the bottle

00:07:59.940 of religious hope in the previous chapters,

00:08:04.940 In this section right here,

00:08:06.440 it's like he's taking that bottle

00:08:08.020 and shaking out every last bit of,

00:08:11.940 every drop of religious hope that you might have

00:08:15.340 in justifying yourself by works and by obedience to the law.

00:08:19.500 And he wants you to understand it is impossible.

00:08:22.380 There is no way to do that.

00:08:24.420 And by essentially giving us a view,

00:08:27.060 a biblical anthropology,

00:08:28.940 a view of man according to scripture, 0.99

00:08:32.060 He proves that there is no way

00:08:36.380 that a man can justify himself before God.

00:08:38.840 In fact, there is no way that a man will even seek God

00:08:42.580 or even be interested in God

00:08:44.180 or even understand how to be justified

00:08:47.560 without God helping him.

00:08:49.100 We are so depraved that we need God

00:08:51.140 to actually intervene first in order for us

00:08:54.820 to respond to the call of the gospel.

00:08:58.240 And so if I had to give the central idea

00:09:01.400 of today's message a title.

00:09:04.820 I would say it's titled The Spiritual Deadness of Humanity.

00:09:08.980 That's really what he's trying to get across

00:09:10.800 is the spiritual deadness of humanity.

00:09:14.400 So I've broken this passage into three sections,

00:09:18.920 which I'm gonna complete over two weeks.

00:09:21.280 So we're gonna get through Romans chapter three,

00:09:23.420 verses nine through 12 today.

00:09:25.300 And then I'm gonna do verses 13 through 18 next week.

00:09:30.300 week and so the sections are the universal condemnation of man which is

00:09:34.920 verse 9 section 2 is the universal condition of man which we're gonna spend

00:09:39.120 most of our time there and that's in verses 10 through 12 and then the

00:09:42.960 universal acts of man which will be verses 13 through 18 so let's just go

00:09:48.240 ahead and dive into the universal condemnation of man he says what then 0.88

00:09:52.140 are we better than they not at all for we have already charged that both Jews

00:09:58.020 and Greeks are all under sin. Okay, antecedents are important. We know this, if you guys have 0.98

00:10:04.940 been on this podcast for some time, you know that understanding the antecedents to particular

00:10:10.940 pronouns will help you interpret the text more faithfully. Now, an antecedent is the object of

00:10:19.140 a particular pronoun, meaning that if I say, Bob threw a ball and he ran to grab it, who is the

00:10:27.300 antecedent or what is the antecedent to he? Well, it's Bob because Bob threw it and then he ran to

00:10:32.200 get it. So we want to know the antecedents behind these pronouns. So much scriptural interpretation

00:10:37.860 is jumbled because of a poor understanding of antecedents or a misinterpretation of antecedents.

00:10:46.960 And so it says here, what then are we better than they? So who are the we and who are the they?

00:10:54.440 Well, the we is Paul including himself in the Jewish community.

00:10:59.940 So he's saying, are we Jews better than they Gentiles?

00:11:03.820 And so at this point, we have to get our context right.

00:11:08.400 And then he asked the question, or he says the word better.

00:11:11.960 I want to talk about that for a second.

00:11:13.540 The word better is referencing a moral justification.

00:11:18.120 Are we better than they? 1.00

00:11:20.740 Do we have some sort of better justification or moral standing before the Gentiles? 0.68

00:11:27.640 And to this, he answers, not at all, which is, again, a shocking statement to a Jewish culture. 0.58

00:11:34.940 So he goes on to give a biblical case and defense for that statement, using a variety of passages from the Old Testament to present the universal condition of man,

00:11:47.120 which again leads us into this next section which we're going to spend the majority of our time

00:11:50.640 there so pay attention with me here this is section two the universal condition of man

00:11:54.820 it says in verse 10 through 12 as it is written there is none righteous not even one there is

00:12:02.680 none who understands there is none who seeks for god all have turned aside together they have

00:12:08.220 become useless there is none who does good there is not even one so paul anchors this premise of

00:12:15.600 that all are under sin, both Jews and Greeks equally under sin. 0.55

00:12:21.200 He anchors this premise by imposing what?

00:12:24.320 The authority of scripture.

00:12:25.700 He says these words as it is written.

00:12:29.340 It's a way to demonstrate that the argument is not philosophical,

00:12:32.080 but he's actually leaning on biblical truth or divine authority

00:12:36.080 that these ideas aren't coming from Paul.

00:12:39.660 They're coming from the word of God.

00:12:41.100 um now these verses that he uses here uh the the statements there's none righteous not even one

00:12:47.700 there's not no one who understands there's none who seeks for god all have turned aside

00:12:50.960 these verses are a collection of old testament passages uh on the depravity of man uh they're

00:12:58.120 they're from the psalms which we'll talk about here shortly they're also essential truths for

00:13:02.460 the doctrine of the total depravity of man which is the t in calvinism in the acronym tulip which

00:13:10.880 total depravity unconditional election limited atonement irresistible grace and perseverance of

00:13:14.880 the saints but this is a central foundational doctrine to grasp really the reformed soteriology

00:13:21.760 or the doctrines of grace it's also a part of the biblical anthropology to give us a a a sound

00:13:30.960 understanding of how the scripture describes man and that's what we're going to spend some time on

00:13:38.240 as well in addition there are some um there are some other doctrines which we're going to see

00:13:44.880 like the doctrine of divine assistance that god essentially needs to come in first in order to

00:13:52.240 produce salvation in a individual now when i say the total depravity i don't mean that

00:13:58.960 human beings are as depraved as they could be we have common grace that god is restraining sin in

00:14:05.600 in the world for the sake of his church. We also know that this doctrine can also be interpreted

00:14:14.840 as total inability, that essentially there is man has an inability to release himself from the

00:14:23.080 slavery and bondage to sin. There needs to be a replacement of the heart. There needs to be a

00:14:29.060 circumcision of the heart or what we would call in theology a regeneration or what John chapter

00:14:35.300 three would say is that we need to be born again now we can't born ourselves again and so this

00:14:41.460 reality is a total inability that god has to be the one who acts first in regenerating an individual

00:14:47.940 because we cannot regenerate ourselves we are not sick and slowly you know having most of our

00:14:55.060 abilities uh dampened but still have a little bit of ability to make a good choice and regenerate

00:15:00.500 ourselves no we are absolutely dead according to the scriptures and we need to be spiritually

00:15:06.180 resurrected we have a dead soul that is separated from god because we know that separation is the

00:15:12.100 definition of death so we know that the separation of the body and the soul is the definition of

00:15:16.500 physical death we know that separation from this of the soul from god is spiritual death and we

00:15:22.580 are born spiritually dead because we're born of adam it's the reason we need to be born again

00:15:27.780 is to be spiritually resurrected where the lord is bringing us to be unified with him

00:15:32.420 the holy spirit is indwelling in us we are now no longer separated but united with christ

00:15:37.380 we are alive in christ and so you start to understand some of that language there

00:15:41.940 okay so paul offers a few things he offers five scriptural truths that solidify the fallen

00:15:48.900 condition of man so in that passage of scripture that we just read there's really five things in

00:15:53.220 in a list. It's none are righteous is number one. Number two is none understands. Number three is

00:15:58.240 none seeks for God. Number four is all have turned aside. Number five is none do good or none who

00:16:05.840 there is none who do good. Not even one is what he says. There's a sense of totality that comes

00:16:12.200 with this passage of scripture. It's essentially the human in thought and word and deed is

00:16:19.660 completely uh shut off to an interest in god we are incapable of operating from a motive to please

00:16:29.180 god we are incapable because we are what we are spiritually dead and spiritual faithfulness cannot

00:16:37.740 precede spiritual life i'm going to say that and i want you guys if you're going to write anything

00:16:42.540 down listening to this episode you want to memorize anything this is the line okay spiritual

00:16:47.980 faithfulness cannot precede spiritual life. So Paul is making an observation of the deadness

00:16:56.740 of a man's soul, meaning you're not going to be able to act to produce a spiritual reaction

00:17:04.060 if you're spiritually dead. You need to be made spiritually alive first in order to produce

00:17:10.360 spiritually faithful responses to god and so again these descriptions that paul's offering

00:17:17.720 here are descriptors of those who are outside of christ that are still dead uh in their trespasses

00:17:24.120 and sins they are that word in ephesians chapter 2 dead is nekros in the greek it means corpse

00:17:32.280 unresponsive dead not sick no it's dead they are all together separated from the life of god

00:17:42.120 and like a corpse they cannot hear they cannot see they cannot understand they cannot move

00:17:47.960 they cannot operate they are utterly incapable to responding to the gospel which is a spiritual

00:17:54.680 faithfulness. They can't respond to the gospel, which is a spiritually faithful act without first

00:18:04.200 a spiritual resurrection. You might hear R.C. Sproul talking about this a lot,

00:18:08.940 is that regeneration must precede faith, meaning that you must be first spiritually born again

00:18:16.040 before you can exercise faith. That is saving faith that trusts in Christ alone.

00:18:22.620 and this is a different type of faith right this isn't this isn't the type of

00:18:26.820 faith where we are you know probable calculations of faith where we are you

00:18:33.220 know we have faith that if I hop in my car today that I'm not gonna die because

00:18:38.340 you know there's mathematical equations that we do in our minds and

00:18:40.920 experiential data that we take and go oh I have faith that I'm that's a

00:18:44.700 different type of faith saving faith is really the relinquishing of the

00:18:49.320 authority of your life to Christ, trusting in him to be righteous and to earn that salvation

00:18:54.020 that you cannot earn on judgment day. It's not even a concept that you can comprehend until

00:18:58.560 you've been made spiritually alive. And so let's break down these five characteristics of the

00:19:05.520 spiritually dead. And I think you guys will start to grasp some of this. Number one, there is none

00:19:11.860 righteous, not even one. This is taken from Psalm 14 verses one through three and also Psalm 53

00:19:20.660 verses one through three. And this is Paul's main clause. And it's really an attempt to demonstrate

00:19:26.020 the total and universal need for justification. It's the condemnation of the law. No one is

00:19:32.320 righteous. We need an alien righteousness given to us through faith. Now, if none are righteous

00:19:39.520 and incapable of keeping the whole law.

00:19:43.840 We know that if you keep the whole law

00:19:45.460 on every point, but fail in one of it,

00:19:47.220 that you're guilty of all of it.

00:19:48.320 That's James 2.10.

00:19:50.400 We know that if none are righteous

00:19:52.880 and incapable of keeping the whole law,

00:19:54.880 then what?

00:19:55.300 Then all are guilty before a holy God

00:19:58.280 and they need to search for the means of justification

00:20:00.580 by faith alone in Christ alone.

00:20:04.020 So this is just kind of this banner statement

00:20:05.860 that none are righteous.

00:20:06.800 It's again, Paul's saying

00:20:07.780 the seven different ways, maybe not seven, but many different ways that are getting this point

00:20:14.080 across to the Jews and to the Gentiles that they are equally condemned before the moral law. Then 0.64

00:20:19.680 he says this line, there is none who understands. And as I said earlier, spiritual comprehension

00:20:27.180 first requires spiritual life. Spiritual comprehension first requires spiritual life.

00:20:34.560 we have some passages that i'm going to put up on the screen here first corinthians 2 14 says

00:20:39.040 the natural person does not accept the things of the spirit of god for they are folly to him and he

00:20:47.840 is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned essentially you can't

00:20:54.240 understand spiritual realities you can't uh accept the things of the spirit of god if you're

00:20:59.840 spiritually dead no you need to be made spiritually alive so that you can accept the things and and

00:21:06.320 you can understand the things that you have accepted so again spiritual life needs to be

00:21:14.000 needs to precede spiritual faithfulness spiritual life needs to precede spiritual actions

00:21:20.480 and so when someone believes it's because they've already been born again they think that they're

00:21:26.080 choosing and in a sense they are choosing but they've been made able to choose which is essential

00:21:32.320 for you to understand and so they've been born again of the spirit of god without their permission

00:21:38.320 just the same way that you were born without your permission in your natural birth you are born

00:21:43.280 again without your your permission in your spiritual birth this is basic understanding

00:21:49.120 to the sovereignty of God over salvation, which you can read in John chapter 3. So, Paul, when

00:21:55.480 speaking to the Christians in Ephesus about the lost, he says in Ephesians 4, 18, he says, 0.98

00:22:04.820 they are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the 0.60

00:22:13.060 ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart. Skatao is the word for darkness or 0.77

00:22:21.720 darkened in the past tense. It really means to be blinded at the mind or blinded in mind.

00:22:30.420 They essentially are blind intellectually. It says they are darkened in their understanding.

00:22:37.480 I want you to hear that word understanding and just hold it for a second because we're going to

00:22:42.020 talk about understanding a lot. So they are darkened in their understanding, alienated from

00:22:47.260 the life of God. Okay, they're alienated from the life of God. Remember, you're spiritually dead

00:22:51.240 because you're not connected to God. You need to be brought back to life. And the way you do that

00:22:55.840 is a spiritual resurrection where you are now united with the source of life, which is Christ.

00:23:02.060 And so they are currently alienated from the life of God because they're spiritually dead.

00:23:07.360 it's a separation of the soul from the source of life, which is the Holy Spirit of God.

00:23:15.180 Because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart. Romans 8, 7, it says,

00:23:22.120 for the mind that is set on the flesh, that is the natural person, is hostile to God. It's not

00:23:29.120 interested for it does not submit to God's law. Indeed, it cannot. End quote. I'm just going to

00:23:37.180 read it again because I want you guys who are struggling to believe that God saves people

00:23:42.560 without their permission to understand the state of biblical anthropology so you can grasp the

00:23:48.560 reality of what it means to be spiritually dead so that you can appreciate your salvation that

00:23:51.980 you did not choose it, but God chose you. It is again, Romans 8, 7, for the mind that is set on

00:23:56.380 the flesh is hostile to God. It's disinterested, right? For it does not submit to God's law. It

00:24:04.180 does not. Indeed, it cannot, end quote. Okay, now I'm going to move on to some Jesus stuff here. So

00:24:11.120 Matthew 13, 19 through 23, Jesus is sharing the parable of the sower. I think this will be helpful

00:24:18.780 for a lot of people. We can see the understanding that the only people who have spiritual understanding

00:24:26.360 are the ones who bear fruit,

00:24:28.900 the ones that land on the good soil.

00:24:31.020 So I'm gonna talk about this for quite a bit here.

00:24:34.340 So Romans, or sorry, Matthew chapter 13,

00:24:37.260 verses 19 through 23, it says,

00:24:41.300 when anyone hears the word of the kingdom

00:24:43.940 and does not understand it,

00:24:47.380 the evil one comes and snatches away

00:24:49.600 what has been sown in his heart.

00:24:52.120 This proves that people can hear and understand.

00:24:53.980 This is my side note.

00:24:54.740 verse 20, as for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately

00:25:02.840 receives it with joy. Yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while. And when

00:25:08.840 tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away. I'm going to

00:25:14.500 stop right there. This is essentially a, what theologians would call a spiritual miscarriage.

00:25:20.400 there wasn't a full birth and there's mystery here we don't understand why god permits these

00:25:25.760 things to happen but this is a reality that people hear the word there seems to be some

00:25:30.240 sort of outward sanctification but then there is a falling away it's because they were never saved

00:25:36.020 we know that uh first john i think it's chapter five uh john is telling to people that have been

00:25:41.860 apostating from the church if they were part of us they would have stayed with us but since they

00:25:45.780 left us. They're not, it's evidence that they're not of us, that they were never of us is what it

00:25:50.780 says. And so this is, we know that he who began a good work and you will finish it, that Jesus is

00:25:58.100 the author and finisher of your faith, that Jesus says, my sheep know me, they follow me, they hear

00:26:02.840 my voice, I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. We know all these passages and the

00:26:07.240 perseverance of the saints. But right here, we see that there's some sort of outward sanctification

00:26:13.020 of hearing the gospel, having some sort of comprehension of that without it actually

00:26:18.240 producing true, full, physical, spiritual resurrection. And so I'm going to jump back

00:26:25.520 into verses 22 here. It says, as for what was sown among the thorns, this is the one who hears

00:26:30.460 the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke out the word

00:26:34.720 and it proves unfruitful. As for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word

00:26:42.560 and understands it, okay?

00:26:46.300 He indeed bears fruit and yields,

00:26:49.580 in one case, a hundredfold,

00:26:51.220 in another 60, in another 30.

00:26:54.360 Okay, so we understand that understanding,

00:26:57.940 you don't have to just hear the word to be saved,

00:27:00.680 but you have to understand it

00:27:02.460 and you have to understand it from the heart.

00:27:05.480 And we're gonna see that in just a second.

00:27:08.120 We see that here, Matthew 13, 13,

00:27:10.660 Jesus recites a prophecy from the book of Isaiah foretelling the Israel's inability to grasp the 0.93

00:27:20.100 gospel and he says quote you will keep on hearing but you will not understand you will keep on

00:27:28.180 seeing but you will not perceive and so if what Jesus says here is true that only those who

00:27:37.460 understand the gospel will bear fruit and prove themselves to be truly born again then how are

00:27:44.100 we to deal with paul's statement that says that none understand i mean how are we supposed to

00:27:50.180 understand if none understand we have a theological dilemma here right that if jesus says that we have

00:27:57.060 to understand uh yet paul says that none understand well we have to figure out how to deal with this

00:28:05.300 are Paul and Jesus at odds with one another? Is somebody lying or wrong in this passage of

00:28:12.180 scripture? Of course not, right? The logical conclusion is that those who do understand

00:28:16.900 only understand because they have been made able to understand. And that is the beauty of

00:28:24.060 the gospel. They have been given, as Jesus would say, ears to hear, and they have been given eyes

00:28:31.240 to see. They have been made spiritually alive and capable of comprehending and understanding

00:28:39.680 those spiritual truths. I'm going to slide up to my notes here, back to 1 Corinthians 2.14,

00:28:46.020 the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him,

00:28:50.140 and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. That's the natural

00:28:55.620 person, but the spiritually alive person, the person that has been born again in Christ,

00:29:00.040 all of a sudden feels like they can see for the very first time in their life and they can hear

00:29:04.840 and they could read the word of God and grasp it and it's new life. And this is what Jesus

00:29:09.700 is talking about in this passage of scripture. Let me get back to my spot here.

00:29:18.960 Matthew 13, 17, Jesus says, for truly I say to you, many prophets and righteous people

00:29:24.780 have longed to see what you see and did not see it and to hear what you hear and did not hear it.

00:29:30.860 Now, right before this verse, Jesus says, quote, he who has ears, let him hear. Then the disciples

00:29:38.040 came and said to him, why do you speak to them in parables? And he answered to them, quote, to you,

00:29:44.780 it has been given to know or to understand the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them,

00:29:52.520 it has not been given for to the one who has more will be given and he will have an abundance

00:30:00.240 but from the one who has not even what he has will be taken away verse 13 this is why i speak

00:30:06.900 to them in parables because seeing they do not see and hearing they do not hear nor do they

00:30:12.940 understand indeed in their case the prophecy of isaiah is fulfilled that says quote you will

00:30:21.280 indeed hear but never understand and you will indeed see but never perceive for this people's

00:30:27.780 heart has grown dull and with their ears they can barely hear and their eyes they have closed

00:30:34.860 lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart

00:30:43.120 and turn and I would heal them, but blessed are your eyes for they see and for your ears for they

00:30:52.860 hear. So this is, this is about people that are completely depraved and can't understand and can't

00:30:59.580 see and can't hear and can't grasp the gospel message. But the people that do understand and

00:31:05.280 do hear and do see need to realize that the only reason they do is not because they're smarter or

00:31:10.840 they're wiser or they're more spiritually able no all of us are equal none understands none is

00:31:16.360 righteous none seeks for god is what paul is saying here no we do these things only because

00:31:21.980 we have been made able to do so god sovereignly without our decision without our permission came

00:31:28.960 in and regenerated our heart gave us new life restored us so that we can see that we can hear

00:31:36.080 so that we can understand from the heart turn that jesus would heal them and so um ultimately

00:31:43.120 understanding the gospel is essential evidence of a born-again believer and this doesn't mean

00:31:52.000 that saved people need to understand theology no but it does mean that they're going to understand

00:31:58.240 the holiness of god the sinfulness of the state of man our need for forgiveness and their need to

00:32:04.400 to have an alien righteousness imputed to them by faith.

00:32:07.660 That is essential for them to understand,

00:32:09.720 not that just Jesus loves you,

00:32:11.560 but really the penal substitutionary atonement

00:32:15.020 of Jesus Christ, that Christ came to die

00:32:20.740 for the sins of his people,

00:32:22.540 and you gave your sin to Christ to pay for it on the cross,

00:32:26.140 and he gave his righteousness to you through faith

00:32:28.720 so that you might be made righteous,

00:32:30.060 so that you could be united back to God,

00:32:32.000 not by your own righteousness,

00:32:33.060 but by the righteousness of our savior.

00:32:34.740 And so to not understand these things is to not bear fruit

00:32:39.180 and to not bear fruit is to be a sign of not being saved.

00:32:42.960 And so this is essential

00:32:44.840 to have a comprehension of the gospel.

00:32:46.820 And this is why individuals who might have all this time

00:32:50.660 in the church and experience,

00:32:51.800 I think many pastors in America

00:32:54.020 and all over the world actually aren't even saved

00:32:56.180 because they don't understand the gospel.

00:32:58.940 They understand moralism, they understand religiosity,

00:33:01.880 but they don't understand the gospel.

00:33:04.600 Okay, the next point we're hitting is none seeks for God.

00:33:07.880 This is number three.

00:33:09.140 Okay, seeking is another reference

00:33:12.800 to the spiritual blindness of man.

00:33:15.780 We don't seek God because we're what?

00:33:17.780 We're spiritually blind, we're spiritually dead.

00:33:20.620 Dead men don't seek, right? 0.98

00:33:23.200 Many seek religion. 1.00

00:33:24.860 They seek God through illegitimate means

00:33:28.880 because God has embedded an intrinsic desire

00:33:31.420 in mankind to worship.

00:33:33.700 And we will seek out religious, you know,

00:33:38.060 ways to express that worship

00:33:41.040 so that we can fulfill that desire to worship

00:33:45.300 that's been given to us.

00:33:46.280 But we do that in illegitimate ways

00:33:48.440 and we will never turn to Christ

00:33:50.020 because we can't even seek for God.

00:33:52.620 Again, this point, just think about this point, guys.

00:33:55.000 None seeks for God.

00:33:56.860 None seeks for God.

00:33:58.140 Just get that in your brain.

00:33:59.080 none seeks for God. And so seeking is also indicative of desire. We seek what we desire.

00:34:07.120 We know this is true. In short, we don't seek God because we have no desire for God. We have

00:34:11.960 no desire for being saved. You have to remember that a lost person has no desire to be saved,

00:34:18.340 none whatsoever. The only way they will be saved is that they hear the gospel,

00:34:23.120 which is the midwife to the new birth, because we know faith comes by hearing and hearing by

00:34:28.600 the word of Christ. And we know that this is the only means by which salvation can come about

00:34:32.660 is the gospel. You don't need to teach people about evolution. You don't need to teach people

00:34:36.220 about the big bang theory. You don't need to defend against all these other religious views.

00:34:41.120 What you need to do is preach the gospel. It's the only thing by which a man can be saved.

00:34:45.240 And in that gospel preaching, God will open up the eyes and the ears and give life to those who are

00:34:52.520 his to his sheep his sheep will hear his voice and they will come to him and so um we have no desire

00:35:02.120 uh lost people have no desire for god and specifically his lordship and rule in their

00:35:08.120 life now i want to say something when you say a lot like this someone recently talked to me about

00:35:12.280 this when i say lost the historic meaning of a lost person is a lost sheep now there are people

00:35:20.440 people, according to the scriptures, that are not receiving mercy, meaning that they are not going

00:35:27.840 to be regenerate, that God has not foreknown them, that God has not predestined them, that God has

00:35:31.920 not elected them. And so when you speak to the lost, you're not speaking of all people who are

00:35:38.200 lost, you're speaking of those people who are God's sheep, but are lost. And so our hope is to save

00:35:44.540 the lost is to save the lost sheep. But God is not extending mercy to all people. He's extending

00:35:50.660 mercy to some. So there's no injustice here with God. There's just justice and mercy because every

00:35:56.700 one of us deserves hell, but we're not going to all receive hell because God has extended mercy

00:36:01.220 to some which are his sheep. Now, again, we have no desire specifically for his lordship or rule

00:36:08.000 our life we know psalm 119 155 says salvation is far from the wicked for they do not seek your

00:36:16.880 statutes now this of course also obliterates the ridiculous idea of seeker sensitive churches or

00:36:28.080 you know the seeker sensitive movement when we believe that people seek god we do a couple things

00:36:34.960 first, we elevate the state of man beyond what the scriptures say. None seek for God. There is 0.94

00:36:44.120 nobody that's coming to the church that is seeking God unless they are already saved. None seeks for

00:36:51.420 God. Now, is there a drawing? We know that Jesus says that no man can come to me unless the Father

00:36:58.200 who sent me draws him. There's an argument to be had there. We don't know the distance between

00:37:04.440 the beginning of a drawing and the regeneration of the heart.

00:37:08.340 We don't know the answers to these things,

00:37:10.160 but we will bank on the clarity of none seeks for God

00:37:13.780 because when we have something that's mysterious

00:37:15.720 and something that's clear,

00:37:17.520 we always opt for the clear doctrine

00:37:20.080 to rule the way that we live.

00:37:22.380 And so when we believe that people seek God,

00:37:26.120 we believe that their lostness

00:37:28.020 is due to some lack of theological information,

00:37:32.280 which is just a bad thing.

00:37:34.880 And it's the whole reason why we have

00:37:36.660 these TED Talk Christianity, 0.75

00:37:38.180 which is trying to sell Jesus

00:37:41.100 and trying to earn a decision from somebody

00:37:44.360 to persuade them to Jesus.

00:37:47.120 And they use all these means other than the gospel.

00:37:50.320 And as a result, again,

00:37:51.820 we try to use emotion and intellect to save people.

00:37:57.340 And we bring people into religiosity.

00:37:59.440 And there's all these people that are in the church

00:38:01.520 that have came to church, but never came to Christ because they never heard the gospel,

00:38:04.960 because the pastor there was trying to persuade them with emotion and intellect to have a grasp

00:38:09.560 with their mind of the gospel, that they heard the gospel, but they didn't understand it from

00:38:13.500 the heart. They didn't turn from their sin and they are not born again. And this is obviously

00:38:18.560 out of step with Paul's approach to saving souls, to evangelism, right? We know that Paul

00:38:27.500 and the other apostles always, always wounds with the law and heals with the gospel.

00:38:34.460 They always wound with the law and heal with the gospel. We know that there needs to be a bad news,

00:38:40.280 good news gospel. The good news is not good if the bad news isn't bad. And that's essential for

00:38:45.480 us to teach the bad news that they are under the wrath of God, condemned by their disobedience to

00:38:50.760 the moral law. And if they don't repent in turn, they will not be righteous. They need to have the

00:38:56.660 righteousness of Christ imputed to them by faith. And so, you know, this is essential for us to

00:39:04.040 grasp. Now, this doctrine that states that no man seeks for God, again, presents a biblical dilemma,

00:39:11.360 similar dilemma that we had before when we were talking about understanding. The Bible is filled

00:39:16.320 with passages telling people to seek God or telling them to draw near or telling them to seek

00:39:21.440 the kingdom or to make a decision or to choose or whatever it may be to obey. And so if Christ

00:39:28.540 calls us to seek, and yet Paul tells us that none seek, we have that dilemma again. That dilemma

00:39:36.360 is only overcome by understanding the reality that if God is calling people to seek, it's not

00:39:42.380 because we have the ability within us to do so. It's that we actually have to have the ability

00:39:47.900 given to us. We have to be made able to seek because none seek. And so this is the mystery

00:39:54.980 of the sovereignty of God over regeneration and salvation. This is why Jesus says in John 6,

00:40:03.720 44, no one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up on the

00:40:10.160 last day. So Jesus confirms man's inability to seek him without God first extending grace

00:40:17.280 and opening their hearts and eyes and minds to seek Jesus.

00:40:21.600 So right there, that passage should be enough

00:40:24.180 for you to understand that you don't choose Jesus,

00:40:27.820 but Jesus chooses you.

00:40:29.340 Our God is the one that inaugurates salvation.

00:40:32.280 It's not you.

00:40:33.880 No one can come to me

00:40:35.360 unless the father who sent me draws him.

00:40:38.460 And so again, this presents us

00:40:40.020 with that doctrine of divine assistance,

00:40:42.400 the idea that God must intervene for us

00:40:45.240 in order for us to fulfill the understanding

00:40:47.760 and the seeking and the becoming righteous

00:40:50.520 and the doing good.

00:40:52.260 And so Augustine in the fourth century once said,

00:40:55.280 grant what thou commandest

00:40:57.400 and command what thou dost desire.

00:41:01.220 Now I'm gonna give you guys the regular English version,

00:41:03.720 the modern English version of that.

00:41:05.540 He's saying, quote,

00:41:07.700 give me the grace to do as you command

00:41:11.160 and command me to do what you desire.

00:41:14.520 And so, in other words, Augustine understood that scripture calls man to do things which he cannot do unless God gives him the grace to do them.

00:41:25.940 And that's why he's saying, give me the grace to do as you command and command me to do the things that you desire.

00:41:32.600 And so, this is essential for us to grasp that God commands us to do things that we can't actually do unless God actually gives us the ability to do them.

00:41:42.780 And that's why so many people get tripped up and they believe that we have this free will to choose, when in reality we don't. We have to rest on these truths here. These are clear doctrines that none understand. No one seeks for God. None are righteous. No one can do good. All have turned aside. These are essential truths. And the only way that we do understand, that we do seek, that we do do good, is because we've been made able to do good already by the Holy Spirit.

00:42:10.200 So Paul summarizes the results of man's lostness in verse 12.

00:42:15.540 And that's where I'm going to cover our fourth and fifth point,

00:42:17.460 and then we'll close up in a conclusion here.

00:42:19.440 So he says in verse 12,

00:42:21.900 All have turned aside. 0.85

00:42:24.540 Together they have become useless. 0.89

00:42:27.380 There is none who does good. 0.92

00:42:29.460 There is not even one.

00:42:31.500 So Paul has dealt with their state of unrighteousness.

00:42:34.820 He's dealt with their disordered heart and affections,

00:42:37.100 their intellectual blindness, their disinterested spiritual posture. In this last point,

00:42:42.580 he shows their diversion or departure from God's way, right? All have turned aside.

00:42:49.060 There's some Old Testament scripture that often, if you've read your Old Testament,

00:42:54.080 you're a stiff-necked people, you've turned aside. I can't essentially guide you,

00:42:59.920 is what God's saying to these people. There is, in Proverbs 14, 12, we know the passage says,

00:43:06.680 there is a way that seems right to a man,

00:43:10.340 but its end is the way to death.

00:43:13.660 And that's really this concept here. 0.79

00:43:15.660 All have turned aside together, they've become useless.

00:43:17.620 There's no one who does good, not even one.

00:43:19.760 Ultimately, we learn a simple truth from this text.

00:43:23.540 The lost cannot find their way without help.

00:43:29.340 And if they can find their way without help,

00:43:32.060 then they're not lost.

00:43:33.500 And so this is a statement of reality here. 0.95

00:43:38.180 As a result of their lostness, they have become useless. 0.92

00:43:42.500 And what does that mean? 0.99

00:43:43.760 How have they become useless?

00:43:45.500 Namely, they cannot carry out the very thing 0.93

00:43:48.720 that they were designed to do,

00:43:50.420 which is to worship and glorify God.

00:43:53.320 They cannot do so because they have turned aside,

00:43:55.920 because they do not understand,

00:43:56.980 because they aren't seeking for God,

00:43:58.400 because they aren't righteous,

00:43:59.240 because they are alienated and disconnected

00:44:00.940 from the source of life.

00:44:02.720 They are spiritually dead.

00:44:04.000 They are lost, blind, deaf,

00:44:05.740 and of no use to God and his kingdom. 1.00

00:44:08.380 So they are useless.

00:44:10.920 And Paul closes with a statement

00:44:12.440 that's really in connection with his first point

00:44:15.680 on none are righteous.

00:44:17.420 So this is kind of a way to close. 0.63

00:44:19.340 If we know a little bit about Hebrew, 1.00

00:44:22.320 what they often will do is that they'll open up

00:44:24.060 with a passage and then they'll have something

00:44:27.100 in the middle and they'll close with the passage

00:44:28.860 that reaffirms the opening line.

00:44:30.820 And so he says at the close of this passage,

00:44:33.500 there is none who does good, there is not even one.

00:44:37.560 And so it's kind of a redundant or a synonymous way

00:44:40.820 of saying there is none righteous,

00:44:42.700 there's no one who does good, there's not even one.

00:44:44.800 So that is being in relationship with God,

00:44:47.740 who is the source of all good,

00:44:51.640 all of man's efforts outside of God,

00:44:55.100 as moral as they may be to man's perspective,

00:44:58.680 are not good because they're not performed

00:45:02.300 to the glory of God, but they are performed what?

00:45:05.840 To the glory of self.

00:45:08.500 And so the religious acts of self-righteousness,

00:45:10.660 so if you see the little old lady 1.00

00:45:12.780 that is bringing all of her extra food to the food bank, 0.99

00:45:17.240 but she hates God, God looks at this and is not impressed.

00:45:22.060 This is not a good work to God.

00:45:23.760 This is an act of self-righteousness and moralism at best.

00:45:28.680 And this is exactly why Isaiah 64 6 says for all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all of our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment. And so even our righteous works aren't good to God. Because if they're not done to the glory of Christ, then they are done to the glory of self.

00:45:50.180 In other words, outside of Christ,

00:45:51.740 even our good works essentially are good.

00:45:54.200 And so we need to realize that there are no good people

00:45:57.040 outside of Christ.

00:45:59.580 Now, in Christ, we actually do have the ability to do good.

00:46:03.840 We can do things to the glory of Christ,

00:46:06.300 driven by the Holy Spirit,

00:46:08.260 motivated from a heart to serve and glorify God.

00:46:11.820 But we cannot do so outside of Christ.

00:46:16.040 And so the conclusion here,

00:46:18.360 Paul closes with kind of this redundant statement of force, right? None, not even one.

00:46:26.880 In other words, that no man born of Adam is righteous and escapes the description

00:46:34.560 that Paul has laid out in these passages of scripture. Every one of us, whether we were

00:46:41.220 converted at age five, or whether we were converted at age 55, has to see that this text really is

00:46:49.640 a spiritual biography of our story. Self-love is blinding, and we often want to elevate the state

00:46:57.540 of man, that we're not as bad as the Bible says we are. We are actually worse than what we think

00:47:06.140 we are. I think it was Charles Spurgeon who said something along the lines that if someone thinks

00:47:13.460 ill of you, do not be mad at him because you are far worse than he thinks you are. The idea is

00:47:20.000 that we are absolutely worse than we think that we are. And so in a sense, we all have the same

00:47:25.800 testimony. All of us came from this, this line. Now, some of us have been given grace earlier in

00:47:32.780 and some of us have been given grace later in life,

00:47:36.900 and some will not be given grace at all.

00:47:39.620 And so all of us were unrighteous.

00:47:41.220 All of us were ignorant to Christ.

00:47:42.640 None of us sought after God.

00:47:44.600 None of us went the way of the Lord.

00:47:47.900 None of us did good, not even one of us.

00:47:51.020 And so when this is understood properly,

00:47:54.740 that somehow you were this, and now you're this,

00:47:59.480 that you will have a magnified gratitude

00:48:05.440 for your salvation.

00:48:07.620 When we understand what we've been saved from,

00:48:11.520 we will have a greater appreciation for the Savior.

00:48:14.700 My professor at the Master's Seminary

00:48:17.140 often did a sermon on Ephesians 2

00:48:18.680 talking about the same concept,

00:48:19.980 is that when we understand the degree of tragedy

00:48:25.540 that we have been saved from,

00:48:27.600 we will have a greater appreciation for the savior.

00:48:31.360 And so if we believe that we chose Jesus

00:48:34.320 and that it was just a really good opportunity

00:48:36.840 to choose God because he gave me a chance

00:48:40.660 and I chose to essentially follow him

00:48:42.620 and I'm doing a good job.

00:48:44.380 If you look at it that way,

00:48:46.080 you will have a low appreciation for your salvation.

00:48:49.960 If you look at it in the sense that you actually had no hope,

00:48:52.920 you were spiritually dead,

00:48:54.180 You weren't swimming and drowning

00:48:56.200 and needing a life vest thrown at you.

00:48:59.580 You actually were absolutely dead

00:49:01.660 on the bottom of the ocean floor.

00:49:02.880 You needed somebody to come bring you back to life

00:49:06.860 and absolutely rescue you

00:49:08.400 because you were on your way to hell

00:49:10.080 and you had no possible way of escaping that on your own.

00:49:14.280 When you understand that degree of salvation

00:49:17.820 from the savior, you have a greater appreciation for Christ.

00:49:21.420 And so it should cause you to be more in love with God.

00:49:25.940 It should cause you to be more indebted to his grace

00:49:28.920 and ultimately more obedient.

00:49:30.700 Now we obey, not because it makes us righteous.

00:49:33.580 We obey because the righteous one

00:49:36.240 has given us his righteousness

00:49:37.620 and the gratitude for that drives us.

00:49:40.920 The gratitude drives us.

00:49:42.260 We are no longer motivated by law and fear.

00:49:46.580 We're motivated by gratitude and love.

00:49:49.660 The late hymn writer, Ron Hamilton once wrote

00:49:53.240 in his famous song, Before I Loved Him.

00:49:56.840 He said, lost in the darkness, I stumble alone,

00:50:00.400 far from the sunlight of day.

00:50:02.560 Then Jesus found me and made me his own.

00:50:05.060 He drove my darkness away.

00:50:07.160 Before I loved him, he loved me.

00:50:09.360 Before I found him, he found me.

00:50:11.820 Before I sought him, he sought for me.

00:50:14.680 Yes, Jesus cares for me.

00:50:17.740 So guys, I hope this was a helpful episode,

00:50:20.300 understanding a basic introduction

00:50:23.040 to the doctrine of total depravity

00:50:25.200 and understanding the beautiful grace of God and salvation.

00:50:30.160 If you're a regular listener to this podcast,

00:50:32.240 would you guys do me a favor and leave a review?

00:50:34.760 You don't even have to write anything,

00:50:36.120 but if you just tap the stars in your podcast app,

00:50:39.120 that's enough.

00:50:40.240 If you do write something, man, I will read it.

00:50:43.680 And we have been very encouraged

00:50:45.220 by those of you who have left reviews

00:50:47.520 they're really helpful for exposing this episode and these podcasts to other individuals again

00:50:54.360 thank you for your listenership we hope you are enjoying this series going through romans

00:50:57.800 we're going to continue to sprinkle in some other topical episodes as we go through

00:51:01.380 over the next several months on that note my name is dale partridge this is real christianity

00:51:06.240 and we'll see you next week

Dale Partridge - October 12, 2022

Romans 3_9-12： Total Depravity： Why No Man Can Come To God

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