Ephesians, Death as Separation Part 1

I've titled today's lesson, and I feel like I oftentimes get myself all whipped up when I'm writing these lessons and sometimes don't choose the most tactful or gracious titles for the lesson. So today I've titled the lesson, The Book of Ephesians versus the Reformed Faith. which is really just kind of classless and propagandist of me.

But I feel like in our environment here that we can hopefully have a little laugh about it and know that it was meant in good spirits, not in a, not hopefully in an angry or overly emotional way. Nevertheless, today what we're looking at is death as separation. And why we have to take a look at death as separation, or one of the many reasons, is because traditionally, when we talk about the Reformed faith, we're talking about actually not all the faith that comes down from the Reformation, but specifically the people who subscribe to the teaching of Calvin, and subscribe to the teaching of the Heidelberg Catechism, and some of his intellectual lineage, if you like. And the reality of that is, is the more we're able to look at the word, the more we're able to continue to walk through doors that Calvin actually opened for us in a sense, we find that his ideas weren't all correct. which actually isn't that shocking of a thing to say when you think about it. I mean, I would never presume to say everything that I say is correct or write that is correct, so why would that be true of Calvin?

Or his multitude of followers. And they are, the Reformed or the Calvinistic movement does play a big part in intellectual or high Christianity right now. So you get a lot of seminary-educated people coming out to pastor churches who've been essentially dogmatically programmed according to this system of thinking. So I'd like to start by just saying a word about isms and ists.

America's Christian, right? We're all Christian, basically, right? I mean, it's part of having white skin or something. It's something that has occurred, and I think it's actually negative in a lot of senses, that everyone just thinks and says they're Christian in America. And your default religion is Christian. And this is a worldwide thing.

The difference is, if you go to Korea, their version of this, like, I guess I'm Christian, because my parents took me to church, they'd say that about Buddhism. I guess I'm Buddhist. My parents were Buddhist, I guess I'm Buddhist, but never really considered it. So it's not like it's a Christian plague or da-da-da-da-da, but it is the case in America.

And so what we wind up doing, as people who are serious about our faith, is trying to find other ways to define ourselves. And I don't think that's necessarily right. Oh, well, we're Calvinist Christians, we're Reformed Christians, we're Open Theists, we're this, we're that, we're Presbyterian, and then you get into the denominational thing. And that gets to be more fun, right?

It seems to seems to indicate to others that you take your faith more seriously than someone else. And the thing that I've found to be a little bit, or not a little bit, but quite disheartening, as I kind of lead Bible studies around, is there are people who are Methodists before they're followers of Christ, before they're lovers of Jesus. There are people who are Calvinists, and their Calvinism, or their reformedness, is more important to them than the fact that their children of God, that they're saved by grace. Believe it or not, there's dispensationalists for whom their dispensationalism or their belief in creation is more important. It takes a higher role than just the fact that they walk with Christ and they're beholding him through his word.

Especially in the case of dispensationalism and creationism, I think those are incredibly important things, and they are exactly right. But I think we need to remember, first and foremost, as we go into this, that those people who call themselves Calvinists, they are our brothers and sisters. There's people who call themselves this and that and da-da-da-da-da. Not in every case, but in many cases, we...

If they are, in fact, following the Lord Jesus, that is... It's our call to love them and pray for them and hope that they're... Hope that they're moving towards Christ, right? Hope that they're moving towards a biblical view of the world. I find that, generally speaking, when we're losing our cool, if we lose our cool over something as I have a tendency to do, I find oftentimes I'm more arguing because I want to be right than because I want them to see Christ rightly. And that's not a good place to be in. So, as we get into isms and ists, I'd just love for us, individually, and then just as we think about things. What does the Bible have to say about following any specific man or person or body or movement outside of just being a part of the body of Christ and moving in? The Bible look pretty positively on that? It says don't. It says don't. Isn't that great?

So as we do this, And I wouldn't also presume to say that everyone who says they're Reformed or Calvinist is brainwashed and agrees with everyone else who says they're Reformed or Calvinist, right? There's incredible variety amongst, just like there's incredible variety amongst dispensationalists and all these other things, actually there's more amongst Calvinists because, as we'll see, their hermeneutic lends itself more easy to yeah, artistic or creative interpretation. So, in any event, I just wanted to preface with that, and I'll apologize in advance, this might seem extraordinarily bookish or academic today. I'm sorry. That's all there is to it. I was thinking about a way to try to spark it up, and I'm not that creative, so I apologize.

So, as we get into this discussion of death, how do we define death? You guys are good. Where did you get that idea? If you see the word death or die or something in the newspaper, or died in the newspaper, what do you think? You think, oh, that person was separated from God. That's what they meant to convey in that newspaper article.

No, you think physical death, right? They were separated from us. Yeah, exactly. And they're spiritual or immaterial portion, and then they're separated from the material portion, right? So, in fact, our definition as death is separation still works incredibly well and still is actually the right one. Nevertheless, when we see the word death, it's defined usually in two ways. In the literal sense, which is Physically was alive physically not alive now, right? And then there's the metaphorical sense in terms of spiritual death and this is where things get sticky. Okay?

The literal definition obviously is quite easy, but when we get into the metaphorical definition, that's where we have to start asking questions Yeah, and if you notice this is a Thayer's definition Thayer has a a very fine Greek lexicon. And there are others that I looked at that basically said virtually the same thing. And you'll notice that these lexicon definitions oftentimes will allow for either what we'll talk about as the Reformed definition of death and what we'd say are, or we'll call the Biblical definition of death. they would allow for either, almost all the time. So these linguists who write the lexicons, or the dictionaries, they're not necessarily, if they're working strictly out of the language, they're not going to be able to come up with these definitions either.

So, death is one of these words that the New Testament, or actually the biblical authors, took, and took a word that was involved in secular culture, in the secular world, and blew it up, and changed it, and mutated it, and started to use it in a way that was different then the culture used it. Does anyone have another example of another word that might have been adopted from secular culture by Paul? Well, Morde himself indicates that those that are trusting in his work on the cross are dead already.

They're just masquerading as life. And when you look at that in the Greek, in the word zoi, that's what we're talking about. We'll actually get closer to talking about that in just a minute. I don't want to skip you. But at the same time, I do think it's important to establish that there's a bunch of these words, and once we start going through them, it'll really open, you'll start, like the floodgates will open, I imagine. But there's a bunch of these words that theologically, or get new theological definitions in the Bible that they didn't have in the culture. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what some of those words might be?

Some of the sports, or the running. Yeah. The athletic analogies? Yeah. Huge. Yeah. Given huge. Grace. Grace! That's actually the one I was looking for first. Awesome. It's in the handout. I always put it in the handout. But I know Randy didn't get it. What did grace mean in the culture? Thank you. Thank you. Yep.

Roughly an unmerited gift, and that was it. Usually given between family members. You wouldn't generally expect a grace from anyone else, from just a normal person you met on the street. What did Paul, whoever was in the grace class, whatever it was, two semesters ago, what did Paul take that definition, that simple kind of smallish word, and stretch it into? Because I can never remember the word combination. It says unlimited, unmerited.

Blessings of God due to the totally adequate work of Christ on the cross. Amen. Okay. Good. You're supposed to do that when you bat. Oh, right. I forgot about that. It's great. No, that's it. I need to commit that. I need to write that on a note card or something or tattoo it on the back of my hand. I always forget it.

But, in any event, yeah, so they took this word that was a word in the culture and just stretched it and worked it into, like, ah, it's the closest thing we've got, let's work this into something that can convey more of the character of God, that can convey more of what's going on here. Because the reality is that what's going on biblically is hard, in fact, the Bible tells us it's impossible for the carnal mind to understand. So even for us as regenerated, spirit-enlightened people, there's going to be stuff that we Wow, that's way bigger than I thought. And our whole language is going to, or the whole language of the Bible reflects that.

Does anyone have any other examples of words like that? Well, I was going to say one way to remember grace. Our friend Ken Marr, he used to be here, he says, God's riches that Christ spent, D-R-A-C-E. stuff is hard to remember. I like the acrostic better, too. That's a good one. That's great. So, grace is a big one, and grace is fun to talk about, so we have to stop. I guess we could go on all day.

What about the word love? Did Paul take the word love specifically for Greek-savvy folks as the word agape? I think that was changed a little bit culturally from the way you used then to the way that Paul then adopted it and John adopted it. Yes. It's actually almost a night and day difference.

I don't think the Greeks and Romans would have had a real concept of the idea of this god or any of their gods loving them with this love that puts subservient his own kind of happiness and pleasure to their well-being. The idea of a love that always seeks the best for the one loved, it wouldn't have been something that was really well thought upon.

Another great example is the word thanks. In the culture, to say thanks was not allowed, and yet Paul really wanted to say thank you to the Philippians. So he spent a whole letter saying thanks, but not saying thanks, but saying thanks. I believe it was kind of tied into the idea of weakness. It's a weak thing to thank somebody. So if you give it to me, that's fine. And I've got to believe that they have some sort of custom of a gesture or something, but generally speaking, saying thanks.

You've got to remember, these cultures especially, we've had As much as Christianity hasn't done great things for the Christianity official, the Catholic Church, the Church Institution, all these things, the Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades, hasn't done all great things. The reality is that the words of Scripture have permeated our society. Things like Thanksgiving and Blessed are the Meek and all these words that we could say, whether they were taken in context, have affected our culture. We've been blessed just by the fact that this book has been near our culture, even if it hasn't been understood by our culture, for the last 1,500 years.

It depends on how far you want to go back, I guess. Cool! So, today we get to look at... Actually, the exact same thing happens with death. I was kind of tempted to have the where's the metaphor conversation, because we always talk about physical things as a metaphor for spiritual things, but I'm less and less convinced that physical things are a metaphor for spiritual things, as spiritual things are actually the reality. and physical things are just there God's tool to show us what's going on in the spiritual world. So in other words we have physical death and we think of that as the starting point and it is for us because we're so attached to this physical world and yet at the same time my intuition is that physical death exists because spiritual death existed. In other words, the spiritual reality came first. And when Christ used a great deal of agricultural imagery, and he said, hey, you know, you plant a seed and it's got to die and goes down and comes up, that he wasn't going, hey, that's neat.

Seeds do that. That's so cool! I'm really glad he was going, see to do that, because I told them to do that. And I told them to do that so you would understand that I had to die. I mean, so anyway, it's just something fun to think about. It's not going to change your life. But it really has been something that I've followed down as I've continued to think about the idea of metaphor in the Bible. Because anyone else in the world, right, they do use a metaphor as a metaphor. But Christ God has a whole different take on metaphor, having created everything with a purpose. So, fun stuff. Alright. So, the Reformed faith, kind of taking us back to our church history.

Calvin came about and started doing this great research and challenged some amazing things. I mean, he was one of the guys that was not afraid to challenge much of anything as far as the Catholic Church. It's hard for us to appreciate the fact that when Calvin went up and said, hey, this whole transubstantiation thing, not so much, that there were people going, He's going to hell. That's insane. I mean, to challenge transubstantiation, it hadn't really been done before. And then all the other things, to challenge the papacy, to challenge all these deals, he was a bold man.

And Christendom, we benefit from him greatly, from his work. So please, don't take anything I'm saying as that stinking, skinny little guy, Calvin, with the ugly beard. Oh, we hate him. But rather, let's just view it and take it with a grain of salt. Because the reality is, Calvin once said that he was trained by humanists. Does anybody have a quick definition of humanism or the humanist movement?

I believe people are in charge. Man at the center. People in charge, man at the center. I mean, man's will is kind of the middle of it. Essentially, you know, coming out of Well, coming out of a lot of history, I'm sure I can't just reduce it all to a simple statement.

But coming out of the bubonic plague and all the others, and the fact that the Catholic Church had raised religion so far away from people, once people started kind of getting back on their feet and money and books and things started to become available, the idea started to come about.

And with the rise of what we finally call science, all this stuff developed into this idea that, well, Humans are pretty cool. We're pretty smart. We can probably figure everything out if we're given enough time. That was kind of the idea that started to float around. Newton started to figure out how things moved and gravity, all that cool stuff.

I think the Tower of Babel is actually a really early example of that same mindset. God squashed it because at the time it was kind of the internet of its age, where everybody had the same language and they came together to a central place and could communicate their ideas and set their mind to things and do things. And God said, we're not going to have that now. So you're suggesting God's going to squash the internet.

I don't think that'd be a bad thing. I'm just saying. I think that I wasn't trying to draw that. OK. I wasn't trying to go that far. But yeah, exactly. It is sort of a Tower of Babel complex. I love that example. It's very similar to what it is. All these things are happening.

Calvin, being a brilliant fellow, no two opinions about it, goes and gets educated by these humanists, but he's a believer, and he gets educated by these humanists saying, I am going to use their humanism, their system of thinking, their way of learning and deducing and talking to battle humanism, to champion the true faith, Christianity. And he did, in great part. I mean, he really inflamed the humanists, for sure, because he put God at the center where they wanted to put man at the center. Unbeknownst to him, he took some of the poison with him.

And the part of the poison that he took was, this is not just as much as we need to know But as much as we want to know and with enough logic and enough You know putting together the dots and enough this and enough that we can enclose all of this information into a nice tight Systematic theology that encompasses all knowledge of a theological nature That sounds perhaps rather attracted to us and I Well, I think it sounds attractive to a lot of us if you can get, you know, like your Bible plus your, this is what the Bible means book, like a Book of Mormon, like a, like a, like a, you know, people historically jump at it immediately.

Oh, wait a minute. You're going to tell me what this means and I don't have to actually look at it myself. You're going to tell me what this means and I don't have to, people love the shortcut, right? It's really attractive. to people, because they think, oh, well, I might not be able to figure it out.

But Calvin did. Calvin got it all figured out, so therefore, we're going to do it. We're going to follow what he had to say about it. So once again, I've read great ... I haven't read all the institutes. If you've ever seen them, they take up a whole bookshelf. I've read out of the institutes and found that his scholarship is fantastic. He's a phenomenal thinker. He loved the Lord deeply. All these wonderful things. But that assumption comes out in his systematic thought, and the reality is that what we teach at Holly Hills and what I think is the most biblical point of view is that you're not going to figure everything out.

I'm really sorry. You're not. The Lord has revealed to us as much as we need to know, but he hasn't revealed to us everything that we might want to know, right? Who wants to know who really wrote Hebrews? I do. I'm kind of curious. There have been some great fistfights over history. It'd be great to go, wrong, right. Yay! That'd be cool. But we can't do that. Sorry. God didn't let us know that.

Who would like to know exactly what it looked like, exactly how God went from nothing to atoms and protons and electrons and stuff and material and matter and da-da-da? Who would like to know that? I wouldn't understand the explanation anyway, but someone must, right? Who would like to know that? He didn't tell us that, did he? He didn't reveal that. He let us know as much as we need to know.

Hey, I did it in seven days. I did it. Don't worry. I'm in control. When I say I did it, I mean he did it. I don't mean I did it. I had nothing to do with it. I promise. But anyway, the point is that this movement in history, and Calvin borrowed this basic presupposition that we can get it all figured out from this humanistic movement, means that When you operate under, and I'm sure computer programmers, anyone working with machines can attest to this, you put a little bit of bad information in, or even, I've been reading the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, it's great. Someone always feeds him a little bit of bad information. He's always gotta wheedle out the bad stuff versus the good, you know what I mean? And that's part of the process, is figuring out, well, I kept coming to this conclusion, and it's because I've been lied to back here. So, with that little bit of information, it affects the way you have to look at this whole book, and here's how.

When they come to our definition of death, or our definition of faith, or our definition of our understanding of Greek grammar, there's a couple great examples of this in Ephesians. Of course, we've talked at length at Holly Hills about the fact that faith is not a gift, and that's not the teaching of Ephesians 2, 8, and 9. And we say, why in the world, if faith is not a gift, if the Greek grammar of Ephesians 2, 8, and 9 is so simple, why in the world are people so insistent that faith is a gift?

Is it because they don't understand their English Bibles? And sometimes that may be true, because the English, if you just read the English, it's like, oh, faith could be the gift. Or they could all three be the gift, but it's not so in Greek. So why is it that this has been so persistent? And it's not because they're bad readers. And it's not because they don't have the ability to dig into the Greek necessarily.

It's because the system, the overarching system, in order to get this whole, we've got it all figured out, thing and continue it requires that they say the grammar can't say what it says because that would appear like there's a disparity between believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you'll be saved and you've been predestined, chosen, yada, yada, yada. Well, how can I have a will in the matter and how can God have a will in the matter? That doesn't make sense.

Therefore, one of them's wrong. So the Calvinists go, this one's wrong and this one's right. Therefore, we're going to reinterp all these by this one. The Armenian goes, actually this one's right, the man's believing and God's choosing is all an illusion and all something that's there and blah blah blah. So we're going to reinterpret all these passage to me that's right. And then they'll sit around and argue all day and all night and all day and all night again about who's right and whose presupposition is right and why they're right for choosing these ones to subjugate to those ones and those ones to subjugate to these ones.

And that's what we want to avoid. If it's true that God's ways are higher than our ways, If it's true that we can't understand things like the Trinity, if it's true that we're not going to come to a perfect understanding of some of this stuff, then there might come a point to go, Lord, I believe what you say.

Out of my little viewfinder, I'm just going to have to say, I believe what you say. I believe I'm chosen. I believe I put my faith in you. I believe you called me. I believe you drew me. And yet, I believe that I, in some manner, had a choice to do it, to go or not.

So that's what we're left at. And this is where we get to the man-made system that dictates how things are interpreted. You'll notice you probably heard the term tulip when discussing the Reformed faith. Can anyone name off the tulip, just for interest's sake?

Total depravity. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Unlimited atonement. P? L. L. Oh, my. I should really save theology for once I've got spelling down. Limited atonement. Unlimited. Unlimited. What is it? Total depravity. Oh, man. Total depravity. No, no, no. What is it? Grace is certainly not unlimited. In fact, it's limited atonement. It's unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and then perseverance to saints.

Which is funny because when we talk about salvation and security, it's because of what the Lord's done. But when they want to talk about security and salvation, it's because we'll persevere. I think it's because the Lord will persevere that I'm going to stay saved. And I've got good examples for that that I can't tell you about in class.

But in any event, so they'll talk about, you'll hear this point, five-point Calvinist, and some people want to be a four-point Calvinist. The one that usually goes is actually limited atonement, which says, Christ only died for the elect. Christ only died for us in this room, the special ones, because you're all so good looking. That's what it was. God chose the pretty people.

So that's the one that they usually forfeit. And why do they forfeit that? Why will you see a lot of four-point calvinists out there? Well, because it releases some of the tension with scripture. Say, well, if I just believe four points, then I can still kind of keep my sense of systematic control over God.

And yet, I alleviate some of the pressure from the Word that says things like, he died for the whole world, you know, John 3.16. the whole world, the whole world, the whole world. Because that's another one that gets redefined based on the system. Because if you believe that God only died for the elect, then Jesus did not, God did not so love the world that he sent his only begotten son, he only loved the world of the elect that he sent his only begotten son. So you have to all of a sudden take those passages like that, simple, clear passages, and if you're just dumb like me, you go, oh, God love the world.

Cool. I get it. That makes sense to me. But then when you try to have a bigger overarching system that's got everything figured out, you're going to start to see things conflict with that. So please, hear me out. I'm not saying that systematic theology is bad. And the practice of going through the Bible and looking about what it says about the same subject throughout the Bible, like God the Father, God the Son, is a great practice, but it's about knowing the frontiers, knowing the limitations of it, and saying, okay, this is where it stops. We're not going to use human reason to put it together where it itself leaves us a space, a blank, a gap. There's a distinction between systematic theology as presented by God's Word and systematic theology as culminated and processed by man.

And that's where the... I mean, when you start using human logic, that's where you reach a whole slew of external doctrines that are not revealed in Scripture. And that's where a lot of this fringe stuff comes out. It's like, Scripture doesn't reveal limited atonement.

But that's a concluded doctrine that Calvin came up with. It's systematic theology from a human perspective. It's that humanism technically coming out. So that's why we can rejoice and celebrate the system of theology that God's revealed, but not find ourselves bound into the logical problems that are human derivatives. Amen. It's beautiful.

But you know, when you analyze it, you read the Bible for one thing, that's to know the Lord. And it's not trying to make an analytical process of dissecting the book so that you can prove all of your points. You know, you just do a thing for your own righteousness.

And that is the best reality that we could ever bring to light here. And hopefully, I'd love to say that I came at this always with the right heart. I've got Calvinist friends, but I'm going to be honest with you. I've wanted to be right a lot in my life. I've wanted to be right and I've gone to the Word, sadly, specifically to prove my point. I've done this a lot.

And I can't even promise you I'm not doing it right now. I'm trying to rest in the Lord. Please be gracious with me. Nevertheless, leaving that as it were, hopefully that's what we're doing now. Hopefully we're freeing ourselves from any systematic need-to-be-right-ism. I'm a need-to-be-rightist. That's what I do. I think they just call that self-righteousness. Oh, good! I do that. Excellent.

But the reality is, and I guess getting back to the Tower of Babel, one of our constant applications as we go through this study will be, this might not be your tower that you're defending. Calvinism specifically, or limited atonement, or da-da-da-da-da. What tower are you defending?

I mean, maybe you're more righteous than me, and there's none, but I've got a lot of need-to-be-rightism, or whatever it is, self-righteousness in me that the Lord's been pounding and hammering on me at for 28 years now. So I guess the application to be thinking of, if you don't know a Reformed person to want to talk to this about, and hopefully, hopefully, I mean, the goal, right, when you're sharing this stuff with them is so that they can see the Lord more clearly as well. If that's your goal, then who knows what the Lord will do, who knows what the Spirit will do with His enlightenment. If your goal is to show them the Lord and their goal is to see the Lord, then I think eventually they'll probably come around to it. And the point is not at all whether you're right or not. And the really funny thing, right, is I'm never right. None of us are ever right. We only agree with God and He's right. Right?

I mean it's like I was thinking about it like we get so caught up in you know how maybe thinking about how intelligent we are, how good-looking we are, how this or how that we are and the reality is which of those things did we do for ourselves and maybe if you got plastic surgery or something then you could take some like hey I paid for this but basically we're dealing with the gifts that God has given us.

I can't you can't take much credit for your IQ. God put it in. And you know what? God who put a profoundly low IQ in another human being who you can look at and say, boy, that guy, he's really not intelligent. God put in them the same capacity to know the Lord. And the reality is, is that when that person stands before Christ conformed, the IQ thing will melt away.

Paul actually puts away that distinction and calls us to learn from one another, period. The more I sit and understand that, the more I care, and I kind of talked about this last week, the less I care about how old you are, the less I care about what gender you are, the less I care about all these things that are trappings. And instead, it's like, what is God teaching me through my brothers and sisters in Christ? He put an order in place, so I go to the elders for clarification, but I don't go to other people skeptically thinking I'm probably not going to get anything out of him. Instead, I call him all the time when I need help with projects, not because he's five houses down the street, but because I get to spend time with him. But the truth of the matter is that the time that I get with my brothers and sisters, it's fantastic. To get that time together, it's not about discrimination that we often find ourselves looking for someone who's smarter or has more experience in X, Y, and Z because we're selfishly going to gain something rather than waiting on the Lord. Yeah, that's exactly it.

We have this funny kind of who's ministering to who in every relationship, we might be thinking, oh, I'm ministering to him, and then going to another relationship, oh, he's ministering to me, or she's ministering to me, da-da-da-da, and it's like, well, wait a minute. Like, when your hand goes to pick up food and put it in the mouth, is the hand ministering to the mouth, or is the mouth ministering to the hand?

Yes. Right? We're constantly Part of each other and the ministry flows though the love of Christ and beholding Christ together flows both ways, okay Since we haven't gotten there yet. We might do that Ephesians chapter 2 would be a good place to start Come on, Ephesians. Sorry, it's hidden in my Bible. All right. It's in the back after second hesitations.

All right, so the system says, the Calvinist definition of death, and we're going to actually get to look this out, is derived from the system. So to go back and figure it all out will be even more confusing than what's happened so far. But nevertheless, the Calvinist defines death as out on a slab, cold, dead in a pile, unable to respond. That's how the Calvinist understands death.

So, when we look at this verse, let's just do Ephesians 2.1. Does somebody have a Bible and a strong voice? And you were dead in your trespasses and sins. There it is. What? Yes. Excellent. Excellent.

Sorry, I had the, you know, there's the little kind of gloss of the He Made Alive and the ones that read off the authorized version. And you, He Made Alive, who are dead, because someone got excited and threw that in there. So I'm sorry, I got confused. I apologize. All right, so they take this and say, you're dead, you're out on a slab, you're unable to respond.

And that's their definition. That's the basis of operation. Now, the question that we have to ask is, is that the Biblical definition? Where is that derived from? Because when we go to define grace, we don't just go to ancient dictionary number 137 that has no context of the way Koine Greek was used in the Biblical sense. So how do the Calvinists interpret that verse?

I guess I don't get it. were dead and unable to respond. Therefore, since you were completely dead and unable to respond, God had to zap you with his provenial grace in order to wake you up enough that you could be presented with the choice to trust in his grace or not. Since grace is, we talked about the I in TULIP, irresistible grace, you will choose. And so you actually have to be regenerated before you believe, and then you believe, but your belief is not up for grabs, you will believe, because it's irresistible. So you really weren't involved with the believing? You really weren't involved at all, which is the thing that they'll... Yeah, and let's see, in the end of John, talk about John specifically, or Jesus specifically, or John says of this, that we believe first and the regeneration comes after that. That believing, you might have life be regenerated through his name.

That's the teaching of scripture. But once again, once you've decided that this is what I'm hanging it on, I'm hanging my whole logical system, all my thought is going to flow out of the fact that God's sovereign. The fact that I'm a total fatalist, the fact that in order for God to be the kind of God I want Him to be, which if we didn't have any will at all would be kind of an absurd thing to say, but let's let that go. In order for God to be the kind of God I want Him to be, He has to be in control of every hair falling, every choice. There can't be any such thing as something happening against His will, which is The President's problem is of its own, but let's leave it there, and say that that's why they have to define death as what it is, because if... Yeah. Let's just move forward. I'm sorry. I could get into a thing. I might get all worked up. Randy? I was going to say, this is outside of Ephesians, so I will try not to make it a rabbit trail. We're going way outside of Ephesians.

Genesis 126, when we're created in God's image, calls us to evaluate what that What does that mean? Because clearly we don't look like a being of light. So what does that mean? My dad, when he talked through it, and I believe this is consistent with what scripture reveals, says that we are given a choice and an intellect, a spirit, a soul, we have a physical body, which Christ would take on a physical body as well later on, but we have a complexity of character and being that if you remove man's need to make a decision from the equation, Paul wasted a lot of time, other than God made him do it, writing logical imperatives and command-like statements. Because your will shouldn't be involved because you don't have one.

And that's where, like I say, that's where the Calvinist will once again... I find that my Calvinist friends, and I do have a handful of them, and I do love talking about... we have Bible studies together, and it's fun. But I do find that when they get worked up, they will follow all their logical beginnings after their logical ends. Total fatalism.

God predestined some to heaven, some to hell. And then after making all those statements, they'll say something like, I don't believe in double predestination. So you don't believe in it, you just talk about it as if it were true. There winds up being this confusion because double predestination, God predestined sending them to hell, even though it's a logical necessity of the system, Doesn't sound nice So they'll say oh, I don't believe in that but then teach that God because everything happens by his explicit will The people who go to hell must go by his explicit will and therefore he's sending people to hell He designed them as firewood for hell He made them to be Hell fodder Way to go go anyway way to go system actually so anyway um I This is the reason why we have to do this. So now we've got to go back to... I'd like to look at it outside of Ephesians, and then we'll come back into Ephesians.

So, does someone want to open up Genesis 2.17?

You going to do that in five minutes? Oh, yeah. I'm good. Actually, we're just not going to get through all this. Everyone live? No kidding. Who's scheduled to teach next week? Bob. So, he'll probably listen to it online so he can... Yeah, you should finish next week. Volunteering your time for that. I think we'll be able to just knock through this. We'll look at Genesis because I think it's, since it's the first, the first occurrence of the word death, I think it's important. We'll look at some of the other ones, just kind of burn through them in passing.

Has anyone got that? Roger, do you? that you eat from it, you shall surely die. So, you can flip over if you want, but what happened? Did they eat of it? Yes. Did they physically die on the day that they ate of it? No. God's a liar! God is a liar! Right? Because they didn't physically die. Wait a minute. Is it possible that God wasn't talking about physical death? Is it possible that God defines death primarily as the separation between Him and man? That's the one that's important to him. And eternally speaking, right?

We'll throw off these mortal coils and, you know, we'll be thankful to do it. And in the space of eternity, the 70, 80, 60, 50, hopefully 35 in my case, years that we spend in this body will look like nothing. Will look like absolutely nothing in respect to eternity. So it'll be kind of unique that sense. However, Real death, spiritual death, will last an eternity.

So, being that as the first occurrence of the word death, we can kind of slide up through John 17.3.

How does Jesus define life in John 17.3? You can turn there if you like, but I'm just going to turn and burn.

John 17.3, Jesus says, this is eternal life that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. brings a lot of verses into clarity, doesn't it? I came that they might have life and life to the full. Lord, where's my Ferrari? I thought we had life to the full. I thought that you would promise this. Where's the job that I really like? You know what?

That's not life to the full. All those worldly things that we tend to attach to that verse aren't life to the full at all. Life to the full is knowing God. Death is not knowing God. Separation from God. So Romans 6 in general, if you go through and read that and try to view death as being out on a slab cold dead, good luck to you, sir. It's going to be confusing.

But Romans 6.23 becomes specifically puzzling. This verse often gets used as a salvation verse, right? We want to talk about, oh, you're going to share the gospel?

Just share Romans 6.23, gift of God, true life, you know, wages of sin, death. Can it be used as a salvation rift? Sure. It displays the truth. But really, it's written to believers, saying, hey, if you abide in your sin nature, and that's what it says, the wages of, it's not just your sins, but the sin nature, the wages it has to pay are death. For the Christian, wait a minute. How could you or I, as a Christian, experience being out on a slab, cold, dead, and unable to respond? How is that even possible? I thought we were regenerated. How are we regenerated and dead? Oh, well.

Obviously, in this case again, it's talking about separation. If we walk in our flesh, we have a separation in our fellowship with God, don't we? Not a selfless separation or relationship, but our fellowship. So now as we get to Ephesians 2, 1 and Ephesians 1 through 10, the first thing that occurred to me, and I actually taught these verses last time, it was a bit of a model, but where were you dead in the verse in Ephesians 2? In your trespasses and sins.

You know, we've talked about in Christ a lot in this book, rightfully so. It's all over the place. In Christ, in Him. I was looking at a Bible I have where someone's underlined all the in Christ, in Him, in the Beloved, all those statements. It's pretty uncanny. It's pretty well underlined. It's been reiterated by Paul.

But to get even better than that, all this being in Christ, in Christ, in Christ, the only other in statements that are made are before you're in Christ, you're in your trespasses and sins. You're identified with your trespasses and sins, which by necessity separates you from God, right? So if we take just our basic understanding of positional truth and apply it to this verse, what was your position before you were in Christ, before you put your faith in Him? when you were in Adam, right? You were associated with your trespasses and sins. Walking dead then. Walking separated from God.

So, if further need of clarification about this, we find Ephesians 2, 1-10 exists as a parallels passage to Ephesians 2, 11-22. So essentially, 2.1-10 talks about individual salvation. And then, once it starts 11-22, he starts talking about corporate issues. That's where he's talking about how you're built together into one body. Jews and Gentiles are no longer separate. And what does he say in the parallel passage, the first statement?

He's saying, hey you Gentiles, Ephesians 12.2 is right on your paper. It says, 2.12, what did I say? I've got a very special version of Ephesians. Yeah, 12.2. Remember that you also... 2.12. Roy, can we edit that in? Can we just 2.12 that? Okay. Remember that at that time you were what?

Separate from Christ. Excluded from the commonwealths of Israel. So when he wants to convey the same thing corporately to the Gentiles, he says, hey, he doesn't say you were dead, he says you were separate. Maybe you just didn't want to be redundant. Maybe you just didn't want us to have to fight about this.

I don't know. But here you get the word separate thrown in there. So it was challenging to come up with an hour on a word. And I think I kind of figured I could lie back on the fact that I'm preposterous, loquacious, and incredibly arrogant, and just kind of fill the time, and I did.

But that aside, we have to wonder why this is such a large issue, and this is going to be a little bit of review, because we've alluded to it before, but once we get to Ephesians 2.8.9, it's these same propositions that say that faith is a gift from God, that allow us to have to commit brain suicide when we come to the simplest passages of scripture that say, hey, your faith is not a gift of God. The salvation is the gift.

I mean, so if you talk to the Calvinists, there has to be several different levels or kinds or special designations of faith. Because everyone has faith, right? Everyone turns on a light and they have faith that it will turn on. Everyone sits down in a seat and they have faith that it's going to sit down.

Can that possibly be the same faith that, well, not in their system. But it's not that complicated for us. We don't have to have this, oh God's got to give you this kind of faith, like you've been using Brand X. But now, you can have God-brand faith that will get you into Heaven. We don't have to do that. Yeah, and it's also important as we as we look at this verse to realize that faith is not a work I hear this commonly commonly commonly they want to the Calvinist will oftentimes want to say well You know if you could put your faith in God as a matter of your will then your flesh is going to boast about the fact that you believed on Christ That is hogwash Faith is not a work, right? Let me give you just a really simple example.

I'm secure enough with this body to admit that I knit. I love to knit scarves, because they're really easy. Anyway, so I knit scarves. Let's say I knit Randy a scarf. And I gave him, I put it in a box, and I handed it to Randy. Randy has a choice of will. He can either receive the scarf from me, because he knows me and loves me, or say, no, there might be mad cow disease on that, or some kind of, I don't trust you enough, I'm not gonna take it, right? But let's say, for the sake of argument, because Randy does love me, not because I'm lovable, but because he's very Christ-like, he takes this gift, and he takes it out, and he says, wow, that is a beautiful scarf, or it's so ugly, but I love bread so much, I'm gonna wear it anyway, and he puts it on. And then he goes about the town, and someone says, that is a really nice scarf. What's Randy going to say?

Thank you. I made it myself. And then he's going to get really prideful, right? No. He's going to say, I received this from a friend. Someone's going to say, wow, you have a really good friend. Yes, well, but I received it. I mean, I had the faith to take it. I really think that was pretty good of me. I really think. Is the absurdity not coming through in this? Like the idea that we're going to go, oh, well, I believed.

Come on. I mean, let's just be real here. You might be able to do that, but only out of the insanity of walking in the flesh. Oh, by the way, if you're walking in the flesh, the insanity that's going to come out of that is going to be insane no matter what. So this idea of taking arrogance or taking pride in our ability to put our faith in God or not is insane. I use the word insanity a lot. Well, that's a scarecrow argument, you know, a straw man argument. Precisely. So anyway, something, food for thought, however you like. Once again, I want to close. We made it.

So Reformed or Calvinist believers are our brothers and sisters in Christ. The purpose of this study, once again, is not to look down our noses at them. It's not to say, I'm right and you're wrong, we're better and you're worse, yadda yadda yadda. This is not the purpose of it. But it's to correct a serious error of of thinking that causes us to misinterpret the simple biblical truth that's been given to us. And the reality is that... not understanding something is OK, because then we just say, I don't understand it.

Misunderstanding something is dangerous because then we think we understand it, but we don't, which is why we need to all keep our humility about us and our discernment about us for sure in these issues. So applications are manifold, but the one that I'd like to close with is you've still got a great message to share.

If there's an unsaved person in your life, you can honestly share the gospel with them. You can say, Jesus Christ died for our sins according to the scripture. He was buried and he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures. And then he was buried and he was raised from the third day according to the scriptures. I feel like I've read that three times. But the point is, you can share the gospel and say, if you put your faith in this, you're saved.

You don't have to caveat that with well if you're if you receive perennial grace and then your jump started and then you put your No, no, you can say God loves you And he sent his son down to earth to die for your sins And there's no there's no magical Argument I have to make to say put your faith in Jesus Christ And you'll have life And that's my application of this.

And we're out of time. Does anybody else have any other comments? You can throw a pen, a rock, a stick, whatever you got. Sweet. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for the truth of your word. Thank you for our brothers and sisters, Lord, of different intellectual backgrounds that challenge us to dig deeper into your word, that challenge us to behold your son on a deeper level in ways that we might not if we all just easily saw eye to eye, Lord. I pray for all of us, all of the believers, all of the believers that have this room that we could be earnestly seeking after beholding your son. That we would be able to let go of our desire to be right and be right for the sake of us and our pride and our arrogance, Lord.

But that we would desire to have seen Jesus and know your character are right. Because that's the goal. That's life. And we want life. Lord, we want to choose life every day. We praise you and we thank you for this body and this time. We pray that you would guide us and illumine our minds as we go into study and worship you again as a larger corporate mass. In Jesus' name, Amen.