Which Side of the Cross - Finish Lesson 12 Start Lesson 13
Mike Doyle · Jul 16, 2017
Which Side of the Cross, No. 27
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492662592453

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

So I'm just going to do the last couple of questions on Lesson 12, and JD will get up and we'll launch into 13. And I sent out 14 this morning, and there's copies of it back there. We've been spending a lot of time the last few weeks really trying to come to the understanding that God does not forgive us on any sort of basis that has to do with big heartedness or waiving the penalty or anything like that. So I'm going to put both of these last two questions into one, which is really question ten. What is the sole ground on which divine forgiveness is now exercised? There's no other ground other than this. What is it? Expand on that. You can't say those 25 cent words and not expand on it. The wrath that God had for his sins.

And how was it satisfying? He and his son made an agreement way back and he decided that he would send his son and Jesus volunteered to go die for the sins of mankind and to appreciate the wrath of God. So that's pretty good. He only takes away sin based on the fact that he's already accomplished the fact. that the sin issue has been totally dealt with to the complete satisfaction of God's righteousness. Schaeffer uses the word undiminished judgments of God against sin. He did not hold anything back. He took it all out on his son, the Lord Jesus.

So the sole ground for forgiveness is now exercise only on what Christ did. And I think it's important for believers to get away from this mentality that he's going to forgive me because I'm something or not. It has nothing to do with your fitness or your qualifications. It has everything to do with what the Lord Jesus did. That's the only reason, the only reason. In studying grace, it's really good to understand that for God to forgive me and to remit the penalty for my sins and also to be able to operate in absolute righteousness is because of something He did, not anything that I did. And just one last question, we talked about this last week.

There's two classes of people in my mind. There's believers and non-believers, right? Any other class? Nobody in the middle? Nobody outside those two? So God requires something from each one of those groups of people. What does he require from a non-believer? Just belief. Does he require this non-believer to confess his sins? No, he doesn't. For a believer, What's his sole responsibility when it comes to sin? Confess them. That's it. So it's a pretty simple equation. And that's really all I have. So we'll start now with JD and finish up this last section on the paper by Schaefer. Yeah, so lesson 13 kicks off with almost the exact same question at the end of lesson 12.

And I think to the point that I've made, we've been focusing a lot on finer details of grace. And I think that having listened to some of the conversations after class the last couple of weeks, I think there might be a temptation or a curiosity in the mind of each of us as to why are we looking at this with such a magnifying glass?

Why are we getting into these details of what grace is and is not. And I think it's important because a lot of times in Christianity grace is one of those big words that is used freely and applied to most any dealings that God has with us from a believer's point of view. And while grace is the environment that we operate under and it is His attitude towards us in so many different ways, We also need to understand that there are other aspects of the Lord that operate alongside His grace that are not falling underneath that leniency or that big-heartedness, as Mike mentioned, God is holy as well. So we've got His attributes, His sovereignty, His righteousness, His justice, His love, which grace is a component of, omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, immutability, eternality. We have a study just like this to define each of those attributes and get into them and talk about what they are and what they're not. But I think grace is oftentimes just sweepingly used across many of the attitudes of the Lord, and yet in the gospel itself, oftentimes grace is introduced to unbelievers by us, potentially in error.

And that's where we're just trying to look at it under that fine-tooth comb in order to make sure that we are calling and having the right the right attitude towards what God has said is grace from his word and what is not grace. And so that's kind of the preamble to getting into this section of grace. I think we've got one more lesson and then in August we're switching over to faith, correct? Yeah. September. So a few more lessons.

So yeah, what we've been doing, for those of you that may have missed a few classes, we've been referring to this It's paper by Schaefer and this particular section is covering portions 6 and 7. And so those would be the contents from answering some of these questions, and hopefully you guys have got a chance to read that. That paper is in the back.

If you don't have it, please pick it up. Even if you don't get a chance to necessarily study and get it all read through for the class, it is a reference that you're going to want to have as a believer over the years, just to refer back to in terms of the stuff that we've studied. My hope is that we can take some of the big words that Schaeffer used. When you get somebody of his mind and his time and energy spent in a word, he ends up using a lot of words that we don't today. So hopefully we can get that.

So question number one. Again, very similar to the last question on Lesson 12. Why is the forgiveness of God towards sinners not an immediate act of grace? So I was thinking about this in light of... I'm trying to think of these questions in light of me communicating with an unbeliever.

Also, maybe a brand new believer. There's not much information there, but here they've been told they've been forgiven. And they say that they're on the fence about believing. They haven't said yes, so they're saying no until they say yes. They're like, what do I need to be forgiven from? Why am I forgiven? And why would I not want to communicate their forgiveness that God offers to them as an immediate act of grace? Why?

Yeah? I think it's what the question is. My past sister Corbett, that wrath of God had to be satisfied, he's righteous. And Jesus had to fulfill that agreement that he would take away the sins of the world with every single one. I think so. I think you're right.

So, we have a lot of different terms that we use to apply to ourselves when it comes to salvation. So, we're talking about the gospel. What is the gospel? Simply stated, as Paul states it. Good news. It's the good news. And what is that good news? As fast as you can say it. Death, burial, resurrection, and the price of believing in God. That was for you. So we've got the death, burial, and resurrection.

And because of those acts of the Lord, there is the opportunity for unbelievers to believe in that. And that's the good news for them. But it's interesting that in those acts, we're not looking at God dealing with them in mercy. Those are not merciful acts. Those are acts that are tied to this aspect of what we call substitution. Does anyone know how to define substitution? Define it in the Old Testament. Define it from the Old Testament. What did it look like in the very beginning?

It hasn't changed. God has always been in the sin. In the Old Testament, even for Adam. Adam had an attitude of sin towards God. He thought he knew better than God. And here we find Adam hiding in the garden. And we see God, in his judicial response to that sin, providing what? The death of another, that's right, and he covered Adam in the skin of that animal, right?

So from that very stage, on through the Old Testament, on into the New, we see this consistent picture of substitution. In the Old Testament you had the unblemished lamb, male, and it had all these different qualifications that the Lord placed on the substitute. And he said, you bring it and place your head on the head of the lamb.

And that was a picture of what? Yep, explain it. The sins would be placed on the animal. That's right. So it was a picture of the guilty convicted sinful man, placing the hand on the perfect unblemished substitute." And it was a picture. And as that transference of sin, the picture of that sin was seen, then God said, Place the animal to death, and as the blood flows, there's a pardon for your sin.

Correct? And that was looking forward to the perfect and complete and total forgiveness of the substitute of the Lord Jesus Christ. Does that make sense? So it wasn't the lamb itself that took away the sin, rather it was Christ himself. It was a picture of what was to come. So, in the Gospel, in the Good News, you see this substitution of what you deserved being done by God Himself. Right?

But it was all judicial in the sense that the substitute was being offered on your behalf. And so, God didn't say, because I'm so merciful, I'm going to die on the cross for you. That was not His attitude towards sin. And it was not His attitude as a substitute either. He said, sin has to be dealt with judicially, completely, wholly.

And I'm the only one that is able to do that. And by doing that, I'm satisfying my own righteousness towards the sin of mankind. So the entire gospel in and of itself, prior to believing it, is rather a judicial pardon of a debtor. That's what you're seeing. You're a debtor. as a simple human being, right? As an unbeliever, you're a debtor. And what is happening in the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ is the payment of your debt. It's a judicial picture. It's the fact that your debt has been paid by another, so we have this picture of substitution. Now where does grace come into all this? If what I'm saying is all about substitution and a judicial act, where does grace come into the picture in this immediate act of forgiveness towards sinners. Does it? Not immediately. The fact that you can believe, though. What's that? I think that's where grace does enter the picture, right?

So, substitution is done. He's satisfied, whether you're a believer or not. The good news is that he is satisfied with the payment of sin. Now, the opportunity you have to believe as an unbeliever is gracious. Entirely. Magnificently gracious, isn't it? So that we don't see a God who is saying, I'm going to save you by sweeping some of this stuff under the rug. I love you so much, let's just forget about it. Right? We do see that, actually. That is a picture that we see in other religions.

Allah is that way. You can buy him off. and they think it's gracious that you can perform jihad and instantly get your one-way ticket regardless of what you've done straight to paradise. You can buy your way right in. That's a gracious act by Allah to allow them that freedom to jump the queue and enter paradise right away. That's not the God of the scripture. He is not satisfied and does not deal with sin and leniency and mercy. It's not the way he deals with it. He deals with sin as a judge.

Does that make sense? Yeah? A little bit? Any questions? You guys are kind of looking like you believe what I'm saying, but I'm not sure. Isn't it also true, obviously, that Allah is not God? for people who believe in that religion. Did you say is it obvious? Is that what you said? No. I mean... Isn't it true that he's not God? Yeah. It's obvious. He's not Yahweh. Yeah, he's not Yahweh. I mean, he doesn't exist. He's not real.

No, that's true. Number two. This is an interesting as well. Fine details. We need them. What is the basis upon which any divine forgiveness can be extended righteously? This ties right into what we've been talking about. But you need to be able to verbalize this now. So what is the basis upon which any divine forgiveness can be extended righteously?

Let's look at John 1.29. Whenever you've got somebody that's got it, go ahead and read it.

The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. What is John saying right there? I mean, we talk to the kids, we ask them a question downstairs, and it's always one of, well, it's always been two answers, and it's recently started to become three, but they kind of work down the chain, right? What's the answer?

The first one. Jesus. What's the second one? God. And the third one is, trust Him. Just trust him. I don't know. Just trust him. Yeah, but here we see John claiming something about the Lord Jesus. What does he say of him? Takes away. Takes away. And what does he call him? The Lamb. The Lamb. Why? For the substitution. One of the names of the Lord Jesus is the Lamb of God. Right? So what does that speak to? What we just talked about? Substitution.

John understood that Jesus was the perfect substitute. Do you think John had seen the sacrificial system in play? Yeah. John had a an experience of having seen these animals sacrificed on his behalf as a Jew, right? And here he looks at the Messiah, which is another term that is given to the Lord, having to do with being a savior, but he calls him the Lamb of God. I think it's the first time that it's mentioned in the New Testament. So, what is what is it that John is recognizing about Christ?

We said that He's the Lamb of God. He takes away the sins of the world. And so the basis for forgiveness at all is that substitute. The person of the Lord Jesus as the Lamb of God, the perfect Lamb of God. So when we talk about Christ being the Lamb of God, we're thinking of that as a judicial Now he's more than judicial, but that is the fact that substitution has to deal with the act. Now, could you be your own substitute? Could you doctor your own sin?

No. Why? What if you've got... I mean, you're willing, you know, it's like, okay God, I'm willing to die for my sin. I'll die for it. What does that get you? Where does that leave you? Dead. Dead in what? In yourself. Why? Because I can't satisfy the wrath of God when I'm not dead. Okay. I can't satisfy the wrath of God by your death, or by my death. Why? Why can we not satisfy God's attitude towards sin by dying and being a substitute for our own, or not being a substitute, but by being willing to die for our own sin? I'm not God and I'm not going to die.

It's just... Any other thoughts? Because we deserve it. We deserve death. Yep. Sin's consequences are death. And what does death mean? Salvation. Okay. So, the consequences of sin are death. Why is it not just enough for you to die for your own sin? Why do we need a substitute? And why is that substitution only available in Christ? Why?

Because it had to be on the same level as God in order to satisfy. That's definitely one part of it. He also had to be human, right? He had to be both God and man. We're talking about sufficiency here. Christ is the only one that was sufficient enough to pay the same penalty, correct? There's no other sufficient payment. No matter who desired to be a substitute on our behalf, as gracious as that might seem by someone's willingness to die for another, they're not sufficient. And what is it about the Lord Jesus that was sufficient?

Yes, I understand He is God, I understand He was man, but He also lived 33 years and communicated some stuff to us that's important in understanding the sufficiency. What were those things? What did He satisfy? I remember this every time we take the Lord's Supper. What are the two parts of the Lord's Supper? Why do you think he chose those things to be remembered? I mean, couldn't he have said, remember my teachings, and remember my...

Miracles. Miracles, thanks. I was going to say good looks, but it didn't really fit. Well, I'll tell you what, being a carpenter in the Middle East 2,000 years ago, I'm sure those boys had some muscles as well. Right? Maybe a few. They're fishermen. Do you think he did a stump on a hammer? If he did, I'm sure he didn't respond how you did.

Why the body and the blood? Why? Okay, why the body? The body is the vehicle through which sin is committed. Is that enough? I'm going to stop there. What his was perfect and without limit. Okay. It's a picture substitution, right? The body had to be perfect. It represents his entire life, doesn't it? Not only did he not sin, and was unable to sin, he performed that substitutionary life on earth as a man and God. And so his body is the picture of that perfect satisfaction of what God required in the law. Right? He satisfied the law, 100%. And he did that in his body. He did what no human being could do, what every single Jew had dealt with their entire life, he perfectly satisfied. In ways that they couldn't even understand and want to stone him for, right?

Remember studying the book of John, here he is, he's doing a miracle on the status. And they're thinking, he's not the Messiah, he is breaking the law, he's not satisfying the law, like he's claiming to be, he hasn't come to save us, he's come to work on the Sabbath.

But yet, Christ explains to them. And he uses questions to do it, often times, like we do in this class. But here, in that picture, he communicates what the law is, even beyond what their understanding was. Right? The miracle of what Christ did was not the work that was not to be committed on the Sabbath. And so he had to communicate how he fulfilled the law in ways that they didn't even understand. But yet he did it. In his body, perfectly satisfied the requirements of perfection. And so when we take the bread, I often recall that perfect life that he lived. He satisfied everything that I could not.

And the blood did what? Why did he have to shed blood? You said without the shedding of blood there's no forgiveness of sins. Why? Why? Why blood? It witnesses that a death took place. Good. A separation. And what's a separation? Blood from the body. Blood from the body, which is what? Death. Right? You separated from your body at that point. Correct? That's what that separation is.

So we see it in the Old Testament as the blood flowed from the substitute of the lamb. So Christ asks us in the Lord's Supper to remember his blood. Now what did the blood satisfy? What term do we often use with regards to what happened when we see the Lord Jesus applying His blood on our behalf? What is the term that we often use for that? Atonement, right? What is atonement? Satisfaction.

Because as a believer, When the Lord looks at you as a judge, He sees the perfect satisfaction of the substitute, the life of Christ. He also sees the blood, the death. And He says, because of that blood, I'm going to allow you to be covered by that same blood. And when I look at you, I will see you in the same way that I see my son, who I'm satisfied with. So you are covered, we often use that term, covered in the blood, and people must think that sounds so crazy when they first get to hear it.

Sounds morbid, right? Odd, weird. But we see it not as that. We see it as a judicial satisfaction of what we could never have accomplished on our own, and we see it as an offer to literally be seen as the Lord Jesus is seen by God. What is it? When he sees the blood, what does he say as a judge of the gavel? He says what? I'm satisfied. I'm satisfied 100% with you because of the blood of the Lord Jesus. And because of that you are not guilty, which means justified. Right?

I have not even talked about the love of the Lord Jesus towards us or His grace in any of that conversation. Now, we can't separate God's righteousness, His judicial dealings with us from His love or His mercy, but in the entire aspect of forgiveness, the basis is the substitute of the Lord Jesus Christ. The basis is that all that forgiveness that was extended to us was provided because of what happened on the cross with His body and His blood. Is that helpful?

Make sense? Cool. So we use the word sufficiency there. To be declared righteous. But when I think about that, the moment I think of that applying to me, I look right next to my Savior. And I say next to, this is just a picture. We are in Christ now. And it's His righteousness that is seen, 100%. And that is the only basis on which He can be satisfied with us. So question number three. What is the scope of divine forgiveness which is ours and is offered to the unsaved? Alright, so now we've got two different aspects here. And we're going to deal with a different word, too.

But first, let's look at Romans 3.24. And whenever someone's got that...

Somebody else grab Ephesians 1.7, but whoever's got Romans 3.24, go ahead. "...being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus." Oh, what is going on there? Alright, Ephesians 1-7, somebody. Ephesians 1-7. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God's grace. Alright.

So who are both of those verses referencing? Who is the subject? Christ. Okay, and who is the recipient of... Who is Paul talking to? Believers. And he's telling them that they have redemption as a result of God's grace. Alright, so what's redemption?

Having been bought for a price. Alright. Having been bought for a price. So it's a picture of a slave, and here the Redeemer would come and pay the price to set the slave free, take the shackles off, and would treat them as a free man. Right? So that's the picture.

There's a lot of ancient recordings of people redeeming others from slavery. Why is this redemption different than just a human buying the price of a slave, taking them and treating them as a free man? What's the divine perspective on this? What's that? It's permanent. Okay, it's permanent. Why is it gracious at this point? Why does the word grace accompany this term redemption now? That's a good answer. There's nothing to earn it. Okay. You didn't set yourself free by any clever or capable part of yourself. It was done completely for you.

But who are we talking to now? Now we're referring to believers, aren't we? And are we referring to believers... At what point has a believer come in order to be told of their redemption, having been bought? Because just because the price has been paid doesn't mean a slave goes free, correct? I mean, you could, even in the human picture of what we're talking about. You could have a slave that says, no, I'd rather stay a slave. Yes, you pay for it, but I'm going to go ahead and shackle myself right back up. Never even attempt to walk freely. And what is that a picture of? A human that does what? Doesn't believe.

That's right. It's belief that that is the gracious opportunity of the slave who's been slaved to sin, it is belief in that redemption that God has offered that graces apply. That's where you see the concept of grace and God's attitude of grace entering into the believer. Now, at what point does that happen? Does that happen like 10 months after a believer believes? When do they start to understand God's grace in the gospel? The instant you believe.

You may not mentally fully understand it, but now going into the scripture and looking back on what happened, for those of us that have believed, we can see that that redemption, that payment, that substitution, and the opportunity that we have to believe was grace. An attitude of God's grace towards us. But God is able and free to forgive and forgive completely and perfectly. That's His right as the judge.

On the other hand, another verse that we can look at to understand this a little bit further is Colossians 2.13. So let's pop over to that one. Whenever you've got it, somebody can read. When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins. In some translations, does it say trespasses? Yeah. We talked about what a trespass was several months ago. That a trespass, or we could even use the word transgression, a transgression has to be seen in light of the law, right? A law.

And so here he's saying every single transgression, trespass, every single sin has been forgiven you. Completely. So there's no other ground that this kind of marvelous statement about every single one of our transgressions. You never need to worry about one of them sliding through and bringing guilt to the table on your behalf as a believer. This addresses to Christians and it defines the scope. So we've got the basis of forgiveness. Now we've got the scope of forgiveness.

It's not partial. It's complete and total. There is no outlier. There's no additional trespass that stands out there that could eventually come up and prevent you and toss you back down to purgatory or something like that. Right? It's complete. It's total.

What is the measure of forgiveness that's offered to the unsaved? Same? Why? Because Christ did it. The scope of divine forgiveness is absolute. Unmeasured. Unlimited. Because the whole offense against God by the sinner has been killed. You guys agree with that? Yeah? Yeah. It's the same. The measure of forgiveness that's offered to the unsaved is the exact same measure of forgiveness that's offered to us, saved. Pretty simple. Pretty simple, but not the problem.

You see a lot of believers that don't own that concept. Especially if they're in a position where there's repetitive sin in their life. They can't get a handle on the fact that God can continually forgive them for the same old offense, over and over again. And I think it's a lack of understanding of what you're talking about. the scope in which God can forgive us is based on what he did, and he's divine, and he does something that's done completely. I think I've been tempted to think this way at some point in my Christian life. I know that it's a common thinking of many, but there's this attitude of, you know, I wasn't that bad, and yes, I understand God saved me, and I'm grateful, But there's no way in the world God can extend forgiveness to that guy.

I mean, if you just compare my sins to his sins, I mean, you think of the kind of people that commit sin at a high level, you know, and I'm not going to mention any Hitler. I'm just kidding. We always say that. It's Hitler, it's Osama Bin Laden, it's somebody.

But the point is, When we're talking about the measure of which God extends forgiveness, it's not based on my perspective or the amount of sin that I perceive in myself or in another. God's position on that is complete and totally defined by the verses that we just read. All transgressions, all trespasses, all sin. All. I don't know how. I'm not God in the sense that that the love that is required of God to extend to that degree is divine.

It's unique. It's one of a kind. That's what makes Him God. That's what makes Him Yahweh. But I think you're right, Mike. I mean, it's so often that we think that God's forgiveness towards man cannot extend to that degree, and we can think of the worst things ever. But it does. The scripture tells us it is so. And what does that do for an unbeliever? What did it do for you? Did you think you were not too shabby when you got saved? And you're like, yeah, I'm glad to be saved, but I wasn't too far off. You mentioned in the verse you read a minute ago, Mike, it was Ephesians 1, 7, I think, the sin nature. It's the nature that's the problem. Right? And the sin nature produces what? Trespasses. But it's the sin nature that's the problem. Yeah.

You know, I think the other thing that, I think, and this is maybe just in the terminology when we, in your example of being covered, I think that we have to be very careful of that term, covered, because I think that leads to, back to the, kind of the old covering. It just covers up and we need to do it several times. You know what I mean? And that's what I think believer can't be good enough.

It's just a covering. It's a temporary where Christ was different. It was a substitution, full payment. And then I think with the body and our co-crucifixion part is we're not even associated with that anymore. There was a complete separation, death, with the body. So I think the covering, sometimes we think, I've got to go back. I'm a rotten scoundrel, and I need to go back for another helping. And I think that's, we have to understand, it wasn't just a covering, it was a complete substitution, the word we've been using, I think. So we just have to be careful, I think, of that term covering versus substitution.

Substitution was one for another. Not just a covering like in the Old Testament, it would cover their sin. Still there, just covered it. This is completely different. It was a substitution. It's gone. Complete and forever. So I think believers kind of come back to that. Why do you come back? wasn't good enough, you know, I'm a dirt word, that guy's a scoundrel.

But it's complete, it wasn't just a covering, it was a complete separation. That's where I think the new man, the new creation and all that is very important in this discussion, that the old man is gone. of our sins taken care of and now not only that we have been separated from the old man. Is that helpful?

It does remind me of that illustration that you do with the cloaks though where you go through you know judicially what all happens and so when I think of that because of that illustration and just the wording of us being covered in the righteousness of Christ like I picture all believers covered in that cloak, like it's not coming off, and that's what Christ sees when he looks at me, regardless of me. Right, on the basis of atonement, on the basis of the blood, the satisfaction of what that death meant, I am now permanently cloaked in his righteousness. I am in Christ.

And there is nothing you can do to remove, if you use the term cloak of righteousness, you can't remove yourself from union with Christ. Going back and trying to get back into Christ is not biblically sound. You can't see anyone being taken out of Christ and being placed back into Christ. You don't see this back and forth.

A lot of people actually do believe that. A lot of people believe that, unfortunately. Did you have a thought? My thought was that if you look at the first sin that was committed by man, And in light of the severity of sins committed since then, and not big sin, if you want to catalogue and turn to some more severe than others, it was as simple as disobeying God and eating a piece of fruit. They did it. Yet look what it caused.

So the point is that God in his righteousness and holiness In order to forgive one sin, you have to forgive them all, no matter how severe they are, no matter how heinous they are. The severity of the sin doesn't matter. It's the sin issue itself that has to be resolved. I think you're right, absolutely. What's the saying about every sin though?

What's the attitude? What's the attitude that Adam had? Even though it was just simply eating a piece of fruit, he was tempted by something. What was his temptation? Not the fruit itself. What was the fruit going to provide him? Knowledge. Of what? Okay. So, it's this attitude of, I know better than God. I know better than God what I need. It's the same thing that caused Lucifer's fall. He wanted to sit in a chair. Right? He desired and believed that he knew better than what God knew. And every single sinful act produced by our sin nature is rooted in that same concept.

I don't believe because I know better. I don't care God. Not caring and just going about your sinful way is the same attitude even if it's heinous, or if it's simply done in secret, and doesn't really ever hurt anybody, so to speak. The attitude is the same. I know better than God, and belief and trust in what you said about this situation is not true.

What I say is true. That's what, in the next section we'll get into that, which I think is the foundation of this faith. That's right. Do you believe it? No, I don't. Grace is awesome. But the Lord's environment of grace is going to be what it is because it's His divine decree to be that. But your experience of it is 100% based on your faith.

And that's why the next part of this whole thing, we started with identification. Who are we? We established all the things that Courtney just mentioned and many more. Now we're talking about the environment in which we have such a great and mighty privilege to operate under. But there is an attitude from you that is required in order to be experienced.

Right? Number four. So this comes straight out of Schaefer here. You probably wouldn't come to these terms, but I'll translate. What is the threefold sentence that every unbeliever is under? So I'm just going to write it down here and we'll talk about it real quick. So he is a sinner by practice. He is a sinner by nature. And by, the term is used by Schaeffer, define, divine, not define. Divine decree. So what do you think when you see this? This is the sentence. The unbelieving sentence. What do we mean by sentence? Yeah, you're sentenced to it, right? Because of your sin, in these threefold aspects, you're sentenced to what? Alright, so let's talk about these. These two are not as difficult to understand, I don't think, but this last one is interesting to me. We've got a few minutes.

What does practice mean? Why practice? You do it, right? The little ones, the big ones, as we might define them, all the attitudes are the same, but because of what? You practice it. Because of your sin nature, you practice sin. Right? So the real problem is you need that sin nature removed. Right? And not just a vacuum with no nature, you need a new nature, right? Okay?

So that's what we've been talking about in the previous portion of the class. That's identification. An unbeliever is also a sinner by divine decree. What does that mean? What's a decree? We're going to have to come back to this. You could think about this for a whole week. What is divine decree? Sinner by divine decree. Alright, let's pray.

Lord, we thank you so much for the truth of your word and just the ability for us to study and understand what you've revealed to us is true about ourselves. We thank you that it divides and goes deeper than any other words could ever go. You say that it divides joint and marrow, and it gets to the level of the human heart, to the very soul that you've created in ways that no other word, no other truth could ever do. And we know that because of it, There's freedom. There's freedom to operate and live under the gracious system in union with the Lord Jesus Christ. And we thank you for the privilege it is to be called your sons, your daughters, to know that we have a family relationship with the very creator of the universe. And so we thank you for all that you have provided on our behalf. and for just the ability to differentiate between what you've done as a judge and what you've done as a gracious and loving father. We thank you for the truths that we found here. In your name we pray. Amen.