ACBC Theology Exam 6 - The Noetic Effects of Sin

00:00:00.000 | everyone and welcome you to Intermediate Biblical Counseling. This is our session number six and

00:00:07.360 | glad you're able to join us tonight. I hope you all had a wonderful week and that the Lord has

00:00:13.120 | been blessing your walks with Christ and also your study in God's Word. And I trust that as

00:00:20.640 | you work through these essays that you're being both challenged and blessed by putting pen to paper

00:00:27.200 | and putting down on paper some of the most precious truths that are found in life,

00:00:33.840 | which is our convictions about the Word of God. And so I'm really glad that you've joined us

00:00:37.600 | tonight. If you have any questions or any feedback on the course materials as we go along, please feel

00:00:43.760 | free to use the chat function or also the Q&A function in your webinar and we'd be happy to

00:00:49.760 | address any questions that you might have. Tonight this is session number six in our study of the

00:00:57.840 | theology exam topics, and we're going to be looking at tonight the noetic effects of sin.

00:01:03.440 | We introduced that idea last week, the whole idea of sin's effects on the mind, on the intellect of

00:01:12.080 | the unbeliever, and how does that relate to the counseling conversation that we have.

00:01:18.560 | How does that relate to our methodology and counseling and how we interact with integrationists

00:01:24.240 | and secular psychologists. So I'm glad you joined us. I hope we'll have a great time of study tonight.

00:01:29.280 | Just as we open our session tonight, I want to read from Ephesians chapter 2, verses 1 to 7,

00:01:39.200 | and both give you a devotional thought from God's Word, and then also to help us

00:01:48.800 | understand from this passage how the doctrine of sin leads us to understand the work of Christ

00:01:55.120 | and also to celebrate God's grace. So let me read from Ephesians chapter 2, verses 1 to 7.

00:02:03.680 | Paul says, "And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according

00:02:10.320 | to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air of the spirit

00:02:16.000 | that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lust

00:02:22.800 | of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature

00:02:29.760 | children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of his great love

00:02:37.600 | with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together

00:02:43.760 | with Christ, by grace you have been saved, and raised us up with him and seated us with him in

00:02:51.760 | the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing

00:02:58.320 | riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus." For a brief moment, I want us to

00:03:07.040 | think about the truth that Paul says in chapter 2, verse 1, "And you were dead in your sins and

00:03:15.200 | trespasses." My favorite illustration of the deadness aspect of the teaching in Ephesians

00:03:23.600 | chapter 2, verse 1, is found in R.C. Sproul's book, Chosen by God, and in that book, Sproul gives the

00:03:33.920 | following illustration that I think is helpful for us to understand the doctrine of sin and

00:03:39.280 | especially that whole idea of being dead in sins and trespasses. He says, "Consider an analogy of

00:03:48.080 | a person who is suffering from a terminal illness. The sinner is said to be gravely ill on the brink

00:03:55.520 | of physical death. He does not have it within his own power to cure himself of the disease.

00:04:01.440 | He is lying on his deathbed, almost totally paralyzed. He cannot recover unless God provides

00:04:08.880 | the healing medicine. The man is so bad off that he cannot even stretch forth his arm to receive

00:04:14.400 | the medicine. He is almost comatose. God must not only offer the medicine, but God must put it on a

00:04:21.920 | spoon and place it by the dying man's lips. Unless God does all that, the man will surely perish.

00:04:28.640 | But though God does 99% of what is necessary, the man is still left with 1%. The man must open his

00:04:37.840 | mouth to receive the medicine. This is the necessary exercise of free will that makes

00:04:43.600 | the difference between heaven and hell. The man who opens his mouth to receive the gracious gift

00:04:50.080 | of the medicine will be saved. The man who keeps his lips tightly clenched will perish."

00:04:56.080 | So, that seems to be, at first, to be a pretty good analogy of the gospel call.

00:05:04.160 | If you open your mouth, you will be saved, and if you close your mouth, then you will perish.

00:05:12.400 | But Sproul denies that this analogy is in harmony with the truth of true conversion.

00:05:19.840 | He writes that the analogy that I've just described almost does justice to the Bible

00:05:25.440 | and to Paul's teaching of the grace of regeneration. But in the end, it falls short

00:05:31.200 | of the biblical picture. The Bible does not speak of mortally ill sinners. According to Paul,

00:05:39.280 | they are dead. There is not an ounce of spiritual life left in them. If they are to be made alive,

00:05:45.600 | God must do more than offer them medicine. Dead men will not open their mouths to receive

00:05:52.080 | anything. Their jaws are locked in death. Rigor mortis has set in. They must be raised

00:05:58.400 | from the dead. They must be new creations crafted by Christ and reborn by his Spirit.

00:06:06.080 | Sproul makes there the simple point that men are not just sick in their sin. They are dead

00:06:12.720 | in their sins and their trespasses, and therefore, they need not only for God to put the medicine

00:06:21.360 | near their mouths, they need to be spiritually resurrected from the dead. So, just in case we

00:06:29.280 | think we got the point there, Sproul's going to hammer that in with a second illustration,

00:06:33.600 | and this is actually my favorite illustration in that book. He says, "Consider a drowning man who

00:06:40.640 | is unable to swim. He has gone under twice and bobbed to the surface for the last time. If he

00:06:46.800 | goes under again, he will die. His only hope is for God to throw him a life preserver. God throws

00:06:53.680 | the lifeline and tosses it precisely to the edge of the man's outstretched fingers. All the man has

00:07:00.080 | to do to be saved is to grab hold of the life preserver. If he will only grab hold of the

00:07:06.640 | life preserver, God will tow him in. If he refuses the life preserver, he will certainly perish."

00:07:13.600 | And again, this seems to be a pretty good illustration of

00:07:17.600 | the gospel invitation. "Grab on to the life preserver, and you will be saved."

00:07:25.760 | But Sproul writes this, "Again, in this illustration, the utter helplessness of

00:07:30.320 | sinful man without God's assistance is emphasized. The drowning man is in a serious condition.

00:07:37.120 | He cannot save himself. However, the illustration is incomplete because the man in the story is

00:07:44.560 | still alive. He can still stretch forth his fingers. His fingers are the crucial link to

00:07:53.520 | salvation. His eternal destiny depends upon what he does with his fingers."

00:07:59.440 | But, and here's the key observation in the illustration, in Ephesians chapter 2 verse 1,

00:08:09.040 | Paul says the man is dead. He is not merely drowning. He is dead. He has already sunk to

00:08:17.440 | the bottom of the sea. It is futile to throw a life preserver to a man who has already drowned.

00:08:24.080 | If man is to be saved, God must dive into the water and pull a dead man from the bottom of

00:08:31.280 | the sea, and then perform a divine act of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. God must breathe

00:08:38.720 | into the dead man new life. And that is exactly what Paul says that God has done for us in our

00:08:47.520 | salvation in Ephesians chapter 2 verses 1 to 7. It's not just that God threw us a life preserver

00:08:56.160 | and said, "You catch it." It's that we were dead. We were drowned at the bottom of the ocean. God

00:09:04.080 | came down and found us, and he miraculously caused us to be born again, and he imparted to us

00:09:12.320 | new life in Christ. Now, if you understand the doctrine of sin as it's found in verses 1 to 3,

00:09:21.120 | and Paul goes on to say more things about the doctrine of sin, but we'll just leave it there

00:09:26.720 | with the whole idea of spiritual deadness before Christ. He then says in verse 4,

00:09:34.160 | "Why is it that God would find a dead man and breathe into that person new life?"

00:09:43.840 | It was because, verse 4, he was great in mercy. He did so because, verse 4, he was

00:09:54.720 | great in love because of the great love with which he loved us when we were dead in our trespasses.

00:10:03.760 | God made us alive in Christ, and he did so that, in verse 7, it says, "So that in the ages to come

00:10:13.360 | he might show the surpassing riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus."

00:10:23.920 | When you really understand the doctrine of sin, and this is how I'm going to segue into our

00:10:28.800 | subject for tonight, when you really grasp the extent of sin, the effects of sin,

00:10:36.560 | the influence of sin, when you really come to terms with the unbeliever's spiritual condition

00:10:42.960 | of being dead in sin, of being a slave to sin, where it leads you in your understanding of the

00:10:51.280 | gospel is a greater understanding and appreciation of God's grace, a greater appreciation and

00:11:00.160 | understanding of the greatness of God's love, the greatness of his mercy, and as verse 7 calls it,

00:11:09.120 | "the surpassing riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus." It leads you

00:11:19.280 | to celebrate and to be in awe and wonder of amazing grace. If your heart is not moved to

00:11:27.440 | seeing amazing grace and to stand amazed, freshly amazed, each and every day at the

00:11:34.720 | greatness of God's grace, then perhaps you need to go back to the doctrine of sin,

00:11:39.920 | and when you are grounded in the doctrine of sin, it will cause you to rejoice in your Savior's

00:11:48.880 | love. With that said, tonight we're looking at one of the aspects of that study of the doctrine

00:11:55.120 | of sin. We're looking at the noetic effects of sin, but my prayer is that this study will lead

00:12:01.680 | us to a fresh appreciation as to the amazing grace of God and salvation that we would be able to

00:12:10.800 | praise him and worship him and be lost in wonder, love, and praise. So, let's pray together and

00:12:17.840 | devote our time to the Lord. Father, we do bow before you tonight, and I thank you for each

00:12:25.360 | of my brothers and sisters who are studying your word and joining us for tonight's session, and

00:12:34.000 | I pray that you would bless them and encourage them as they continue in their training.

00:12:41.440 | I pray that, Lord, the understanding of your word and an understanding of the doctrine of sin would

00:12:48.640 | lead us to a great understanding of how amazing your grace really is, that you loved us not

00:12:57.760 | because there was anything in us that was lovely. You loved us not because we could love you in

00:13:04.720 | return. You loved us simply because it is in your nature to love, and you not only sent your son to

00:13:12.640 | die for our sins, you made us alive in Christ. You caused us to be born again. You granted to us the

00:13:20.800 | gift of sovereign regeneration, and you opened our eyes to see the beauty and the glory of your son,

00:13:29.280 | Jesus Christ. Lord, help us to handle these truths carefully. Help us to think deeply and clearly.

00:13:36.880 | Help us to think biblically, and we pray that, Father, you would grant that the result of this

00:13:43.360 | study would not be an essay, but that, Lord, it would be a heart that worships and praises you,

00:13:50.160 | for we know that you indeed have been gracious to us, and so we just give our time to you,

00:13:57.600 | and we pray all this in Jesus' precious name. Amen. Amen. Okay, we are looking at theology exam

00:14:08.480 | number six. This is, as I mentioned, the topic dealing with the noetic effects of sin.

00:14:13.840 | Heath Lambert's chapter three in the theology of biblical counseling is going to be very helpful

00:14:19.920 | to you in writing this essay. I really encourage you to read that chapter carefully, especially

00:14:26.480 | the second half of chapter three is going to be very helpful in relating the doctrine of

00:14:34.320 | the noetic effects of sin to the issue of counseling, but let's read the question together.

00:14:39.760 | The question is, "Explain the doctrine of the noetic effects of sin relating the doctrine to

00:14:45.520 | the ability of secular psychologists to understand true information about the human condition."

00:14:52.320 | Last week, we introduced the idea that the term noetic comes from the Greek word nous,

00:14:58.080 | n-o-u-s, and that word simply means mind, so when we're looking at the noetic effects of sin,

00:15:06.160 | we are looking at sin's effects on the mind. How does sin affect the human intellect? How

00:15:14.480 | unbelievers think about life and about intellectual disciplines? Now, I've given

00:15:23.040 | you way more information on your handout that you need to write this essay, but I did think this was

00:15:29.520 | necessary because we do need to understand the broader look at the doctrine of sin before we

00:15:35.440 | narrow in on understanding sin's effects on the mind, and also I found just in general that

00:15:43.760 | teaching on the doctrine of sin and the church's understanding of the doctrine of sin

00:15:49.120 | really has been in short supply, and as I mentioned, it's not that we so much enjoy

00:15:56.080 | studying all about the doctrine of sin and its effects upon man, but understanding the doctrine

00:16:04.400 | of sin is necessary to understanding the gospel. It's necessary for understanding the greatness

00:16:10.800 | of God's grace and his love toward us in Christ. If you have a weak understanding of the doctrine

00:16:17.040 | of sin, you're going to have a weak understanding of the gospel, a weak appreciation of the

00:16:22.880 | greatness of Christ, a weak appreciation of how amazing God's grace really is. On your handout,

00:16:30.160 | I put J.C. Ryle's statement where he says, "Dim or indistinct views of sin are the origin of most

00:16:38.720 | of the errors, heresies, and false doctrines of the present day. If a man does not realize

00:16:44.080 | the dangerous nature of his soul's disease, you cannot wonder if he is content with false or

00:16:49.040 | imperfect remedies. I believe that one of the chief needs of the contemporary church has been

00:16:53.360 | and is clearer fuller teaching about sin." That's a really interesting statement there, and I think

00:17:01.680 | that's really helpful for us. When is the last time you said to your pastor, "Pastor, what I

00:17:08.800 | really want to hear is clearer, fuller teaching about sin." When is the time that you felt in your

00:17:15.760 | own heart that, "What I need to really grow in my love for Christ is clearer, fuller teaching about

00:17:24.160 | sin." But the truth is that if we don't have fuller, clearer teaching about sin, then we won't

00:17:32.000 | have a full and clear understanding of the person and work of Jesus Christ. 1 Timothy 1, verse 15,

00:17:39.200 | "The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came to the world to

00:17:44.480 | save sinners, of whom I am foremost." So, just mark it down as sin is being redefined today.

00:17:52.720 | I have some notes on your handout there that in the world of secular psychology, sin is being

00:17:59.440 | redefined as a disorder or a syndrome. Here are some ways that sin is being redefined. Letter A,

00:18:09.040 | some say sin is a lack of self-esteem. This was popularized by Robert Schuller in his work,

00:18:18.000 | "Self-Esteem, the New Reformation." Schuller said that the first reformation was

00:18:23.040 | justification by faith, and the second reformation is the rediscovery of self.

00:18:28.960 | He says, "What I mean by sin, answer, any human condition or act that robs God of his glory by

00:18:35.920 | stripping one of his children of the right to divine dignity. I can offer still another answer.

00:18:42.320 | Sin is any act or thought that robs myself or another being of his or her self-esteem. The core

00:18:48.800 | of sin is lack of self-esteem. And what is hell? Hell is the loss of pride that naturally follows

00:18:57.760 | separation from God. A person is in hell when he has lost his self-esteem." And just in case you

00:19:07.680 | think that this redefinition of sin is gone in our generation, just listen to Joel Osteen on

00:19:15.680 | the subject of self-esteem. This is on the slide here. He says, "Allow me to tell you who you

00:19:24.000 | really are. You are talented. You are valuable. You are confident. You have been handpicked by

00:19:30.800 | the creator of the universe on the inside of you. Right now is a victorious, successful

00:19:36.800 | world changer just waiting to break out. Your butterfly is waiting to soar."

00:19:44.720 | So, that's just echoing the teaching of secular psychology. Inside of you is goodness, and light,

00:19:52.240 | and potential, and if you haven't blossomed, it's your teacher's fault, or your parents' fault,

00:19:57.840 | or your family's fault. And Osteen writes, "I'm asking you to release the full you.

00:20:06.720 | You are destined to leave your mark on your generation. There's no limit to what God can

00:20:13.840 | do in you and through you when you reprogram your thinking and start believing that you're blessed,

00:20:20.000 | valuable, one of a kind, and more than a conqueror. When you renew your mind, transformation takes

00:20:26.720 | place. Your butterfly is waiting to soar." So, John the Baptist got it wrong when he said,

00:20:37.280 | "You brood of vipers." He should have said, "You bunch of beautiful butterflies that are just

00:20:43.360 | waiting to soar." That's the new reformation. Sin is being redefined. Sin is being redefined

00:20:50.880 | as a lack of self-esteem, and when you get the doctrine of sin wrong, you will have the gospel

00:20:58.400 | wrong. So, this is the new reformation. On your handout, you have letter B, "Sin as a disease

00:21:08.720 | model." We no longer have sins that need to be repented of. We have disorders that need to be

00:21:15.120 | managed. The DSM has conduct disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, antisocial personality disorder,

00:21:23.360 | intermittent explosive disorder. So, the idea is if I explode at you and rage

00:21:30.960 | that I don't have a sin problem, I have a disorder.

00:21:37.360 | So, I have IED, and you should feel sorry for me because I'm just a poor, needy victim

00:21:47.840 | who has a disorder that needs to be managed instead of I am a sinner who is in need of

00:21:56.640 | repentance and forgiveness through the grace that is in the Lord Jesus Christ. You see how

00:22:03.520 | attractive this kind of teaching is, how it appeals to the pride and the self-will of man.

00:22:11.120 | Carl Menninger asked this question, and he was a secular psychologist. He's not writing from

00:22:19.040 | a Christian perspective, but he lamented the lack of understanding of sin, even from a secular

00:22:26.720 | perspective. He said, "Has no one committed any sins? Where indeed did sin go? What became

00:22:32.880 | of it?" Now, when an unbeliever is saying, "What happened to the doctrine of sin?" you know that

00:22:38.400 | we need to take care to rearticulate the doctrine and understand it for our own lives.

00:22:47.440 | And then you have letter C on your handout, the victimization model. "I'm not a sinner. I'm a

00:22:52.960 | victim." This starts all the way back in the garden. Adam said, "The woman whom you gave me

00:22:58.080 | to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree, and I ate." Adam was basically saying,

00:23:03.760 | "It's not my fault, God, that I ate the fruit. It's the woman's fault, and it's not her fault,

00:23:09.360 | God. It's really your fault because you're the one who gave me the woman. It's everyone's fault,

00:23:15.120 | but mine." And you see that dynamic being played out in so many people today.

00:23:21.760 | It's the victim model. "I'm not a sinner. I'm not responsible. I'm a victim." So

00:23:29.600 | we could say much more about that, but let me move on. Sin is being redefined,

00:23:35.600 | and when you redefine sin, you redefine the gospel. If you don't get sin right, then

00:23:43.840 | you don't get the remedy right. You have to get the diagnosis right before you give

00:23:49.520 | the cure. So let me move to, I think this is the next page of your handout, "The Doctrine of

00:23:56.880 | Original Sin." "The Doctrine of Original Sin." Anthony Hokema defines the doctrine of original

00:24:06.320 | sin in this way, "Original sin is the sinful state and condition in which every human is born."

00:24:13.600 | "Original sin is the sinful state and condition in which every human is born." And it's called

00:24:23.520 | original sin because it's derived from the original root of the human race, Adam.

00:24:30.400 | So let me give you a diagram here. I'm trying to come up with a little bit better artwork for these

00:24:43.520 | PowerPoint presentations, but you'll have to go with it for a moment. If you look at the bottom

00:24:51.360 | part of that illustration, and let's just say that I just put Dan, but you could write your

00:24:55.600 | name in there, any sinner's name in that bottom stick figure. And let's say Dan has sins in his

00:25:05.360 | life, and you might look at that person and say, "Well, that person has a sin problem," and you

00:25:12.560 | would be correct. But the doctrine of original sin says that my sin is related to the original

00:25:23.840 | root of the human race, which is Adam. So there's a relationship there that's indicated by the arrow.

00:25:31.440 | There's a relationship between Dan the sinner and the original root of the human race, Adam,

00:25:40.320 | and that's the relationship that we need to understand if we're going to understand

00:25:44.480 | the doctrine of sin. On your handout, you have the statement by the Westminster Confession of Faith,

00:25:55.120 | which says this, "Our first parents, being seduced by the subtlety and temptations of Satan,

00:26:04.320 | sinned in eating the forbidden fruit. By this sin, they fell from their original

00:26:10.480 | righteousness and communion with God, and so became dead in sin and wholly defiled."

00:26:17.520 | You want to circle those two words, "wholly defiled." We'll get back to that in a moment.

00:26:23.280 | "They became wholly defiled in all the parts and faculties of soul and body,

00:26:30.080 | they being the root of all mankind. The guilt of this sin was imputed,

00:26:37.840 | and the same death and sin and corrupted nature conveyed to all their posterity descending from

00:26:45.520 | them by ordinary generation. From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed,

00:26:52.160 | disabled, and made opposite to all good and wholly inclined to all evil, do proceed all actual

00:26:59.680 | transgressions." So, there is a relationship between my sin at the bottom of that diagram

00:27:08.320 | and the sin of Adam. What exactly is that relationship? The Westminster Confession of Faith

00:27:18.720 | helps us understand that. You have there, "Adam is the root of mankind."

00:27:25.120 | I have a sin problem because there is a relationship between me and the original

00:27:34.880 | root, Adam, and you notice there I just switched the arrows around so that they're facing

00:27:45.520 | downward there, but the nature of the relationship is twofold, and you'll find

00:27:53.200 | this in the language of the Westminster Confession of Faith. There is, first of all, imputed guilt,

00:28:00.800 | imputed guilt, otherwise known as original guilt. From the confession, it says,

00:28:12.480 | "They, being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed."

00:28:19.360 | So, you may want to underline that statement and just put a number one next to that. That

00:28:27.920 | is the first way there is a relationship between Adam and myself. There is imputed guilt,

00:28:36.400 | and then secondly, there is imparted corruption going on in that statement, and the same death

00:28:45.920 | in sin and corrupted nature conveyed to all their posterity descending from them by ordinary

00:28:51.920 | generation. So, there is a nature that is imparted in addition to the guilt that is imputed.

00:29:03.120 | So, let me deal with the first aspect very briefly, but I want you to understand this concept

00:29:10.240 | because I think this is going to give us a fuller, clearer teaching on sin and help us

00:29:16.240 | to understand the grace of God. What is imputed guilt, imputed guilt? Now, a lot of people

00:29:24.560 | don't like this whole idea of imputed guilt. They say, "You know, it's not fair.

00:29:31.120 | What do you mean that Adam sinned and somehow that guilt was imputed to my account?

00:29:37.840 | That's not fair. I mean, I wasn't there in the garden. It's not my fault that Adam sinned.

00:29:42.960 | How am I held responsible for Adam's guilt?" And the way I kind of respond to that is just by

00:29:51.760 | showing them the three imputations in the Bible. The concept of imputation is very important to

00:29:59.840 | our understanding of salvation and our understanding of the grace of God. You see there,

00:30:05.360 | and I start here conceptually on the right-hand side just to show you the reasoning

00:30:11.200 | of how people like the first two imputations, but they really don't like the third.

00:30:16.640 | The first imputation is that my sins were imputed to Christ at the cross. When Jesus died on the

00:30:26.160 | cross, Jesus took the penalty for my sins. God treated Christ as if he had sinned every single

00:30:34.320 | one of my sins, and he reckoned or imputed all the guilt of my sin to Jesus, my perfect substitute.

00:30:43.760 | And if you're a believer in Christ, you say, "Well, I love that imputation. That's a

00:30:48.480 | that's a imputation that communicates God's grace to me that Jesus paid for all of my sins."

00:30:55.600 | The second imputation, and you can look at 2 Corinthians 5 verse 21 for this idea of double

00:31:03.040 | imputation, was not only my sin nailed to the cross with Jesus, but Christ's righteousness

00:31:10.160 | was granted to my account at the moment I believed in Christ for salvation. God took my

00:31:19.920 | sinful record of guilt and nailed it to the cross with Christ. Then God takes Christ's spotless

00:31:29.120 | record of perfect obedience to the holy law of God. He takes his perfect record of perfect law

00:31:36.480 | keeping, and he imputes it to my account when I trust in him for salvation, and that's amazing

00:31:45.760 | that's amazing grace. He who knew no sin became sin, that we might become the righteousness of

00:31:52.000 | God in him. So, those are double imputation that's found in scripture. So, every believer looks at

00:31:58.720 | those two imputations and says, "Amazing grace. I love the idea of imputation. I love the idea of

00:32:04.480 | double imputation." Well, if you are going to embrace the concept of imputation in those first

00:32:12.480 | two imputations, then you have to be willing to embrace the third, and I know in terms of time,

00:32:18.320 | the left-hand side goes first, but I'm just showing you how I reason from this

00:32:24.080 | when I get the objection that it's not fair that Adam's guilt is imputed to my account.

00:32:31.040 | If you're going to take the first two imputations, then you have to be willing to take the third.

00:32:37.360 | Somehow, when Adam sinned, his guilt was imputed to my account so that Romans 5 verse 12 says,

00:32:48.000 | "Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin,

00:32:51.600 | and so death spread to all men because all sinned." Somehow, when Adam sinned, it was reckoned to my

00:32:59.600 | account so that God has considered that all those who came from Adam's line sinned as well.

00:33:08.400 | Now, theologians walk through. It's way more than we can look at tonight in our study,

00:33:16.560 | but theologians look at exactly how did that happen. Some take the federal headship view,

00:33:22.000 | this idea of Adam was the federal head of the human race. It's like if the president

00:33:30.480 | of the United States says, "We're at war," then I'm at war, whether I like it or not,

00:33:37.200 | because he's the head of the country. I might say, "Well, I didn't go to war, but

00:33:42.400 | the president says we're at war, so I am at war as an individual because he represents

00:33:48.480 | me as the head of the country." There's the federal headship view. There's also the

00:33:54.000 | seminal view that all of man was seminally in Adam when he sinned, so all are considered to

00:34:00.400 | have sinned. If you want further study on that, you can look at that on your own,

00:34:05.200 | but the idea is you can't deny the plain teaching of Romans 5 verse 12. Somehow, when Adam sinned,

00:34:11.440 | all were considered to have sinned, all sinned in Adam. That's the first way that

00:34:20.320 | our sin is related to Adam. The second way, as we saw, is not only is guilt imputed from Adam to us,

00:34:34.400 | but then original pollution, a corrupt nature is imparted from Adam to us. Now, this is going to

00:34:40.480 | lead us right into our essay. We're laying the groundwork here, so trust me, we're going right

00:34:47.280 | to the noetic effects of sin. This is where the noetic effects of sin come in. We have received

00:34:55.600 | a corrupt sinful nature because of Adam's sin, and it is from this corrupt nature that precedes

00:35:06.320 | actual sins. We are not sinners because we sin. We sin because we are sinners. We are simply

00:35:15.840 | expressing our nature that is derived from Adam. My children have not learned to sin merely by

00:35:24.240 | imitation. It's not that they just saw me complain about chicken and nuggets at McDonald's, and so

00:35:31.040 | they learned to complain about chicken and nuggets from McDonald's because they saw me sin,

00:35:37.600 | and I never complained about chicken and nuggets from McDonald's. That's just an illustration,

00:35:43.120 | but they didn't learn to sin merely because of my example. They have inherited from me a sin nature.

00:35:51.680 | Dogs reproduce dogs, and cats reproduce cats, and sinners beget sinners, and just as dogs bark

00:36:01.040 | and cats meow, sinners express their nature through actual sins. It's amazing. I didn't

00:36:07.120 | have to teach any of my children to complain. I never had to have a single lesson on how to fight

00:36:13.040 | or how to steal or how to lie. All those things came from their nature. I had to teach them

00:36:19.680 | otherwise, and all that is because they received a sin nature from me, and that goes all the way

00:36:27.680 | back to Adam. So, here's where the essay question comes into focus. The extent of sin, and this is

00:36:36.000 | on the next page of your handout. Because we have received a sin nature from Adam,

00:36:48.080 | then it follows that sin affects every part of man. Sin affects the will, the mind,

00:36:53.600 | the emotions, the thoughts, the affections, the desires, the purposes, the inclinations,

00:36:58.320 | the values, and the treasures of the heart. Every part of man is affected by sin, and this would

00:37:06.720 | relate to the five points of Calvinism. I try not to wear that as a slogan, but more just as a

00:37:19.760 | summary of biblical truth. The T in tulip, total depravity, refers to the extent of our sinfulness,

00:37:30.320 | not the degree to which we manifest it. It means that evil has contaminated every aspect of our

00:37:37.280 | being. That's important. Sin affects our wills, our intellect, our emotions, our conscience,

00:37:44.960 | our personality, and our desires. Our depravity is a heart corruption. In other words, it goes

00:37:49.760 | to the very core of who we are. We are infected by sin in every part of our souls.

00:37:56.480 | So, tulip begins with total depravity. It could probably be better

00:38:03.600 | defined as radical depravity, but the acronym RULIP is not a great acronym. So,

00:38:14.400 | we'll just go with total depravity, but it refers to the extent of our sinfulness,

00:38:20.080 | not the degree to which we manifest sinfulness. Not every man manifests his sin nature to the

00:38:28.800 | fullest degree that he could possibly do so, but total depravity means that evil has contaminated

00:38:36.800 | every aspect of our being and goes to the very core of who we are. So, a few points here,

00:38:43.360 | and then I'll make some application. Letter A, sin as internal heart corruption. Sin has affected

00:38:49.680 | the heart, the real you, the center of who you are. Genesis 6 verse 5, "The Lord saw the wickedness of

00:38:54.800 | man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only

00:39:00.640 | evil continually." So, that's why I don't tell my children, "Follow your hearts."

00:39:09.840 | I tell them, "Follow the word. Follow Christ. Follow

00:39:13.680 | the Lord. Don't listen to yourself. Talk to yourself. Submit yourself to scripture."

00:39:19.200 | Letter B, we have sin as spiritual slavery and bondage. John 8 verse 34, "Jesus answered them,

00:39:27.600 | 'Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. Spiritual

00:39:32.560 | slavery implies an absolute inability to change one's own nature." So, people always bring up

00:39:41.120 | at this point, "Well, what about free will? Do you believe in free will?" And I do in the sense

00:39:51.440 | that I believe that a man can freely choose what is in accordance with his nature.

00:40:00.800 | A dog can freely choose to bark, and a cat can freely choose to meow. A dog cannot freely choose

00:40:09.280 | to meow, because that is not in accordance with his nature. Man can freely choose what is in

00:40:18.000 | accordance with his nature, but his nature is sinful. He is infected to the core of his being

00:40:25.200 | with sin. Man is not free to choose what is contrary to his nature. So, man can freely choose

00:40:34.000 | to sin, but man cannot freely choose righteousness. He is a slave to sin. Martin Luther called this

00:40:42.880 | the bondage of the will, and it was really this whole discussion of the bondage of the will versus

00:40:49.760 | the freedom of the will that led to the rediscovery of the great doctrines of the reformation and

00:40:55.520 | justification by faith. Is man's will free, or is it in bondage? And scripture says that man is a

00:41:05.600 | slave to sin. Man can only freely choose to act what is in accordance with his sinful nature. And

00:41:15.680 | then we looked at our devotional sin of spiritual deadness, and you were dead in your trespasses and

00:41:22.720 | sins in which you once walked. Spiritual deadness implies an absolute inability to respond to

00:41:30.720 | spiritual things. God told Ezekiel in Ezekiel chapter 37 to preach the bones. He said there

00:41:40.560 | is a valley of bones, and he wanted Ezekiel to preach. I've always said that I preach to some

00:41:49.680 | tough audiences in my life, but I've never had this assignment. Go preach to a bunch of dead bones.

00:41:56.000 | And Ezekiel 37 verse 5, "Thus says the Lord God to these bones, 'Behold, I will cause breath to

00:42:03.440 | enter you and you will live, and I will lay sinews upon you and will cause flesh to come upon you

00:42:08.880 | and cover you with skin and put breath in you and you shall live and you shall know that I am the

00:42:13.600 | Lord.'" That's an illustration of the glory of salvation, regeneration. Ezekiel 37 is an

00:42:22.320 | illustration of the expressions of grace in the new covenant as explained in Ezekiel chapter 36.

00:42:30.000 | In the new covenant provisions of salvation, God is going to take dead men and he is going to make

00:42:35.920 | them alive, and this is a beautiful illustration of new life. So the intellect is affected by sin,

00:42:49.200 | the conscience is affected by sin, the will of man is affected by sin, and really to our point,

00:42:56.080 | and all this was a lot of foundation, but to our point, Roman numeral number four,

00:43:05.120 | we have the noetic effects of sin. The mind is infected by sin. So responding to this idea that

00:43:13.520 | says in order to help people with their problems, we need to integrate the tenets of secular

00:43:18.880 | psychology with the truth of scripture, which if I could just respond to that kind of bluntly,

00:43:25.760 | what you're saying then is that we need to take the teaching of spiritually dead sinners

00:43:34.080 | and integrate them with biblical truth that is taught by those who are spiritually alive in

00:43:43.840 | Christ. Would you want to combine spiritually alive teachers with those who are spiritually

00:43:55.440 | dead? That's kind of just a blunt way to respond to that. We'll get a little more nuanced in a

00:44:01.360 | moment, but this is the whole idea of sin has infected the mind of the unbeliever,

00:44:09.840 | and the intellect of the unbeliever is affected by sin. So how would we respond to this idea that

00:44:18.400 | we need to integrate secular psychology with the truth of scripture?

00:44:23.200 | Well, letter A, a few arguments, a few responses. We have to acknowledge that the unbeliever is

00:44:31.280 | not objective when it comes to the things of God. Colossians 1 verse 21, "And you who once

00:44:38.560 | were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds." I covered some of this last week. I'm not

00:44:44.720 | going to redo that teaching, but we're not saying that unbelievers are unintelligent. We're not

00:44:52.240 | saying that unbelievers aren't smart. We're saying that unbelievers will use their intellect to argue

00:44:57.520 | against the truth of God's word. And I showed you a diagram last week, which I'll redo this

00:45:09.440 | today in just a moment. But the Noahic effects of sin have their greatest

00:45:16.400 | impact on the subjects which are closest to the study of God.

00:45:22.880 | I gave you George Sipioni's, the article, Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Moe, footnote 24,

00:45:30.320 | which says that as we move to left to right on the spectrum of intellectual disciplines,

00:45:38.400 | we move from the abstract non-personal to the concrete personal aspects of the universe.

00:45:42.880 | As we move to the right, the noetic effects of sin are multiplied at an escalating pace,

00:45:49.360 | distorting the observation of data and the conclusions drawn from that data. The distortion

00:45:54.160 | grows as we move right until we find clearly rival theologies that openly self-consciously reject the

00:45:58.960 | true and the living God. So the closer you get to the study of God, the more you see the noetic

00:46:06.240 | effects of sin. You see the most distortion in the realm of psychology because man is made in

00:46:13.600 | the image of God and you cannot study man without understanding God. So that's a footnote that you

00:46:20.320 | would do well to study and understand for this essay. Heath Lambert says that geologists do not

00:46:30.400 | merely observe fossils. They make sense of those fossils by attempting to discern the time of their

00:46:35.920 | origin. Unbelieving geologists never trace fossils to a personal God from several thousand years ago,

00:46:41.440 | but to impersonal forces seven billion years ago. It is the same with secular psychologists. They

00:46:48.880 | press their observations through the grid of a fallen worldview and will inevitably

00:46:54.000 | distort their observations with faulty interpretations. So he's building on those

00:47:00.000 | three aspects of psychology that are articulated in chapter three of

00:47:07.040 | Theology, Biblical Counseling, Observations, Interpretations, and Interventions.

00:47:12.080 | And he's saying, look, a geologist at the level of observations would probably make the same

00:47:20.320 | observations that a believer would about fossils. They would say, well, it's this color

00:47:27.360 | or this size or here's the measurements. They would probably make similar observations about

00:47:36.320 | fossils. But an unbelieving geologist at the level of interpretation will trace the existence of

00:47:46.080 | fossils to impersonal forces several billion years ago and say it all is a result of evolution

00:47:53.200 | and it all came out of a big bang at some point. It's really at the level of interpretation that

00:47:59.200 | believers and unbelievers diverge in how they interpret information. And it's the same with

00:48:08.320 | secular psychology. He says the difference between psychology and geology is that the

00:48:14.160 | implications for the human race are much more severe in an atheistic interpretation of counseling

00:48:19.280 | people than with an atheistic interpretation of rock formations. The interpretations of secular

00:48:25.520 | psychologists affect troubled people where they live and experience problems. It is in these

00:48:30.880 | interpretations where we see the largest impact of the noetic effects of sin. So you can't just

00:48:37.840 | take a distorted view of man and then import it into a biblical worldview. Let me give you an

00:48:45.680 | illustration of this. You have there the three levels of psychology. This is found in chapter

00:48:50.160 | three of Heath Lambert's work. You have observation, interpretation, intervention. We're saying that

00:48:56.160 | observation tends to be similar whether it's made by a believer or unbeliever.

00:49:02.800 | The interpretation of that data is completely different. And an illustration of this would be

00:49:09.360 | if you had a counselee who was struggling with anxiety. Well, both a secular psychologist and

00:49:19.360 | a biblical counselor would most likely make very similar observations about the counselee and how

00:49:25.440 | the counselee is behaving. They would probably both observe that the counselee has sweaty palms,

00:49:32.960 | increased heart rate, heightened emotion, distracted thinking. They would most likely

00:49:40.480 | make similar observations about these anxious periods tend to occur at certain times of the day

00:49:48.880 | that there really would be a lot of commonality at the level of observation between a secular

00:49:56.000 | psychologist and a biblical counselor. It's at the level of interpretation. Why is the

00:50:03.280 | counselee behaving in this way? That's where the two viewpoints diverge. At the level of

00:50:11.280 | interpretation, we would say that the counselee is a person who was made in the image of God,

00:50:16.720 | that the counselee is made to live in relationship with God and to worship God,

00:50:23.440 | to reflect God's glory, that it is out of the heart that flow the issues of life,

00:50:29.760 | that the heart is always relating to God either rightly or wrongly.

00:50:34.480 | Biblically speaking, the heart has thoughts, desires, values. Most likely, these thoughts

00:50:42.720 | are unbiblical thoughts that are giving rise to anxious behaviors. Desires are rooted in what a

00:50:50.960 | person most values. Most likely, this counselee has strong desires that are not submitted to the

00:50:59.120 | will and to the plan of God. Those are all heart issues that relate to how is this person relating

00:51:07.200 | to God because the interpretation of that data would be completely different from a secular

00:51:14.960 | psychologist. A secular psychologist might say one viewpoint. There's so many different viewpoints

00:51:22.880 | within secular psychology, but one viewpoint in secular psychology would be the medical model,

00:51:27.680 | which says it's all physiological. There must be a physical explanation for this kind of behavior,

00:51:36.480 | and that might relate to imbalances chemically in a person's brain or so forth and so on.

00:51:44.400 | The intervention is to medicate. If you're with me in year one of biblical counseling,

00:51:54.560 | we are not anti-medication. There's no law in the Bible that says you cannot take

00:52:02.960 | anti-anxiety medication, but what the biblical counselor would do would seek to address the

00:52:08.880 | thoughts and intentions of the heart using scripture, scripture such as Matthew 6, verse 34,

00:52:14.400 | "Do not be anxious for tomorrow, for tomorrow will take care of itself."

00:52:18.640 | Philippians 4, verses 6 to 7, dealing with anxiety through thankful prayer and then

00:52:26.160 | training the counselee to address the issues of the heart through use of the word of God.

00:52:32.320 | I give you this case study to just illustrate how observations can be similar, but interpretations

00:52:39.040 | can be different, and your interventions are based on your interpretations. So, letter C,

00:52:47.040 | what's the good news? The good news is because of Christ, the believer can have a renewed mind. I

00:52:54.480 | mean, that theme is just found throughout all scripture. We could spend an hour talking about

00:52:59.200 | how the mind of the believer is renewed in Christ, how we've been given the mind of Christ,

00:53:05.680 | the noetic effects of sin are reversed in salvation, and the more we are sanctified,

00:53:11.120 | the more we take the truth of God's word and renew our minds, and this is the process of

00:53:17.760 | sanctification. 1 Corinthians 2, verse 12, "Now we have received not the spirit of the world,

00:53:22.640 | but the spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God."

00:53:27.040 | Verse 16, "For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him, but we have

00:53:31.200 | the mind of Christ." Ephesians 4, verse 17, talks about the futility of the unbeliever's mind.

00:53:40.320 | Verse 18, "They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of

00:53:45.200 | God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of heart." So,

00:53:49.360 | we would just ask the question, do you really want to take that intellectual system that is

00:53:55.680 | darkened in its understanding at the point of understanding who man is

00:54:03.920 | and then combine it with the mind of Christ? Will you come up with a hybrid that is useful?

00:54:14.960 | So, going back to our question, and I'll wrap it up in this way. The question is, "Explain the

00:54:21.760 | doctrine of the noetic effects of sin, relating the doctrine to the ability of the secular

00:54:26.400 | psychologist to understand true information about the human condition." I would hit three points in

00:54:32.240 | this essay. Number one, make sure you explain the corruption of the unbeliever's nature.

00:54:39.600 | It's not just the mind that is affected by sin. It is the unbeliever's entire nature that has been

00:54:48.560 | inherited from Adam. Make sure that you articulate a robust doctrine of sin that affects

00:54:57.280 | mind, will, intellect, conscience, desires, and so forth and so on. And you would do well to take

00:55:06.560 | some time. Don't get lost. You don't need to do the whole explanation of the doctrine of original

00:55:12.080 | sin, but you would do well to take some time to explain how this all derives from its root, which

00:55:17.680 | is Adam. Number two, you want to hit the point that the unbeliever's mind is hostile. It's not

00:55:28.000 | neutral or unbiased. Work through the three levels of psychology. Secular psychologists can make

00:55:37.680 | accurate observations, but they will have flawed

00:55:41.920 | interpretations because their minds are hostile towards God. And then number three, you want to

00:55:54.640 | note that the interpretations of the data under secular psychology is going to be impacted by

00:56:02.880 | sin's effects. So the task of the biblical counselor is to renew the mind in Christ. We

00:56:11.360 | can address the issues of life because we have a renewed mind. We have the mind of Christ.

00:56:18.480 | Just a practical word, in biblical counseling, what we are doing is we are seeking to help the

00:56:25.120 | counselee to renew their minds in the scriptures. Most times in counseling, there are unbiblical

00:56:33.280 | thoughts, unbiblical desires, unbiblical thought patterns that are opposed to the truth. And

00:56:40.080 | many times those thought patterns have been built up over time and rehearsed

00:56:45.280 | over many years. And we are seeking to help the counselee to renew their mind according to the

00:56:50.480 | scripture by getting them into the scripture and then using the word of God as a scalpel

00:56:57.760 | with precision to take every thought captive to Christ. And so this is a good

00:57:04.000 | session that will help us to equip us for that ministry. Okay. Well, what I'm going to do right

00:57:12.960 | now, I'm going to go ahead and pray for us and close this. And if you need to go,

00:57:17.440 | then you're welcome to go. I'll hang on for a few minutes. If any of you have any questions,

00:57:21.760 | I'll be happy to answer that on the chat or on Q&A. Otherwise, we do wish you a wonderful night

00:57:28.640 | and a great week rejoicing in the grace of God that God has saved us and given us a renewed

00:57:36.960 | mind. So let me pray for us and we'll officially bring this time to a close. Let me pray.

00:57:41.600 | Father, thank you for your word and just for the grace that you've shown to us to make us alive in

00:57:47.840 | Christ, to give us a renewed mind or a new heart, a renewed spirit. We thank you that you took us

00:57:56.640 | when we were dead and you made us alive in Christ. And we thank you, Lord, that though we

00:58:04.240 | were once hostile in mind, and now Lord, we desire to use our minds to glorify you and to think your

00:58:11.040 | thoughts after you. We thank you for your word, which gives us a renewed mind, the mind of Christ.

00:58:16.800 | We thank you for your spirit who teaches us your word. And we pray that you would give us a great

00:58:22.080 | week studying these truths. We pray that a fuller, clearer teaching about sin would lead to a fuller,

00:58:30.240 | clearer understanding of Christ and all that he has done to save us. And that we would love you

00:58:38.400 | as a result of this study. Thank you for each of my brothers and sisters here. Bless us as we go

00:58:43.440 | in Jesus' name. Amen. Okay, amen. Have a wonderful night. I'll hang on for a few minutes here. If you

00:58:52.880 | have any questions, I'll be happy to answer that for you.

00:59:04.320 | So,

00:59:11.280 | okay, great question. There's one question that came in. Is there a difference between unbiblical

00:59:32.080 | thought patterns and habits and strongholds? The ACBC conference is destroying strongholds.

00:59:39.520 | Great question. So, this is the ACBC theme for this year is destroying strongholds,

00:59:53.680 | and it is based off of 2 Corinthians chapter 10, verse 3. "For though we walk in the flesh,

01:00:04.000 | we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh,

01:00:09.680 | but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations

01:00:15.840 | and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every

01:00:20.480 | thought captive to the obedience of Christ." I think that the inspiration for this conference

01:00:32.400 | came out of David Powelson's final work before he went to be with the Lord. I think it's published

01:00:40.000 | now. You can actually find David Powelson's final work on spiritual warfare, and he wrote that right

01:00:47.760 | before he went to be with the Lord, and he was really articulating this idea of spiritual warfare

01:00:56.960 | is taking every thought captive to Christ. It's really battling for the thoughts and

01:01:04.000 | the intentions of the heart, and the idea of fortresses here is there are in people's hearts

01:01:12.320 | thought patterns, as I mentioned, that have been so built up and fortified over time

01:01:18.000 | that really to demolish those fortresses takes a spiritual battle. I can relate to this of just,

01:01:29.840 | you know, my wife and I have talked about the battle against perfectionism, and that's a

01:01:38.480 | continued battle for me maybe built up over time where I was raised in a culture where grades were

01:01:47.840 | very important, very preeminent. I mean, if you brought home an A-minus, and this is not faulting

01:01:56.160 | my parents at all, and I'm very grateful actually for how they raised me, but there was a standard

01:02:04.400 | there where if it was an A-minus, why isn't it an A, and for me, for years, you know,

01:02:12.960 | your worth was defined as your grade or your standard of performance, and even in my own

01:02:22.480 | sanctification, that's not something that easily goes away to find that my worth is in Christ.

01:02:30.800 | The fortress that I've been dealing with in my own life and over the years of being a Christian is

01:02:37.360 | the fortress of I am, my worth is in my performance. My worth is in my performance.

01:02:45.600 | My worth is in my performance. That's a repeated refrain in my heart that has

01:02:50.880 | been built up over years, and it's become a stronghold where to move from that in sanctification

01:02:59.360 | to say my worth is in Christ. My worth is in His finished work. My worth is in what He has

01:03:05.680 | accomplished for me. That's a battle that by God's grace, I'm making progress, but it's not

01:03:14.160 | something that comes easily or immediately, and I think that's some of what Paul's saying here

01:03:21.920 | with taking every thought captive to Christ, that that's a spiritual battle, and I think that's what

01:03:27.200 | the ACBC conference is going to address, and by the way, if you're able to make it, please try to

01:03:32.400 | make it. I'm not sure what the plans are going to be. They are still planning to meet in person, but

01:03:37.120 | they might have an online session as well, a live stream, but it is a very important

01:03:44.560 | topic and one that's worthy of your careful consideration, and I encourage you to get David

01:03:50.720 | Powelson's, I'm forgetting the title, but if you go on Amazon and look up David Powelson,

01:03:56.560 | I think it's spiritual warfare or something along those lines. That would be a worthy read for you

01:04:02.560 | to work through this whole idea of destroying strongholds, so wonderful question. Thanks for

01:04:09.760 | a great question there. Question is, it was mentioned that our spiritual deadness implies

01:04:16.960 | an inability to respond to spiritual things. How do you respond to someone who feels conviction

01:04:22.560 | and responds to teachings such as from a sermon, but they're not saved yet?

01:04:26.640 | Is this inability for actual understanding and application?

01:04:33.360 | So that's a great question. I'd have to understand specifically maybe the person

01:04:41.840 | a little bit better before I made a blanket statement. In general, if there is an unbeliever

01:04:50.160 | that is in my church and they are responding to teaching and even being convicted by that teaching,

01:05:01.120 | then I'm going to do everything in my power to take a very gracious and hopeful perspective on

01:05:08.560 | that and pray and trust that that is the Holy Spirit working on that unbeliever's heart.

01:05:14.800 | I want to be very careful before I consider this person a brother. The person is not a brother in

01:05:21.280 | Christ until he confesses Jesus Christ as Lord, but if an unbeliever is in the midst of a church

01:05:27.520 | assembly and hearing the Word and hearing Bible teaching, I'm going to do everything to encourage

01:05:34.400 | that, to take the most hopeful view of that, to pray that, Lord willing, that is the work of the

01:05:39.760 | Holy Spirit softening that unbeliever's heart. And practically speaking, we do understand that

01:05:48.960 | theologically regeneration is instantaneous. It is the quickening work of the Holy Spirit

01:05:56.880 | where he makes an unbeliever alive in Christ, but practically what it looks like in many people's

01:06:04.000 | cases is a progressive softening over time. If you were asking about my testimony,

01:06:10.960 | I could probably point out a two to three week period that I believe it was somewhere in that

01:06:19.120 | period that I gave my life to Christ. I'm not totally sure. I can't pinpoint a date or a time.

01:06:25.040 | There was no magic zap or there was no altar call that I came forward, but it was in some kind of,

01:06:33.120 | within a month, God was working in my life. Theologically, I know that there was a point

01:06:39.600 | in time where God gave me new life and made me to be a new creation, but experientially,

01:06:47.440 | I'm not sure when that point was. So we just want to be careful of that. And on a pastoral level,

01:06:54.400 | I would be encouraging that unbeliever to keep sitting under God's Word. I'm going to pray that

01:07:00.240 | God will do a work in your heart, but I wouldn't treat that person as a brother until they confess

01:07:06.080 | Jesus Christ as Lord. So it's a great question. Thank you for that question. It's encouraging

01:07:13.680 | to see that you're thinking that through. One question is, would you nuance how to difference

01:07:22.960 | between answering the noetic effects of sin versus common grace? Great question. So

01:07:29.440 | my short answer is read chapter three of A Theology of Biblical Counseling

01:07:35.360 | by Heath Lambert. The two essays overlap. There is a place where one ends and the other begins.

01:07:48.000 | One practical tip is you can always in your essay say you stated something in a previous essay and

01:07:54.800 | you want to use that material again in a new essay. You can actually in the new essay say,

01:08:03.200 | as previously discussed in essay number five, common grace does not

01:08:13.440 | overcome the noetic effects of sin. And you can actually use some of the same material twice

01:08:18.320 | where the essay topics overlap. So just be aware that you can do that. And in these cases,

01:08:26.960 | theology exam number five and theology exam number six do overlap. Generally speaking,

01:08:33.520 | the first half of chapter three in Heath Lambert's work deals with common grace. But the whole point

01:08:40.000 | of that presentation is to state that common grace does not overcome the noetic effects of sin. And

01:08:46.560 | then there's a discussion on the second half on the noetic effects of sin. So it's a great question

01:08:54.240 | and thank you for asking it, but there is an overlap. And so there might be some overlap in

01:09:00.240 | these two essays on how you write it, but you can use that technique if you need to repeat some

01:09:05.520 | material. Just say, as previously discussed, and you can overlap in some of that material.

01:09:13.520 | Not all of the essay can be an overlap, but some of it can be. So wonderful question.

01:09:19.600 | The question is, I think it's a similar question. With the last question,

01:09:28.960 | I focused on the common grace relating to knowledge and about half of it is on the

01:09:33.280 | noetic effects of sin's effect on knowledge. This new question feels almost the same. Should

01:09:39.280 | I redo the last question or really focus on the doctrine of sin on this one?

01:09:45.520 | Yeah, as I mentioned, a great question. There are some overlaps, but question number five,

01:09:55.040 | you probably want to spend the bulk of that essay discussing common grace

01:09:59.920 | and distinguishing that between saving grace. And you should be spending a majority of that

01:10:07.920 | discussing what is common grace? What does common grace allow the unbeliever to do?

01:10:15.760 | And then at the ends of that essay, moving toward the limitations of common grace.

01:10:22.960 | And there will be some overlap, but the focus of essay number six, most of it should be focused on

01:10:32.800 | doctrine of sin, inherited sin nature, the extent of sin and how sin affects

01:10:39.920 | every part of man, and then how that relates to the secular psychologist, assuming that

01:10:48.880 | the secular psychologist is an unbeliever, how does that impact their understanding of man?

01:10:54.880 | I remember sitting with Dale Johnson, who was the executive director of ACBC,

01:11:02.160 | and he was sharing how in his undergraduate studies, he studied secular psychology,

01:11:07.360 | he was a psychology major. And then at some point as a Christian, he came to

01:11:13.920 | the conviction that secular psychology presents a different doctrine of man than the Bible does.

01:11:20.000 | And that for him led him into the ministry of biblical counseling. It really is centered on

01:11:30.000 | the doctrine of man, who is man. And so can an unbeliever who does not have the truth of God's

01:11:38.000 | word, and who is dead in sins and trespasses, understand the truth of who man is apart from

01:11:44.320 | the revelation of God? That's really more the focus of theology exam number six. So there is

01:11:51.120 | some overlap, but focus in on common grace on essay number five, and focus on the doctrine of

01:11:57.280 | sin in essay number six. Wonderful question. Okay. Well, wonderful. Thank you so much for

01:12:10.320 | joining us tonight. I hope that you were blessed and hope that you'll have a great and a wonderful

01:12:16.080 | week, and have a blessed week in the Lord. We'll see you next Sunday. We'll look at theology exam

01:12:22.880 | number seven next Sunday at five o'clock, and I'll see you next week. God bless you guys.

ACBC Theology Exam 6 - The Noetic Effects of Sin

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