Pastor John, is it true to say that every man has a thirst in his soul for God he is trying to fill with sin, and also to say that every man is spiritually dead? In other words, is it right to talk about a spiritual longing being filled by sin in a spiritually dead soul?

How do you think about that? I have three kinds of responses to this. One, definitions are always crucial. The question is, is it right to talk about a spiritual, underline the word spiritual, longing in a spiritually dead soul, that is in the unregenerate. If a person means, can a spiritually dead person have a religious longing?

And the answer is yes. In fact, that's what religions are driven by, desires and longings that the spiritually dead people have, very deep desires and and willings and choices and passions. But if we stick to the New Testament, the most relevant New Testament definition, is it right to talk about a spiritual longing in a spiritually dead soul?

The most relevant definition in this regard is to take the term spiritual longing in the same way as spiritually dead, and that means spiritual is enlivened and prompted and shaped and guided by the Holy Spirit. That's what spiritual means. And the key text there is 1 Corinthians 2, 13 and 14, and the opposite of spiritual is not secular or non-religious.

The opposite is natural or minus God, a human being minus God, human being minus spirit. So the text says, "We impart these teachings in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths," there's the phrase, "spiritual truths to those who are spiritual." And then he clarifies, verse 14, "the natural person," that's the opposite of spiritual.

So a person just what they are by nature apart from God. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. So now the question is, is it right to talk about a Holy Spirit enlivened, prompted, shaped, guided longing in a soul that has no Holy Spirit given life?

And the answer is no. Those souls don't have any such longing. So that's my first observation, which is basically to clarify the definition of spiritual. But there's more that needs to be said to help fill out the picture of what we mean by spiritually dead. It does sound strange, this is my second observation, it does sound strange to lots of people to think of a dead soul with the incredible amount of activity that the dead soul has in the New Testament.

If you just take the main text on deadness in Ephesians 2, the deadness apart from Christ, this soul that is dead is amazingly energetic. Let's just read it and listen. "And you were dead," this is Ephesians 2, 1 to 3, "and you were dead in trespasses and sins in which you once walked." So you know, a walker who's dead.

"According to the course of this world, according to the Prince of the power of the air," so this soul is very responsive to the world and the devil, verse 3, "among whom we all once lived or conducted ourselves." So this soul is conducting itself, it's making choices, it's acting in ways that are appropriate to its nature, in the passions of our flesh, and then it says, "doing the desires of the body and the mind." So there's plenty of desires, there's plenty of doing, there's plenty of living, there's plenty of walking.

This is an incredibly active soul, and that's not unique to Ephesians 2. As Jesus said in John 3, "What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit." In other words, our first birth makes us merely flesh, and our second birth makes us alive to the Holy Spirit, and our spirit comes alive.

But when we are just flesh, when we're natural, to use Paul's language, there are, Paul says, lots of works of the flesh. He says the works of the flesh are sexual morality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalry, dissensions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like that.

In other words, a dead soul is a very active soul, which is strange. We must not confuse deadness of soul or spirit or heart with inactivity or having no powers at all. The dead, natural soul is filled with energy to desire and to do, which now leads to the third and last clarification that I wanted to make.

What the questioner, I think, asks is, "Can a spiritually dead person have a thirst for God that he's trying to fill with sin?" And in that sense, he says, "Is it right to talk about a spiritual longing that is a real longing for the true God," I think he means, "in a spiritually dead soul that is unregenerate?" In other words, I think he's asking, "Is there such a thing as a true seeker?" There's a lot of churches built around seeker-sensitive views of church, and here's Paul's answer, but stay tuned.

There's more. His answer is, Romans 3, 9, "Jews and Greeks are under sin, as it is written, 'None is righteous, no, not one. No one understands, no one seeks for God.'" Now that's a pretty strong statement. No one, apart from Christ, apart from the Holy Spirit, no dead soul seeks for God.

Now what does he mean? Because we don't want to say more here than we should, and I think Romans 8, 7 and 1 Corinthians 2, 14 are what he means. He says, "For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, it does not submit to God's law, indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God." Or, 1 Corinthians, "The natural person does not welcome, does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, that is, who by their unrighteousness," he says in chapter 1 of Romans, "suppress the truth." So I think what Paul means by "no natural person," no unregenerate, unborn-again person, seeks for God, I think what he means is, yes, they have longings of heart and desiring hearts and yearning hearts, and yes, this longing, desiring, yearning heart was made by God and for God, and yes, this longing for something more than what is in this world is true.

As C. S. Lewis said, "It's a sign that we're made for another world." It says, "Hunger is evidence that we're the sort of people that were made for food, and this aching and longing for something we know not what seems to point to the fact we were made for something else, and yes, this longing and desiring and yearning will only be satisfied by God." I think Paul would say all that, I think he would agree with all of that, but then he would say, "No, our longings and desires and yearnings are not for God in this sense, that is, we do not want the true God.

We don't want the true God. We don't like the true God. We don't admire the true God. We don't respect the true God. We don't trust the true God. We don't delight in the true God. Our longings are for what we think this God might be or should be or could be, and that turns into rejection.

As soon as the real God begins to make himself truly known, Romans says, we suppress it, we hold it down unless we're born again, unless the Spirit gives us eyes to see that the true God is beautiful and desirable, we won't seek him. We'll seek and seek and seek and seek for what we know not, but we won't seek the true God, and to the degree that the true God starts to be visible to us, we suppress that knowledge until the Holy Spirit is at work.

So, question, final question again. Is it right to talk about a truly spiritual longing for the true God in a spiritually dead soul? No. Not if we mean that a spiritually dead soul can perceive the true God and want him for who he is. It can't. It can't see him, it can't want him, it's hostile to him, and it can't please God by embracing God or seeking God as the true God.

The dead soul does not want God for who he is. The dead soul suppresses who God is and creates alternative gods. Yes. Thank you, Pastor John. And we're gonna break now for the weekend, but we return on Monday with a doozy of a question, because there is an important debate in the Church in recent years over whether or not the ethics of the New Testament are final and binding, or whether they're merely suggestive and set a trajectory the Church can reshape and modify over time.

This is such a crucial topic. I'm your host Tony Rehnke. We'll see you on Monday.