everyone and welcome you to Intermediate Biblical Counseling. This is our session number six and glad you're able to join us tonight. I hope you all had a wonderful week and that the Lord has been blessing your walks with Christ and also your study in God's Word. And I trust that as you work through these essays that you're being both challenged and blessed by putting pen to paper and putting down on paper some of the most precious truths that are found in life, which is our convictions about the Word of God.

And so I'm really glad that you've joined us tonight. If you have any questions or any feedback on the course materials as we go along, please feel free to use the chat function or also the Q&A function in your webinar and we'd be happy to address any questions that you might have.

Tonight this is session number six in our study of the theology exam topics, and we're going to be looking at tonight the noetic effects of sin. We introduced that idea last week, the whole idea of sin's effects on the mind, on the intellect of the unbeliever, and how does that relate to the counseling conversation that we have.

How does that relate to our methodology and counseling and how we interact with integrationists and secular psychologists. So I'm glad you joined us. I hope we'll have a great time of study tonight. Just as we open our session tonight, I want to read from Ephesians chapter 2, verses 1 to 7, and both give you a devotional thought from God's Word, and then also to help us understand from this passage how the doctrine of sin leads us to understand the work of Christ and also to celebrate God's grace.

So let me read from Ephesians chapter 2, verses 1 to 7. Paul says, "And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.

Among them we too all formerly lived in the lust of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved, and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus." For a brief moment, I want us to think about the truth that Paul says in chapter 2, verse 1, "And you were dead in your sins and trespasses." My favorite illustration of the deadness aspect of the teaching in Ephesians chapter 2, verse 1, is found in R.C.

Sproul's book, Chosen by God, and in that book, Sproul gives the following illustration that I think is helpful for us to understand the doctrine of sin and especially that whole idea of being dead in sins and trespasses. He says, "Consider an analogy of a person who is suffering from a terminal illness.

The sinner is said to be gravely ill on the brink of physical death. He does not have it within his own power to cure himself of the disease. He is lying on his deathbed, almost totally paralyzed. He cannot recover unless God provides the healing medicine. The man is so bad off that he cannot even stretch forth his arm to receive the medicine.

He is almost comatose. God must not only offer the medicine, but God must put it on a spoon and place it by the dying man's lips. Unless God does all that, the man will surely perish. But though God does 99% of what is necessary, the man is still left with 1%.

The man must open his mouth to receive the medicine. This is the necessary exercise of free will that makes the difference between heaven and hell. The man who opens his mouth to receive the gracious gift of the medicine will be saved. The man who keeps his lips tightly clenched will perish." So, that seems to be, at first, to be a pretty good analogy of the gospel call.

If you open your mouth, you will be saved, and if you close your mouth, then you will perish. But Sproul denies that this analogy is in harmony with the truth of true conversion. He writes that the analogy that I've just described almost does justice to the Bible and to Paul's teaching of the grace of regeneration.

But in the end, it falls short of the biblical picture. The Bible does not speak of mortally ill sinners. According to Paul, they are dead. There is not an ounce of spiritual life left in them. If they are to be made alive, God must do more than offer them medicine.

Dead men will not open their mouths to receive anything. Their jaws are locked in death. Rigor mortis has set in. They must be raised from the dead. They must be new creations crafted by Christ and reborn by his Spirit. Sproul makes there the simple point that men are not just sick in their sin.

They are dead in their sins and their trespasses, and therefore, they need not only for God to put the medicine near their mouths, they need to be spiritually resurrected from the dead. So, just in case we think we got the point there, Sproul's going to hammer that in with a second illustration, and this is actually my favorite illustration in that book.

He says, "Consider a drowning man who is unable to swim. He has gone under twice and bobbed to the surface for the last time. If he goes under again, he will die. His only hope is for God to throw him a life preserver. God throws the lifeline and tosses it precisely to the edge of the man's outstretched fingers.

All the man has to do to be saved is to grab hold of the life preserver. If he will only grab hold of the life preserver, God will tow him in. If he refuses the life preserver, he will certainly perish." And again, this seems to be a pretty good illustration of the gospel invitation.

"Grab on to the life preserver, and you will be saved." But Sproul writes this, "Again, in this illustration, the utter helplessness of sinful man without God's assistance is emphasized. The drowning man is in a serious condition. He cannot save himself. However, the illustration is incomplete because the man in the story is still alive.

He can still stretch forth his fingers. His fingers are the crucial link to salvation. His eternal destiny depends upon what he does with his fingers." But, and here's the key observation in the illustration, in Ephesians chapter 2 verse 1, Paul says the man is dead. He is not merely drowning.

He is dead. He has already sunk to the bottom of the sea. It is futile to throw a life preserver to a man who has already drowned. If man is to be saved, God must dive into the water and pull a dead man from the bottom of the sea, and then perform a divine act of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

God must breathe into the dead man new life. And that is exactly what Paul says that God has done for us in our salvation in Ephesians chapter 2 verses 1 to 7. It's not just that God threw us a life preserver and said, "You catch it." It's that we were dead.

We were drowned at the bottom of the ocean. God came down and found us, and he miraculously caused us to be born again, and he imparted to us new life in Christ. Now, if you understand the doctrine of sin as it's found in verses 1 to 3, and Paul goes on to say more things about the doctrine of sin, but we'll just leave it there with the whole idea of spiritual deadness before Christ.

He then says in verse 4, "Why is it that God would find a dead man and breathe into that person new life?" It was because, verse 4, he was great in mercy. He did so because, verse 4, he was great in love because of the great love with which he loved us when we were dead in our trespasses.

God made us alive in Christ, and he did so that, in verse 7, it says, "So that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus." When you really understand the doctrine of sin, and this is how I'm going to segue into our subject for tonight, when you really grasp the extent of sin, the effects of sin, the influence of sin, when you really come to terms with the unbeliever's spiritual condition of being dead in sin, of being a slave to sin, where it leads you in your understanding of the gospel is a greater understanding and appreciation of God's grace, a greater appreciation and understanding of the greatness of God's love, the greatness of his mercy, and as verse 7 calls it, "the surpassing riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus." It leads you to celebrate and to be in awe and wonder of amazing grace.

If your heart is not moved to seeing amazing grace and to stand amazed, freshly amazed, each and every day at the greatness of God's grace, then perhaps you need to go back to the doctrine of sin, and when you are grounded in the doctrine of sin, it will cause you to rejoice in your Savior's love.

With that said, tonight we're looking at one of the aspects of that study of the doctrine of sin. We're looking at the noetic effects of sin, but my prayer is that this study will lead us to a fresh appreciation as to the amazing grace of God and salvation that we would be able to praise him and worship him and be lost in wonder, love, and praise.

So, let's pray together and devote our time to the Lord. Father, we do bow before you tonight, and I thank you for each of my brothers and sisters who are studying your word and joining us for tonight's session, and I pray that you would bless them and encourage them as they continue in their training.

I pray that, Lord, the understanding of your word and an understanding of the doctrine of sin would lead us to a great understanding of how amazing your grace really is, that you loved us not because there was anything in us that was lovely. You loved us not because we could love you in return.

You loved us simply because it is in your nature to love, and you not only sent your son to die for our sins, you made us alive in Christ. You caused us to be born again. You granted to us the gift of sovereign regeneration, and you opened our eyes to see the beauty and the glory of your son, Jesus Christ.

Lord, help us to handle these truths carefully. Help us to think deeply and clearly. Help us to think biblically, and we pray that, Father, you would grant that the result of this study would not be an essay, but that, Lord, it would be a heart that worships and praises you, for we know that you indeed have been gracious to us, and so we just give our time to you, and we pray all this in Jesus' precious name.

Amen. Amen. Okay, we are looking at theology exam number six. This is, as I mentioned, the topic dealing with the noetic effects of sin. Heath Lambert's chapter three in the theology of biblical counseling is going to be very helpful to you in writing this essay. I really encourage you to read that chapter carefully, especially the second half of chapter three is going to be very helpful in relating the doctrine of the noetic effects of sin to the issue of counseling, but let's read the question together.

The question is, "Explain the doctrine of the noetic effects of sin relating the doctrine to the ability of secular psychologists to understand true information about the human condition." Last week, we introduced the idea that the term noetic comes from the Greek word nous, n-o-u-s, and that word simply means mind, so when we're looking at the noetic effects of sin, we are looking at sin's effects on the mind.

How does sin affect the human intellect? How unbelievers think about life and about intellectual disciplines? Now, I've given you way more information on your handout that you need to write this essay, but I did think this was necessary because we do need to understand the broader look at the doctrine of sin before we narrow in on understanding sin's effects on the mind, and also I found just in general that teaching on the doctrine of sin and the church's understanding of the doctrine of sin really has been in short supply, and as I mentioned, it's not that we so much enjoy studying all about the doctrine of sin and its effects upon man, but understanding the doctrine of sin is necessary to understanding the gospel.

It's necessary for understanding the greatness of God's grace and his love toward us in Christ. If you have a weak understanding of the doctrine of sin, you're going to have a weak understanding of the gospel, a weak appreciation of the greatness of Christ, a weak appreciation of how amazing God's grace really is.

On your handout, I put J.C. Ryle's statement where he says, "Dim or indistinct views of sin are the origin of most of the errors, heresies, and false doctrines of the present day. If a man does not realize the dangerous nature of his soul's disease, you cannot wonder if he is content with false or imperfect remedies.

I believe that one of the chief needs of the contemporary church has been and is clearer fuller teaching about sin." That's a really interesting statement there, and I think that's really helpful for us. When is the last time you said to your pastor, "Pastor, what I really want to hear is clearer, fuller teaching about sin." When is the time that you felt in your own heart that, "What I need to really grow in my love for Christ is clearer, fuller teaching about sin." But the truth is that if we don't have fuller, clearer teaching about sin, then we won't have a full and clear understanding of the person and work of Jesus Christ.

1 Timothy 1, verse 15, "The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came to the world to save sinners, of whom I am foremost." So, just mark it down as sin is being redefined today. I have some notes on your handout there that in the world of secular psychology, sin is being redefined as a disorder or a syndrome.

Here are some ways that sin is being redefined. Letter A, some say sin is a lack of self-esteem. This was popularized by Robert Schuller in his work, "Self-Esteem, the New Reformation." Schuller said that the first reformation was justification by faith, and the second reformation is the rediscovery of self.

He says, "What I mean by sin, answer, any human condition or act that robs God of his glory by stripping one of his children of the right to divine dignity. I can offer still another answer. Sin is any act or thought that robs myself or another being of his or her self-esteem.

The core of sin is lack of self-esteem. And what is hell? Hell is the loss of pride that naturally follows separation from God. A person is in hell when he has lost his self-esteem." And just in case you think that this redefinition of sin is gone in our generation, just listen to Joel Osteen on the subject of self-esteem.

This is on the slide here. He says, "Allow me to tell you who you really are. You are talented. You are valuable. You are confident. You have been handpicked by the creator of the universe on the inside of you. Right now is a victorious, successful world changer just waiting to break out.

Your butterfly is waiting to soar." So, that's just echoing the teaching of secular psychology. Inside of you is goodness, and light, and potential, and if you haven't blossomed, it's your teacher's fault, or your parents' fault, or your family's fault. And Osteen writes, "I'm asking you to release the full you.

You are destined to leave your mark on your generation. There's no limit to what God can do in you and through you when you reprogram your thinking and start believing that you're blessed, valuable, one of a kind, and more than a conqueror. When you renew your mind, transformation takes place.

Your butterfly is waiting to soar." So, John the Baptist got it wrong when he said, "You brood of vipers." He should have said, "You bunch of beautiful butterflies that are just waiting to soar." That's the new reformation. Sin is being redefined. Sin is being redefined as a lack of self-esteem, and when you get the doctrine of sin wrong, you will have the gospel wrong.

So, this is the new reformation. On your handout, you have letter B, "Sin as a disease model." We no longer have sins that need to be repented of. We have disorders that need to be managed. The DSM has conduct disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, antisocial personality disorder, intermittent explosive disorder.

So, the idea is if I explode at you and rage that I don't have a sin problem, I have a disorder. So, I have IED, and you should feel sorry for me because I'm just a poor, needy victim who has a disorder that needs to be managed instead of I am a sinner who is in need of repentance and forgiveness through the grace that is in the Lord Jesus Christ.

You see how attractive this kind of teaching is, how it appeals to the pride and the self-will of man. Carl Menninger asked this question, and he was a secular psychologist. He's not writing from a Christian perspective, but he lamented the lack of understanding of sin, even from a secular perspective.

He said, "Has no one committed any sins? Where indeed did sin go? What became of it?" Now, when an unbeliever is saying, "What happened to the doctrine of sin?" you know that we need to take care to rearticulate the doctrine and understand it for our own lives. And then you have letter C on your handout, the victimization model.

"I'm not a sinner. I'm a victim." This starts all the way back in the garden. Adam said, "The woman whom you gave me to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree, and I ate." Adam was basically saying, "It's not my fault, God, that I ate the fruit.

It's the woman's fault, and it's not her fault, God. It's really your fault because you're the one who gave me the woman. It's everyone's fault, but mine." And you see that dynamic being played out in so many people today. It's the victim model. "I'm not a sinner. I'm not responsible.

I'm a victim." So we could say much more about that, but let me move on. Sin is being redefined, and when you redefine sin, you redefine the gospel. If you don't get sin right, then you don't get the remedy right. You have to get the diagnosis right before you give the cure.

So let me move to, I think this is the next page of your handout, "The Doctrine of Original Sin." "The Doctrine of Original Sin." Anthony Hokema defines the doctrine of original sin in this way, "Original sin is the sinful state and condition in which every human is born." "Original sin is the sinful state and condition in which every human is born." And it's called original sin because it's derived from the original root of the human race, Adam.

So let me give you a diagram here. I'm trying to come up with a little bit better artwork for these PowerPoint presentations, but you'll have to go with it for a moment. If you look at the bottom part of that illustration, and let's just say that I just put Dan, but you could write your name in there, any sinner's name in that bottom stick figure.

And let's say Dan has sins in his life, and you might look at that person and say, "Well, that person has a sin problem," and you would be correct. But the doctrine of original sin says that my sin is related to the original root of the human race, which is Adam.

So there's a relationship there that's indicated by the arrow. There's a relationship between Dan the sinner and the original root of the human race, Adam, and that's the relationship that we need to understand if we're going to understand the doctrine of sin. On your handout, you have the statement by the Westminster Confession of Faith, which says this, "Our first parents, being seduced by the subtlety and temptations of Satan, sinned in eating the forbidden fruit.

By this sin, they fell from their original righteousness and communion with God, and so became dead in sin and wholly defiled." You want to circle those two words, "wholly defiled." We'll get back to that in a moment. "They became wholly defiled in all the parts and faculties of soul and body, they being the root of all mankind.

The guilt of this sin was imputed, and the same death and sin and corrupted nature conveyed to all their posterity descending from them by ordinary generation. From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good and wholly inclined to all evil, do proceed all actual transgressions." So, there is a relationship between my sin at the bottom of that diagram and the sin of Adam.

What exactly is that relationship? The Westminster Confession of Faith helps us understand that. You have there, "Adam is the root of mankind." I have a sin problem because there is a relationship between me and the original root, Adam, and you notice there I just switched the arrows around so that they're facing downward there, but the nature of the relationship is twofold, and you'll find this in the language of the Westminster Confession of Faith.

There is, first of all, imputed guilt, imputed guilt, otherwise known as original guilt. From the confession, it says, "They, being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed." So, you may want to underline that statement and just put a number one next to that. That is the first way there is a relationship between Adam and myself.

There is imputed guilt, and then secondly, there is imparted corruption going on in that statement, and the same death in sin and corrupted nature conveyed to all their posterity descending from them by ordinary generation. So, there is a nature that is imparted in addition to the guilt that is imputed.

So, let me deal with the first aspect very briefly, but I want you to understand this concept because I think this is going to give us a fuller, clearer teaching on sin and help us to understand the grace of God. What is imputed guilt, imputed guilt? Now, a lot of people don't like this whole idea of imputed guilt.

They say, "You know, it's not fair. What do you mean that Adam sinned and somehow that guilt was imputed to my account? That's not fair. I mean, I wasn't there in the garden. It's not my fault that Adam sinned. How am I held responsible for Adam's guilt?" And the way I kind of respond to that is just by showing them the three imputations in the Bible.

The concept of imputation is very important to our understanding of salvation and our understanding of the grace of God. You see there, and I start here conceptually on the right-hand side just to show you the reasoning of how people like the first two imputations, but they really don't like the third.

The first imputation is that my sins were imputed to Christ at the cross. When Jesus died on the cross, Jesus took the penalty for my sins. God treated Christ as if he had sinned every single one of my sins, and he reckoned or imputed all the guilt of my sin to Jesus, my perfect substitute.

And if you're a believer in Christ, you say, "Well, I love that imputation. That's a that's a imputation that communicates God's grace to me that Jesus paid for all of my sins." The second imputation, and you can look at 2 Corinthians 5 verse 21 for this idea of double imputation, was not only my sin nailed to the cross with Jesus, but Christ's righteousness was granted to my account at the moment I believed in Christ for salvation.

God took my sinful record of guilt and nailed it to the cross with Christ. Then God takes Christ's spotless record of perfect obedience to the holy law of God. He takes his perfect record of perfect law keeping, and he imputes it to my account when I trust in him for salvation, and that's amazing that's amazing grace.

He who knew no sin became sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in him. So, those are double imputation that's found in scripture. So, every believer looks at those two imputations and says, "Amazing grace. I love the idea of imputation. I love the idea of double imputation." Well, if you are going to embrace the concept of imputation in those first two imputations, then you have to be willing to embrace the third, and I know in terms of time, the left-hand side goes first, but I'm just showing you how I reason from this when I get the objection that it's not fair that Adam's guilt is imputed to my account.

If you're going to take the first two imputations, then you have to be willing to take the third. Somehow, when Adam sinned, his guilt was imputed to my account so that Romans 5 verse 12 says, "Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned." Somehow, when Adam sinned, it was reckoned to my account so that God has considered that all those who came from Adam's line sinned as well.

Now, theologians walk through. It's way more than we can look at tonight in our study, but theologians look at exactly how did that happen. Some take the federal headship view, this idea of Adam was the federal head of the human race. It's like if the president of the United States says, "We're at war," then I'm at war, whether I like it or not, because he's the head of the country.

I might say, "Well, I didn't go to war, but the president says we're at war, so I am at war as an individual because he represents me as the head of the country." There's the federal headship view. There's also the seminal view that all of man was seminally in Adam when he sinned, so all are considered to have sinned.

If you want further study on that, you can look at that on your own, but the idea is you can't deny the plain teaching of Romans 5 verse 12. Somehow, when Adam sinned, all were considered to have sinned, all sinned in Adam. That's the first way that our sin is related to Adam.

The second way, as we saw, is not only is guilt imputed from Adam to us, but then original pollution, a corrupt nature is imparted from Adam to us. Now, this is going to lead us right into our essay. We're laying the groundwork here, so trust me, we're going right to the noetic effects of sin.

This is where the noetic effects of sin come in. We have received a corrupt sinful nature because of Adam's sin, and it is from this corrupt nature that precedes actual sins. We are not sinners because we sin. We sin because we are sinners. We are simply expressing our nature that is derived from Adam.

My children have not learned to sin merely by imitation. It's not that they just saw me complain about chicken and nuggets at McDonald's, and so they learned to complain about chicken and nuggets from McDonald's because they saw me sin, and I never complained about chicken and nuggets from McDonald's.

That's just an illustration, but they didn't learn to sin merely because of my example. They have inherited from me a sin nature. Dogs reproduce dogs, and cats reproduce cats, and sinners beget sinners, and just as dogs bark and cats meow, sinners express their nature through actual sins. It's amazing.

I didn't have to teach any of my children to complain. I never had to have a single lesson on how to fight or how to steal or how to lie. All those things came from their nature. I had to teach them otherwise, and all that is because they received a sin nature from me, and that goes all the way back to Adam.

So, here's where the essay question comes into focus. The extent of sin, and this is on the next page of your handout. Because we have received a sin nature from Adam, then it follows that sin affects every part of man. Sin affects the will, the mind, the emotions, the thoughts, the affections, the desires, the purposes, the inclinations, the values, and the treasures of the heart.

Every part of man is affected by sin, and this would relate to the five points of Calvinism. I try not to wear that as a slogan, but more just as a summary of biblical truth. The T in tulip, total depravity, refers to the extent of our sinfulness, not the degree to which we manifest it.

It means that evil has contaminated every aspect of our being. That's important. Sin affects our wills, our intellect, our emotions, our conscience, our personality, and our desires. Our depravity is a heart corruption. In other words, it goes to the very core of who we are. We are infected by sin in every part of our souls.

So, tulip begins with total depravity. It could probably be better defined as radical depravity, but the acronym RULIP is not a great acronym. So, we'll just go with total depravity, but it refers to the extent of our sinfulness, not the degree to which we manifest sinfulness. Not every man manifests his sin nature to the fullest degree that he could possibly do so, but total depravity means that evil has contaminated every aspect of our being and goes to the very core of who we are.

So, a few points here, and then I'll make some application. Letter A, sin as internal heart corruption. Sin has affected the heart, the real you, the center of who you are. Genesis 6 verse 5, "The Lord saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." So, that's why I don't tell my children, "Follow your hearts." I tell them, "Follow the word.

Follow Christ. Follow the Lord. Don't listen to yourself. Talk to yourself. Submit yourself to scripture." Letter B, we have sin as spiritual slavery and bondage. John 8 verse 34, "Jesus answered them, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. Spiritual slavery implies an absolute inability to change one's own nature." So, people always bring up at this point, "Well, what about free will?

Do you believe in free will?" And I do in the sense that I believe that a man can freely choose what is in accordance with his nature. A dog can freely choose to bark, and a cat can freely choose to meow. A dog cannot freely choose to meow, because that is not in accordance with his nature.

Man can freely choose what is in accordance with his nature, but his nature is sinful. He is infected to the core of his being with sin. Man is not free to choose what is contrary to his nature. So, man can freely choose to sin, but man cannot freely choose righteousness.

He is a slave to sin. Martin Luther called this the bondage of the will, and it was really this whole discussion of the bondage of the will versus the freedom of the will that led to the rediscovery of the great doctrines of the reformation and justification by faith. Is man's will free, or is it in bondage?

And scripture says that man is a slave to sin. Man can only freely choose to act what is in accordance with his sinful nature. And then we looked at our devotional sin of spiritual deadness, and you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked. Spiritual deadness implies an absolute inability to respond to spiritual things.

God told Ezekiel in Ezekiel chapter 37 to preach the bones. He said there is a valley of bones, and he wanted Ezekiel to preach. I've always said that I preach to some tough audiences in my life, but I've never had this assignment. Go preach to a bunch of dead bones.

And Ezekiel 37 verse 5, "Thus says the Lord God to these bones, 'Behold, I will cause breath to enter you and you will live, and I will lay sinews upon you and will cause flesh to come upon you and cover you with skin and put breath in you and you shall live and you shall know that I am the Lord.'" That's an illustration of the glory of salvation, regeneration.

Ezekiel 37 is an illustration of the expressions of grace in the new covenant as explained in Ezekiel chapter 36. In the new covenant provisions of salvation, God is going to take dead men and he is going to make them alive, and this is a beautiful illustration of new life.

So the intellect is affected by sin, the conscience is affected by sin, the will of man is affected by sin, and really to our point, and all this was a lot of foundation, but to our point, Roman numeral number four, we have the noetic effects of sin. The mind is infected by sin.

So responding to this idea that says in order to help people with their problems, we need to integrate the tenets of secular psychology with the truth of scripture, which if I could just respond to that kind of bluntly, what you're saying then is that we need to take the teaching of spiritually dead sinners and integrate them with biblical truth that is taught by those who are spiritually alive in Christ.

Would you want to combine spiritually alive teachers with those who are spiritually dead? That's kind of just a blunt way to respond to that. We'll get a little more nuanced in a moment, but this is the whole idea of sin has infected the mind of the unbeliever, and the intellect of the unbeliever is affected by sin.

So how would we respond to this idea that we need to integrate secular psychology with the truth of scripture? Well, letter A, a few arguments, a few responses. We have to acknowledge that the unbeliever is not objective when it comes to the things of God. Colossians 1 verse 21, "And you who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds." I covered some of this last week.

I'm not going to redo that teaching, but we're not saying that unbelievers are unintelligent. We're not saying that unbelievers aren't smart. We're saying that unbelievers will use their intellect to argue against the truth of God's word. And I showed you a diagram last week, which I'll redo this today in just a moment.

But the Noahic effects of sin have their greatest impact on the subjects which are closest to the study of God. I gave you George Sipioni's, the article, Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Moe, footnote 24, which says that as we move to left to right on the spectrum of intellectual disciplines, we move from the abstract non-personal to the concrete personal aspects of the universe.

As we move to the right, the noetic effects of sin are multiplied at an escalating pace, distorting the observation of data and the conclusions drawn from that data. The distortion grows as we move right until we find clearly rival theologies that openly self-consciously reject the true and the living God.

So the closer you get to the study of God, the more you see the noetic effects of sin. You see the most distortion in the realm of psychology because man is made in the image of God and you cannot study man without understanding God. So that's a footnote that you would do well to study and understand for this essay.

Heath Lambert says that geologists do not merely observe fossils. They make sense of those fossils by attempting to discern the time of their origin. Unbelieving geologists never trace fossils to a personal God from several thousand years ago, but to impersonal forces seven billion years ago. It is the same with secular psychologists.

They press their observations through the grid of a fallen worldview and will inevitably distort their observations with faulty interpretations. So he's building on those three aspects of psychology that are articulated in chapter three of Theology, Biblical Counseling, Observations, Interpretations, and Interventions. And he's saying, look, a geologist at the level of observations would probably make the same observations that a believer would about fossils.

They would say, well, it's this color or this size or here's the measurements. They would probably make similar observations about fossils. But an unbelieving geologist at the level of interpretation will trace the existence of fossils to impersonal forces several billion years ago and say it all is a result of evolution and it all came out of a big bang at some point.

It's really at the level of interpretation that believers and unbelievers diverge in how they interpret information. And it's the same with secular psychology. He says the difference between psychology and geology is that the implications for the human race are much more severe in an atheistic interpretation of counseling people than with an atheistic interpretation of rock formations.

The interpretations of secular psychologists affect troubled people where they live and experience problems. It is in these interpretations where we see the largest impact of the noetic effects of sin. So you can't just take a distorted view of man and then import it into a biblical worldview. Let me give you an illustration of this.

You have there the three levels of psychology. This is found in chapter three of Heath Lambert's work. You have observation, interpretation, intervention. We're saying that observation tends to be similar whether it's made by a believer or unbeliever. The interpretation of that data is completely different. And an illustration of this would be if you had a counselee who was struggling with anxiety.

Well, both a secular psychologist and a biblical counselor would most likely make very similar observations about the counselee and how the counselee is behaving. They would probably both observe that the counselee has sweaty palms, increased heart rate, heightened emotion, distracted thinking. They would most likely make similar observations about these anxious periods tend to occur at certain times of the day that there really would be a lot of commonality at the level of observation between a secular psychologist and a biblical counselor.

It's at the level of interpretation. Why is the counselee behaving in this way? That's where the two viewpoints diverge. At the level of interpretation, we would say that the counselee is a person who was made in the image of God, that the counselee is made to live in relationship with God and to worship God, to reflect God's glory, that it is out of the heart that flow the issues of life, that the heart is always relating to God either rightly or wrongly.

Biblically speaking, the heart has thoughts, desires, values. Most likely, these thoughts are unbiblical thoughts that are giving rise to anxious behaviors. Desires are rooted in what a person most values. Most likely, this counselee has strong desires that are not submitted to the will and to the plan of God.

Those are all heart issues that relate to how is this person relating to God because the interpretation of that data would be completely different from a secular psychologist. A secular psychologist might say one viewpoint. There's so many different viewpoints within secular psychology, but one viewpoint in secular psychology would be the medical model, which says it's all physiological.

There must be a physical explanation for this kind of behavior, and that might relate to imbalances chemically in a person's brain or so forth and so on. The intervention is to medicate. If you're with me in year one of biblical counseling, we are not anti-medication. There's no law in the Bible that says you cannot take anti-anxiety medication, but what the biblical counselor would do would seek to address the thoughts and intentions of the heart using scripture, scripture such as Matthew 6, verse 34, "Do not be anxious for tomorrow, for tomorrow will take care of itself." Philippians 4, verses 6 to 7, dealing with anxiety through thankful prayer and then training the counselee to address the issues of the heart through use of the word of God.

I give you this case study to just illustrate how observations can be similar, but interpretations can be different, and your interventions are based on your interpretations. So, letter C, what's the good news? The good news is because of Christ, the believer can have a renewed mind. I mean, that theme is just found throughout all scripture.

We could spend an hour talking about how the mind of the believer is renewed in Christ, how we've been given the mind of Christ, the noetic effects of sin are reversed in salvation, and the more we are sanctified, the more we take the truth of God's word and renew our minds, and this is the process of sanctification.

1 Corinthians 2, verse 12, "Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God." Verse 16, "For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him, but we have the mind of Christ." Ephesians 4, verse 17, talks about the futility of the unbeliever's mind.

Verse 18, "They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of heart." So, we would just ask the question, do you really want to take that intellectual system that is darkened in its understanding at the point of understanding who man is and then combine it with the mind of Christ?

Will you come up with a hybrid that is useful? So, going back to our question, and I'll wrap it up in this way. The question is, "Explain the doctrine of the noetic effects of sin, relating the doctrine to the ability of the secular psychologist to understand true information about the human condition." I would hit three points in this essay.

Number one, make sure you explain the corruption of the unbeliever's nature. It's not just the mind that is affected by sin. It is the unbeliever's entire nature that has been inherited from Adam. Make sure that you articulate a robust doctrine of sin that affects mind, will, intellect, conscience, desires, and so forth and so on.

And you would do well to take some time. Don't get lost. You don't need to do the whole explanation of the doctrine of original sin, but you would do well to take some time to explain how this all derives from its root, which is Adam. Number two, you want to hit the point that the unbeliever's mind is hostile.

It's not neutral or unbiased. Work through the three levels of psychology. Secular psychologists can make accurate observations, but they will have flawed interpretations because their minds are hostile towards God. And then number three, you want to note that the interpretations of the data under secular psychology is going to be impacted by sin's effects.

So the task of the biblical counselor is to renew the mind in Christ. We can address the issues of life because we have a renewed mind. We have the mind of Christ. Just a practical word, in biblical counseling, what we are doing is we are seeking to help the counselee to renew their minds in the scriptures.

Most times in counseling, there are unbiblical thoughts, unbiblical desires, unbiblical thought patterns that are opposed to the truth. And many times those thought patterns have been built up over time and rehearsed over many years. And we are seeking to help the counselee to renew their mind according to the scripture by getting them into the scripture and then using the word of God as a scalpel with precision to take every thought captive to Christ.

And so this is a good session that will help us to equip us for that ministry. Okay. Well, what I'm going to do right now, I'm going to go ahead and pray for us and close this. And if you need to go, then you're welcome to go. I'll hang on for a few minutes.

If any of you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer that on the chat or on Q&A. Otherwise, we do wish you a wonderful night and a great week rejoicing in the grace of God that God has saved us and given us a renewed mind. So let me pray for us and we'll officially bring this time to a close.

Let me pray. Father, thank you for your word and just for the grace that you've shown to us to make us alive in Christ, to give us a renewed mind or a new heart, a renewed spirit. We thank you that you took us when we were dead and you made us alive in Christ.

And we thank you, Lord, that though we were once hostile in mind, and now Lord, we desire to use our minds to glorify you and to think your thoughts after you. We thank you for your word, which gives us a renewed mind, the mind of Christ. We thank you for your spirit who teaches us your word.

And we pray that you would give us a great week studying these truths. We pray that a fuller, clearer teaching about sin would lead to a fuller, clearer understanding of Christ and all that he has done to save us. And that we would love you as a result of this study.

Thank you for each of my brothers and sisters here. Bless us as we go in Jesus' name. Amen. Okay, amen. Have a wonderful night. I'll hang on for a few minutes here. If you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer that for you. So, okay, great question. There's one question that came in.

Is there a difference between unbiblical thought patterns and habits and strongholds? The ACBC conference is destroying strongholds. Great question. So, this is the ACBC theme for this year is destroying strongholds, and it is based off of 2 Corinthians chapter 10, verse 3. "For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh.

For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ." I think that the inspiration for this conference came out of David Powelson's final work before he went to be with the Lord.

I think it's published now. You can actually find David Powelson's final work on spiritual warfare, and he wrote that right before he went to be with the Lord, and he was really articulating this idea of spiritual warfare is taking every thought captive to Christ. It's really battling for the thoughts and the intentions of the heart, and the idea of fortresses here is there are in people's hearts thought patterns, as I mentioned, that have been so built up and fortified over time that really to demolish those fortresses takes a spiritual battle.

I can relate to this of just, you know, my wife and I have talked about the battle against perfectionism, and that's a continued battle for me maybe built up over time where I was raised in a culture where grades were very important, very preeminent. I mean, if you brought home an A-minus, and this is not faulting my parents at all, and I'm very grateful actually for how they raised me, but there was a standard there where if it was an A-minus, why isn't it an A, and for me, for years, you know, your worth was defined as your grade or your standard of performance, and even in my own sanctification, that's not something that easily goes away to find that my worth is in Christ.

The fortress that I've been dealing with in my own life and over the years of being a Christian is the fortress of I am, my worth is in my performance. My worth is in my performance. My worth is in my performance. That's a repeated refrain in my heart that has been built up over years, and it's become a stronghold where to move from that in sanctification to say my worth is in Christ.

My worth is in His finished work. My worth is in what He has accomplished for me. That's a battle that by God's grace, I'm making progress, but it's not something that comes easily or immediately, and I think that's some of what Paul's saying here with taking every thought captive to Christ, that that's a spiritual battle, and I think that's what the ACBC conference is going to address, and by the way, if you're able to make it, please try to make it.

I'm not sure what the plans are going to be. They are still planning to meet in person, but they might have an online session as well, a live stream, but it is a very important topic and one that's worthy of your careful consideration, and I encourage you to get David Powelson's, I'm forgetting the title, but if you go on Amazon and look up David Powelson, I think it's spiritual warfare or something along those lines.

That would be a worthy read for you to work through this whole idea of destroying strongholds, so wonderful question. Thanks for a great question there. Question is, it was mentioned that our spiritual deadness implies an inability to respond to spiritual things. How do you respond to someone who feels conviction and responds to teachings such as from a sermon, but they're not saved yet?

Is this inability for actual understanding and application? So that's a great question. I'd have to understand specifically maybe the person a little bit better before I made a blanket statement. In general, if there is an unbeliever that is in my church and they are responding to teaching and even being convicted by that teaching, then I'm going to do everything in my power to take a very gracious and hopeful perspective on that and pray and trust that that is the Holy Spirit working on that unbeliever's heart.

I want to be very careful before I consider this person a brother. The person is not a brother in Christ until he confesses Jesus Christ as Lord, but if an unbeliever is in the midst of a church assembly and hearing the Word and hearing Bible teaching, I'm going to do everything to encourage that, to take the most hopeful view of that, to pray that, Lord willing, that is the work of the Holy Spirit softening that unbeliever's heart.

And practically speaking, we do understand that theologically regeneration is instantaneous. It is the quickening work of the Holy Spirit where he makes an unbeliever alive in Christ, but practically what it looks like in many people's cases is a progressive softening over time. If you were asking about my testimony, I could probably point out a two to three week period that I believe it was somewhere in that period that I gave my life to Christ.

I'm not totally sure. I can't pinpoint a date or a time. There was no magic zap or there was no altar call that I came forward, but it was in some kind of, within a month, God was working in my life. Theologically, I know that there was a point in time where God gave me new life and made me to be a new creation, but experientially, I'm not sure when that point was.

So we just want to be careful of that. And on a pastoral level, I would be encouraging that unbeliever to keep sitting under God's Word. I'm going to pray that God will do a work in your heart, but I wouldn't treat that person as a brother until they confess Jesus Christ as Lord.

So it's a great question. Thank you for that question. It's encouraging to see that you're thinking that through. One question is, would you nuance how to difference between answering the noetic effects of sin versus common grace? Great question. So my short answer is read chapter three of A Theology of Biblical Counseling by Heath Lambert.

The two essays overlap. There is a place where one ends and the other begins. One practical tip is you can always in your essay say you stated something in a previous essay and you want to use that material again in a new essay. You can actually in the new essay say, as previously discussed in essay number five, common grace does not overcome the noetic effects of sin.

And you can actually use some of the same material twice where the essay topics overlap. So just be aware that you can do that. And in these cases, theology exam number five and theology exam number six do overlap. Generally speaking, the first half of chapter three in Heath Lambert's work deals with common grace.

But the whole point of that presentation is to state that common grace does not overcome the noetic effects of sin. And then there's a discussion on the second half on the noetic effects of sin. So it's a great question and thank you for asking it, but there is an overlap.

And so there might be some overlap in these two essays on how you write it, but you can use that technique if you need to repeat some material. Just say, as previously discussed, and you can overlap in some of that material. Not all of the essay can be an overlap, but some of it can be.

So wonderful question. The question is, I think it's a similar question. With the last question, I focused on the common grace relating to knowledge and about half of it is on the noetic effects of sin's effect on knowledge. This new question feels almost the same. Should I redo the last question or really focus on the doctrine of sin on this one?

Yeah, as I mentioned, a great question. There are some overlaps, but question number five, you probably want to spend the bulk of that essay discussing common grace and distinguishing that between saving grace. And you should be spending a majority of that discussing what is common grace? What does common grace allow the unbeliever to do?

And then at the ends of that essay, moving toward the limitations of common grace. And there will be some overlap, but the focus of essay number six, most of it should be focused on doctrine of sin, inherited sin nature, the extent of sin and how sin affects every part of man, and then how that relates to the secular psychologist, assuming that the secular psychologist is an unbeliever, how does that impact their understanding of man?

I remember sitting with Dale Johnson, who was the executive director of ACBC, and he was sharing how in his undergraduate studies, he studied secular psychology, he was a psychology major. And then at some point as a Christian, he came to the conviction that secular psychology presents a different doctrine of man than the Bible does.

And that for him led him into the ministry of biblical counseling. It really is centered on the doctrine of man, who is man. And so can an unbeliever who does not have the truth of God's word, and who is dead in sins and trespasses, understand the truth of who man is apart from the revelation of God?

That's really more the focus of theology exam number six. So there is some overlap, but focus in on common grace on essay number five, and focus on the doctrine of sin in essay number six. Wonderful question. Okay. Well, wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. I hope that you were blessed and hope that you'll have a great and a wonderful week, and have a blessed week in the Lord.

We'll see you next Sunday. We'll look at theology exam number seven next Sunday at five o'clock, and I'll see you next week. God bless you guys.