Soteriology: The Study of Salvation

Les D. Crause

Soteriology is a very big word, but a very simple word really. It is made up of two Greek words – Soterios and Logos. You have probably heard of logos. Soterios is the Greek word for salvation. Logos is usually translated as ‘word’, but it can also mean ‘study’, so by putting Soterios and Logos together we get Soteriology, which means ‘the study of salvation’. So Soteriology is going to be the study of salvation. What is salvation?

You say, "Well what is the big deal with the study of salvation? I always thought that salvation was pretty simple wasn’t it? How much would you teach on it?"

Well, quite a few studies. You are going to be surprised how much we are going to cover in this series. In fact Soteriology is at the heart of everything that we stand for and believe in. It is at the heart of our whole spiritual lives and it is what we are here for. It is what serving the Lord is all about. So that is why Soteriology is such an important subject.

What is Salvation?

Before I get onto it let’s just stop and get your minds turning a little bit. Saved – what does that mean to you? If I come to you and say, "Are you saved?" what are you going to say? Well, I hope all of you are going to say, "Yes," otherwise there is a problem. All right, "Are you saved? What does that mean?"

If I were to ask you, "What do you mean when you say you are saved?" we are going to hear things like, "Well I believe if I died tonight I will go to heaven." In fact that is probably about what more than 90% of Christians will say.

"Saved – saved from hell. Saved is to go and live eternally with the Lord in His presence in heaven one day," and that is what most Christians believe. So to them salvation means getting born again, getting saved, turning from the path of sin that has taken them to hell, and now turning to salvation. If that is all your salvation consists of, then I feel sorry for you because salvation involves a whole lot more than going to heaven one day. That is why we need to study the subject of Soteriology and salvation.

But before we can learn what it is that we are saved from, and what it is that we are saved to, we need to go back to the beginning again. We need to go right back to the beginning of the Bible and see exactly what it is that God intended for us in the first place, and what it is that He intends for us in the end. And what I would like to specially cover here is the condition that we are now in – every human being is in before they come to Christ and enter into what we call the experience of salvation.

Creation

So let’s go right back now to Book 1, Chapter 1, Page 1 – right at the beginning of your Bible. I am not going to cover it here because it will take too long and I have a couple of other Scriptures which I am going to deal with later, so we are just going to review what we know about Genesis Chapter 1.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the waters. And God said, "Let there be light."

So God began to go through the stages of creation, and we know the story of the six days of creation and how God made Adam, man, on the sixth day of creation. Then on the seventh day God rested.

Man in the Garden of Eden

We read that God took this man, He planted a Garden in Eden, and He placed the man in that Garden. We read how God took the man and caused him to go to sleep, and removed part of his body. Most translations say a rib, but the original actually means his side. God took out a half of him and formed it into a woman, and He brought Eve to Adam and God presented him with his wife.

And God commanded Adam and Eve and said, "You can eat of all the trees in the Garden. Whatever you like, there it is. Help yourself. Enjoy. Just don’t touch that tree there, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, because in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die."

So Adam and Eve started their life in this beautiful paradise, this wonderful place where everything that you could possibly want was there. You were living with the best looking person in the world. He was the most handsome guy that ever lived. She was the most ravishingly beautiful woman that you had ever seen. And you know what? There was no competition. There was no-one else that he could be attracted to, nobody else that she could be attracted to. They were living in this garden paradise with the most wonderful, luscious fruits that you could possibly have, everything that was wonderful to eat.

And God did not say, "Thou shalt eat only 2000 calories per day otherwise thou shalt put on weight."

There were no diets. Wow, it was wonderful. None of this heavy stuff that we suffer with when we eat too much, no diets, no restriction. No, "Thou shalt push weights three times a day. Thou shalt do aerobics to make sure that thou keepest fit." There were no gyms necessary in the Garden of Eden. It was a wonderful paradise and everything you could ever want was there.

Perfect Peace and Unity

Then Adam and Eve were created with innocence. There was no guilt, no fear, and no negatives. There was no taking up a person the wrong way. There was no conflict, no strife, but perfect innocence where they could walk naked without feeling ashamed. There was perfect openness and honesty with one another.

I just want to show you this, which is something extra. You know the thing that brought Adam and Eve together so close was the fact that they both had a good relationship with God. Consider this little illustration. If you take a triangle and put God at the top, and Adam and Eve on either side at the bottom, if you take Adam and move him closer to God, and you take Eve and move her closer to God, you know what happens? They get closer to each other. There were no barriers between them and the Lord. No guilt, no sin, and as a result, there were no barriers between each other. They could come close to the Lord without any restriction or hindrance, and automatically they would come closer to each other as well.

You know what? There were no marriage squabbles in the Garden of Eden. There was no, "Well, Eve, it’s time you learned to submit to me."

There was no Eve getting on Adam’s case and saying, "Why did you leave your socks lying on the ground again?"

No, there was just perfect harmony, sinless perfection, not even the thought of sin entering their minds, and yet total freedom, and total liberty.

Adam Given Authority

There was authority. The Scripture says that God gave man authority over the fowls of the air, the fish of the sea, over the whole of creation. God said to Adam, "You are in charge."

Adam took a look at all of these animals and he did not say, "God, what am I going to call them? What do I call that big funny looking thing with the big trunk and the massive feet?"

God said, "That’s up to you."

And Adam said, "I think it looks like an elephant."

God said, "Great idea."

Adam named them all. He was in charge. Adam did not have to go to God and say, "What do I do? How do I run this place?"

God said, "I’ve put you in charge. Use the authority and power that I’ve given you."

The Bible says that Adam was given responsibility to care for the garden. Now, I do not read anywhere that God supplied him with hedge clippers, lawnmower, shears, spade and fork. Could you see Adam going through the Garden of Eden there, trimming the trees? But surely there must have been a need for something like that? Surely there must have been a need for some kind of control in the garden? How did Adam do it? He had authority.

What happens when you have authority? What do you do when you have authority? Come on, who has authority over somebody else? How do you show your authority over your children?

"John, come here now!" and he comes. "Leave, sit, jump, run! Go get me this, go get me that!"

Authority means you command. Now if Adam had authority over the creatures in the earth, and over the vegetation, and over everything in the earth, Adam had the authority to command. So if this tree was growing just a little bit close to the other one I think Adam had the right to say, "Hey, move over NOW!"

I can see the tree saying, "Yes boss!" and moving.

Same Authority as Jesus

You do not believe me? Just read the New Testament and see what the last Adam did. He came to a fig tree and He said, "You will not bear fruit again." That was the end of the fig tree. Did He not? He spoke to the wind and the waves and He said, "Peace, be still!" Instant calm.

You say, "Well, that was Jesus. He was the Son of God."

No, He was the Son of Man. He came to show us what Adam was. Yes, He also came to show us what God was, but the Scripture says He put aside His divinity and put on Himself the form of a servant, and humbled Himself and became a man. Jesus came to show us what man was meant to be in the first place. Jesus came to show us what Adam was.

The Tree of Life

So God gave to Adam and Eve access to the Tree of Life. If you want to read more about the Tree of Life go to the book of Revelation right near the end and have a good read about the New Jerusalem. And you know what? You are going to read about the Garden of Eden? You are going to read about the same rivers that flowed in Eden, and you are going to read about the same Tree of Life that bore its fruits and its leaves were for the healing of the nations.

The Tree of Life was for health. There was no sickness or disease in the Garden of Eden, none whatsoever. And as they continued to eat of the Tree of Life they would have lived eternally and forever. We will look at that more later. They had access to all things freely. There was nothing to pay, no price and Adam’s work in the Garden of Eden did not determine whether the fruit was going to come. Adam did not have to dig around the tree and put in some manure and make sure that it was well fertilized before the peaches come out.

He did not have to do that. Yes, he had to care for the garden. Yes, God gave him a job to do, and Adam did not sit and have holiday all day. He had a job to do, but he did not have to work hard at it. All he had to do was to keep control. He had to just exercise his authority. The trees grew naturally. They bore their fruit naturally. Everything came freely. I would like to call that prosperity, wouldn’t you? Everything just falling into place perfectly, everything obeying you, everything flowing with you, and everything that you touch with your hands prospering and being successful.

Abundance of Everything

They were secure in the Garden of Eden. There was no loss. You did not have to be afraid that if you left your peach lying there somebody was going to come and steal it. They did not have to be afraid of anybody harming them. The animals did not attack in those days. There was no strife, no strife either amongst Adam and Eve or amongst the animals. The animals did not tear each other and fight with each other. You know why? There was an abundance of everything.

We had an experience recently where our dogs started getting into each other because they had not been fed, and when we gave them food suddenly they thought this was the last meal they were going to have and each one tried to grab before the other and there was a terrific fight that ensued. It was not like that in the Garden of Eden. There was no lack. There was an abundance of everything.

Fellowship and Communion

And most important of all, there was fellowship and communion with God. Every day in the cool of the day, the Scripture says, God would come down and He would walk in the Garden and He would talk with Adam and Eve. He would fellowship with them and He would share with them. He would not come down to command or to dominate them. Do you know why? Because Adam had been put in charge.

All God did was to come down and have fellowship and say, "Adam, so how is it going?"

And Adam would say, "Well, it’s okay. I found a couple of species today that I hadn’t named before. And you know what, I called that funny buzzing thing? I decided to call it a bee."

God probably said, "Great idea, Adam. I like it. Anything else I can help you with?"

"Yes, well we’ve been having a problem here, and we don’t know what to do there…"

Whatever the problem was Adam could share with God. God could give him advice. He could tell him how to run the world, and He would be off again. There was perfect fellowship and communion with the Father, God not interfering, just being in control of the universe. But what took place on the earth was in Adam and Eve’s hands, specifically Adam who was the head.

Satan Was Jealous

But it did not stay that way did it? No, there was another character on the earth and he did not have the authority and the power that Adam had, and oh how he wanted it. And his name was Satan, Lucifer, the Devil. We will look at him another time and learn all about him and his kingdom. But God had given to Adam the power and the authority in the earth. Why? Because God had made Adam, man, in His own image and had placed a piece of Himself in man in his spirit. And we are going to learn that in detail when we get to Anthropology.

God placed in Adam the ability to be a god in the earth. Adam was the god of this world. Did you know that? He was the god of this world. He was in control of this earth. That is the way God made him, and oh how Satan wanted that power. Man, he wanted that power. And God gave to Adam and Eve two trees. We looked at the first already - the Tree of Life, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

There were two trees, in addition to the rest of the trees in the Garden. And God said, "You can eat of the fruit of the Tree of Life freely, but of this tree you shall not touch." Why? Because those two trees were a lot more than just ordinary fruit trees. Those two trees were gateways. They were gateways into dimensions, into realms, that could have determined what kind of future man was going to have.

When Adam and Eve had access to the Tree of Life they gained access to God’s realm. The Scripture calls it the heavenly realm. They gained access to where God was, and to His power and His blessing, and to everything that is offered in the heavenly realm. But the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, if they were to touch that, they would open another door. They would open a door to a realm that was not of God at all, but they would open the door to the one who stood against everything that was of God – the Prince of Darkness himself.

God said, "Don’t you dare touch that tree. Don’t you dare eat of that fruit, because if you do, death is going to be the result."

Now I like to think of each of these two trees as doors. It is very easy to imagine that with the science fiction stories we have these days where people pass into this warp and they go into another dimension. God lives in another dimension, so does Satan. It is the dimension of the spirit.

Satan knew that the only way that he was going to get the power and the authority that was vested in Adam was to somehow draw him into the place where Adam was under his control. You see, only man has authority in the earth. Only a spirit living in a physical body that came from this world, which was made from the elements of the earth – only a spirit living in that body has the authority and the power to determine what goes on in this world.

And God Himself, being Spirit, though He had spoken forth the worlds by His spirit, He Himself withdrew and said, "Adam, I will work through you, because in your spirit, I put of Myself, and I will work through your spirit in you. But you as a human being living in a physical body, have the authority and the dominion in the earth."

That is why when God came to visit He did not impose. He moved through Adam, through his spirit. He gave him instructions by his words and told him how to live, and Adam then implemented the words that God had given him.

The Fall

In order for Satan to have control in the world, he had to tap into the power that was in Adam, and to do that he had to get Adam to submit to his authority. And that is what the temptation was all about. That is how he tempted Eve and he drew her aside as a bait, to get Adam to finally submit to him by partaking of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. I am not going to cover that in detail here because that again is part of Anthropology, and the creation and fall of man, but I am just trying to show you exactly why salvation is necessary.

As Adam submitted in sin and partook of the forbidden fruit, he opened the door to Satan’s realm and gave him access into this world. He opened the door wide like a Pandora’s box and all the demons of hell were released into the earth. And Adam submitted himself to his new lord and master, Satan, and Satan became what Adam was – the god of this world. Now Satan pulled the strings, now he called the shots, and Adam had to do what he said, because Adam was now under his control.

Fear, Guilt and Disharmony

The first thing that took place was guilt and fear. As soon as it was all over the first thing that happened is that Adam and Eve suddenly realized they were naked. They had never noticed that before strangely enough, but now they did. And they started covering each other up with fig leaves, covering from each other. What happened? All of a sudden clouds of guilt came between them and the Lord.

And do you know what the result was? It was barriers between them. On that day began the first marital problems. How do I know? Watch what happened when God came to Eve and said, "Eve, why did you eat of the fruit?"

"Well…, the serpent tricked me into doing it you know."

"Adam, why did you eat of the fruit?"

"Well, it was my wife’s fault."

I think a marital squabble started right there don’t you? There was guilt and fear. They heard the voice of the Lord coming down in the cool of the day to speak to them and they ran and hid away from Him in fear. Fear of what? Did God ever say, "I’m going to hurt them."? Did God ever speak judgement on them? No, all He ever spoke was love and blessing upon them. But God had said, "In the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." And I guess when they ate the fruit and they did not fall dead they figured, well God must have been kidding or something. Or maybe the devil was right. Maybe God was lying to us. Then when they heard His voice they thought, "Okay, maybe He’s going to come and kill us."

Effects of Sin

Sin became their master. It began to control them. And you see it begin to manifest immediately as they began to have children and started to multiply on the earth. And later on God looked upon man and says He sees that, ‘the ways of his thoughts are wicked continuously.’ Sin began to bear forth fruit, sin that entered their bodies at the time that they partook of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

There was no more sinless perfection. They were barred from the Tree of Life. No more divine health became their portion, and no more access to the realm of God. They lost it. And then they were kicked out of the Garden of Eden. There was no more getting up in the morning and thinking, "I’ll just go and have a nice plum." No. The bible says that Adam now had to work in the sweat of his face. You know why? Suddenly weeds started to grow. They had not been there before.

Have you ever tried to plant a garden? Oh man. You plant all your seeds and you water it and sure enough, within days you see the sprouts coming up everywhere. And you get all excited and say, "Whoa, just look at my wonderful garden!" And you look a little closer and you see that those seeds are not the ones that you planted. Well where did they come from? I never planted those things? You did not need to. You do not have to plant weeds for them to come up automatically. And then when the real seed finally begins to come up, and the fruit begins to come forth and you see those wonderful peaches begin to ripen, wow you cannot wait. And you reach and you grab one and bite it, and what do you get? Worms, because some insect came and stung it and laid an egg in it.

The Curse of Adam

The curse – the curse of Adam. The whole earth became cursed as a result of their sin. There was no more security. Instead there was fear, pain, sorrow and strife. That did not take long with Cain and Abel. Cain came to bring his offering to God and Abel came to bring his offering and God showed more regard for Abel’s offering than Cain. And Cain got jealous, and he got angry and he killed his brother. Strife, hatred, jealousy – all the negative things that were never there before, suddenly began to show themselves. There was no more communion with God in the Garden in the cool of the day, no more close loving fellowship. Instead there was just this judgement. All of these things were taken away from them.

There are two completely different pictures. And the curse of Adam is still in the earth today. Oh we know all about the curse of Adam today don’t we? We know all about sickness and disease. We know all about poverty and financial lack and things going wrong. We know all about hatred and strife and theft and destruction and pain and sorrow, and all of the things that go with it. And we know about trying to reach the Lord and He just does not seem to be there. He has gone. When you pray it feels like your prayers are just hitting against the ceiling. He has gone. He is not there.

Plan For Reversal

All of those are the results of the fall. And when God looked down on man He made a plan. He formulated in His mind a plan by which He was going to reverse all of the effects of the curse. As I said earlier, if you read the book of Revelation you will see a picture of the New Jerusalem. So what has that got to do with us? Aren’t we going to heaven? Heaven? Where is heaven? Well heaven, that is up in the clouds somewhere isn’t it. That is where God lives out there on another planet. Does it? Are you sure? Well Jesus went up there didn’t He?

Read the book of Revelation and you will find out where heaven is going to be. Because the Bible tells me that the New Jerusalem came down to the earth and there was a new earth. God is going to restore and improve on what Adam and Eve had. He is going to bring it all back again and the curse is going to be removed.

So, what is it that we are saved from? We are saved from all of the negative effects of the fall, of the sin of Adam and Eve and of the curse of Adam that came into the earth. We are saved from all of them. That means that we are saved from the power of sin in our lives. We are saved from sickness and disease. We are saved from poverty and lack, strife and destruction and pain and sorrow. We are saved from broken fellowship with God. All of these things are to be restored, and in Christ all of those things have been restored, as we will see as we continue with the study.

But because of the sin of Adam, that effect was passed down onto his children, and to his children’s children, and to his children’s children’s children’s children… right down to you and I. Each one of us, when we are born, are born in a condition, not like Adam was in the beginning, but like Adam was after he had sinned – under the control of Satan, under his power, under the curse. And I am going to show you a few Scriptures now, and I am going to show you the condition that man is outside of Christ; the condition that every single person is born into and grows up in until they come to that place where they appropriate and experience the salvation that Jesus has purchased for them.

Man Outside of Christ

I want you to look at a couple of passages of Scripture with me now. I want to firstly go to the book of Romans 1:14. Paul says:

Paul is writing to Christians here. He is writing to the church at Rome which has already been established and has been going for a while, and he says, "I want to come and preach the gospel to you." Weren’t these people saved yet? Why did Paul want to preach the gospel to them? Maybe what we thought was the gospel is a little bit more than what we thought it was. We are going to be speaking about that plenty more.

Paul says, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and for the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith. As it is written, ‘The just shall live by faith.’ "

These are lovely passages. We will be studying them all in a little more detail in time to come.

Okay, I am going to just give that to you in a nutshell. Paul is saying here, "Listen, there is no such thing as an atheist because everybody, because they’ve got a spirit in them is already aware of the fact that there is a God. And as they look at the creation round about them they have proof that there is a God, so there is no excuse."

He says:

Downward Spiral

What happened? Man had the ability to know and serve the Creator, but he went down, down, down, until he ended up serving the creation. Man bows down before his idol in worship and praise to it. The early Egyptians worshiped the River Nile, they worshiped the frogs and the beetles (not the singing group), the dung beetles. In fact every one of the plagues that Moses was told to bring upon them actually hit one of their gods. They worshiped all of those things.

Man has begun to worship created things instead of God. That is the depravity that humanity and human nature has sunk to.

You say, "Well, we don’t do that in our modern times, us well-educated, sophisticated people in the more well-to-do countries."

No? What about your car? "Nobody else is going to drive my car. It’s very special that, just for me."

Idols? What do we depend on, what do we count on? So many things. There are so many things that control our lives that manipulate us and have become gods in our lives. Man is serving the creation instead of the creator.

Spiritual Death

I want to go to another passage now and I want to describe to you a little bit more the condition that man is outside of Christ, and that is in Ephesians 2:1. It says:

The first thing Paul says here is you were dead. God said to Adam, "In the day that you eat of that fruit, you shall surely die." Well Adam lived about 900 years odd. So was God wrong? No, the day that Adam partook of that fruit what happened was what we saw there in Romans Chapter 1. Man’s mind became lifted up against the knowledge of God and his foolish heart was darkened. Adam died spiritually that day. His spirit became ineffective and he lost the power and authority that he had. He was spiritually dead. Every person who is outside of Christ, has a spirit, but their spirit is dead towards God.

Paul says, "In which you once walked according to the course of this world." The Greek term ‘according to’ there is a very interesting word. It speaks about a downward motion, or control, or domination. It means effectively ‘under the domination or control of’. According to the course of this world – under the control and dominated by the course, by the way this world does things.

Living in a Rut

So as we grow up it does not take long before we start living just like everybody else in the world. We are following the course of this world, and the course is like a rut. You have no choice. You just go in it all the time, everybody doing what everybody else does. You sin, according to the prince of the power of the air, and under the control of the prince of the power of the air – the air, the ether, the heavenlies – where Satan and his host rule. That is another subject we will look at later, but there are certain evil powers that are on the earth, and there are other powers that are in the air, who control. And Satan is called the prince of the power of the air. Every single person who is outside of Christ is under the control of the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the sons of disobedience.

Natural Body Desires

Finally it says, "Among whom we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and the mind," under the control of the natural bodily desires.

Food and Nourishment

What are the natural bodily desires? Firstly food, eating, nourishment. And when that desire begins to dominate and control our whole lives we live for things. We live for money, we live for pleasure. We live for all the things that are involved with things and the joy of owning things and controlling, possessions, and getting.

Reproduction

The other natural function of the body is reproduction, and when that begins to control our lives we begin to live lives of lust and sexual desire, leading from normal sexual desire to illicit sex and all sorts of other aberrations which have become prevalent today. If you go back to Romans to that other passage that we read, it goes into how women left their natural function and men left the natural desire of the woman, and burned in lust towards one another. And it describes the gay movement and the homosexuality that is so prevalent today.

Self-Preservation

The last function of the body is the self-preservation or self-defense mechanism, which instead of protecting ourselves from harm becomes aggression and attack, and hatred, strife, murder and killing. If you want to see those three, just switch on your TV. Fortune and fame, sex, murder. Show me a TV program that does not have at least one of those. I have not seen one yet. They are all there. That is what the world thrives on – fulfilling the desires of the flesh and the mind.

That is the condition of a person outside of Christ, and the Bible calls that living in the flesh, living under the domination and control of the world, under the control of Satan and of his hordes, and living by the control of the flesh.

No Hope Outside of Christ

The last passage that I want you to look at, and this one is the one that I really want to emphasize here and end on, is Romans 3:9:

There is how many righteous? None. Any exceptions here? No. Do you mean to tell me that there is nobody out there in the world that does what is right, that is righteous and good? No. What about all these people who do their charitable deeds and care for the poor and have sacrificed their lives to help others? No. God says there is none righteous. If you want to try and do righteous deeds and good works, "They are filthy rags," the Bible says, outside of Christ.

"There is none who understands."

There is how many who understand? None. Have you ever sat down a person who does not know the Lord and explain to them so simply that a two year old child could have understood it, the way of salvation, and they have looked at you blankly and said, "I don’t know what you’re talking about." Have you ever explained blue to a man who was born blind? I would not even know where to start.

"There is none who understands" the Bible says. "There is none who seeks after God."

There is none who seeks after God. Hang on, the world is full of religions. The world is full of people who are all seeking God in different ways, right? There are the Buddhist’s that are seeking God through Buddha, and there are the Hindus who are seeking God in a different way. And there are the Shinto’s and all these different religions, and they are all seeking God.

No they are not seeking God. They are seeking relief from the problems of life and they are trying to find a way out.

But aren’t they seeking God? Not according to this passage. It says there are how many who seek after God? None who seek after God. Are you starting to get confused yet? I hope so.

"They have all gone out of the way."

Most of them? A lot of them? All! They have all gone out of God’s way. Have you heard that little verse? "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." I memorized that verse when I was much younger.

I thought, "Well yes that’s true, everybody has sinned and come short of God’s glory."

But the verse says more than that and you do not pick it up in the standard translation. That verse should say, "For all have sinned and are continually coming short of God’s glory." It is a present continuous tense the word ‘come short’.

For all have sinned and are still continuously coming short of God’s glory. Yes, well I did sin back there. Sin is a continual process. It is at work in you because of the root of sin that was placed into the body of man when Eve and Adam partook of that fruit. You will read about it in Romans 7 where Paul says that it is sin dwelling within me. I try to do the good but I find that I cannot because it is sin dwelling within me.

"They have together become unprofitable."

God has no use for you. He has no use for you at all. I do not care how much you dress up your sin and how good you become and how much charitable deeds you do. I do not care if you are caring for the poor and the sick and you are doing such wonderful things and giving money to charity, and it is on TV – "And so-and-so gave a check of so many thousand dollars to such-and-such a charity." Wow, isn’t she wonderful? God says she is unprofitable. She is no use to Him at all. I do not care how much money she is giving away or how much she has sacrificed.

"There is no who does good."

None? Any exceptions there? No, not one. It is almost as though God heard somebody say that. And he answered it again,

"No, not one. Their throat is an open tomb."

Could you imagine an open tomb? We passed by a rotting animal corpse once and the smell was unbearable. Can you imagine sitting by an open tomb?

God says, "If you’re unsaved keep your mouth shut. It’s like an open tomb. It stinks."

"With their tongues they have practiced deceit."

Every time you open your mouth to speak, even when you say those good wonderful words, those kind tender loving words, God says it stinks. It stinks bad, too.

Total Depravity

I want to end with a little illustration that pictures it so beautifully. We often present the gospel in this way. We see the sinner as a person who is sick. They are sick because of their sin, and in Christ in the gospel we have the solution to their sin. We have the good news, the medicine that is going to make them better. And we present it to them like.

"Here is the free gift of salvation in Christ, here is the medicine. If you would just take this medicine, if you would accept it, if you would drink it, you would be healed of your sin. Now take it."

The gospel is quite simple really. There is nothing complicated about it. But I want to tell you a little bit more about this person, this sick person that you are trying to give the medicine to.

I want you to know firstly that this person is lying in bed because they are paralyzed and they cannot move. This person is blind so they do not see the medicine that you are offering them. I want you to know that this person is deaf so they do not hear you offering the medicine. This person does not believe in doctors or medicine so that even if they could see and hear they would not take it, and because they are paralyzed, even if they wanted to they could not.

Right, now you have a picture of what an unbeliever is like, and now you have a picture of what the chances are of somebody accepting the free gift of salvation when you offer it to them. Their eyes have to be opened first. Their ears have to be opened to hear the Word. There must come a desire in their hearts to receive. There must come a confidence in the doctor who prescribed the medicine, and there must come a release from the paralysis that enables them to reach out freely of their own choice and to take that medicine, to drink it, and to be healed.

I am going to go quickly through Romans and show you.

"There is none righteous."

They are all sick.

"There is none who understands."

They are deaf.

"There is none who seeks after God."

They do not trust Him.

"They have all gone out of the way; they have together become unprofitable; there is none who does good, …"

… and the whole description. You see, a person cannot come to God because sin has so permeated their being as to render them totally unable to come to Him. They are running their lives by the course of this world. They are under the control of the prince of the power of the air. They are being ruled by their own sinful passions.

Why should they come and receive salvation? They are not seeking after God. It is a condition that theologians call Total Depravity. I am mentioning that so if you ever hear the term, you will understand what I am talking about.

Born in Sin

David spoke about it. He said, "I was born in sin, and in sin my mother conceived me. I was born in iniquity. I was conceived in sin and in iniquity my mother bore me."

All of us are born in sin. We are born with a tendency to sin, and you do not have to teach your children to be bad, to be naughty, or disobedient, or to be sinful. The seed of sin that is in them begins to manifest itself until eventually it controls their lives. And so each of us, before we came to the Lord, were in that condition of total depravity, of being unable to come to Him.

Now how do we move from there to salvation? How do we get a person to go from that situation to where they are ready and prepared to receive the gospel? You see, I told you Soteriology is a big subject, and this is only our first study in the subject. Unless you understand this principle and this concept well, you are not going to understand what we are going to teach from hereon. Because unless you understand just how bad man is, how low and degraded he has fallen through sin; unless you can understand that picture very clearly you are not going to understand why and how salvation actually comes to be applied to such a person. So if you can get that picture very clearly and firmly here on this first study, you are going to have a good foundation to follow it through and to understand exactly how salvation takes place.