This morning, part of my devotions was in 2 Corinthians, and the relevance of God’s sovereignty over micromanaging our lives struck me. Is he involved in the little things, the hard things? Does he bring these things about? This text is remarkable.

The Purpose in Our Pain

Paul says:

For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself (2 Corinthians 1:8).

Some of you probably come into this room feeling that way right now. Something has happened in the last week that just makes you feel absolutely overwhelmed, just emotionally hanging on by your fingernails, maybe even not able to hang on. That’s what Paul felt like in this situation: “It’s over, as far as life is concerned.” He doesn’t tell us what it was. I’m glad he doesn’t, because it leaves room for all of our experience then. He continues:

Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead (2 Corinthians 1:9).

Now, I want to ask you this. Whose purpose is that? It’s God’s. It cannot be Satan’s, right? Satan never wants you to rely upon God. So here’s a horrible thing that has happened to Paul. We don’t know what it was, but it brought him to the brink of death. And he says, “But it has a purpose in it. It has a purpose in it,” right there. And it’s not the devil’s purpose. It’s God’s purpose to make me despair of all human reliability. So you always know one holy, good purpose in your life for everything that comes into your life that involves knocking props out from under your life so that you feel like, “I don’t know where to stand anymore.” God is where you stand. That’s the point of having all the props knocked out from under your life. It’s the point of cancer. It’s the point of losing your job. It’s the point of divorce. It’s the point of every hard and horrible thing that comes into your life. God is causing you to fall on him. Isn’t that what that says?

So, yes, I want a God who is involved in the details of my life, and there’s no maverick molecules and no maverick moments in my life. He’s governing it all for a wise and holy purpose. This is just one of them. There are hundreds. This is one holy purpose that’s always there.

And then I got to the end of the chapter. Paul says:

But I call God to witness against me — it was to spare you that I refrained from coming again to Corinth. Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy, for you stand firm in your faith (2 Corinthians 1:23–24).

I’m saying to myself as I look at you or onto the screen, “I don’t want to lord it over anybody’s faith.” I’m not your lord. I’m not twisting anybody’s arm. I’m not constraining anybody. I’m not lording it over anybody’s faith. What am I then? “We work with you for your joy, for you stand firm in your faith.” So what is my role in a seminar? I don’t want to be lording it over anyone’s faith, any kind of coercive or constraining or manipulative or abusive way. Let’s be done with all that. I want to come down here beside you where we stand as needy sinners before Christ, and I want to work with you for your joy. I think that 2 Corinthians 1:8–9 are in the book for your joy, because he just said so. He’s writing this letter, he’s doing ministry, I do seminars for people’s joy. And the joy that I have in mind is joy as you’re dying.

I just read to David Livingston, back in the room there, an email I just got this morning from a friend whose wife is dying of cancer. If he’s watching right now, he knows exactly who I’m talking about. She does too. She knows her days are numbered. We think it’s probably God’s time. I am really thankful that he can be joyful and she can be joyful. I’ve got the best news in the world for dying people. I’d rather talk to a dying person than almost anybody. I have news that nobody else has for a dying person. There’s nobody but a Christian that can help a dying person be well-grounded and happy. We have every reason to be happy as we die. So I want a God who is totally, deeply, powerfully messing with my life in the details and utterly and totally in charge.

Concluding Irresistible Grace

We rushed, in the last 10 minutes or so last night, through the many texts pointing to the reality of irresistible grace, so we can just pause now and take our time on the conclusion here on irresistible grace. What is it? When God wills, his saving grace becomes irresistible. He overcomes our resistance and unfailingly brings about the act of saving faith, and through that faith he infallibly supplies everything we need to live joyfully with God forever. In other words, irresistible grace gets you saved and keeps you saved forever. That’s what it does. And we made very clear irresistible grace doesn’t mean it can’t, for a season, be resisted. And we gave six texts on how humans resist God’s grace. We all do. Everyday, we are more or less resisting or receiving and depending upon grace. And God, in his sovereignty, suffers us to resist him. But when he decides it’s time to overcome our resistance, he can. That’s what we mean. And here’s a few concluding thoughts about the implications of that.

So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace (Romans 11:5–6).

Depending on grace and depending on your works are mutually exclusive; can’t do them both. Depending on grace and depending on your performances to get saved or to keep you saved are inimical. They’re at odds. And so this has to go if you believe in grace. That’s what Paul’s saying in Romans 11:5–6. If it is by grace (that there was this remnant of Jews that were preserved in that context) it is no longer on the basis of works. All those works that Paul listed in Philippians 3 — circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to righteous under the law, blameless — what did he call them? Crap. That’s a mild word for what he called them. That’s what he called them. Instead, it was replaced by the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus who had been graciously made his own.

Second Timothy 1:9 says:

[He] saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began . . .

So again, he contrasts being saved, not because of our works. And, then, he doesn’t contrast it with faith, which he could. He says not works but grace. It’s God’s eternal grace and purpose. So what excludes our dependence on my performances is the sovereignty of grace in all of this.

So I wrote in the margin over here, the solas. And some of you know what I’m talking about. In Reformed theology, or Calvinism, or the doctrines of grace, or the Reformation heritage, the gospel is summed up at its core in terms of these five solas. We are justified, made right with God, declared to be accepted and just and forgiven and loved and righteous, by grace alone, through faith alone, on the basis of Christ’s work alone, to the glory of God alone, all interpreted on the basis of Scripture alone.

Empowerment of Grace

This one right now we’re talking about, namely grace alone, means not that you don’t do anything. I mean, if I say, “Trust the Lord Jesus, and you’ll be saved,” you must do that. That’s a human act. But if you believe what we’ve seen for the last hour on irresistible grace or texts like this, what you believe is that human act is totally enabled and possible because of grace. So that when I perform it, I don’t take credit for it and boast about it. I praise God that I believed.

Paul said in Romans 6:17, “I thank God that you became obedient from the heart unto the doctrine.” Well, why would he say that? “I thank God that you became obedient from the heart unto the doctrine.” That’s because he knew without the sovereign, irresistible grace of God, we wouldn’t accept what the Bible says without his sovereign grace. So sola gratia (by grace alone) doesn’t mean there’s no preaching happening, no evangelism happening, no prayer happening, no faith happening, all of which are human acts. It means that grace is behind all of that. Grace is through all of that. Grace is moving and empowering all of that.

Biblical Basis

There are a handful of verses, that just constantly circle my life to help me live my daily life. This is one of them. Paul says, “By the grace of God I am what I am.” He had just said, “I’m the least of all apostles because I persecuted the church. I’m a Johnny-come-lately in this apostle thing. I shouldn’t even be included. But God came to me, knocked me off my horse, even though I was a hater of Christians. I threw them in jail. I tried to kill them. I was against Jesus with all my might. And he broke into my life with sovereign grace and saved me.” He says:

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.

Paul says, “His grace toward me was not fruitless, empty, in vain.” How did he know? “Because I worked.” So what does that mean? It meant all of Paul’s apostolic labors, he was counting as the fruit of sovereign grace. Grace is in my life. If you do anything good, anything right, and you do, just say thank you. Just say thank you at the end of the day. I try to always get on my knees with my wife at the end of the day, and our prayers are very simple usually, nothing big and fancy. We just say, “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” Then he says:

Though it was not I, but the grace of God that was with me.

One of the reasons I love the sovereignty of God and the totalizing of grace is that John Piper’s heart is the proudest, most arrogant heart I know. I don’t know your heart. I know mine, and I’m a proud man. I like to be praised. I like to get my way. I get ticked if I don’t. I’m a proud man. Therefore, I need every conceivable weapon in the book to kill that. This is one of them. I do work hard. I love to work. People call me a workaholic. They call me a legalist because I’m a teetotaler. I’m a workaholic, they say. Well, maybe. I repent when I see evidence of that, like if I can’t work, I have withdrawal symptoms. Maybe, maybe not. We’ll let God decide that.

But I do work, and so working hard leads to pride, right? How might you overcome that? Right there. He says, “I worked harder than any of them, but it was not I but the grace of God that was with me.” So you get down on your knees at the end of the day, a hard day, a long day. You’ve put out and the sermon is ready, and you say, “Thank you. Thank you. I would have had a heart attack. I would have hated you in the middle of the day, if it weren’t for you. I would have turned away. I would have thrown the Bible out the window when I ran into a problem. A hundred things might have ruined this life, and you help me keep going. And I just want to thank you. You get the credit. I don’t get the credit. I get the joy of your grace. You get the credit.”

And, then lastly, he predestined us for adoption, to the praise of the glory of his grace (Ephesians 1:6). Everything in this course is aiming at that verse six of Ephesians 1. You are on the planet and I’m doing this course for the praise of the glory, not of just power or wisdom, but of grace. It’s as though God’s power and God’s wisdom are in the service of the capstone of his glory, which is grace. This is a wonderful thing. God wants us to praise the glory of his grace. And therefore, he makes it irresistible in our lives and he triumphs over our rebellion. Hebrings us to himself so that at the end of the day, when you have put your faith in Christ and you have followed him for 60 years and are ready to meet him, all you can do is thank him.

Question and Answer

Before we turn, I’m going to turn to some questions and see what’s here.

I’ve never thought about the economy of TULIP. What texts do you use to elevate God’s irresistible grace to the top?

I didn’t mean to elevate it to the top. I meant to put it at the front. The reason I gave was simply that it just seems to work existentially to help me get into it. I’m not ranking these in terms of their theological importance. I think they’re all indispensable, indispensable. If any of them is missing, they all go down. And I think Christianity goes down with them, in their fullest and robust sense. So when I put “I” first, I don’t mean to rank it first. I mean to say most people get into doctrine through experience, not theory. And I think irresistible grace is experientially the most immediate and relevant of the five. “P” is going to come close, but that is after you’ve been brought in, you persevere. That’s all. I didn’t mean to give it a rank higher than it should.

Do you need to agree with all five points of Calvinism to be an elder at Bethlehem?

Yes. We have an Elder Affirmation of Faith. It’s 12 pages long with 300 texts supporting it. And these are implicit in them. There’s no place in the document where TULIP is spelled out, but implicit in the document are all these doctrines. I’m going to read from the Elder Affirmation of Faith at a few points in our lesson. Here is just as important a point. You don’t even have to be a Calvinist, or an Arminian for that matter, to be a member of Bethlehem Baptist Church. My view about the church is that the front door of the church should be as wide as the universal church is wide, and the door into the eldership should be as small as you can make it — meaning, it should be as biblically faithful as the church can understand biblical faithfulness to be. Because the elders are charged to teach the flock. I want a person who got saved yesterday to be a member of the church today. He doesn’t know anything, right? He just got stunned by Jesus. He heard the most minimal gospel possible on the street, on Hennepin Avenue or Nicollet Mall. He put his faith in Jesus. He should be part of a family immediately, right? He shouldn’t be an elder.

There’s the distinction I make. So if that sounded narrow to you, “Oh, you have to believe in the five points to be an elder at Bethlehem,” these elders will be called to account by God Almighty for the souls of this flock. They’d better be chosen carefully, and they better be thoughtful, biblically faithful, strong, seasoned men of God. But the church is a ragtag group of people from the tiniest baby to the most mature saint. And they’re just all over the map. We should be loving each other like crazy, folding in the newcomers and the babies and just helping them like crazy with all their stupid ideas and everything. We should be just tolerating all kinds of stuff. But don’t ask to be an elder until you know your Bible really, really, really well.

What is resistance if we don’t have free will?

Let’s define free will. We have to always define it. In my understanding, whenever I use the term “free will,” unless I tell you otherwise, I mean ultimate self-determination. Or you could use the word decisive self-determination. So if God and I are pushing on something — I’m pushing this way and he’s pushing this way — whoever is decisive is the free one. If God pushes and wins, I wasn’t decisive and, therefore, at that point I don’t that kind of freedom.

So what is resistance if we don’t have it? It’s everything we’re pushing against God with until he takes it away. You can, right now, spit in God’s face and resist him. Why? Because he lets you. But you’re not ultimately free because at any point he could take that away from you. He can overcome that. That’s all I mean. So resistance is real. Your resistance is real. If you want to call it that measure of freedom, you can. That’s probably what the question was asking. If I don’t have any freedom at all, how can I resist God? Well, you do have that much. He tolerates that. But any time he wants he can overcome it.

Just take Paul for an example. According to Galatians 1, Paul was set apart for the gospel from his mother’s womb. For 20, 30, or 40 years he was a God hater, and he hated Jesus. He was throwing people in jail. According to Acts 9, he was breathing out murders and threats. Men and women he was trying to get put in jail and executed, and he was happy when Stephen was stoned to death. That was God’s chosen instrument. Then the time came, right? God was watching all this, saying, “That’s my man.” What do you mean he’s your man? He says, “I chose him in the womb. I said so. And I aim to save him, but it’s not time yet.”

So here he has all this freedom, like on a leash, you might say. God has him like this. And then on the way to Damascus, God says to his Son, “Now.” The heavens become so bright it blinds everybody and he falls off his horse. He says, “Who are you, Lord?” Jesus says, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. Hard for you to kick against the pricks. Stand up. Somebody’s waiting for you in Damascus.” He’s never the same again. Why didn’t he do that five years earlier? It wasn’t time. That’s a pretty dramatic statement about how free you can look when in fact God has you for his own, and he’s going to take you for his own when he pleases.

What do you do when God’s grace doesn’t feel irresistible?

It almost never feels irresistible. Ours is not to wait in bed until there is an irresistible catapult of us into our devotional time and we think, “That was irresistible.” It just threw you out of bed. It never feels irresistible. I’m going to say “almost.” The way grace feels is that we’re reading our Bible, and a still small voice speaks and conquers us. It doesn’t feel coercive or abusive or manipulative. It’s just beautiful. I think the way Christ becomes irresistible is by removing our blindness so that we see him as compellingly attractive. When you’re sick, you don’t look at a hot fudge sundae and desire it. You say, “I don’t want anything.” When you’re well, you look at a hot fudge sundae and say, “I would like a big spoon, please.” What’s the difference? It was the same hot fudge sundae. The difference is you. And what God does to make hot fudge sundaes irresistible is to make us well. He heals the eyes of our heart so that when we look upon the cross, it’s no longer a stumbling block, no longer foolishness, but now it’s, “I gotta have it.” Which is why I think Galatians says, “For freedom, Christ has set you free.”

If you draw the conclusion, “Well, Calvinists believe we’re just nothing but robots, or we’re just slaves.” Well, we are slaves because the Bible says so. We become slaves of righteousness. But what it means is we’ve become so perceptive that we cannot turn away from the good. That’s an overstatement, but that’s the way it works, right? When we are functioning as we ought as human beings, all the clouds are removed. All the sickness of disinclination is removed. And we look at everything good and beautiful in the world, and that is attractive to us. It’s irresistibly attractive. The better we are, the more irresistible it is.

And what makes us free is that we love to do it. My definition of freedom for us is getting to do what you want to do and not being sorry for it in a thousand years. Getting to do what you want to do. That’s what true freedom is. “I want to do what I want to do.” Well, me too, but the problem is that I’m sinful and, therefore, I want to do suicidal things, things that’ll kill me. I want sin. And conversion and sanctification is the progressive healing of my heart, my eyes, and my body so that I want what’s good. That won’t be fully healed until we’re dead or Jesus comes back. And to me that’s one of the most glorious things.

There are two glorious things about dying or about Jesus coming. One is you see him and you’re with him. And two is that you don’t have any sinful inclinations anymore. All your inclinations are good, which means you only do what you want to do forever. That’s freedom and that’s happiness. So my Calvinism leads me to being the freest of all people partially now, fully later. And the way the grace of God becomes irresistible is by taking away my sickness and my blinders that make the attractive look unattractive. So now, by being born again and having my heart’s eyes opened, I see what is true and beautiful, and I’m drawn to it irresistibly. But it never feels coercive. It just never feels like he’s yanking us around. He doesn’t do that.

Here’s just one little illustration from my call to the ministry. This was in October 1979 at about midnight. I’m staying up. I had been wrestling with God for weeks over whether I should continue teaching at Bethel or resign and become a pastor. I was 33 years old. I was 34 when I started in 1980. I’m wrestling. I’ve got this rumbling inside of me to preach, to lead a church, to apply what God has shown me from his word to a people, not just a class of students who are 18 to 21 years old.

All I can say is that between about midnight and 1:00 a.m., it became irresistible. I have no explanation for how that works. I was uncertain at 11:00 p.m., and I was virtually certain at 1:00 a.m. I thought, “I should resign and look for a church.” God just works. He just works. It had a lot of human processes in it. I had talked to a lot of people. I had sought a lot of counsel. And I was leaving one little slot here for my wife, because I’m not going without her, right? I’m not going without her. I’m not going if she says, “We can’t do that.”

So I stopped and I said, “Okay, Lord. I’m going to go to bed now. And when I wake up, I’m going to say to Noël, ‘What would you think if I resign my job and looked for a church, and you would now be a pastor’s wife?’” And my wife swore she’d never marry a pastor. I don’t know if she swore, but she just said it. And, so, I’m lying there awake at 6:00 in the morning, and she’s still sleeping. And, finally when she wakes up, I say, “What would you think if I resigned and became a pastor?” And she said, “I could see it coming.” And then she said, “That’d be alright.” My wife is just incredible. I could tell you other stories.

One more story. I know you like this and I like telling it. I was so depressed after my first year at Bethlehem. I came home one day and she was in the bedroom. I was at the dining room table with my head down at about 1:30 p.m. or so, Sunday afternoon. And I said out loud, “I think I’m going to go to Africa.” You know what she said from the other room? She has a blog named this. She said, “Tell me when to pack.” That’s a good wife.

By removing decisive free will, doesn’t that remove the essence of love?

No. Ultimate self-determination is not required to be a loving person. It just isn’t. The whole Bible is built on the assumption that we don’t have it. And the whole Bible is built on the assumption that we should love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. You don’t have to be God in order to love God. You don’t have to think of yourself as being ultimate in order to love the Ultimate. So no.

How does God work irresistible grace in the lives of people in the Muslim world who have no one to share with them the gospel?

He works irresistibly by getting the gospel to people like he did with Cornelius. Evidently, God wanted to save Cornelius in Acts 10. And Cornelius was a pagan outside the sphere of the gospel. He was a God-fearer, went to the synagogue, and didn’t know beans about Jesus. And God set his favor on Him. And the way Luke tells the story is that he appeared to him in a vision and said, “There’s a man up in Joppa. Go send some people to bring him down. He’s got some news by which you will be saved.” So these men go knock on Peter’s door.

In the meantime, Peter’s getting a vision about unclean animals, namely Cornelius, on the roof. Three times, the net comes down, “Rise, eat these unclean animals.” Peter says, “I’ve never touched an unclean animal,” meaning “I’ve never visited a Gentile. I don’t go into Gentile homes. I’m ritually pure.” And God says, “Don’t call unclean what I’ve cleansed. Go down there. There’s some people at the door.” Knock, knock, knock. Perfect timing. He goes with them. He walks in, says, “Don’t know why I’m here. I don’t do this sort of thing,” preaches the gospel. Cornelius is saved. That happens in the Muslim world. It’s happening today.

When I hear about dreams, I get a little worried. I hear stories all the time about dreams. The reason I get worried is because I don’t think God has ordained to preach the gospel through dreams. I think the Bible says, “How shall they believe unless they hear? How shall they hear unless there’s someone preaching it? How shall they preach unless someone is sent?” And that’s the normal way that God does it.

But God does give dreams. I heard Mack Stiles give this story at the National Conference of a woman in Dubai. A Muslim woman had a dream about her sister, and she was supposed to find out from this sister what the story is. So the sister is also having God communicate to her, “You need to go to Dubai.” She goes to Dubai and walks in, “Don’t know why I’m here.” She says, “I know why you’re here. Tell me about Jesus.” She tells her about Jesus. She’s saved. That woman in the church, in Mack Stiles’ church in Dubai today. So God is moving. But what we should pray for is that irresistible grace should come to the church to send thousands of people to the Muslim world because people don’t get saved without the gospel.

Irresistible grace flies in tandem with the gospel. So here’s the Holy Spirit working with irresistible grace, and he’s like a jet flying in tandem with the gospel. If the gospel lands in Minneapolis, the Holy Spirit doesn’t go on down to Dubai and save people. He doesn’t. This jet needs to take off, which is why we want to be a missionary sending church, a missionary praying church, an evangelizing church. When this gospel plane takes off, the Holy Spirit says, “There it is.” He’s flying in tandem. So where the Word lands, the Holy Spirit is moving. The Holy Spirit inspired this word. He loves this word. He loves to exalt the Christ of this word. And, therefore, he’s flying where the gospel flies. If you open your mouth today over at McDonald’s or wherever and speak the gospel, the Holy Spirit is flying in your life right there. And you’ll never have to fear, “I’m alone here.” The Holy Spirit loves Christ-exalting gospel.

If Satan is not omnipresent like God is, then how are they always in the same event as you mentioned? How does he attack everyone?

That’s a really good question. He has his minions. And he is a non-spatial entity. I just don’t know how this works. I have no experience of or way to describe a being with no up, down, or sideways. And, therefore, where is he? He has no where. I don’t know. I don’t know the answer to that question.

I just see, “Though this world with devils filled should threaten to undo us.” Somehow they’re all over the place. And if the devil is in China at work right now, can he have an influence on me here right now? I would say probably. I don’t know. I just want to mess with him. He who’s in me is greater than the one who’s in the world, and I’m assuming there is demonic power against me all the time. If you asked me how do you explain that? Maybe there are two billion demons. I don’t know. I just see enough of it and feel enough of it that I would like to war against it effectively.

Total Depravity

Let’s go on to the next letter. What is total depravity? Why do we talk about this? Why does it matter? Depravity refers not first to our sinning but to the corrupt condition that gives rise to our sinning. Is that clear? That I commit sins and say things and do things and think things I shouldn’t is not the first meaning of depravity. Those are coming from somewhere, and that’s my depravity.

So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit (Matthew 7:17).

So there’s a tree and there’s fruit. There’s a heart and there’s a mouth.

But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.

So Jesus is pushing through behavior down into the heart for these Pharisees. He says:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence (Matthew 23:25).

The classic picture of the Pharisee is hypocrisy. Their religion is so squeaky clean. They have all this superficial, external conformity to law. And Jesus sees right through it, down here in the heart. So Christians ought to be supremely concerned with the invisible aspects of our nature. And I’m arguing in this section when you get there, it’s really bad. Depravity refers not first to our sinning but to our corrupt condition. Matthew 12:34 says:

You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.

Okay, so that’s what I mean by depravity. I haven’t called it total yet. That’s what we are going to now. Depravity is the corruption, the sickness, the brokenness, and the bentness of my deep inner self. I just don’t think we can grasp this deeply enough because, if you really feel this, not just say it with your brain and mouth but feel this, it will make you a better person. It assumes some really good news to go with it, but I’m not there yet. I just want you to feel really bad. I don’t think most Americans feel nearly bad enough about how bad we are. We should always say we, lest we start pointing our fingers at people. We are sinners. And it’s not that we do bad things; it’s that we are bad.

All humanity Affected

Depravity, now, is total in at least five senses. One, depravity affects totally every human.

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).

First Kings 8:46 says:

There is no man who does not sin.

Psalm 143:2 says:

Do not enter into judgment with your servant, for in your sight no man living is righteous.

First John 1:8 says:

If we say we have no sin, we’re deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.

Now, that was spoken to Christians. I’ve met Christians who don’t think they sin. Have you met any like that? There are sects and groups who have been taught from 1 John 3:9, “He who is born of God does not go on sinning.” That’s in the same book with 1 John 1:8. And the reason 1 John 1:8 is here is so that you won’t believe that when you get to 1 John 3:9. It does not mean perfectionism, but I’ve met them. I met one in Germany when I was there. She said, “I don’t sin.” My jaw just dropped. I’d never met anybody who’d said that. My jaw just fell. I said, “You don’t sin? I think I can make you sin.” And then she said, “Well, I make mistakes and I stumble.” And I realized, “Okay, you are redefining sin to make your theology work here,” because of what she thinks she’s seeing. And we had to go round and round to try to set that straight.

But John, evidently, had to overcome that. This is kind of an over-realized eschatology. And I mean, there is just so much spectacular good news in the New Testament about how God is already at work in his people and how we’re already forgiven, already saved, already justified, already secure, and already in heaven. Our lives are hidden with Christ in God. And a person can take this already and say, “Already sinless.” It’s just a little step too far. There are verses in the Bible like this that say, “Don’t take that step.” Even as a born again, Holy Spirit-indwelt Christian, you sin. John says, “If we say we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.” So total depravity means, first, that the depravity is true of all human beings, in all times and places except for Jesus. He was tempted, yet without sin.

No Delight in Holiness

Here’s the second meaning of total. Our rebellion or hardness against God is total. That is, apart from the grace of God, the irresistible grace of God, there is no delight in the holiness of God, and there is no glad submission to the authority of God. So apart from grace, my heart would not look at the holiness of God and say, “I love that,” and it would not hear the authority of God and say, “I totally and gladly submit.” No human being can or would ever say that apart from grace, and that’s what it means to be totally hard against God — that is, totally unable to change your condition.

So Romans 3:9 says:

What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God . . . There is no fear of God before their eyes” (Romans 3:9–11; Romans 3:18).

Now, I’ve never gotten on a crusade, like some have, against seeker-sensitive worship services. I think, in general, thinking that way is a mistake. Worship services ought to be mainly for the people of God, and then unbelievers should be welcome to come and watch the people of God worship and get saved there. But if you try to build your whole worship service around people who are not Christian, you will wind up not being a church someday. And seeker-sensitive churches have discovered that and kind of pulled back from that.

But the reason I haven’t gotten on that crusade the way some have is because I don’t think this text right here should be used against those people the way some do, when it says “No one seeks for God.” So what are you seeker-sensitive doing building your whole services around them? They don’t even exist. Well, they do exist. This means no one seeks for God unless the Holy Spirit is drawing them to seek God. And I fully assume that some of you are here right now on a quest for truth. You’re just not sure what you believe. You’re not even sure you’re a Christian, and you’re here seeking. And I’m not going to say, “You’re not seeking. You’re tricking yourself.” I’m not saying that, because I believe there is a tacit exception here. No one seeks for God in and of themselves. No one does good in and of themselves.

But as soon as the Holy Spirit starts to work on you and draw you, he’ll get you to church. He’ll get you on the radio to some sermon. He’ll get you on the internet to find something, like a Jewish man in Amsterdam who wrote to me. He wrote me an email and he said, “I got saved yesterday. I’m a Jew, and I got saved yesterday. I found Desiring God, and you were preaching on education for exultation, talking about Jews. And I almost turned it off, but I couldn’t turn it off.” How did that happen? A Jewish man in Amsterdam stumbles across a sermon where I happen to be alluding to Jewish people, and he gets saved. He wrote me an email. That’s God enabling him to seek. He doesn’t know what he’s seeking for. So just don’t overstate this. This means that apart from the work of the Spirit, we’re all running away from God not toward God.

Hating the Light

Jesus says:

And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God (John 3:19–21).

Until God works in you to make you love the Light, you hate the light. We by nature are light haters. And the reason we are Light haters is because the things we are doing we love to do, and the light exposes them as dark. And we don’t want to be exposed, so we hate the light. You hate what gets in the way.

I just read in my devotions this morning in Luke 16. And it said the Pharisees were lovers of money. Have you ever read that? The Pharisees, these religious people, love money. And then he says, “Then Jesus said to them, ‘You are those who justify yourselves.’” I just stopped right there in my devotion, and I thought, “What’s the relationship between loving money and being a self-justifier?” I concluded that what these people really love is being seen to be correct and right and authoritative and superior and in charge, and money just happens to be one of the ways you can secure yourself in those kinds of positions. Money’s just paper or metal. It’s what you do with it. It’s power. You can get yourself a job, or you can eat at a certain restaurant, or you can go to a certain theater, or you can hobnob with certain people, or you can drive a certain kind of cool car, or you can dress in a certain kind of power way. Money just serves this love affair that they have with justifying themselves.

They think, “I can defend myself against any criticism that comes at me because I love being above. I love being right. I love being strong. I love being seen and praised and applauded in the market places.” And they love this, and they’re going to keep on hating the light. Jesus was light, and they just hated him. They wanted him dead. Why did they want him dead? Because they love the dark. And that’s the way we are. Oh, there’s so much of that left in me. It’s called indwelling sin.

Anybody here love to be corrected? Do you think, “Oh, please, show me where I’m wrong. It just feels so good to be criticized by your wife and other elders to be pointing out how mistaken you were and how that was a bad attitude you just had. It just feels so good”? Nobody. I mean, you have got to be way near heaven in your sanctification for that to make your day. And some of you are. I praise God for you. I really do. I know people way more godly than I am who take criticism way better than I do. So I see myself here. It’s not hard for me to believe this is true of human beings because I am one.

Truth Suppressed

Romans 1:18–21 says:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

So God comes to the world through nature and things that have been made, witnessing to His power and His deity, and instead of saying, “I gotta find you, whoever you are. You’re amazing. You’re glorious. And you’re merciful, because I’m still breathing, and I don’t love you as I ought, and I don’t even know you. I need you. I want you,” we just push it down and become atheists or new agers or something to get that sovereign Creator God out of their experience who would surely have enough authority to tell them what to do. And they don’t want to be told what to do, and so in their ungodliness, our ungodliness, we suppress the truth.

Every Action Sin

Third, in his total rebellion, everything man does is sin. This is pretty radical. I would say this, I remember, in classes, and students shook their heads and said, “That is just the craziest thing I ever heard, that everything an unbeliever does is sin. You don’t believe that, Piper. You just can’t believe that.” Romans 14:23 says:

Whatever is not from faith is sin.

They don’t have any faith. Hebrews 11:6 says:

And without faith it is impossible to please him . . .

They don’t have faith, therefore nothing they do pleases God.

For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out (Romans 7:18).

Why did he put that little qualifier in there? I think the reason is because the Holy Spirit dwells in him. He wanted to make sure that he didn’t indict the Holy Spirit by this statement, “Nothing good dwells in me.” The Holy Spirit would say, “Excuse me?” So what Paul means is “in my flesh.” That is, he is saying, “What I am apart from grace, what I am in my nature, there’s no good that dwells in me.”

Let me give you a picture of how this looks, I think. Someone might say, “So you’re saying, Piper, that anybody who is not a believer in Jesus can’t please God and only sins?” Yes, that’s what I’m saying. “Moms give their lives for their kids. Pagan moms will die for their children. And rich pagans build hospitals instead of bombs, lots of them. What are you talking about?” I’m saying those things don’t please God. They’re sin. They’re certainly better than killing your kid and it’s better to build a hospital than a brothel.

Picture it. I have four sons. They used to be at home, and now they’re not. They’re married, got their own problems. And I want to help them with their problems. Let’s just pick one of them. Who would let me pick him? Let’s pick Karsten. He won’t mind. And let’s say that one day Karsten says to me, “Can I use the car tonight to go to the basketball game, Friday night?” I say, “Yeah, sure. That’s fine.” We’ve always been a one car family so he’s checking in to see if we need the car. And I say, “Yeah. That’s fine. No problem. Oh, before you go tonight, would you wash it for us so it’s nice for Sunday and nice for you tonight?” And he says, “I don’t want to wash the car.” I say, “Karsten, look, do you have anything going on this afternoon?” He says, “No.” I say, “Well, just wash the car, okay. And you can have it tonight.” He says, “I don’t want to wash the car.” I say, “Well, Karsten, look, if you don’t want to wash the car then you’re not going to use the car. Let’s just settle it. That’s the way it’s going to be.”

He storms out of the room. About an hour later, I see him out there washing the car. How do I feel about that? Is he obeying me? He’s doing the right thing totally wrong. He’s not loving me. He’s not submitting to me. He’s angry as can be. And that’s what building hospitals looks like for godless people. They aren’t doing this for God. They don’t love God. They’re just doing what their conscience tells them to do, and they have their reasons for doing it.

This is one of the things that happens when you become a radically God-saturated person. Nothing can be spoken of apart from God. Once you bring God in relation to everything, the question becomes are the people trusting him, loving him, obeying him, delighting in him, and treasuring him? And wherever the answer is no, sin is happening because God is the main reality. Hospitals are not the main reality. Babies are not the main reality. God is the main reality in the universe. And at this moment of hospital building or baby saving, God is being despised, neglected, belittled, and ignored. And that’s an outrage 10,000 times more than cancer. But that will not make sense to anybody for whom God is not the center of the universe and the most important reality there is. So, in our total rebellion, we are totally displeasing to God. We displease him in all we do without grace.

Moral Inability

Here’s the fourth thing total means. Man’s moral inability to submit to God and do good is total. This is probably the most decisive one, the most crucial one when it comes to our salvation. Man’s moral inability to submit to God, believe God, trust God, delight in God, love God, and all those things, is total. Let’s see a few texts for that, and then we’ll tackle the problem that arises, namely, “Well, doesn’t that mean he’s not responsible to do it since he’s unable to do it?” That’s the question that immediately arises. Well, if you say a man is unable to do a thing, then you can’t hold him accountable to do it. So we’ll address that. But first, let’s just be biblical before what looks like logic. I think God is the most logical person there is, but we get it wrong often thinking we’re logical.

For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot (Romans 8:5–7).

That’s where I’m getting “inability.” I’m not making those words up. This is not a theological word I got from a textbook. It’s a Bible reality I got from Romans 8:7. Then Paul says:

Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him (Romans 8:8–9).

So there’s two kinds of people. Those who have the Holy Spirit and are thus not in the flesh, and those who are in the flesh and don’t have the Holy Spirit. People in the flesh cannot please God, cannot trust him, cannot submit to him, cannot love him, and cannot delight in him because their eyes are shut to glory, and their eyes are wide open to lust and money and power and the praise of man. And these other things are unbelievably attractive and kill them in their suicidal addictions to them. And this boring, meaningless, mythological, useless, silly, right-wing, hateful reality is something that makes them say, “Why would you want that?” Well, they can’t. They can’t love it because it’s ugly to them.

There’s the first place I get the inability idea. Where else? John 3:5–7 says:

Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’”

You’re born once, and by that first birth, you are merely human, natural, fleshy, and in rebellion against God and blind to His beauty. And when you’re born of the Spirit, that changes, and God becomes your surpassing treasure. He says, “Do not be amazed that I said you must be born again,” because by your first birth you cannot see the kingdom, you cannot enter the kingdom. You can’t.

Or listen to Romans 6:17–18, which says:

But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.

Those two verses are just a classic picture of how you got saved and how you should talk about it. You should say, “Thanks be to God,” not, “Thanks be to my spiritual discernment or my free will or my wisdom or my hard pursuit of God.” You say, “Thanks be to God because once I was a slave. I was controlled by the slave master sin. And, now, from my heart that God has sovereignly changed, I love righteousness and am, therefore, locked into seeing it as beautiful and attractive and doing it. Now I’m a slave of righteousness, a free slave. The Lord’s freed man and a slave of righteousness. And the difference between the two was God because I was a slave. I couldn’t do anything about it.”

Dead in Sin

Or what about our deadness?

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked . . . But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ . . . (Ephesians 2:1–5).

We were dead, and now we’re alive. And then, there’s this insertion, “By grace you have been saved,” close parenthesis, “and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 2:6). So notice two things. We were in a condition that is called “deadness,” and dead people can’t do what they need to do. I just saw a retweet yesterday from Mark Dever. And Mark Dever said something to the effect, “If you do your evangelism in a cemetery, it won’t help to raise your voice. And the only place we have to do evangelism is in a cemetery.”

Mark Dever is one of the most effective evangelists I know. If you want to say Calvinists aren’t effective evangelists and they don’t get people saved, you don’t know what you’re talking about. I can just point you to living Calvinist pastors and living Calvinist laymen who are red-hot for evangelism, totally on mission for Jesus, eager to make disciples, stay up late, get up early, to get people saved. The old soul-winner types, the Spurgeon types — who was a ten-point Calvinist, for goodness sakes. And then, you go to history with Whitfield and on back through history.

The reason is because God loves to raise the dead through the preaching of the gospel or through the sharing of your life. He loves to raise the dead. He gets glory when we do evangelism in cemeteries and there’s only a cemetery. Jesus said, “Let the dead bury their dead. Come follow me.” What did he mean by that? Everybody is dead who doesn’t follow me. There’s the living dead and the dead dead. He says, Follow me. I’ll make you fishers of men. We’ll bring some alive.” So deadness means inability.

This little insertion here that says “by grace you have been saved” why does he stick that in there? Do you see how that’s stuck in? That’s faithful to the original. It’s stuck in. He’s going to say just two verses later, “By grace you have been saved through faith.” He’s going to say it. Why say it again here early? I think the reason is to clarify the meaning of irresistible grace. When you stick in the phrase, “He made dead people alive — by grace you have been saved.” The point is, do you get what grace is? You see. Let me say it again. “He raised you from the dead — by grace you have been saved.” That’s a way of saying, “Do you get what grace is?” Grace is the kind of thing that raises the dead. It’s sovereign. It’s irresistible. It’s grace moving into the tomb of Lazarus, saying, “Come forth,” and the grace in the word creates the response.

Once upon a time, you were all dead. Now, you may not remember when you were saved. I don’t remember when I was saved. My mother told me that I knelt down in Fort Lauderdale, Florida when I was six years old, 1952, and prayed to receive Jesus. I have zero memory of that, so I take her word for it. I have no memory of being an unbeliever. And you might think, “Oh, that’s a bummer. What kind of testimony is that?” David Michael would just stand up and say, “God saved me from drugs and alcohol and sexual immorality when I was five years old.” And everybody always laughs, and I say, “That’s awesome. That is an awesome thing.”

Kempton Turner said to our youth at the last retreat for youth or the time before last. He was talking about testimonies and how some of them seem sparkling and wonderful and inimitable, and others seem kind of simple. And he said, “A resurrection from the dead is never boring.” He was pleading with our kids, “Know what has happened to you.” I’m saying that to you. This happened to you. You have to be taught that. There’s lots of people who are really saved who don’t know how they got saved. They don’t know this happened. They’ve been taught wrongly. They’ve been given all kinds of “free will” talk about how they did it and, therefore, they’re never saying, “Thank you for raising me from the dead when I was totally unable to do anything. Thank you.” They don’t even praise him for that.

So you have a testimony if you would just believe it. You were dead, and then you didn’t make yourself alive, I promise you. God made you alive together with Christ Jesus and raised you up by grace. That’s what grace is. By grace you have been saved.

Our Hardness of Heart

Ephesians 4:17–18 says:

Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.

I’m just giving more verses to describe the totality of our inability. Notice how the deepening happens: “Who are in the futility of their mind, darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of ignorance that is in them.” And if you stop right there, you would say, “Oh, our deepest problem is ignorance.” He didn’t stop there. You’re ignorant because of something deeper: “hardness of heart.” That’s me. If I’m ignorant of what I need to know with all the Bible I’ve got, it’s just hardness. It’s just hardness.

John 6:44 says:

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.

First Corinthians 2:14 says:

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

So here’s what we want to do next, and I think we’ll take the break now before I do this because this is crucial. Here’s where we’re going in 15 minutes or 10, whichever you do ... “So you’ve just given a lot of verses, Piper, that we are unable to please God, submit to God, trust God, love God, obey God, follow God, treasure God. We can’t, you’ve said. For the life of me, I don’t see how God can hold us responsible for doing it then.”