Total Depravity

Opening the third major division of the series, 'The Salvation We Receive and Proclaim,' Pastor Martin demonstrates that the work of salvation is the central activity of God in Scripture and identifies its primary object: man. He treats man as created in the image of God (Genesis 1-2), man as fallen in Adam (Genesis 3; Romans 5; 1 Corinthians 15), and man as ruined in sin under four realities — guilt, pollution, bondage, and impotence. He closes with two searching questions: have you ever felt the weight of these facts, and do you maintain the remembrance of them in the presence of a vigorous faith in the Redeemer?

The first of two messages on unconditional election. Pastor Martin gives a simple statement of the doctrine from the Westminster Shorter Catechism, then establishes its biblical basis first through the explicit testimony of key words (elect, foreknow, predestinate) and key passages (Matthew 11, John 6, John 17, Acts 13, Romans 9, 1-2 Thessalonians), and begins the implicit testimony drawn from God's pattern of dealings with Israel, the doctrine of sin, and the doctrine of God's sovereignty.

Pastor Martin completes his exposition of definitive sanctification by working through Romans 8:5-9 and Galatians 5:16-24. Romans 8 draws an extended contrast between those after the flesh and those after the Spirit, concluding that if the Spirit dwells in us He does so as the liberator from the realm of the flesh and if any man has not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his. Galatians 5 adds that those who are of Christ Jesus have once-for-all crucified the flesh with its passions and lusts. He draws four final conclusions: a radical breach with sin is on the threshold of all true Christian experience, this breach is rooted in Christ's death and resurrection, its virtue becomes ours by union with Christ, and it must condition all our future dealings with sin.

Pastor Martin sets the doctrine of justification within the supportive framework of three indispensable truths without which it cannot be rightly understood: the character and position of God as holy and just Creator and Judge, the character and position of man as accountable creature and guilty sinner, and God's overall ultimate purpose to conform His people to the image of His Son. He warns that whenever justification has been wrenched out of this larger context, it has suffered grievously even at the hands of its friends.

After a nine-week digression, Pastor Martin resumes the Psalm 1 series by identifying secular education as a second major channel through which ungodly counsel reaches believers. He outlines five philosophical pillars of secular education -- the supremacy of man's mind, man's normalcy, a world of chance, man's good as the goal, and this world as the exclusive sphere of concern -- and contrasts each with the corresponding biblical principle. He urges believers to pray for a purgation of secularism from their minds and to saturate themselves and their children with the biblical worldview.