Polemics, Secular Psychology to the Rescue?
Vern Peterman · Sep 17, 2006
Polemics, No. 25
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49260274862

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

This is something that's become quite an issue, quite a question. There's several different issues involved with it. One of the reasons I would bring the point up is that, especially in recent decades, I would say the last few decades, There have been a couple of trends.

One of those has been to look upon all truth as God's truth. Have you ever heard of that phrase? All truth is God's truth. And a lot of, especially Christian colleges, have taken up that theme. The all truth is God's truth thing, I think first proposed by Holmes, a fellow by the name of Holmes. The idea with all truth is God's truth is things in the scientific realm, are looked upon as truth basically on parallel with biblical truth.

So that you end up putting supposed science at the same level of authority and understanding as scripture. That perspective, which by the way Scripture does not support, that perspective then has allowed Christian colleges and other Christian institutions to grab hold of this idea and figure that their endeavors in any other technical realm, if there's any technical validity, is then put on par with Scripture and able to supplement Scripture. I've even seen one where a missionary organization said, we have these marketing principles. I majored in marketing in business school, so it was something I was kind of stunned to hear, but even marketing principles are on par with scripture. And I thought, whoa.

One of the problems is that general revelation, that is revelation outside of scripture and Jesus Christ, those are special revelations. General revelation in nature is intended to tell what? The heavens declare the glory of God and the earth is handiwork. What those things do is they reveal God's character, not in detail, not in depth, but in sufficient degree that people are able, if they are willing to do so, to respond to those simple revelations about God in creation. So the leap that has taken place among many is to go from there to saying that, okay, all our scientific discoveries then have this revelation of God kind of authority. But let's ask a question. The heavens declare the glory of God.

When was that written? Probably about 3,000 years ago, right? Was there science then? Did they have telescopes? Did they use microscopes? No. There was not science. The thought was that this could be seen, the glory of God, could be seen without science.

It wasn't anticipated that all the findings of science be brought into the same level of authority of scripture. Now, on that basis, what has happened is that there have been There have been, along with this trend, there has been a tendency to draw in things from the secular psychological realm and to integrate that with scripture, calling them of equal authority. And many of your programs in Christian colleges and seminaries for counseling will simply put the two side by side. scripture and secular counseling and put them on the same level.

I've been over at Denver Seminary a number of times just going and looking at the bookstore, sometimes buying things, although I find there's less and less to buy worth buying. But going over there and looking through, what do they have in the way of course offerings? What do they have in the way of books? I would say, as a rough guesstimate, probably somewhere around half of the books that they have available there are in the counseling realm. Four textbooks. you know, just the general bookstore, you can find lots of things.

But textbook-wise, a great deal has gone to counseling, and a lot of it is either completely secular or with a significant secular basis. The idea is integrative psychological counseling, where you try to integrate scripture with the secular counseling. Alright, now, some things to look at. Secular psychological counseling has been developed over the last century, roughly, primarily by those who approach the development of theory with at least a non-biblical outlook, if not an anti-biblical outlook.

One of the big names early on would be, for example, Sigmund Freud. What did Sigmund Freud think about God? Not much, right? Sigmund Freud's view was that man's perception of God was a psychological phenomenon. Basically, in many cases, projecting a father image onto God.

Man's behavior. Man originated by evolutionary processes. Man's behavior is basically rooted in his animal ancestry. How many of you have run into that where you're looking at certain behaviors of man on the basis of evolutionary ancestry? And that is a problem in terms of what basis is there for insisting upon human behavior. Yeah, and morals. It's difficult because if you point to the animal ancestry, it becomes difficult to insist upon a human moral behavior. It also becomes difficult to insist upon responsibility. Personal responsibility. From a biblical standpoint, there's no problem insisting upon personal responsibility.

But from an evolutionary standpoint, you can see how it would be easier to say, hey, this is my animal ancestry. It's just the way it is, you know? Yes. Way before my time, evolutionary time we're talking about. Yeah, monkeys are the craziest people. Some time ago I read a book by Jane Van Lawick Goodall who did a lot of study with the primates in Africa. She has done a lot of work trying to make these connections between primate behavior and human behavior.

Man is not a spiritual being, but entirely physical. Now, ultimately, you think about this not from an objective scientific standpoint, but from a scientism standpoint. In other words, if I look at scientism, science is the sole source of knowledge. If I look at scientism as the basis for everything I know and believe, then man is not a spiritual being because the things that are spiritual are not subject to scientific testing, verification, things of that sort. So only what is physical is valid. Therefore, if I take a scientism approach to psychology, to human mind and behavior, then the difficulty is this, that I then have a difficult time looking at anything that's truly spiritual from a psychological viewpoint, without expanding beyond that viewpoint of scientism. The difficulty is that it assumes nothing is spiritual.

Yes, Art? Maybe you'll mention this, Well, I would say his view is generally integrative. The idea that I mentioned earlier is this concept of integrating scripture and psychology. Sure, can do. Alright. Then the next one, the spiritual realm and spiritual approaches to psychology are superfluous. That is, there is no need to look to spiritual approaches because the scientism... Pardon? Right there. Okay. Tasting, one, two, three.

Alright, taking spiritual approaches then from a scientism approach to psychology is simply unnecessary. I went to an evening debate at Stanford University some years back in which the psychology professor said, you know, our viewpoint and our aim is to look at every single human behavior from a purely physical, psychological standpoint. That's what we aim to do.

Describe every single human behavior from a purely physical, psychological standpoint. And that's all. No spiritual character involved. Period. And he says, and what we aim to do is to increasingly define human behavior entirely by physical, non-spiritual, psychological phenomenon. Period. That's what we increasingly aim to do. Therefore, since we don't know everything yet, we haven't squeezed out the spiritual, but that's what we're shooting for. and we certainly assume that the spiritual is already squeezed out. Yes? You know, that kind of attitude was rather pervasive for maybe a decade or so, but it didn't fly very well, did it?

Because if you look at what people are so into, angelology, and eastern religion, and spirituality, I mean, if you ever watch Oprah, Yeah, I think what you would say is the psychologist is still insisting upon, and I say that in a scientism viewpoint, not every psychologist takes this view, but from that viewpoint, which is really the foundation of psychology, that viewpoint, the spirituality is still to be explained from purely physical phenomenon, nothing spiritual. The reality is that human beings, no matter how much you try to squeeze out anything spiritual, they continue to cling to things that are spiritual. They'll have various explanations for that, why people do that. One of them is that we're not evolved far enough yet. Another one is that we haven't been able to explain everything psychologically sufficiently to convince people to drop the stupid spiritual stuff.

That would be their viewpoint. Okay. God has defined the scriptures not a necessary consideration of psychological matters. And this would be the position of the psychology professor that I was referring to earlier. It's just simply not necessary. You want to insert God in there? I guess you can go ahead and do that, but it's just simply unnecessary. God's not required.

That was the viewpoint from which he operated. There are probably a couple hundred, and that's an approximation by all means, a couple hundred psychological theories regarding the behavior of man. And those are all the way from purely psychological models to philosophies of therapy. So you've got a range of things in there. Now, what's the assessment of the problem? We got that question there.

What at the core of the development of the approach of secular counseling theories, and there are a couple hundred theories, is the atheistic agnostic assumption. That is, you don't have to be an atheist to be someone who takes the scientism approach. Psychology in the physical realm explains everything. But it is typically at least agnostic that God is irrelevant, that God is superfluous, that you don't need to make that assumption.

So at least start from that standpoint. And the vast majority of them are coming from that viewpoint. Mankind's problems are to be explained entirely in the physical realm within the fields of historical anthropology, biochemistry, physiology, psychosocial history, etc. All those fields of academic study, they feel, explain everything. Spirituality typically becomes a vestigial relic of man's evolution or explained on the basis of factors entirely in the physical realm.

See, the anthropologist is going to look at the development of religion in terms of, they will say, early man was typically animistic, is the model. the early man looked upon spirits in the creek, and on the river, and on the rocks, and in the tree, and the spirit of the mountain, and spirit in the sky, and all sorts of things like that. That that animism was thought to be an initial religion. Then it developed into polytheism, like the Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Assyrians, Egyptians, right? And then, so Christianity is an evolutionary development where there's belief in one God. and then the next evolutionary development is what? No God at all. That's the evolutionary development. No God at all. You and me are as good as it gets. Well, and here's what you have.

You might have a grief counselor come to the school. The grief counselor, if they've been thoroughly trained, has been trained in a number of these theories. And they're typically picking a theory, or oftentimes, I've talked to some of them that are eclectic. They'll have various things they draw from. It's kind of like a toolbox. And so they'll draw from various theories.

Some counselors will even incorporate the spiritual beliefs of the people that they're talking with into their counseling. It's not that they believe it's true, but that they will use that as part of the spiritual toolbox. Yeah. Yeah. If you want to believe that there's a life after death and there's a God that loves you and things like that, then we're glad to talk in those terms. But it's not that the counselor necessarily believes that because the next person they talk to might be Islamic and they're happy to use that too. So that is one of the approaches that a number of psychological theories will try to embrace. Rather than try to talk you out of your religion or ignore it, they will use whatever religious belief you have as a tool towards their psychological goal, whatever that is. Yeah, Marilyn? Sure, sure. Yes, yep, yep. Okay, let's talk about Marilyn's question. Marilyn is saying, gee, do I then throw out psychology?

I would put it this way, that there is spiritual truth which is absolute, and spiritual truth does of course recognize the spiritual realm. It says basically this physical world that scientism says is that's all there is. that this physical world, from a biblical standpoint, was created by God, who is a spiritual being, and in fact, human beings are spiritual beings. And so, from a biblical standpoint, it looks upon biblical authority as being primary, and the spiritual issues as being primary. Secondary to that, things in the psychological realm. And to the extent that those things are valid and verifiable, they are certainly scientific. If a theory is based upon the idea that that, for example, there is no God, and that conflicts with scripture. I have to pick scripture over the theory.

But, for example, I've seen in psychology magazines, research magazines, there will be everything from how hormone levels affect how people behave and feel, our auditory range, how we sense things. They'll ask somebody, is that twice as loud? and then be able to measure decibel levels. So people's subjective sense of things is something that we can get some sort of feedback from. And then we have an objective measurement of things like decibel levels, frequencies, things of that sort.

One of the things, for example, they found in a prison experiment that I read about, they had a double blind study in which they gave a number of prisoners just a complex of B vitamins. and a number of other prisoners had no change in their diet. They found among those prisoners who had the B vitamins, that the number of behavioral incident reports dropped significantly. So on the order of 40%. Now here's a behavioral thing. It's entirely psychological in terms of what you're seeing. It's physical. Now, did that create a spiritual change in the prisoners? Not really, but it's certainly valid from a psychological and physical standpoint.

Now, the one thing, though, is that I don't use anything discovered from science to override scripture. Scripture is the higher authority, and so there is a place of using both. The difficulty comes when we let psychology have an equal or higher authority than scripture. Does that help answer? We'll touch on that more in a minute, but at least hopefully that initially addresses your question.

Okay, what's the objective towards what we're counseling? If you have secular psychological counseling theories, these define the objective towards which counseling is directed in terms of human behavior and condition. Reckoning with sin or addressing any spiritual factors is excluded from the counseling process. Secular psychology focuses on what mankind can do and ignores God, or even, according to some theories of behavior, deals with belief in God as a problem. Someone will be dealing with guilt. Guilt, by the way, is a significant psychological and even psychiatric problem. Guilt is a big problem.

So, how do you deal with the guilt? I could come from a Christian standpoint and say, hey, the guilt issue, that was dealt with on the cross, okay? And, you know, it's handled entirely that way. Grace handles the guilt, okay? God's grace, God's provision for guilt. However, if I am a secular psychologist, I might look at it this way. Someone comes to me with immense guilt, well, how come you think you're guilty? Oh, because God's going to hold me accountable.

Well, then there's your problem. So the viewpoint that you take towards the guilt hugely impacts what you're going to say is the problem and what you're going to say is the solution. Okay, now let's look at page two. So what's the problem with the assessment of the problem?

Secular theories view mankind entirely from the viewpoint of the physical realm, dealing with humans as purely physical beings. Scripture says that mankind was created as a physical and spiritual being by God, who is a totally spiritual being. That's Genesis 1 and 2. Scripture also says that mankind fell from the position of innocence. How much does psychology recognize a falling from innocence?

It doesn't, see? And so that would be an instance where Marilyn asks the question, how do I deal with this? I'm going to include that understanding of having fallen from innocence as a primary thing, whereas secular psychology has no way to evaluate that. It's a revealed spiritual fact, not an observable scientific psychological phenomenon. I might look at how people's behavior is degraded or corroded, but the understanding of having fallen spiritually is not there. Okay, the other thing, Scripture also says that mankind fell from a position of innocence and is ruled entirely by the sin nature, unless saved by faith in God's provision for salvation. Sin nature. What does psychology do to deal with the sin nature? Think of it from this standpoint.

I am a secular psychologist, hypothetically. I'm a secular psychologist. I am looking at psychological phenomenon from a purely physical viewpoint. I want things, if I'm a secular psychologist, that are entirely measurable. At very least, I want people to feed back something to me, but better yet is having things that I can measure phenomenon. I tell somebody something and I look at what's their hormone level, what's their heartbeat, what's their blood pressure, those kinds of things, because those are much more measurable even than verbal feedback. I can get all sorts of scientific measurable entities that I can chart, that I can put statistics to, and all those kinds of things, that's scientific. All right.

Well, and that's the thing, because you think of what sin is. What is sin? Pardon? Separation from God. Yeah, it's separation from God. Okay? Ephesians 4, I think it's about verse 4, 17, 18, somewhere in there, separated from the life of God. Here is the sin nature seeking to pursue life apart from the source of life. Sin is hamartia, missing the mark. Oops! Didn't hit the bullseye. Or trespasses. Proptima.

Well, the thing is, if sin is entirely defined by who God is and falling short of that, then secular psychology has no basis to define sin at least like that. Sin ends up being something else. Sin can be, I have a bad self-image. Sin can be, society doesn't accept that. Sin can be, I feel badly about that. In other words, I have to end up coming up with some humanly definable thing that you say, well, this isn't so good. Nancy, let me ask you this question.

What does Dr. Phil tell everybody who comes on the show no matter how outrageous and corrupt their behavior has been? You're not a bad person. Here's this child molester and they're not a bad person. Yeah? Yeah, it's not your fault. You're not a bad person. It's because your mother did this or your father didn't do that. Or you just don't know how to. Yeah, you just don't know how to. Your problem is... let me write you a prescription. Now, the thing is there's no recognition of sin. Let's ask another question that's related to Maryland's.

Is there validity to having some prescription to help deal with something that's emotional, psychological, something. Is there validity? Yes, there is a validity. It doesn't mean every single prescription is valid. I'm not saying that, but there is a validity. Why would there be a validity to that?

Yeah, in other words, we're physical beings. You're right. There are physiological beings as well as spiritual beings. There may indeed be something physical on the physical side that's going on. And it may indeed be valid to have some prescription that addresses that physiological need. Now, if I truly have a spiritual problem, the chemical isn't going to fix it. It may fix some aspect of the behavior, but the chemical cannot deal with the spiritual problem. So, okay, let's move on here.

Looking here, what scripture identifies as the problem in human character and behavior is the sin nature, which secular psychology categorically denies. From a biblical standpoint, secular psychology essentially becomes increasingly knowledgeable about the sin nature and seeks to reform the sin nature. Scripture, on the contrary, says the sin nature is not reformable or ultimately knowable.

This is Jeremiah 17.9, who can know it? And the believer's relationship to the sin nature has been radically altered. Now, this is only believers. If you're a psychologist, how do you measure who's a believer and who's not? About all you can do is ask them, right? But you still can't measure the sin nature.

You could try to do it in terms of, this person feels on a scale from 1 to 10 unhappy to happy or something. You could try to do it in terms of certain hormones. This is my happy hormone. You could try to measure it in those terms. But the reality is that psychology has no way to measure that. Are you walking in the spirit or walking in the flesh? Does psychology have any way to measure that? No, it doesn't. And the sole solution is found in God's provision through Christ.

If I have someone who has outrageous anger issues, they just go into a wild rage. Now, does that appear to be a psychological problem? And really calling it a problem is somewhat arbitrary. Okay, I define this as a problem because he shot this guy and this guy. What's that? Yeah, in other words, we call it a problem because socially it becomes a problem, but from a psychological standpoint, it's just a phenomenon.

Now, question, from a spiritual standpoint, how would Scripture say that this rage originates. The sin nature is what is able to deal with it. Now, can I impact the expression of that rage using chemical substances? Sure. You can do various things to suppress the expression of the rage.

Have you done anything to the sin nature? You haven't touched it. So you can impact the behavior and make it less extreme using chemical processes and maybe other processes as well. You haven't done anything to the sin nature from a biblical standpoint. The sin nature is still the sin nature is still the sin nature. Now, from a psychological standpoint, the substance that I supplemented to this person has fixed the problem. From a spiritual standpoint, I've done nothing. This person is a far less angry person who's still going to hell.

Or maybe even a believer who is not walking with the Lord. Okay, so how do we deal with the secular counseling? How should we address it? Secular psychology is based upon ignoring God, so biblical counselors should ignore secular psychology. I say that a little bit facetiously. In terms of biblical counselors, from a biblical standpoint, we're conveying scripture. Nancy and I, for example, do marriage counseling with numerous folks, premarital counseling after the fact. And so we'll do counseling. We don't involve secular psychology in any significant degree because we see our ministry is really customized teaching of the Word of God applicable to the people we're talking with. That's really what it amounts to, aside from which I'm not legally qualified to write anybody a prescription.

That can take place. I haven't personally run into that, but it can happen. If there is somebody who does have a physiological issue that's contributing to it, then, yep, they may need to see something, you know, somebody else. The other thing we could run into, and we haven't done it recently, but we could run into is instances where something has to be referred to law enforcement. In the past, I've seen that. So yeah, there may be instances where it does need to involve somebody else. I know Hal has had an instance where it definitely required some outside help.

So this is not to completely set it aside, but in terms of biblical counseling, it isn't a matter, I've got to take the Bible and the secular stuff and try to put that together. In terms of spiritual issues, scripture is sufficient to address those issues. But your point's well taken. There is a time for saying, you know, this is not an entirely spiritual issue.

And people may, in fact, need other kinds of input, other areas of expertise. Let's take a look here. Paul uses the word, where we get our word, psychology. Sukakos is the natural man. We get our word psycho from that. How much more clearly can we be told that secular psychology is unable to address the spiritual nature or the condition of man? Only God and His word go deep enough to get to the heart. And this is, I think, a key point that there is a place for There is a place for recognizing, and the point Marilyn brought up with her question, there's a place for recognizing the validity of other areas of expertise.

The point is we don't want that to override scripture or we don't want to set scripture aside as we do so. That ultimately, and especially in a church context where we're seeking to address spiritual needs, scripture is sufficient for addressing those spiritual needs. Hebrews 4, 12 and 13, for the word of God is living and active and sharper than a two-edged sword and piercing as far as where? The division of soul and spirit.

I can have a chemical substance that is prescribed to someone and that will have an impact on their behavior, physical, psychological condition. Scripture is able to go deeper. And there may be a need for that chemical substance, that prescribed substance. But Scripture is able to go where that substance cannot. See the difference? That Scripture can touch at the depth where nothing else will. Nothing else gets there. And that's the point here in Romans 4.

Verse 13, there is no creature hidden from His, God's sight, But all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do." Ultimately, this has to do with the relationship with God. And there is nothing, although there are valid areas of expertise and involvement, there is nothing in any of those realms that can get to where Scripture can get. And it's the relationship with God who knows it all that we're seeking to work with, biblically. All right, so is the Bible relevant for the problems that we face? Some would say, well, look, here's a book that the most recent stuff was almost 2,000 years ago. Is that even relevant to what we got now? I mean, most people didn't have cell phones. They didn't have laptops. They didn't have hospitals to run to. Electrocardiogram? Forget it.

So is this really relevant? Is the Bible relevant since it's so ancient compared to all the stuff we got now? In biblical times, child neglect, child abuse, sexual abuse, substance abuse, and addiction were as prevalent as they are today, or even far worse. Let's just take a particular instance.

If a child was being abused by their father, do you think the Roman government is going to step in and fix it? No, they didn't. As a matter of fact, it was perfectly legal if a man wanted to go buy some three or four year old girl in the slave market and abuse her in whatever way he wanted. It was entirely legal for him to do so. A father could abandon a son or daughter out in the woods. A father could take his son or daughter out into the marketplace in town and say, anybody want this kid? Have them, whatever you want to do.

So the protections that we look at having in our society, and certainly they're not perfect, but at least there's something to call upon, Roman government didn't care. And before that, it was even worse. Here's 1 Corinthians 6, 9 through 11. Do not be deceived, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, or homosexuals. The effeminate are basically a homosexual slave boy. Nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards. There's your diction. Nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. Such were some of you. the believers in the church at Corinth.

Did they have intense sexual problems? Yeah. How would you like to have been born a slave boy? They called them verna if you were born into the slavery. Born a slave boy and you were just used your whole life by other men and you come into years later and you become a believer. And that's your background. That's your earthly history. That was real. That's on the list. That's the one translated effeminate.

How's that for a place to start in life? It's neither fornicators. One of the ways that that was done, some man could go buy a slave girl at any age, and use her for however he wanted, and keep her in the house, and by the descriptions we have of a good pagan wife in those days, a good pagan wife didn't mention that that was going on. Certainly no authorities to turn it over to, because it was completely legal and valid. Now, is that young girl, when she grows up, is she going to have problems? Deep problems.

What does Paul say needs to happen with those people? They need to be saved. They need to grow in the Lord. There's a spiritual solution. Notice the manner of dealing with these deep-seated moral and character problems. was precisely the spiritual solutions the apostles declared to be fitting to those who had been saved by faith in Christ. God did it. Here's another one on page 3, top of page 3, Galatians 5.

Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, pharmakia, our word pharmacy, drugs. That word, by the way, also shows up in the book of Revelation, describing the tribulation period. Lots and lots and lots of drugs. Enmity, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes. And he goes on, drunkenness, carousing and the like. By the way, the drunkenness, one of the religious practices of the time was to get just way wasted drunk and then tear apart small animals, live animals, with the hands. Now, you do that for a while. And by the way, they had the kids involved with this. What kind of psychological problems are you going to be dealing with? This can get gross. I'm serious. This can get gross. But these people had problems just like we do in our day.

The Bible is not at all irrelevant because of its age. Why? Sin nature hasn't changed. The gospel is the same gospel then as it is now. And the biblical solution is the same biblical solution as it was 2,000 years ago. Throughout the pagan world in which the gospel was spread, all of the above were legal and widespread. All were generally legal with almost no provision for treatment comparable to any modern sense.

What you had was the pagan medical temples that you could go to, the god Asclepius, One of their solutions, if you had some of these problems, was to have you sleep in the temple at night and have snakes slither over you. Because that's supposed to help fix your psychological problem. Real good, huh?

The practice of slavery allowed owners to carry out unimaginable abuses of slaves of any age or gender, though it must not be thought that this was typical or normal. It did happen often, but it wasn't categorical across the whole range of slaves. Nonetheless, there was a wide range of practices in New Testament times that were abusive, addictive, and negligent, as in our modern era, if not more so, and almost nothing in the way of protections to stop people from abusing others, sexually, physically, or any other way. And there was, we have, you know, policemen to go in and force drug abuse, things of that sort. There was nothing of that sort available, none whatsoever.

We find that the solution of the apostles is not found in dredging through their personal history or present sentiments, but in being united with Christ's history, his sentiments, and the ministries of the Holy Spirit. Here's Romans 6, I quote some selected verses there.

Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death? Therefore, we have been buried with him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we would become united with him in the likeness of his death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection. Knowing this, that our old self was crucified with him in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin, to the sin nature.

For he who has died is freed from that sin nature. Therefore, do not let sin reign, that sin nature, reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments. By the way, that word instruments is military assets. Instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead and your members as instruments of unrighteousness, excuse me, of righteousness to God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you're not under law but under grace.

That's the message that he gave to the people at Rome where you could go to the Colosseum and rent a boy when you exited the Colosseum. The actual Colosseum that's there now wasn't built until the late 70s, but they had other Theaters of that kind and that was the standard practice if you went to see Throughout the Roman Empire if you went to see a theatrical or musical performance All the ladies on the stage were for sale There were there was a gathering of boys that you could rent as you exited Gross stuff This is his solution. This is the biblical solution for dealing with those awful things and Romans 8, 5 through 17, for if you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons, by which we cry out, Abba, Father. In Roman times, it was legal for a father to execute his son at any age.

We have record even of a man executing a son who was in his twenties, right in front of everybody, and nobody batted an eye or asked a question. Oh, that's his son. No questions asked. At any age, just wipe them out. Perfectly legal. And so, when we find in the New Testament statements like, you are beloved children of God, to them that was just incredibly precious. I mean, here's a God that loves me, And He won't beat the tar out of me? He won't do me in? That's phenomenal. Yes? Didn't the adoption process change that?

Yeah, that's the next point that I want to look at. Paul says to the church at Rome, to the church in Galatia, and to the church at Ephesus, those three churches he writes and he says, he talks about the adoption of sons. I want you to understand what that is and how fantastic that is. In the adoption of sons, we think of adoption as adopting a child. Adoption of sons was adopting an adult in general.

Here's what happened. You would have an adoption. It was done in front of seven witnesses. It was approved by a high-level governing body. The person who was being adopted, and it was originally put in place in order for the emperor to have an heir to the throne if he didn't have a son. The person who was being adopted had all past criminal records, if any, completely erased from the record. The person who was being adopted had all past debts, if any, completely erased from the record. Did you owe anything? You don't anymore. Are you guilty of anything? No more. It's all gone.

And then the adopted son, unlike These other sons who had not been adopted or legally accepted, it was a crime to take out those. The adopted son could never be taken out. And the adopted son even had a priority over a born son if one was born before or afterwards. So if this person were adopted, That person then could not be supplanted or have their place taken over by someone, even if that one was born at any time. So it was like phenomenal. For the people to read this, and by the way, Rome had 50% slaves in the population.

For the people to read this, do you mean to tell me that if God loves me, everything that is criminal in my past is just gone? Yep. Do you mean any debts that I might have are erased? Yep. Do you mean to tell me He wants to put me in an enthroned position? Yep. Do you mean to say that I could never ever be pushed out or taken out or set aside? Yep. That's what He told him.

It was phenomenal and fantastic. Even if somebody else comes along, I can't be shoved aside? No. unparalleled, absolutely of grace. That's fantastic. Can you imagine some boy who had grown up being put out for rent at the Coliseum coming to this place and saying, man, that's phenomenal. I feel raunchy about myself, but what does God think of me? God accepts me absolutely. I can't be supplanted. Anything I've ever done, and oh boy have I done a lot, anything I've ever had done to me, none of that can set that aside. That's phenomenal. That's just wonderful stuff. That's just really fantastic. I'm sorry, what? I think that they would.

First of all, adoption of sons, and this was written to Rome. Adoption of sons was something that started in Rome and was centered in Rome. It was something that was done and they made a lot of it, so it was well known. Paul drew upon things that the people were quite aware of.

We talk about crucifixion. Rome had used crucifixion as a billboard for don't mess with Rome. And you would go outside. We have a record of as many as 6,000 crucifixions at one time just outside the city of Rome. And they would leave the bodies on the crosses until they rotted off the wood. Yes, that was Roman law. Nope. Because they're adopted, they couldn't push them out. There were two ways that you could not be pushed out. One was to be adopted and the other is to be legally accepted.

And so that's where you see he refers to adoption of sons three times, including to Galatia, which is over in the middle of Turkey. So it's not just in Rome. He writes it to the church at Ephesus, which is, again, over in what's now modern Turkey. That is another place he writes it.

The other thing is, you hear about being accepted in the Beloved, right? We're accepted in the Beloved? That's a son that's legally accepted, can no longer be put aside, can no longer be taken out legally. Up until that legal acceptance process, any son of any age can be taken out by the Father. Crazy, but that was commonly known and practiced. It could be anything from aggressive, we would call it murder, aggressive murder to just abandonment and neglect. Both of those were completely legal. It's amazing. Doug? Don't we see that today in Islam? Doug's asking the question, do we see it today in Islam? Yeah, and in Islam where you send a little kid in with a bunch of explosives on them.

Yeah, essentially, it's some of the same. It's thought about differently, but it's effectively the same. Yeah. Yeah, because in that case, the child is looked upon as doing something Yeah, what's strange is the viewpoint on it. Yeah, you are sacrificing a son, but it's looked at as a good thing, and they'll be rewarded, and you'll be rewarded. And they actually have special funds set aside so that if you have a child that dies that way, the family gets money. Oh, and they get all this honor and stuff, even if the attempt is unsuccessful and the kid's supposed to be healthy.

Yeah, it's different. Okay, we've run out of time. So, let's pray. Lord, as we look at this, there is lots that we could still go into, much more that we could explore, but we're thankful for the certain and indeed true spiritual issues that each and every one of us has as human beings. You have provided the eternally sufficient answer. And we thank you for that. Thank you for your marvelous grace. In Jesus' name, Amen.