R.C. Sproul

to influence the outcome.

That's why I said that even though the word providence is rooted in the Latin for seeing something beforehand, that it involves far more

than God's seeing what takes place, because if there's anything that is revealed to us about the character of God in the Old and New Testament is that God is not merely a spectator.

He is a spectator, but not merely a spectator.

He has the authority to change what He sees

and to bring to pass whatsoever He desires to bring to pass.

The portrait that we get in the Scriptures of man in his fallen condition is that sin penetrates massively to the whole of the fallen person.

In other words, sin is not a simple external blemish, but it is something that goes to the very core of our being.

There's one word, I think, that crystallizes the essence of the Christian faith.

I'm going to begin this session by calling your attention to that word, and it is the word grace.

Grace.

In fact, one of the great mottos of the Protestant Reformation was this Latin phrase, sola gratia, by grace alone.

Now this phrase wasn't invented by the 16th century reformers, but has its roots in the theology of St.

Augustine, who incorporated this phrase to call attention to the central concept of the essence of Christianity, that our redemption in the presence of God is by grace sola alone.

that the only possible way a human being can ever find themselves reconciled in the presence of God is by virtue of grace.

Now that concept is so central to the teaching of scriptures you would think that by now to even mention it would be an insult to people's intelligence because it's so, so elementary.

And yet, if there is any dimension of Christian theology that I think has become obscured in the 20th century, it is this core notion of grace.

I've already mentioned in the process of this series that one of the most important series that I regard in Ligonier's catalog of education is that one that focuses on the holiness of God.

And I've said on many, many occasions the two things that every human being just absolutely has to come to understand is one, the holiness of God, and two, the sinfulness of man.

Those seem to be the two poles of thinking that we have done everything in our power to obscure.