https://youtu.be/XZdmVojbGLk
In our verse-by-verse study of Romans we finished Rom 2:5. Our expanded translation is "Because of your hardness and unrepentant heart, you store up and accumulate for yourself wrath against the day of wrath, even disclosure of just judgment from the God."
The words translated heart, hardness, unrepentant, and judgment in this verse brought up some doctrines to look at and we are presently looking at the doctrine of hardness of heart.
The word stubbornness in the NASB that is translated hardness in the KJV is the Greek word "sklerotes" that is used to describe scar tissue that develops into a hard callous in the heart that causes the heart to become spiritually "hard" and resistant to God's Word of truth.
This "skletotes" eventually becomes impenetrable and the person cannot ever change their mind and accept God's truth. Heb 12:16-17;
Last time we were noting Eph 4:18-19; NIV They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.
19 Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.
The word translated "insensitive" in the NIV is the Greek word "sklerotes" that means, "to become callous" that is how it is translated in the NASB.
It is connected with a preposition of ultimate source that is the source of the problem. The source of the problem is negative volition to doctrine because scar tissue is developed from negative volition to doctrine.
The perfect tense means that the scar tissue is constantly being developed, with the result that it accumulates and remains. Every person develops their own scar tissue, and every believer-priest must take responsibility for their own scar tissue.
Believers who have scar tissue in the heart of the soul is going to be tripped up by mental attitude sins, because as soon as you divorce yourself from the humility that comes from the daily study of God's Word a vacuum sets up in the heart that sucks arrogance from demon doctrine into the soul.
The arrogance is characterized by mental attitude sins. This makes the believer with scar tissue in the heart very susceptible to fear, jealousy bitterness, anger and vindictiveness.
It is also possible to be very arrogant from self-righteousness, religiosity, ritualism or emotionalism and be proud of what you assume is a great Christian testimony and actually be negative toward doctrine.
More often than not the neglect of Bible doctrine accompanies this type of activity because of an incorrect criterion for what Christianity actually is.
You may be so busy giving your testimony, so busy trying to witness to ten people a day, so busy making points in a program that you do not have time to learn Bible doctrine.
This is the problem that the Pharisees had in Jesus' day. Rom 10:2-3; Mark 7:7; and many zealous Church goers have this same problem today.
It is the PMA of Bible doctrine that is sine qua non of the Christian life.
Eph 4:19; " Who having become calloused with scar tissue, have given themselves over," or literally, " they have betrayed themselves."
Once mental attitude sins are developed it becomes a very slippery slope. In this verse a betrayal to sexual promiscuity is described. The aorist active indicative of "betrayed" means "at a point of time that follows the development of scar tissue."
The sexual promiscuity, that is described here, is the result of scar tissue in the heart of the soul. There are two betrayals; first, the inner betrayal, or the mental attitude sins that continue unchecked followed by, an overt betrayal that reveals the inner betrayal."
Into sensuality" is the first category of the overt betrayal. The Greek word means " promiscuity, fornication, sexual activity" outside of the category two love of marriage as God's Word of truth defines it.
This isn't the normal word that is used for adultery; that is relationship of wrong man with wrong woman. It includes all categories of sexual perversion including homosexuality, lesbianism, pedophilia, child sex change abuse, transgenderism. etc.
All of the things that the criminal leftist perverts in the ruling class of our country are involved with that if possible makes the USA worse than Sodom and Gomorrah. Matt 10:14-15;
Eph 4:19; The second category, "indulge in every kind of impurity." "To indulge" is to spend time and effort doing something illicit. One of the routes a person who has scar tissue in their heart from their rejection of Bible doctrine is to make a business out of unrestrained sexual perversion. The word "akatharsia" translated "impurity" denotes both mental and overt impurity.
The third category, "with greediness" in the NASB is translated "with continual lust for more" in the NIV is describing the frantic search for happiness that comes from an insatiable lust for more and different types of perverted sex.
Once a person has scar tissue in the soul, he cuts off any possibility of happiness from a relationship with God. This means there is no happiness because all true happiness depends exclusively on one's volition toward and compliance with God's Word of truth. Luke 11:28;
This will also cause mental attitude sins that bring on self-induced misery and intensified unhappiness. Unhappiness is expressed by frustration boredom, soul agony and the associated compensations of trying to break free from the unhappy situation.
Operation break-free often leads to some form of sexual promiscuity that only makes things worse.
When right man and right woman are involved, either sexually or soulishly in the marriage relationship, they will derive great happiness from that relationship, even though they are unbelievers and may have an unhappy life otherwise. Eccles 9:9;
God created sex to be an expression of human happiness in the right man-right woman relationship during the entire period of man's innocence in the Garden of Eden.
Before the fall Adam and Ishah derived great happiness from their relationship with each other.
Sex in the right man-right woman relationship in marriage is one of the precedents, that, along with the other divine institutions, survived the fall and continued to function in the devil's sinful world as a basis for happiness and stability.
It is therefore inevitable that people who are frustrated by scar tissue in the soul are going to try to use sex as a form of sublimation. However we see in Eph 4:19; a warning that with scar tissue in the soul, promiscuity will only build up greater frustration, insatiability and a more desperate frantic search for happiness.