A week ago in APJ 2129, we heard from Bethany, an 18-year-old, wrestling with how she could have been an enemy of God, despite her lifelong Christian upbringing and lack of any conscious opposition to him.

Pastor John, you related to her story. It's your story, too. And you explained how enmity with God is both a human and divine issue and that our true condition outside of Christ is revealed not merely through personal memory and experience, but through God's word, which exposes the depth of our sin and our separation from him, even when we don't

feel it personally.

That episode last Monday connects to today's question on this Monday from Monica, a 20-year-old

woman from Albania, reflecting on our Bible readings from the first 10 days of March.

Hello, Pastor John, and thank you for leading us through the Bible on the podcast and through

Romans in March. I am new to the faith and joined my first Bible reading with you last year,

and I'm doing it again in 2025. That is wonderful to hear, Monica. Thank you for joining us.

This discipline reminds me there's so much I don't understand. But one thing I do know is that sinners refuse to come to God. That became

clear in last March's readings, including Psalm 53, Romans, and Matthew 23. Of course, the gospel is a wide open offer to all,

as I read in Romans 116, but God looks down to find someone who seeks him and none do,

none do, according to Psalm 53. The same point is repeated in Romans 311. No one seeks after God.

Romans 510 even says that we were enemies of God. And in the Gospels we see Jesus weep over

Jerusalem because they refused to come to him in Matthew 23, verses 37 and 38. To be a sinner

seems utterly hopeless. If there's such a strong theme of

sinners who cannot come to God, how does salvation even happen? Some of our listeners will think,

wow, that's a really basic question. Certainly is. And I think it is really

good for us to regularly turn to very basic questions and see whether or not we have moved so far

beyond the basics that we're not able to explain the basics anymore.

Yes.

That's a real good test.

So Monica has read her Bible carefully enough to see that sin is really serious, not only because it offends God, but because it enslaves people.

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