A Detailed Sermon in Preaching a Luther-Style Theses of a Unlicensed Bunyan Exposition of 96-Disputations on John 8:36 and Trinity-Enslaved Freedom

"Even though I was once a blasphemer and a
 persecutor and a violent man, I was shown
 mercy." 1 Timothy 1:13 ...Literally, "I was bemercied." Christians, why might not you have been in the number of those who persist in
sinning? Because God has bemiracled you with mercy!....See what cause you have to admire the stupendous goodness of God, who has wrought a change in you—and checked you in your full career of sin! ...Christians, you who are vessels of election—were by nature as wicked as others—but God had compassion on you and plucked you as brands out of the fire! He stopped you in your course of sinning—when you were marching to hell! He turned you back to Him by sincere repentance. Oh, here is the banner of love displayed over you!

...Behold sovereign grace! Let your hearts melt in love to God. Admire His royal bounty. Set the crown of all your praises, upon the head of free grace! "By the grace of God I am what I am!" 1 Corinthians 15:10...(Thomas Watson, "The Mischief of Sin")

 I will sing of my Redeemer
And his wondrous love to me;
On the cruel cross he suffered,
From the curse to set me free.
Sing, O sing of my Redeemer!
With his blood he purchased me;
On the cross he sealed my pardon,
Paid the debt and made me free.
I will tell the wondrous story,
How my lost estate to save,
In his boundless love and mercy,
He the ransom freely gave.
I will praise my dear Redeemer,
His triumphant power I'll tell,
How the victory he giveth
Over sin and death and hell.
I will sing of my Redeemer
And his heav'nly love to me;
He from death to life has brought me,
Son of God, with him to be.  (TH, 681).

 "...My dear Lord, I can but tell Thee that Thou knowest I long for nothing but Thyself, nothing but holiness, nothing but union with Thy will. Thou hast given me these desires, and thou alone canst give me the thing desired. My soul longs for communion with Thee, for mortification of indwelling corruption, especially spiritual pride. How precious it is to have a tender sense and clear apprehension of the mystery of godliness, of true holiness! What a blessedness to be like Thee as much as it is possible for a creature to be like its creator! Lord, give me more of Thy likeness; enlarge my soul to contain fullness of holiness; engage me to live more for Thee. Help me to be less pleased with my spiritual experiences, and when I feel at ease after sweet communings, teach me it is far too little I know and do. Blessed Lord, let me climb up near to Thee, and love, and long, and plead, and wrestle with Thee, and pant for deliverance from the body of sin, for my heart is wandering and lifeless, and my soul mourns to think it should ever lose sight of its beloved. Wrap my life in divine love, and keep me ever desiring Thee, always humble and resigned to Thy will, more fixed on Thyself, that I may be more fitted for doing and-suffering..."  (Longings After God, The Valley of Vision).

By Mike Petillo,

Doctor of Theology from St. Andrew’s Seminary, N.C.

“…So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed…”  (John 8:36 NASB).

1.    The Father’s design is for spiritual freedom for His chosen.

2.    The Son’s work is for spiritual freedom for His children.

3.    The Spirit’s regenerating and convicting presence sets His people free from the bondage of a domination sinful nature.

4.    The Son is given the glory, honor and praise, because everything in the fullness of the Bible is about Him alone.

5.    The slavery of original sin and actual transgressors begins at conception through birth until the end of life unless the Lord set them free to obey Him in set apart slavery to Himself.

6.    There is slavery for the unregenerate by Satan.

7.    Satan holds the condemned under his captivity.

8.    Satan’s hold on the pre-converted elect is breakable at God’s timing until He sets them free.

9.    Satan’s captivity on the never-converted reprobate is allowed to sustain for their whole lives until the fruition of ultimate justice because God turns them over to their master according to the riches of His wisdom in His just fury.

10.   Satan’s slavery is unjust but God’s slavery is good.

11.  Satan’s slavery of fallen humans is tyranny.

12.  God’s enslavement through Christ is apart from tyranny.

13. The Spirit sets us free from Satan by the work of regeneration in granting us a new heart and application of the unified merits of Christ alone to the awakened fallen sinner.

14. True freedom is enslavement to Christ.

15. False freedom is enslavement to Satan.

16. The mind of fallen sinners is spiritually dead.

17. The heart of fallen sinners is spiritually incomprehensible.

18. The Christian has the treasure of Christ in the mind.

19. True Christians has the treasure of Christ in the heart.

20. There is a civil belief among the reprobates with those who are religious but unconverted.

21. The conversion of fallen sinners to biblical Christianity is the work of the Holy Ghost and written Word.

22. The written Word is active to convert sinners by the Spirit.

23. The Word is also used to judge fallen reprobates, but whatever the case for the pre-converted it is meant for their mercy.

24. The Spirit gives the reprobate a civil warm heart when the Gospel is proclaimed, but the Christian has a Spirit-created new heart.

25.The eternal Son is to set sinners free whom He has chosen.

26. The Son awakens the mind of all of His chosen.

27.  The Son rolls away the stone for true enlistment to the Spirit.

28. The Father approves of the work of the Son.

29. The Son intercedes for His people alone.

30.  The Son does not intercede for the reprobate.

31. The Spirit convicts the people of God.

32. The Spirit does come upon the reprobate but does not indwell them, because indwelling is a matter of redemption.

33. The Father loves the Son and gives all to Him.

34. The Son loves the Father and all is also His.

35. The Spirit loves the Father and Son and all is in His Hand.

36. The Son sets us free from idolatry.

37. The Son sets us free from pride.

38. The Son sets us free from foolishness.

39. The Son sets us free from total depravity.

40. The Son sets us free from radical corruption.

41. The Son releases us from a dead mind and heart.

42. The Spirit awakens the heart and mind of Christians.

43. The Father loves His children through the Son.

44. The Son loves through the Father’s design.

45. The Father and the Son loves by the Spirit.

46.  The God of the Bible reveals His presence to reprobates like Balaam and Judas Iscariot for His own sovereign purposes.

47. The Bible is alive and active to change hearts by the Spirit.

48. The Bible is used by God for a benediction for good.

49. The Bible is used by God for a malediction for justice.

50. The Spirit does not set those to whom it is not appointed.

51. The Son is about proclaiming the infallible Word.

52. The Spirit accompanies the Word and the Word the Spirit.

53.  Adam and Eve were set free by the covering of Jesus.

54. Moses was set from Egyptian paganism by Jesus.

55. Abraham was set free from paganism by Christ.

56. Noah and his family were saved by God the Trinity.

57.  St. Peter was set free by Christ to impetuosity lead.

58. St. Andrew was set free by Jesus to be an instrument of miracles.

59.  St. Nathanael was set free by Christ by an awakening that reflected his name “a man without deceit.”

60.  The Son provides the TRUE white robes of Himself over the spiritual nakedness of God are chosen.

61. The Spirit is about following the design of the Father through the application of the unified work of the Son alone.

62. The Father wants to exalt the Son alone.

63. The Spirit wants to apply the praise of the Son alone.

64. The Bible is about conviction of all kinds of sin.

65. There is sin the Bible makes us aware of by His Spirit.

66. Remaining in sin is blindness and deafness to God’s Word.

67. No fallen creature has the power to release themselves from sin.

68. The sinner is loyal to civil goodness.

69.  Fallen sinners do not spiritually comprehend in an awakened manner by the Spirit a higher righteousness but are content with a godless civil goodness that seems good because it is man in light of man instead of man in light of a holy God.

70.  According to Romans 1:19, civilly awakened reprobate people are possible to civilly know Reformed truth in the Gospel but not attain it in spiritual and authentic awakening to the Gospel.

71.  Civilly awakened reprobates will also know the truth about God’s creation but are able to surpass God’s divine truth touching the handiwork of creation that reveals God’s true existence.

72. Loosing from captivity is not native to fallen sinners but resides in the power of a holy Triune God.

73. Christ is the Magnetic God-man who attracts the Father’s glory.

74. Every awakened sinner has the alien unified righteousness of Christ alone in how someone is right with a holy God.

75. The death of Christ sets us free touching our deep sin.

76. The life of Christ provides the grounds for earning salvation.

77. No sinner’s death can ever atone for sin.

78. No sinner’s life could merit heaven.

79. The death of reprobates merit hell.

80. The life of reprobates merit hell.

81. No one can do anything to earn salvation for another.

82.  Only God Incarnate could endure the Father’s wrath for His people in a redemptive sense.

83. The sting of death is taken out of the way by Christ.

84. The life of sin by elect sinner is replaced by the life of Christ by heaven-born faith in His Name.

85. The living reprobates are dead alive people headed to hell.

86. The Christians dead to sin but alive to Jesus are headed to heaven.

87. No one in hell could ever be set free by Christ who resides there forevermore.

88.  All the pre-converted elect no matter what will become the awakened people of God in Christ even if it means to enter the pit of hell but be unlocked from the pit of the abyss by the keys of Jesus Christ who is bringing them through to Himself in His purpose unto glory for His matchless mercy.

89. Buddha could not set anyone free but further a greater bondage.

90. Confucius could only bound sinners but Jesus sets them free.

91. Muhammad is dead and descended to hell but Jesus sets His people free from a throne of Majesty as Risen Redeemer.

92. The gods of Mormonism on other planets are so far removed from spiritual freedom to set sinners free that Jesus Christ remains incomparable, matchless, unattainable and untouchable regarding His eternal self-existent deity as the Incarnate Beginning and the End.

93. The gods of Greek Orthodoxy are not true gods, because they are not eternally self-existent as the Three in One and One in Three.

94. Denial of the eternal self-existence of the Triune King marks a heart that is wayward but at worst unregenerate.

95. Denial of the all-sufficiency, all-exclusiveness and all-necessariness of Jesus Christ is astray but at worst a rejection of essential Christian truth that is destined to hell.

96.  Roman priests cannot set anyone free, because of a farce of their mediatorship.  That is they are no God and man, but Jesus Christ is God and man in two distinct natures.  The Roman mediators only provide a further bondage of the sinfulness of sin that leads to hell unless God changes their destiny for ultimate doom-consumed justice. 

Come to the Saviour, make no delay:
Here in his Word he's shown us the way;
Here in our midst he's standing today,
Tenderly saying, "Come!"
Joyful, joyful, will the meeting be,
When from sin our hearts are pure and free;
And we shall gather, Saviour, with thee,
In our eternal home.
Suffer the children! O hear his voice!
Let ev'ry heart leap forth and rejoice;
And let us freely make him our choice:
Do not delay, but come.
Think once again, he's with us today;
Heed now his blest command, and obey;
Hear now his accents tenderly say,
"Will you, my children, come?"  (TH, 693).

"...O God, may Thy Spirit speak in me that I may speak to Thee. I Lord Jesus, great high priest, Thou hast opened a new and living way by which a fallen creature can approach Thee with acceptance....Help me to contemplate the dignity of Thy Person, the perfectness of Thy sacrifice, the effectiveness of Thy intercession....O what blessedness accompanies devotion, when under all the trials that weary me, the cares that corrode me, the fears that disturb me, the infirmities that oppress me, I can come to Thee in my need and feel peace beyond understanding!...The grace that restores is necessary to preserve, lead, guard, supply, help me.  And here Thy saints encourage my hope; they were once poor and are now rich, bound and are now free, tried and now are victorious....Every new duty calls for more grace than I now possess, but not more than is found in Thee, the divine treasury in whom all fullness dwells.  To Thee I repair for grace upon grace, until every void made by sin be replenished and I am filled with all Thy fullness....May my desires be enlarged and my hopes emboldened, that I may honour Thee by my entire dependency and the greatness of my expectation....Do Thou be with me, and prepare me for all the smiles of prosperity, the frowns of adversity, the losses of substance, the death of friends, the days of darkness, the changes of life, and the last great change of all. May I find thy grace sufficient for all my needs..."  (Grace Active, The Valley of Vision).