Video Notes:

• There is no middle-ground. There is no freedom of the self. You are always either captive to sin or captive to God.
• We are all fleshly from birth, born with a sinful nature that is always rebelling against God. Prior to being raise to new life in Christ through faith by your baptism, you only had this sinful nature. Now, after your baptism, you are a new creation and the Spirit of God dwells within you. The sinful nature, however, is still present as well.
• What the passage indicates here is that our fleshly self with its sinful nature, is not only not good, but no good dwells within it. This contradicts the idea that we are all born with the capacity for good and evil and it’s up to us which we do in our actions, a common naturalist statement.
• This passage also contradicts the idea that there was some spark of good in us that either led to God choosing us or which allowed us to chose God or that God’s grace is some kind of supernatural strength to do the righteous deeds (or avoid sin) which the body is too weak to do.
• This leaves us in a bad situation. We are slaves, prisoners of sin.
• Zechariah 9:11–12 – Prisoners of hope?
• This is an act of God. He takes us spiritually dead, enemies, in which nothing good resides, and makes us alive in Christ, forgives our sins and makes us righteous, and He works in us to will and to do good works which He has prepared in advance for us to do.