There is a quiet epidemic in the modern church—not the scandalous kind that splashes across headlines, but the quiet, private sort that festers behind the walls of smiling fellowship. It is the disease of hiddenness, the subtle and sophisticated art of appearing righteous while dying inwardly. We have learned how to worship publicly without ever walking in the light privately. We have made sin a matter of private conscience rather than communal burden, and in so doing, we have lost the biblical meaning of confession.

Let’s say this as simply as possible:

When Jesus explained the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13; Mark 4; Luke 8), He laid bare the unseen dynamics of salvation. The Word of God, like seed, is sown—but it bears fruit only when it falls on good soil. Some hearts reject it. Some receive it superficially. Worldly concerns choke others. But some receive it deeply and bear fruit a hundredfold.

If you have followed this journey from the beginning, you’ve seen how the idea of libertarian free will—so cherished in modern thought—has no foundation in biblical theology. It is absent from Jewish tradition, foreign to the teachings of Christ, introduced into the Church through speculative minds like Origen and Pelagius, and sustained today not by Scripture but by sentiment.But this series has not been about merely proving a point. It has been about recovering a posture. The posture of a creature before the Creator. Of a sinner before a holy God. Of a son kneeling in joy before the will of his Father.The truth is simple and terrifying and beautiful all at once:

After tracing the historical and theological roots of libertarian free will—from its absence in Jewish thought, to its introduction by Origen, to its moralistic expansion by Pelagius—we must now confront its pastoral implications. It is not enough to know where these ideas came from. We must ask:What kind of posture does this theology produce?What does it say about how we view God and ourselves?