Salvation From the Power of Sin
Hal Molloy · Jan 26, 2003
Major Bible Themes (2002-03), No. 30
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262252233379

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

In chapter 29, salvation from the power of sin, Roger last week went through the three different aspects of salvation. Salvation from the penalty of sin, salvation from the power of sin, and salvation from the presence of sin. He presented God's entire plan of salvation in those three aspects. question for you this morning, and that is this. My question is this. Can you identify what I've listed here, some of the sins that are listed in scripture?

For example, casting blame. Can you identify with that? This week, Lindy noticed for the first time in her brand new car that she has a big hole in her bumper. And so, of course, the first thing is, right, were you driving by? Right? And so it tends to be this. You tend to gas blank. Well, we decided it was someone else, and so we resolved that. Don't know who. But can you identify with that, with casting blame?

How about anger, in terms of something comes up that deviates from what you thought it would be, and it's surprised? and the response may be anger, or you get very irritable, or sometimes bitter about something. There's some constant thing in your life that's stirring you and you're bitter. Or there's someone in your life that is really causing you problems and you're resentful to that person. Or you get into the mode of, poor me, I've got all of these things to do, I can't get them done, etc., etc., and there's that self-pity.

Or you get discouraged. Discouragement, by the way, is a sin. I think it was Robert Newell who wrote a commentary on the Book of Romans who said, to be discouraged is to have put your trust in yourself in the first place. Isn't that interesting? So there's discouragement or fear.

You may be fearful or there's worry or anxiety, loneliness. Depression, despair, and by the way, people who are depressed go through this cycle here, this ever-vicious cycle of being discouraged and fearful and worried, anxiety and loneliness, depression and despair. And the end of despair is normally suicide. And I should have put suicide here, and I forgot and left it out.

But short-tempered. Now, you know, sometimes do we have a short fuse? Or scripture says that we should have a long fuse. We get moody or critical. Now that's just a part of the list. But here's some more. Discontent, provoking, complaining, inhospitable, gluttony, excessiveness, extravagance, lazy, busybody, miserly, being a miser, bad to aggressive, glorifying self, gossip, just being unconcerned, but there's more. Selfishness, being insensitive, insensitive to the needs of your wife or to your husband, argumentative, that you always find yourself in an argument, Just being unthankful.

In fact, one of the main reasons why I used to ride the Rockies for 10 years is because not only for the exercise, but the other thing is that I realized how unthankful I am just for the simple things in life in terms of God providing just plain old water. But until you get on an 85 mile bike ride from, or where were we going, if you go from Montrose to Gunnison, I forget how many miles that is, I think it's about 80 some odd miles, and there's nothing, there's nothing out there. You've got to carry everything with you. And just that one drink of water, you are so thankful. You are so thankful that the Lord would provide one cloud just to block the sun for about three minutes so you can cool down.

I mean, we don't realize how unthankful we are. How about being satisfied? Oftentimes people are just never satisfied. Sometimes we think that we need this, and we get this, and then we say, uh-oh, but we also need this. And so we get into a state where we're never satisfied.

But go down the list, you know, rebellious, hatred, wrathful, malice, judgment. But that's not all. It goes on. Unloving, impatient, harshness, roughness, uncaring, ignorance, all the way down in terms of greed, falsehood, down the list. So my question is, can you identify with any of these? And let's say you can't identify with any of these sins. So then my next question is, well, I'll show you another list. If you can't identify with any of those, arrogance and being disobedient, inconsiderate, lying, murmur.

One of the sins of the believer that Paul talks about in Philippians is murmuring. Being a fault finder. Nothing's ever right. Always finding fault with someone or something. Down that list. And if you can't identify with any of those, how about these? Here's another, you know, it goes on in terms of this whole list of sins, and that's not all. And it just keeps going on.

Jealousy, envy, being in a stumbling block, conceited, being carnal, enmity, strife, factions, divisions, and it goes on. Having a lack of joy in your life, being thoughtless, hostile, coming down here to desires. Desires of wanting to be popular, a desire of wanting to be influential, a desire to have a good reputation, prestige, acceptance, success, power, riches, and wisdom. And I think we went through this once before, but as you go through scripture, Old Testament, New Testament, God defines the three greatest sins of man is the desire for power, for riches, and for wisdom.

And I don't know if we talked about this before, but the interesting thing is this. I believe that God gave us those desires. But man fulfills those desires in man, as opposed to in Christ. Because as you get into the New Testament, we find out that Christ has the power, and the riches, and the wisdom. And that to desire to be there, and walking in His power, and His riches, and His wisdom, So that's why I think the Lord has given man those desires.

Okay. So, question. Can you identify with any of these? If you can't, I've got another list. I want to see where the threshold is. But this is what we're going to do this morning. taking a look at the potential sins of a believer. Every one of those sins that we just went through is a sin that you and myself can commit. Okay? And just as well as an unbeliever, believers can commit the identical sins.

So the question we want to ask is, what's the source? from whence comes all of those sins? What's the source? And what is our relationship as a believer to the source of sin? And we're going to go through the process of temptation and then end with the impact of where we're abiding, where we're walking, whether we're walking in our old man or old nature versus our new nature. So, question.

What's the source? What's the source of all those sins? Now, if you are of the theology that believes that when you became a believer that God eradicated your sin nature, you would say that the source of those sins are either residual sins, or they are just bad habits, or the source is Satan. So how many say that the source is bad habits? What's the source? From whence come that list of sins that you can identify with? And you're probably sitting there saying, boy, that describes my husband. Or that describes my wife. And so you can identify, right? You can identify with those. And you see them. So what's the source? From where do they come? And I know you all know the answer, but I want you just to say it, verbalize it.

The sin nature. Okay. The fact that we have a sin nature. So, the thing is this. Scripture clearly teaches that every believer still has his or her sin nature. Alright? We've got sin nature. As we talked about, as we said before, one naturist who believes that the sin nature has been eradicated has a different source of those sins as we talked about. But every believer possesses two natures, the sin nature or the Adamic nature, the new nature, because we are a new creation in Christ. And with that new creation, we have a new nature. And so we have two natures. And at this point in time, here are the scripture references, but I don't want to go through them all.

But in Romans 5.12, which you're familiar with, which we have gone through previous weeks, talking about, by one man, sin, definite article, the sin came into the world, and death by sin. So death passed upon all men for all of sin. Talking about, for by one man, the sin, the sin nature came into the world. So everyone has a sin nature.

And God has not eradicated it, so we still have that sin nature. And in 1 John it says that if we say that we don't have a sin nature, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. We have a new nature. We become a new creation in Christ with a new nature. And it's Christ very nature, as Peter says. He says it's the divine nature. Now here's the thing. The question is, why hasn't God eradicated that sin nature? Why did He leave that sin nature within us?

Okay, excellent point. The answer was one reason is that we really appreciate having a Savior in terms of what Christ did on the cross for us. Think about that. If on that list of sins, if you don't realize how offensive any of those is to God, and that Christ died and paid the penalty for every one of those sins. And pages and pages we could list after that. And just think about that in terms of what Christ did for us. Whoa! It's incredible. Okay. Scripture doesn't tell us.

Scripture is silent in terms of why God left us with that sin nature, even though He's given us the new nature, which is Christ's very nature. Just a couple of points, and that's this, that if we look at the sin nature, I want you to remember this now. is incapable of holiness or righteousness. The new nature is incapable of sin. So we have the old nature, the Adamic nature, the sin nature, incapable of any holiness or righteousness. The new nature, Christ's very nature, is incapable of sin. Everybody believe that?

As you go, as you take a look, At 1 John 3.9, it says exactly that, that those who are of God do not sin. It's talking about those who have the divine nature cannot sin. Think about it, if we have Christ, first of all, let me ask the question, could Christ sin?

Why not? Okay, he's holy. It's not in his nature, right? We looked at his nature in terms of being holy and righteous and just, etc. It's not within his nature. He's incapable of sinning because of who he is. Can a dog bark? Why? Because it's part of his nature, right? Can a dog meow? No, because it's not part of his nature. So, Christ cannot sin because it's not part of his nature. We have the very nature of the Lord Jesus Christ. So, it's incapable of sin.

So, from whence comes the sin? The sin has to come from the sin nature or the old nature. Over the years, I've tried to diagram this to give you the picture in terms of what this looks like. When we talk about the source of a believer's sins, You know, here we are, here you are, mind and heart, and in Scripture, that term mind and heart, in the New Testament, in the Old Testament, the same thing is true with mind and heart.

Those words are used synonymously sometimes, just like soul and spirit is used synonymously, but yet they're used distinctively. But at any rate, here we are with mind and heart. We have a soul. Within our soul, we have a mentality. We are capable of thinking, of reasoning. We have senses, the five senses. We can relate to the entire world with our senses. We have a conscience that God has given us. We have emotions. We have will. That is our soul. Now, we abide somewhere at any moment of time.

As a believer, we abide either in the sin nature or we abide in our new nature, which is Christ's very nature. The sin nature is the very nature of Adam that we inherited from Adam. So, we're abiding somewhere. So, on that list of sins, when we're sinning, those sins The source is from that sin nature.

And what we do is by faith. We make a faith transfer over here to the sin nature. That switch over here is we do that by faith. We do it by faith, and I say by faith for this reason, because we think getting angry at someone or getting back at someone is a lot more satisfaction than abiding in Christ. Just to strike back, just whatever it is, the sin nature obviously finds more satisfaction in that. And so the sin nature comes at us with that temptation. How? how wonderful it is that you just put that person down. Because you are right. See, you are right. And that's how the nature comes at us.

And depending upon how well we know the word Jesus Christ, depends upon which way our faith is going to go. We're going to do that by faith. So, being here is what scripture calls unbiblical faith. Over here, abiding in the new nature is biblical faith.

So, that's kind of a picture in terms of the source. Any questions, raise your hand because I'm just going to keep on going here. So, the question is this. The question that we want to ask is, we just answered the question in terms of what the source of a believer's sins are. Now the question is this. What's our relationship to the source? Okay? So let me ask it as a question.

What is your relationship to your sin nature? Without looking at your notes. Here you are. You're walking in the Spirit, you have fellowship with the Lord, and some event occurs in your life which really disturbs you. and the anger is coming at you. What do you do? Where's the anger coming from? It's in nature. What's your relationship to the Source? We are dead to it. I want you to see that, because it's critical that we know this. Turn to Romans chapter 6 and verse 2. Go back to Romans 5 and look at verse 20.

It says, the law entered that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, and there's a definite article there, where the sin abounded, grace did much more abound. Verse 21, that as sin, or the sin nature, has reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord." So then Paul goes right into chapter 6 and he says, what should we say then? Shall we sin, continue in sin, in the sin, the sin nature? There's a definite article there, that grace may abound. I mean, isn't that a logical question? And what he's saying is where the sin nature abounded Grace did much more abound. Grace overflowed. It overflowed the abounding of the sin nature. It just overflowed it.

So, I mean, logical question. Well, if grace overflows that of the sin nature, why not continue in the sin nature so that grace might abound? Isn't that a logical question? What's his answer? God forbid. May it never be so. In fact, in the Greek, the construction, you could translate it this way. It's impossible. It is impossible. Why is it impossible?

And verse 2 gives the answer. It says, because we are dead. To sin. To the sin. We are dead to the sin nature. Question? You look alive. What does it mean when it says that we're dead to the sin nature? Okay, cut free. Death means? Separation. Cut free. So how can we, as believers in Christ, who are dead, cut free, separated from the sin nature, continue in the sin nature? So that's what Paul is saying. So the thing is this, that as the temptation comes, that we need to understand our relationship to that sin nature and the source of sin, which is the source of sin, that we are dead. We're cut loose from it. We don't have to be a slave to it. Okay, so let's take a look at that. As I've indicated in...

How did that death occur? How did we die to the sin nature? How were we cut loose? How were we separated from that sin nature? Not only how, but when? When were you cut loose from your sin nature? When was I cut loose from my sin nature? When were we set free? on the cross, that's the place it happened, and the when is when we trusted Christ. The moment that we trusted Christ, we were put on the cross with Christ. We died with Him. by that? How did that happen?

This is a tough concept because, I mean, the cross occurred 2,000 years ago, right? And here we are in 2003, and we've been around here for whatever years, less than 100. And the cross was 2,000 years ago. I don't want to give away my age. No. The cross occurred 2,000 years ago. How were we put on that cross? Because we were co-crucified with Christ.

Paul says in Galatians 2.20, I am crucified with Christ.

And the word there in Galatians 2.20 is I am co-crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live, yet not I. but Christ liveth in me. In the life that I now live, in the flesh, I live by the faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am co-crucified with Christ." You and myself were co-crucified with Christ. How did we get on that cross?

Vani's question last week, she asked the question, about was it eternal life, having eternal life? When did we really receive it? Was it when we trusted Christ or was it before the foundation of the world? Did you think about that question? I'm sorry, say it a little louder, Crystal. We're all? Okay, so the point is, we're all eternal. When did that eternity start for us as a person?

Now, by the way, this is not a trick question, and I'm trying to get a response here, and this is not a test. I'm not working anything there. No, think of it. At conception, okay, There's somebody who ventured. At conception, we became a person, right? That's when we became a person. Now, let me ask you a question. Did we exist as a person before conception? Did we have a spirit and a soul? Obviously we didn't have a body until conception, right? And it started the formation of the body. How about a spirit and a soul? Did our spirit and soul kind of float around and exist way back in the past?

It's not a trick question. Okay, no? Okay, so how do we correlate then that we were in Christ before the foundation of the world, in terms of Ephesians chapter 1? Because if it's that conception, how did we get before the foundation of the world? Let me tell you, this is a tough question. I don't know that I've got the answer, okay? I'll look at Ephesians 1, 3? Or 4? He chose us? Read it again. Yeah. Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. Okay. He chose us in Him, in Christ, before the foundation of the world. Well, hold it now.

If our existence came into being and we became eternal at conception, then how do we correlate that with with Ephesians. So, did we exist prior to conception? Was our soul and spirit around for eons? Okay, he chose us, it doesn't mean he existed yet.

Alright, I'm trying to make it a trick question now. Let me tell you, after years of thinking about this, in terms of The only way that I can explain it in my own mind is this, that all these scripture passages are true, and I think that we didn't exist via spirit or soul or body until conception. Scripture never says anything about our souls and spirits floating around there before the foundation of the world. We did not exist as a person. So we came into existence at a point in time.

Also, at a point in time, the Gospel was presented to us, and we put our trust and faith in the person of Christ and in His work, that He died for our sins, He was buried and He rose again the third day, and He died for us personally. We believe that. When we believe those two things, God put us in Christ. If we were to read on in chapter 6, in verse 3 and 4, it says that He baptized us into Christ. He immersed us into Christ, into the person of Christ, into His death, burial, resurrection, His ascension, and His seeding. So, we are in Christ.

Now, what we need to do and try to understand is to get ourselves out of the physical realm and think about the spiritual realm. Because in this physical realm, there's tick-tock time. And I'm looking at the clock all the time. And we're always looking at the clock, right? And we're in tick-tock time. But in the spiritual realm, God looks at truths, not time. So the thing is that we were co-crucified with Christ. God doesn't put the time factor in there.

It's just in terms of what happened, in terms of where in Christ, Christ was on the cross when He was on the cross, then we were on the cross with Him. Now, that was 2,000 years ago, but now the question is, when did the cross really come into existence? When did God, we just blew the lesson, when did God When did God make a decision of the cross? Back in the eternal covenant, before the foundation of the world, God knew that before creation, that when he created man, that man would sin. just because God knows it, is not causative.

He didn't cause man to sin. So Adam sinning was not a surprise to God. He didn't have to say, oops, we've got to go to plan B, just like we had to do the other night. He didn't have to go to plan B because it was planned before the foundation of the world. And there was the eternal covenant, the agreement made between the Father and the Son. Son, you lay your life down for the sins of the world.

You shed your blood, Hebrews 13.20, and I'll take it up again. I'll raise you up again.

Okay. So, now think about this. In the spiritual realm, no time, no tick-tock time, that we were co-crucified with Christ, And he was crucified 2,000 years ago physically. But the plan was, when? Before the foundation of the world. We're in him. We were co-crucified with him. He was essentially co-crucified before the foundation of the world. He came to do his father's will, right? When he came, that was his father's will. We were in him, guess when? Before the foundation of the world.

So are you making a distinction between plan A and when it actually happened? Are you saying there's something more to it than the conceptual? I'm sorry. No, I don't understand the question. Before the foundation of the world. Okay. Are you saying that something happened, there's more to it than a conceptual God-knew, God-planned, that something's going to happen in the future, in time? Okay. He knew man would sin. Right? Right. Are you saying the crucifixion happened before the foundation of the world?

All those things you just went through? Are you saying that actually happened? Or was it just a plan that he had? It was a plan, but essentially, let's see, it was a plan. It hadn't happened yet, but it was a fact. It was truth. It was fact. It was going to happen. Okay? True. God's foreknowledge. Okay. All right. We've got ten minutes. I'm just going to try and zip through this.

But it's important to understand that you're dead and that you've been cut loose from your sin nature, and that you were co-crucified, and we went through that. Okay, so how do you picture that? So I tried to draw a picture here to understand. Here's the cross, here's the sins of the world on the cross, and the Lord Jesus Christ took the sins of the world upon himself on that cross in 1 John 2. where it says he is the propitiation or he is the satisfaction not for our sins only but for the sins of the entire world. And so he died for the sins of the entire world and was resurrected.

When we put our faith and trust in terms of what he did for our sins, at the very moment we put our trust in him, we were co-crucified with Christ. God sees our sin nature on that cross. That's where He sees that sin nature, because Christ died unto that sin nature. And at that very same moment, we were put into a living union with Christ.

So we received a new nature, His very nature. the nature that cannot sin. And this is the nature that cannot be holy or righteous. So we've got these two natures, one totally righteous, one totally unrighteous within us. And there's a battle that goes on within us. So we're in living union with this nature, with our new nature, Christ's nature. We were cut loose, separated from this nature. We were in the living union with the old nature, with the sin nature, but we were cut loose from that nature.

So, the thing is this. Here comes a situation in our life, and here comes the anger. Maybe we'll talk about that in Temptation. Question. No, no. Okay. Okay. Excellent question. The question that was asked was this. Is everybody's sin nature co-crucified with Christ? Good question. Your answer? Only those in Him. Only those in Him. Okay. So, Crystal? Pardon me? Okay. Alright, good question. So, hold it. Now, here comes that He died for the sins of the world, but how come He didn't die for the sin nature? Okay. Okay. Very good. Okay. Notice what we say here turns out about believers. It's only believers that are in a living union with the Lord Jesus Christ, with His nature.

Unbelievers are in a living union with that sin nature, which was put on the cross, is condemned. This sin nature in Romans 8.3 says that it's condemned. So, did He die unto everybody's sin nature? Yes, in that He condemned it on the cross. The sin nature of every single person is condemned on the cross. But the unbeliever who hasn't trusted Christ does not believe that Christ died for their sins.

They're still in union with that old nature, with the Adamic nature. They're in union with that. That nature is condemned forever and ever for all eternity. So if the nature is condemned and they're in union with that nature, where are they? What's their status? They are condemned.

Okay. Does that help? Or is that more confusing? Okay. We're going to whisk right through these. I think I've shown you this before, and maybe not in this class, but when I talk about faith in the auditorium, and you may have been there or may not, but I just want you to understand this in terms of temptation. Okay?

Here's what happens. We're walking in the Spirit, we're abiding in Christ, and here comes that event in our life. Some event that gets us upset. Whatever it may be. And you can think of that event in your life this week, where you may have gotten angry, where you may have the feeling of anger came on, resentment, fear, anxiety, worry, whatever one of those two pages of sins that we listed, that comes at you. And if we look at James Chapter 1, which we don't have time to turn there, but what it says is this. is that essentially, here we are, abiding in Christ, and then the lust, which is the source, or the desires, out from the sin nature, come at us. And we start being drawn away. And here comes the anger. You should be angry at that person because of what he or she said or did. And the anger comes at us and starts to draw us away from Christ. And not only that, then comes the enticement.

And the enticement is when you throw that hook into the water with that worm on the end of it, and you're enticing fish. Come on, take that bait, right? And that's what happens. Then comes the bait. Then comes this enticement. And depending upon our response to that, to being drawn away or being lured by the bait, depending upon response. Now, our response could be, yeah, I'm going to go for it.

Or our response can be, as Romans 6.11 says, to reckon ourselves 6.2, Romans 6.2 says that we are dead. 6.11 says, count it true that you're dead, that you've been cut loose, you've been separated from that sin nature which is coming at you, drawing you away, enticing you to be angry, to be this, to have fear and worry, etc., etc. Reckon yourself dead. That's the process of temptation. So we're to reckon ourselves dead. And then, however, sometimes that bait is so attractive, we take the bait. And when we take that bait, I love the word in the Greek, it's sulumbano. We just sulumbano-ed. And the word there is we became pregnant.

You can't reverse pregnancy. you cannot go back. And pregnancy produces birth. And birth, as it goes in this text, in James chapter 1, 13 through 15, the birth is the baby is sin. And as a result of sin, there's death. And death means what? Separation. And it's separation from fellowship with Christ, not separation from salvation, not losing our salvation, but it's death in terms of separation or losing our fellowship with Christ, and now we're abiding in the flesh.

And we just made the switch. By faith, we took that bait. We thought it was more attractive. Okay. In your notes, Just give me a minute. There's one thing I would just like to make clear. There's 13 pages of notes there, but there's one thing I just want us to understand. The impact. The impact on your life, the impact on my life, when we take that bait.

When we take the bait and we abide in the flesh versus abiding in the Spirit, or walking in the old nature versus the new nature. If we're walking in the Spirit, with our new nature, in our new nature, then if you look at... By the way, let me mention this. In terms of abiding or walking, we're either abiding or walking in one of two places, in the Spirit or in the flesh.

There's no in-between. We're either here or here. It's a digital state. It's like a computer. A computer deals with ones and zeros. So it's either a one or a zero. We're in one of two states. We're either walking in the spirit or walking in the flesh. Walking in the sin nature or walking in our new nature. If we're walking here, abiding in Him, beholding Christ, then there's growth. We are growing. We grow spiritually. The moment we We abide in the flesh. I just want you to notice here that there is no growth. There is no spiritual growth. Can somebody tell me why? Okay. Okay. Loss of fellowship. Very good. And what does it take? What does it take to grow?

Second Corinthians 3.18, think about it.

All we with unveiled face, beholding as in the mirror the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, are being changed, transformed into His very same image. So we have to be walking in Him, beholding Him, and as we behold Him, and we behold Him in the mirror. The mirror is the thing that reflects Him, is the Word of God. So there cannot be any growth because we're not beholding Christ. We're in the flesh and we're beholding self as opposed to beholding Christ. So there's no growth.

We confess, the Spirit comes along and says, That outburst of anger is sin. Confess that sin. We're restored back to fellowship. We're now walking in the Spirit. Beholding Him, we can continue on with the process of growth. Okay? So, walking in the Spirit, here's grace. Walking in the flesh, we're living under a law system. There's some law system that you're going to be living under if you're walking in the flesh.

So, and here's the distinction between the two. And Galatians says that we can fall from grace. It doesn't mean that we lose our salvation. When it says that we fall from grace, we fall from grace to law, living in the flesh. Okay. I'm sorry, I ran over, but let's close in a word of prayer.

Our Father, we just thank you for the wonderful truth that you've given to us in your word. And we thank you, Father, for the work on the cross that Christ has done on our behalf. Not only did he die for our sins, but he died unto our sin nature. And we thank you, Father, through just simple trust and faith in what he's done, that you have co-crucified us with him. And we don't need to be a slave to our sin nature any longer. And we can live unto you that his life might be manifested through us. And that's our prayer. In Jesus' name, amen.