Trials and Suffering
Hal Molloy · Feb 22, 2004
Trials & Suffering (2004), No. 08
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4826233214796

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

We're looking at our identification with Christ. Last week, I'll ask the question again. Why was it necessary that we be identified with Christ? This is a test, just to see if you're listening last week. Did we have the right identity? Because previously we were identified with the father of life, Satan, and could not therefore remain or be in the presence of the Holy One. Okay, so we had the wrong identity. Our identification was in Adam, and everything about our identification in Adam was wrong. in terms of the identification that we needed to be in the presence with the Father, we had to have the identity of Christ.

Could we do anything to change this identity that we had in Adam? No. Impossible to change. Man tries to change his identity, But you can't do it. If you're black, you can't change your identity to white. If you're Irish or Hungarian, you can't change your identity to Italian. If you're a male, you can't change your identity to a female.

Although some were trying. When I lived in the Bronx, New York, we had a there was a fellow in our neighborhood who who decided to change his identity. As far as I know, he's the first one. Remember Christine Jorgensen? He lived in my neighborhood and he tried to change his identity.

So he did it externally, everything that he could do externally, but he couldn't do it internally. Because God wired him to be a male. And no matter what he did externally, he was still a male. He thought like a male, and even though externally he tried to make himself female, he couldn't do it.

Same thing here. There is no way. that we can change our identity. Not even God tries to change our identity. And what He does is He replaces us. He replaces us. And He replaces this identity with identification of Christ. Turn to Romans chapter 6. And we started in, we left off at verse 3. Know ye not that as many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death. Now, I want you to notice that the way that God changes our identity is He baptizes us.

And the word baptized meant what? Immersion. Immersion. And what does he do? He places us into Christ. He immerses us into Christ. Now, notice the first thing, the immersion. The immersion is into the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Notice that in verse 3? And usually, when we talk about identification truths, we talk about his immersion into his death, burial, resurrection. But notice what Scripture says, is that we're immersed into the person of Christ.

And last week we used a little Right. Experiment here. But just so you see it. Right. We had this filled with dye. Right. And here we were in an atom and this white dye or bleach, whatever. I guess you can't dye white, can you? But here we were in Adam, in darkness, and we were placed into Christ, and we were immersed into Christ, and then we were raised with Him, and we were raised a new creation. And you cannot, and we're in Christ, and Christ is in us, and you can't separate us from Christ.

So this is who we are. This is the new creation. This is the old creation. You know what I like about that illustration versus the actually having something that dyes it, is that that continues to illustrate the two natures. Yeah. So, OK. Look at. So in verse 3, we're identified into Christ. Passive voice. God did it. We had nothing to do with it. In fact, we didn't even know it.

All we knew is that God came at us and said, you're a sinner. And because of your sin, you're going to go to hell. However, here's my son. And what he's done, he's died on the cross for your sins. He's paid the penalty for every one of your sins. It's a done deal. They're forgiven. The only issue between you and me is Christ, not your sins. Because the only sin that the Holy Spirit is convicting the world of is what? Unbelief. Unbelief, right? Because they believe not on me.

Okay. So, we were immersed into Christ. Indicative mood, which is a mood of reality. It's a reality. Whether we knew it or not, whether we understood it or not, and we didn't understand it when we believed, we had no clue it even happened. But nevertheless, it was true about us. We were baptized. We were immersed into the person of Christ. And we did not know that we were in this living union with the Lord Jesus Christ.

So now here comes the question. Why? Why did God baptize us, immerse us into Christ? Because He wanted to be glorified. Okay. In the end, that is true. He wanted to be glorified. To change our identity. And to change our identity. And when I'm thinking of specifically, I want you to turn there. Turn over to John chapter 17. And remember what the Lord Jesus Christ said before He went to the cross. John chapter 17, let's start at verse 20.

He says, neither pray I for these alone, but for them also who shall believe on me through their word. And we went through this once before, remember? And the ones he's talking about that shall believe is you and me. That we believe the word that he has given to his apostles. Verse 21, that they all may be one as thou, Father, art in me, Now look at the rest of it, that they also may be one in us. Notice that? That they, that's you and I, may be one in us, in the Father and in the Son.

And so this is an answer to his prayer. The only way that we could become one in the Father and in the Son was through this baptism, through immersion, being immersed into the person of Christ. And this immersion, now, is that we're immersed in and never taken out. Because we think of baptism as dipping in and taking out. But we're immersed in and never, ever taken out.

Certainly true. In terms of from the old to new, that there is a... Well, how about this? Let's look at it as a replacement. He replaced the old man with the new man. And as we today walk by faith, we are being transformed as we behold the Lord Jesus Christ. Maybe that's a better way to look at it. A transformation process is occurring in our life as we behold Him. And the transformation process is for us coming to understand who we already are in Christ.

Because we're immersed into Him. We have His very glory. As he said, Father, the glory that you have given me, I have given them." We have the totality of His glory, but we don't know what that is until we behold Him through the Word, and as we behold Him, He is transforming us. into that very same glory, from glory to glory. We're coming to understand who we already are. So the transformation process is an ongoing process. Flip over, since you're in John, go over to John chapter 14 and verse 20. Let's start at verse 17.

It says, Even the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive, because it sees him not, neither knows him, but you know him, for he dwells with you and shall be in you. So he's talking to his apostles just before the cross. So when does that become true? That the Lord Jesus is saying that the Holy Spirit is dwelling with you, but He shall be in you. When did that occur?

On the day of Pentecost. Okay. And he goes on to say, I will not leave you comfortless. I will come to you. Yet in a little while, and the world sees me no more, but you see me because I live. You shall live also. And we have his life, right? We have his very life.

And look at verse 20. At that day, which day? Pentecost. At that day, you shall know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you." Now, is he speaking here primarily to his disciples, but also to us now? Sure. Because everything that he told his disciples through his word was going to be true about us.

So, notice what he says in that day, that you and me, and I and you, and you can't separate Christ from you, or you from Christ. And isn't that the Christian life? is the outliving of the inliving Christ. The whole Christian life can be summarized by just about four words. The outliving of the inliving Christ. He's living His life through us.

Okay, back to Romans 6. One thing that's really relevant though is the fact that Romans 6 is theological truth, but in fact what Christ has pathetically outlined in John 14 is the Spirit as the activator, correct? As the activator, absolutely. Paul was well informed with the truth, but then the Romans 7 struggle in the absence of the empowering of the Holy Spirit. That makes the John passage so much more relevant.

Oh, absolutely. Okay, so the point is that our baptism starts with our immersion into the person of Christ. And in verse 3 of Romans 6, where it goes on to say that we were also baptized into His death. And same thing, it's a passive voice, we were acted upon, we had nothing to do with it, and it's the indicative mood, it's a fact in your life. that you were baptized into his death. And the reason, why? Why were we baptized into his death? Why were we immersed into his death? Josiah?

So that the sin nature could be judged. Okay, so the sin nature could be judged. Any other thoughts? And to the condemnation, so it's condemned? And we had to die in order to be co-resurrected? Very good. Excellent. So that we can be separated from that nature that we don't need to be a slave to it anymore.

Weren't all of these things that have been stated true, but for the reason of all was our belief in the gospel and therefore we were baptized into his death. This all occurred because of our trust and faith in terms of the person and the work of our Lord Jesus Christ. What we're going through is kind of like the mechanics of it, if you will, in terms of the truth of our identification, in terms of what God did. This is what He did. Now there's the outworking of this, as Bob was alluding to here a moment ago, in our life. How do we make this real in our life? And we'll come to that in just a minute.

So we had the wrong identity in Adam, and we had to be separated from that sin nature. We had to be cut loose from that sin nature. We had to be cut loose for various reasons. as David said, so that we didn't need to serve it any longer. We didn't need to be a slave to it any longer.

Because in our old man, we were united with that sin nature, right? And we could not be separated from that sin nature. And so the sin nature was the driver in our life. Everything we did, every desire we ever had, came out from that sin nature. And we were driven by the sin nature.

And whether it was a desire to do good, it was still out from the sin nature. Whether it was a desire to do evil, it was still desire out from the sin nature. And the sin nature wants to be, if you will, righteous, quote unquote, and have his or her own self-righteousness. And still, that is sin in God's eyes. No matter how good the sin is, sin is sin. Question. Did the sin nature die? No, it always was. I have no yeses? Not one? It was certainly not a 9 out of 10. Okay, it was certainly not a 9.

So the question is, what happened to the Sin Nature? So, as you look at various teachings today, we have some unbiblical teaching with respect to the sin nature. And the first one, as Nancy said, was annihilation or eradication. And as we go through Romans 6, we understand that none of these unbiblical teachings are true. But the first unbiblical teaching is eradication.

And according to this teaching, when a person becomes a Christian, the sin nature itself dies or is eradicated. It's like poof, it's gone. And this means the very capacity to sin is removed. And so whatever a Christian chooses or desires in his or her life comes from the new nature. Now does that sound like your life? doesn't sound like mine. Our experience in life is that we sin, right? We get angry. We worry. We have fear. We have anxieties.

And that's sin, right? So scripture doesn't teach us that the sin nature has been eradicated. And we've gone through Romans 6.6 where it says, knowing this, that our old man is crucified. that the body of sin, or the body of the sin nature, might be destroyed. And that word destroyed, ketnergeo, doesn't mean annihilation, as many teach, but it means to be put out of business, taken offline, or some of your translations say rendered inoperative. So the other false teaching is suppression, that we can suppress, and we have the power to suppress the sin nature in our life. So this recognizes that the sin nature is present, but the Christian is responsible then to hold down the desires of the sin nature.

So in this approach, a great deal of emphasis is placed on the law for suppression. So you're oppressed in nature by law. And guided by the law's demands, and always aware of his own personal responsibility, the individuals fights for mastery over his old self.

Does this sound like anything in Scripture? Bob mentioned it just a while ago in Romans chapter 7, this struggle in terms of suppression of the sin nature that Paul went through. He says, remember in Romans 7, the things that I want to do The very things I want to do, I don't do. The very things that I don't want to do, those are the things that I do.

And there was this battle that went on within Paul, and he was trying to suppress all of the desires that came out from the sin nature. And he talked about the desire, well he talked about coveting. Coveting just means desire. And he had all these desires, and that he knew was inconsistent with the Word of God.

But he was trying to suppress them and not do the things that the law said you shouldn't do. But he wanted to do the things that the law said you should do. Failure. And he failed. What was his final conclusion in Romans 7, 24? He said, a wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of sin. So, suppression doesn't work. Then there's the teaching about self-crucifixion. And this is how this goes.

Noting that we were crucified with Christ in Romans 6, Galatians 2.20, where Paul said, I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live.

This approach to the Christian life visualizes our sin nature as something that struggles to get off the cross again. So it's the receiver's, believer's responsibility then to live the crucified life. Each temptation calls for renewed surrender to God. So you have all these temptations and you renew this surrender to God. And the interesting thing is this, at times this approach to Christian living has led individuals to see every human desire and pleasure as an indication of sin. So you have desires in your life, you have temptations in your life, you see this as sin.

So let me ask you a question. Are temptations sin? Are desires sin? My temptation to get angry at Monday is not a sin? Yes. It's not the temptation, it's the grasping of the temptation. The response to it. Okay, so it's only when I respond to the temptation, the temptation in and of itself is not sin. But when I respond to it and I say, yeah, I'm going to put her in her place, because I know she's wrong, right? I know she's wrong, and boy, I'm going to be right. But I thought it was a sin just thinking about it. It's after that revival.

Okay. And haven't we taken our eyes off the Lord? That temptation comes upon us. Okay. So, alright, so here's the question. Scripture says that just thinking about it is a sin. And for example, the Lord Jesus Christ told us that if a man lusts or desires after a woman, that there's no difference between that and committing the act itself of adultery. Right? Okay. So what's the difference between the statement that we just said, that temptation is not a sin, and the fact of having this desire?

You've already taken the bite. I mean, you've already gone for it if you're lusting like that. The fact that you'd see a man would see a woman, I mean, seeing the woman isn't the sin. Sure, the thinking, but that is the process. That is taking the bait. Okay. Karin said it. Pardon me? Karin said it. He was lusting for, when he was still married, he was lusting for whatever he looked at.

Okay. So let's go through the process, just for a minute, to see the difference. So here comes... Right? And there is a temptation. And the Spirit of God comes to me and says that if I go any further, that's sin. But I don't have to go any further because I can reckon myself the fact that I'm dead. I'm dead to that sin. Right? I've been cut loose from the sin nature. I don't have to follow after the desire of the sin nature. And so I can see myself dead unto sin, as Bob said last week, but what? Alive unto unto God, unto Christ.

I think one way to conceptualize this, and I have anything but victory here most of the time, but if you think of Christ's temptation in the wilderness, I mean, we know when we rest in Him, stand in the theological truth of our position, that every temptation is therefore a testing to prove who we really are, right? So I think I mean, the self-crucifixion, I suspect that most of us go through this all the time, this idea of calling for renewed surrender to the power of God to overcome these things in our life.

I mean, aren't we doing this all the time? But yet, that's not what we believe. And as we share in the truth of what this is all about, that's not what we believe, but that's where we act, right? So the perspective, again, which I have not conquered, is the idea of a temptation as a testing to prove ourselves who we really are in Christ, right? And most of the time, the Greek actually, the term temptation can be interpreted as testing, can it not?

I mean, sometimes those two are distinguishable. True. And the interesting thing, and we'll be getting there, we'll be getting there, and we'll be seeing that a temptation, which is a pirasmos, which is a solicitation to sin, you know, You know, a solicitation to sin. There's that solicitation to sin. But God uses that, as Bob says, as a test. He uses a temptation, which is the solicitation to sin, as a test. of our faith. We'll see that. But we're not there yet. And this is where we're going into Charles's suffering. But we've got to lay this foundation. We have to understand this foundation.

Josiah? Not to say that the temptation comes from God, but that he uses the temptation that comes from the old man. Or from the world, you know? Yeah. And because in that same book, in the book of James, in chapter 1, he says God cannot tempt us. He cannot solicit us to sin. It's impossible for him to do that. To replace us in a fallen world, correct?

Correct. There's no way out. Correct. The very presence of the temptation indicates that we have the sin nature. Yeah. The temptation isn't sin. Rather, when we're tempted, we observe that the sin nature is within us, but at that point, can we choose to abide in one of these tithes? It's a solicitation to sin, but it's not sin. Faith. Choice of faith.

I don't know, but when you start intellectualizing this, which choice am I going to make? You're almost defeated when you're at that point. I'm alright with that. Am I going to choose this or choose that? That's almost a self-crucifixion kind of concept.

Choice of faith. Bob, I used to be the other way where I didn't think that I could believe. I just waited around for the Holy Spirit to enable me to believe. I did that a couple of years ago, but now I do believe from the Scriptures that it is our responsibility to believe to appropriate the truth. So choose to believe, maybe that's a better way to say it, but still, we do have that responsibility.

Thank you, Scripture. And I think the bottom line is that we're going to rest we're going to trust, how about this, we're going to trust in either the old man or in Christ. And it's basically, it comes down to that, is where we're going to rest and where we're going to trust. And it's a constant battle. Yes. It's that. Okay. Self-crucifixion. The last one is penalism. This approach views all temptations as attacks of Satan. The problem is never located within us, but it's always the fault of Satan.

And so isn't this true? This is true, especially true, with those who believe that we only have one nature. Okay. And they say, well, okay, then where does Where do these desires come from? Where do these temptations come from? Well, obviously, when you have a new nature, they can't come from Christ's nature, so therefore they have to be external. They're never internal, they're external. And they must be from Satan. Do you see where they're all temptations? Where the two stars come? For those who believe this, those who believe that we have one nature, believe that all temptations are attacks of Satan. Because if we only have Christ's nature, right? Christ's nature can't sin, doesn't have the desire to sin. There is no desire in Christ to sin.

It's not his character. It's not his character, it's not who he is, right. Is that okay, David? But biblically there are some temptations that Satan ends, but not all. I mean, I see that that's the unbiblical. Oh, from the biblical side? From the biblical side, true, there are temptations from Satan. True. Okay. So, very briefly, let me just go through this.

In terms of what does Scripture teach? What is biblical teaching? Now, before you start that, on the last concept of biblical teaching, the question is what do you call these things that arise from within us, and if we have one nature, where's this stuff coming from?

And you pointed out faith, but I've heard some people describe this as bad habits, like the whole transition from a caterpillar to a butterfly kind of thing, where we're seeing ourselves as a caterpillar, and therefore these are habits that we bring.

There's all this kind of circumferential reasoning as to what this is all about. Yeah, and that is true in terms of what Bob says. Those who believe that we have one nature, that the sin nature is eradicated, Then from whence comes the desires? From whence comes the sin?

Well, it's called residuals, right? And we talked about that here a couple of weeks ago, right? About that there's these residuals left over in our body and they sin. And we sin because of these residuals that are just kind of left over, floating around.

And I gave you the illustration of that. The fact that if I in my house, if I turn off the circuit breaker, the main circuit breaker to the house and I go in the house and I turn on my lights, there's no residual. energy in those lines to light those lights, right? In order to light the lights, we have to have a power source. In order to sin, there must be a power source, right? And the source is the sin nature. Well, so kind of underlying all four of those is that sins are the problem?

There are some bad things maybe that we've done, but it's not Us that have a problem? You know, it's not the sin nature that's the problem. Do you know what I'm saying? Okay, in this unbiblical... Right, in the unbiblical thing. Underlying it all is that it's not really me that was the problem. No. It's what I did. No, it's not you. Right. Well, isn't that also sort of along the line, you know, you talk to people and they say, well, man is inherently good. True. Especially a believer. I have a friend who, I think, I'm pretty sure is a believer, and she said something about, well, you know, I just can't believe that we were all bad.

There had to be some little bit of good within us that otherwise why would God want to save us? I mean, it's sad because she's caught in that cycle that's just going to go on forever of trying to be worth something to God. And I said, you know, but how awesome if there was absolutely nothing within us, you know? Grace all the more awesome, you know?

Sure. So you take her to Romans Chapter 3, where it says, there are none that are righteous, none that doeth good, no, not one. But you know, the more you understand about the sinful nature, it would very quickly come to this conclusion. It's the sins that I do, I'm not that bad, because five days, I want to be on the throne. When bad things happen to good people, that book would be great again. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so what's the Biblical teaching? Let me just read through it.

Number one, sin nature is condemned, Romans 8.3, alright? It's condemned. But, the sin nature is alive and well. And we talked about condemnation before in terms of it's just that it's been condemned, but the penalty hasn't been executed yet, so that the sin nature is still alive and well and resides within us. But the sin nature, as stated before, has been rendered powerless.

It's been taken offline. choose to go back to it, but it's been taken offline. It's been put out of business. The issues are how it's been taken offline from God's perspective. From God's perspective. Our perspective, it's alive and well. Except if we reckon what God has done. That he's taken it offline. But we have to reckon this truth. Absolutely right. Jesus, you reckon? And you reckon by faith, right? Okay.

The other is that the believer, you and I, have died. We've been separated, right? We've been cut loose from the union, and so our position is is that we're no longer in union with the sin nature. We've been cut loose from it. Our union now is with the person of Christ. So the identification has changed, the union has changed. The believer has been separated also, not from just the union, but from its power.

The believer can still choose to abide, Boy, I used the word choose. And I should have said the believer can still, by faith, abide in his or her sin nature. Because it is a faith response, is what it is. Because what happens is that by faith you can either see the sin nature more attractive than Christ, and it's by faith. And so that says, the more we know Christ, the less we're going to, by faith, abide over here in the sin nature. The more we know Him, the more we're going to abide there, and the less we're going to abide in the sin nature. The believer is to reckon himself dead. Because from God's perspective, as Bob points out, we are dead. That's God's perspective. We are dead. We've been cut loose from the sin nature. So reckon it. You reckon, put it down as true, and you do that how? How do you reckon? It's done by faith. By faith. By faith. You put it down as true by faith that that's happened. Okay, I'm going to finish this today.

But not only have we been immersed or baptized into the person of Christ, into his death, into his burial, into his resurrection, since we've been baptized or identified with the person of Christ, then everything that Christ went through, we went through. Death, burial, resurrection, ascension, seeding. And all of this is true because we were in Christ. We were identified in the person of Christ.

So all this is true about us. And burial is important. And the reason why burial is important is to see yourself. Because many will say, Christ didn't really die. But he died. He was buried. This was the proof. Burial was the proof of his death. Because many say that he just swooned on the cross. That he really didn't die. But the fact that he was buried was the proof that he died, and that's key.

The last one here is, not only were we also baptized into Christ's body, right? And His body is the Church. And in 1 Corinthians 12, 13, it says, For by one Spirit will we all, what? baptized. into his body, talking about the body of Christ, or the church.

And this is interesting because this answers the Lord Jesus' prayer in John 17, 21, and 22. And his prayer, remember, is that they all may be one. Right? His prayer was in two parts, that they, that we, may all be one, and the way that we're is that we're baptized into the body of Christ, into the church. And then the next part of his prayer is that they may be one in us. And that part of his prayer was fulfilled when we were baptized into the person of Christ.

If you want to see it in summary form, look at it this way. This is a picture. Get it all in one picture. Here you are. you're co-crucified with Christ. In fact, the words that are used in scripture is co-crucifixion. In Galatians 2.20 when Paul says, I am crucified with Christ, I am co-crucified with Christ. So since I was baptized into Christ, everything that happened to Christ happened to me. Co-crucified. So the sin nature is put on the cross. It's nailed to the cross. It's condemned. Then we are co-buried with Him. You really died. You really were cut loose from the sin nature. You were separated from the sin nature. And you were co-risen. You were put into a living union with the Lord Jesus Christ. who, when he was raised, you were raised.

And you were raised into what Romans 6.4 says, into the newness of life. And the word newness is not an adjective. You were raised in newness. It's a noun. You were raised in newness, total newness of life, whose source of that newness is life. It's a genitive of source, whose source is life. Christ's very life. So you're new. I'm new. We're totally new. We're a new creation in Christ. And then you were co-seated into the risen and glorified Lord. You were co-seated with Him. And here you are. Christ in you, you in Christ. Your baptism into the person of Christ.

Next week we're going to start hitting trials and suffering. We're going to be hitting some passages in trials and suffering. Let's close. Father, when we see from your Word what you have done, how glorious it is, and how glorious it is, Father, to know who we are in Christ. The fact that you took us from Adam, our identification in Adam, and have taken us out of Adam, ended our history in Adam, and placed us into the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom we have a new history. We thank you, Father, for it. We pray, Father, that as we go through these truths, that each of us would grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. In His name we pray. Amen.