Identification Truths

The reason we've gone to Romans 5.12 is because it's the beginning of an understanding of the identification truths. And if you look at the book of Romans, it's designed and laid out very logically in terms of all men are separated from God, all men are fallen, and that's what we've spent the last five weeks or so, six weeks on, is all men's identification with Adam and their relationship to God because of their identification with Adam.

And men have two basic problems. They have the problem of their sins, and they have the problem of sin, their sin nature. They have the problem. And they can't do anything about either one themselves. Well, Romans sets up a scenario where the sins issue, or all men being guilty before God is the first thing because of their sins, then God brings the remedy, which is the death of Christ, the substitutionary death of Christ, to pay the penalty for the sins of the world, so that his death satisfies God.

And now, when you get to 5, where we're going to talk about today and for the next couple of weeks, comes what is known as the doctrine of the two men, which we've already talked about a lot, Adam and Christ. And so these two men are the critical men of all time. And we'll talk about the reason why. But then in six are the identification truths in terms of how God unidentified us with Adam and identified us with Christ.

And from that point on, in all of Paul's epistles, he assumes you understand that principle. He never explains it again. He refers to it over and over and over again. And if you don't understand the principle of the two men and the leaving of one and being identified with the other, then the rest of Paul's epistles become difficult to understand. Because you always have to think two questions in your mind when you're studying especially Paul's epistles.

Is he talking position or condition? Is he talking Adam or Christ? Do you see that? And I know from teaching a lot, here and in other places, that even on Tuesday, sometimes that's a real difficult issue. Position or condition. We'll have two camps, they're arguing with each other, and you know what they're arguing? One is arguing from the position, the other is arguing from condition. And if there isn't an understanding, once there is an understanding, the argument goes away. So the other thing is the two men. We're studying Galatians on Tuesday now. There are those in there that kind of think that we're not really done with the law. And the reason we're not really done with the law is because they don't understand this.

So, Romans 5.12-21, the doctrine of the two men.

So the first question I ask is, how did the sin nature get into the world? Through Adam. The verse is very succinct if you look at it slow. Through one man, sin entered the world. Now, I'm sure most of you have been through this before. Up until this time in the book of Romans, every time the word sin is used, it's plural. Sins. Sins. Sins. When you get to this verse, it's singular. Sin. And in the Greek, it has a definite article in front of it. The sin. When you see that, usually when you see the word sin, it means not acts done by sinners, it means sinners. Sin nature. So by one man, sins didn't get into the world, the sin nature came in. The whole composite of sins showed up, the person who sinned.

And so, if you were just in a position to say, well, I have been justified by my own trespasses and my own sins, I have been forgiven, would that afford you anything? Let's say if you're just forgiven, that you're a sinner, and you've committed sins, and you recognize that the person and work of Christ paid the penalty for your sins, not only past, but the ones that you're doing right now, and all those in the future.

If that was the totality of God's provision for you, how good would that be? What do you think? I'll add something to it. Do you have the right as a forgiven sinner to be in the presence of a holy God? How many think you do? How many think you don't? How many are too chicken to raise their hand? You don't. Because a forgiven sinner is still a sinner. A forgiven thief is still a thief.

So the issue that we're going to deal with now is this thing, sin, which we are identified with. The person that's born on this planet today comes into this world identified with a sin nature. And if they never come to Christ in their lifetime, God has some plans for that sin nature, condemnation. and if they leave this planet identified with the sin nature, they go where it goes to condemnation. Do you see that? No matter how good their life was. And we'll see that in a couple of verses.

So when Adam sinned, he became flesh and he got a sin nature. Now we've talked about in Genesis this principle of like begets like. So when you are conceived by your parents, what do you get? You get a sin nature, don't you? You become flesh. So when did all of you become a sinner? When you committed your first sin? When you were conceived? How many think it's when you were conceived?

Before then. You became a sinner when Adam sinned. Because you sinned in him. By one man, sin entered the world. What's the rest of the verse? Come on, somebody. You know the verse. I know you do. By one man sin entered the world, and death by sin. So death passed upon all men. Why? Because all men sinned. When did they sin? They sinned in Adam. Now that's another biblical principle that needs to be very clear. that our sinning, Adam didn't sin for us. You understand what I'm saying?

You can't look at Adam and say, You know, if I was Adam, I wouldn't have done that. Yeah, you would. Yeah, you would. You'd have done exactly what he did, because you're just like him. But the Bible teaches that we actually committed the sin when Adam sinned. You okay with that? Because that's what this verse says. Is everybody clear on that, or do you struggle with that principle? You're struggling, aren't you? No, you're okay with it? That's somebody else's fault, right?

One thing, I think people understand that for salvation. It doesn't somehow lose it with law and grace. You have to understand that for salvation. I mean, you have to have that, that you're a sinner. You have to understand that through Adam and Eve. So it's kind of odd that you know that for salvation, but abandon that when it comes to grace, law, you know, you suddenly keep going back to the old man.

I think the one thing you don't know when you're saved is that the work of salvation completely severs you from any identity with that old man, because 99 out of 100 Christians think that what they are are saved sinners. Even in the Schofield Reference Bible, Schofield has a footnote that says believers are saved sinners. You know what? There is no such animal as a saved sinner. It's an oxymoron.

Do you agree with that? It's like saying, does a forgiven sinner have the right to be in the presence of a holy God? Answer no. So what we're going to find out with identification truths is that your standing before God has nothing to do with your used to be identification with Adam. When Adam sinned against God, he was condemned to death, dead to God. Adam being your unsaved head in life, does the same hold true for you? Whatever is true of Adam is going to be true of you in your standing and position before God. Entire humanity into the position of death.

1 Corinthians 15.22 In Adam all die. Pretty simple. The nature of the children of wrath.

Ephesians 2.3 No dancing around about that. OK. Let's talk about imputation. What does imputation mean? Assigned is good. Let me show you what imputation is. This is imputation. You know why? Because if you use it, what happens to your account? The charge gets imputed to your account. You see that? In other words, it becomes your responsibility to pay it.

So God did not impute the sins of man to their account from Adam to Moses. Why not? No way to judge it. There wasn't a law. There wasn't a law. There wasn't a category. And notice what the verse says in verse 13. For until the law, sin was in the world. Sins or sin? Sin. But sin was not imputed when there is no law. So if there isn't any statute to violate, there's no category of sin. Was there a statute before that? There was one. And there was one guy who was supposed to obey it. So why does he pick these two guys, Adam and Moses? Obviously, Adam is obvious, but why Moses? Moses is the lawgiver. That's right. Moses got the law. The sins got categorized with Moses. So what about all these men?

Verse 14, Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses. And then the King James says, Even over them that had not sinned after the similarity or similitude of Adam's transgression was a figure of him to come. Now, the word says that men were dying, but they didn't die because they sinned like Adam sinned. What's the difference between their sins and Adam's sin? Adam was given a specific law. Don't eat of the tree. From then on, there weren't any specific laws until Moses. So Adam sinned because he violated... Notice they use the word transgression. Transgression means a violation of a law or a standard.

But men were sinning, but their sins weren't imputed to them because they weren't violating or they weren't transgressing. Do you see that? Does that make sense? In other words, if your kids grow up in your family and you have no laws in your house, and they can do whatever they want, no matter what it is, they haven't transgressed. They may be sinning, but they haven't transgressed.

Then you implement some laws, now they become transgressors. And when you become a transgressor, what happens? Your sins are imputed to your account. Out comes the charge card. Do you see that? So how about men in Romans chapter 1? What about their condemnation? Why would God condemn a man without law? Because he has a sin nature. And because God says, well, okay, you don't have the law, but here's the deal.

I've put into you a knowledge of me. and I put a knowledge of me in my creation. And what I require of you is that you honor me and be thankful. If you don't do that, if you want yourself rather than me, I'm going to give you yourself. And that's in essence what he does.

So men become condemned. The word is anomia, which means lawless. Now, sins, the sins, S-I-N-S, between Adam and Moses did not bring the sentence of death upon humanity. You alright with that? We don't think like that now. But back then, the sins that they committed did not bring the sentence of death on humanity.

As an example, when Cain killed his brother Abel, was that murder? Did he get a death sentence for doing that? He didn't, did he? No. Well, you think about it, because of that specific act of sinfulness, he doesn't get a death sentence. God doesn't take a life for a life. See that? There's punishment involved, but he's not condemned to death because he took another life. And if you look at what's going on in the world up until the time of Moses, there's lots of sinning, but it's not sinning unto death. Now everybody that sins doesn't die in the sense of for the specific sin that they commit. Are you with me on that? Or is that confusing? Isn't the fact that there is death, I mean that was part of the fall too. That there was death in the world between Adam and Moses.

Yeah. The point that he's making here is the breaking of the statute because there weren't any statutes, wasn't what condemned men to death. What condemned them to death? Because they had the sin nature. Maybe you look at it this way. If you look at the Book of Romans as a legal document, and it used to be in Harvard Law School years ago, people who were in law school had to study the Book of Romans and debate it in a moot court, because it's the greatest logical argument ever presented. greater than anything else, of course they wouldn't do that today, but the point is that a trial was held in the Garden of Eden by God and the verdict was rendered. Adam was guilty, so was his whole race, they were condemned.

This is probably off the subject a little bit, but the Great White Throne, those people, are going to be judged by their works, by their sins. But it wasn't attached to them. The mosaic law. No, the people between Adam and Moses that didn't have the sins imputed to them. Oh, I see what you're saying. The argument in the book here is that, well, let's say that God is not imputing the sins.

The problem is they're still dying. How come? How come the cemeteries are filling up if God isn't imputing their sinfulness, their sins, to them? How come? Because they've got this nature. They've got this sin nature. So what we're going to find out when we get up to Romans 8, and Romans 8.3 says, is what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, what did he do? He condemned sin in the flesh. So what happened was, there was a trial in the Garden of Eden, and the sin nature got condemned right there. And death was the judgment, or was the penalty, for the condemnation.

So all men are born dead. And they're born spiritually dead, and they die physically at some time later. Death reigns. Do you see that? Death is the reigning principle. It doesn't matter if a man was born and he never ever committed a sin, which is impossible, he'd still die. Because he's identified with the condemned sin nature. You see that? That's the point. You're talking about the flesh dies. Even a believer dies. Oh yeah. As a result of... But the separation is the spiritual thing. Born separated.

So I find it interesting, and that's why I ask in question four, what does the word say, why does the word say that death reigned? Keyword rain from Adam to Moses. We Americans don't understand this word rain very well, because we think we're free. What does rain mean? It's a place that can rule. Rule? A place that can control. Absolute authority. Absolute authority.

There's only one guy that I know of that escaped death in the Old Testament. Who was it? Enoch. Only one. But he was born spiritually dead. He's the only one. And so, if we understand that death reigns as king, it's not voluntary. Understand? Death is over everybody. and it rains as king. Nobody gets to escape. And it's raining from Adam to Moses.

It was interesting. I'll read this quote from Newell about this verse. He says, I traveled around the world, from west to east, beginning from Chicago. As we went eastward to the older parts of the states, we saw stones thicker and thicker in the cemeteries. Then in England and Scotland, still more cemeteries with still more monuments to the reign of death. But when we got out to old China, I was literally appalled at the number of tombs and the coffins.

Surely death has reigned. The proof that death is a reigning principle is the cemetery. It's hard for us to accept the fact that death reigns. And from Adam to Moses, no law, it's still reigning. People still dying, cemeteries still filling up. Even though some of these guys lived a long time. Now, look at the last part of verse 14. This is where you begin to get a hint about the fact that there are two men. In 14 it says, Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned, after the similitude of Adam's transgression.

Who was the figure of him that was to come? So what does that mean? Who was the figure of him to come? This figure means he was a type of one who was going to come. And Adam is the type. So what does that mean? What's that? Of the human race. And so he's the type of who? Who is he the prototype? Who is he the type of?

So this begins to set up the issue of these two guys are unique men. Adam is the head of the human race, but he's the type of another man who was going to come, and the other man is Christ. Well, if he's a type, what are the similarities? Well, one is that both men are the heads of races of human beings. Do you see that? Both men are heads of races.

They were born without sin. Say that again? They were born without sin. Christ was. No, that's not the issue. The issue is this. That Adam was made a living soul by God, okay? And he was given, he was the first man, and because he was the first man like the first apple tree and the first everything else, it reproduced after its own kind. It was the type. But this verse says that Adam wasn't the prototype. He was the type of another man who was going to come later, who is the prototype, who's Christ.

Well, what's similar in them? Yeah, they're both men. But why are these two guys unique? What's so unique? I mean, Adam's different than Cain and Abel and... Well, Christ is different than all other men, too. First of all, Christ didn't have... They both had the same father. You could say that, but the difference is... Otherwise, how did Adam become...

He was created. He was created by whom? By God. But the Lord Jesus wasn't created. No, but they were both born, as they say, without sin. One created without sin. One born sinless. What makes the second one born sinless? because everybody else up until that time was born sinful. What broke the link? What broke the chain? No, it's simple. Where does the sin nature pass from?

The mother or the father? It's the father, right? Because Adam is the one who has dominion. So whatever is true of Adam passes down to all of his progeny, right? But when you get to Christ, Adam's not his father. The Holy Spirit's his father, so he's born without a sin nature. Unique man, doesn't have a sin nature. Now, these types, there's going to be things that are unique to each man. The first unique thing about him is both of them are the heads of races. Adam is the head of the human race. Every human being except for him that comes on this planet comes from him. But at some point in time, there's a switch, and we'll talk about the switch later. The idea is not to get your sins forgiven. The idea is to get your heritage into this second head of a race. Do you see that?

In 1 Corinthians 15.22 it says, As in Adam all die, also in Christ shall all be made alive. in 47 and 49, as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. The first man, Adam, the first man is of the earth, earthy. Do you see that?

The first man, Adam, is of the earth. Where did God make his body from? Out of the earth. He's an earthly man. He was created by God to occupy the earth, have dominion over it, and never leave it. The second man is of heaven. So the second man is not an earthly man. That's another difference in them.

Where do they come from? Adam comes from the earth, Christ comes from heaven. As we have borne the image of the earthly, we all have done that, right? We shall also bear the image of the heavenly. That's another difference. Adam is earthly, Christ is heavenly.

You hear me use the term federal head. That's what it means, the head of a race. He's the federal head of a race, which means whatever is true of him is true of all those that come from him, and he's the first one. Federal in this book, with the use of this word, indicates the action of one for all in a representative manner. and the consequences of such.

So when Adam sins, he represents every human being because we're in him, and the consequences accrue to every human being. Now I'm not going to talk about Christ yet, maybe for another two weeks. The reason we're sticking so close to Adam is I want you to feel like the oppression of being from Adam, that Adam is not rescuable He's not fixable.

He is what he is because his father was what he was. And the real secret to the identification truths and the freedom therein is switching to another man and then the same principles are going to hold true. Whatever is true of this new man is going to be true of you. The problem we find in Christianity is that the grace is so overwhelming that we feel more comfortable being stuck with the old guy.

So why is the offense of one unlike the gift of the other? Did you figure out that question? It's a difficult question. What do you think? Why is the offense of one, and what we're talking about here, is verse 15. Now watch how it goes. But not as the offense, so also is the free gift. Adam actually bought death. Christ bought eternal life. That's pretty good.

Anybody else want to take a shot at this? Is this getting too complicated? Maybe we'll do this. Somebody have another version other than the King James they could read verse 15 from? That might help. This is in the American Standard. But the free gift is not like the transgression, for if by a transgression of the one, the many die, much more than the grace of God and the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ.

Okay. So, back to my question. I want you to think this through. Why is the offense of one not like the gift of the other? There's a lot of similarities, but there's a major difference. You got your sin nature because of Adam. You sort of kind of earned that.

But the gift from Christ is a gift. Okay, think about it this way. How many times did Adam have to sin in order for him to bring condemnation in the reign of death? How many sins were put on Christ in order to bring us justification in the reigning and life?

All of them. That's the difference. In other words, Adam sins one time, and because of that sin, in kind and operation, what happens is that condemnation and death comes upon all men. He did it one time. The second thing is that when Christ enters into the issue of solving Adam's problem, put it that way, the difference is that many sins were put on him. He gets identified with all the sins of the world, all of them.

The operation is different, the kind is different. He was sinless, but he got identified with all of the sins and with the sin natures of all believers. It wasn't an act that he did, it was an act that he allowed to be put on him by God. So the, as the verse says, the offense was one single offense, okay? But the free gift is different in that the gift is offered because the offenses were paid for.

You alright with that? Yeah, Steve. The other two words that caught my attention were much more. Yeah. One of the questions for next week is to identify the much mores. There are four of them in these verses and to explain what they are. And the much more is also along that line. One act by one man. Now you think about this. We love to look in the paper and think about radical Islamists blowing up a hotel and killing 25 people, right? What a terrible tragedy that is. Now think about this.

One guy takes one bite out of one piece of fruit and what happens? The entire race goes in the dumper. Falls. Not only does the race fall, but everybody gets this little added benefit called the sin nature. And that benefit means that you have a propensity, a desire, and an eagerness to manifest what you are.

You love sinning. Raise your hand if you've ever committed a sin you really didn't want to do. I don't know. I love sinning. Adam wants to sin. And you know what? That's all he knows how to do. He doesn't know how not to sin. Do you see that? You don't have to send your kids to sinning academy. They come that way. And they like it. And you can say, oh, I really don't like to sin. Nonsense. Your sin nature, the sin nature of every human being demands expression. And when it gets the opportunity to express itself, it's doing what it wants to do. It's sinning. Because it's totally self-centered.

You see that? So you don't have to crank it up or down. You don't have to turn it on or off. It's always on. It's like your operating system. It's always on and it's always running. And in a believer, when it's allowed to have expression, what does it do?

It doesn't do anything good. It sins. That's all it does. So the new man in Christ, or Christ being the new man, doesn't have that operating principle in him. That isn't what he is. That is what Adam is. You said he couldn't do anything good. He could do something good, couldn't he?

Well, no, I don't think so. Location? I'm sorry? because it's a tree location, good and evil? Well, good in the sense that the Lord Jesus said there was none good but the Father, in the sense of absolute goodness. Adam can do the relative good and evil thing. He can do, you know, well, this is evil and I'll do the opposite of that, which is relatively good from his viewpoint, but not from God's.

It's still fallen. Yeah, it's still fallen good. Whichever branch you're in, that tree, it's still fallen. Yeah. You alright with that? I mean, that's another problem we have as believers and as moral Americans, is that we have this code of conduct, this little black box in our brain that says, well, these 45 things are good and these 40,000 things are evil. As long as I stick with the 45, I'm going to be good and accept.

The problem is, is that nothing from Adam is acceptable to God. Not one thing. And, back to the issue, every human being that comes on this planet is identified with Adam, which means he's totally incapable of doing anything that's pleasing to God. Nothing.

He says that by one thing in the law, if you disobeyed one thing in the law, then the whole law was... That's right. You broke the whole... I read this thing about the law one day and it made all the sense. You know what tempered glass is like? What happens when you break a piece of tempered glass? It goes into a jillion pieces, right? Can you put them back together? That's the law. You break one law and the whole thing goes into a jillion pieces. You have no shot at getting it back together. So even if you did good on all of them, it just takes one. Well, you break one, you've broken them all. See?

Very interesting. Next week we'll talk more about the law. But the law, rather than being our friend, is our absolute enemy. Because it smokes out the old sin nature. Oh no! I had them hidden there for such a long time. So, how many people come under judgment and condemnation? All men. Now are you going to be able to stand before God and say, you know what, Adam sinned for me, I didn't sin, it's his fault, I get to go in. And what does he say? He's going to answer in one word, identification. Where did you come from? So we talked, I repeated a question because I wanted to spend more time on death reigning, but I think we We kind of covered it.

Sin is a reigning principle through death and we are all governed by principles even though those Republicans who think they have free will. A principle can be defined by the way in which a thing functions or operates. Do you understand what a principle is? We all live according to certain principles.

We live under the principle of gravity. We live, you know, on the principle of, I don't know, name another one. You're an engineer, name one. You're an electrician. Oxygen. We breathe. We all function based on these principles. Well, there are certain spiritual principles that we all live under, and one of the principles is that sin reigns in death. That's a principle. that every human being lives under. So, all men have been positionally separated from the life of God because of that principle.

All men. Death means separation. Are you alright with that? Does it mean annihilation? So, all men are separated from the life of God because they function under the principle of sin and death. Do you see that? Now if we ever get to Romans 7, and in the beginning of Romans 8, God talks about, or Paul talks about, the law or the principle of sin and death.

Everybody's under it. Okay? Now... I was thinking, you've spurred my engineering brain here. One of those ones, that there is a principle that we are under, Everything tends from a state of order to disorder. That's a ruling on its own. That's survival of the fittest. But I mean that's perfectly right. There's nothing that gets better. We have a law that's secular, that's engineering. Everything tends from a state of order to disorder.

I was listening to J. Bernard McGee the other day, he made an interesting point. He said, if you have a perfectly holy person represented by a clear glass of water, and sitting next to them is a sinful person represented by an inky glass of water, can the holy person make the sinful person holy? No. What happens? The holy person gets tainted.

That's the principle. See? That's the principle. So, we think we're better than that, but we're not. I mean, we have the law. We can never get better, no matter how good we try, no matter how... And the secular world says that. It has observed that and recorded that. We will never get better. Never. Never. So, just a little taste of the future. What does then reigning in life mean? If there is a reigning death principle, which there is, then what would reigning in life be?

As you just think about this for a minute, think about what Christ brings. Not only does he bring life, but he brings it as a reigning principle. Do you hear that? Do you hear what I've said? He brings life as a reigning principle. And this means reign as kings. You're the boss. When did this reigning and life principle begin? at the resurrection of Christ. When did it begin for you? The day that you believe. You are a king who reigns in life. You don't think of yourself that way, but that's what you really are, by identification. The reigning life principle has already begun, and the reason it has begun is because we are in Christ, who is the life.

Now, do you think of being in Christ that there are certain principles that function by being in Him, that are undeniable principles, just like the principle of sin and death? Or just like the principles of thermodynamics? That they work that way all the time, and they've been proven to work that way all the time, and there's never been an example when they didn't work that way all the time. It's the same thing with the principles that we'll discover in the last half of this class about the principles that operate in Christ. There are principles there.

Now, back over to Steve's question. What are the four much-mores? You have to go back up to verse 9. 9. Much more then, having been now declared righteous by means of his blood, shall we be saved through him from the coming wrath, much more. Much more, being reconciled shall we be saved by his risen life. Isn't that interesting? It's his life that saves you, and this isn't the point of salvation, this is eternal salvation.

Much more, being reconciled shall we be saved by, I already read that, for if by the trespass of one, Adam, death came to many, much more did the grace of God and the gift by grace of the one man Jesus Christ abound unto the many. And the last one is, for if by the trespass of one death reigned as king through the one, much more those accepting the abundance of grace and of the free gift of righteousness, shall reign as kings in life through the one Jesus Christ." You didn't know you were a king, did you?

So my last question was, why is it important that we see that God has changed men? Do you understand the question? Do you understand what the question is? Who doesn't understand what the question is? Why is it important that we see, understand, and comprehend that God has changed His man? That's exactly right. Do you understand that? Now let me ask you some subordinating questions.

Is God done with your sins? Is he done with your sin nature? Is he done with the principle of sin and death? He's finished with it, is he not? How come you're not? I'm serious about that. I mean, if he's done with it, how come we're not? We like the dance. You know what I think the real reason is? We don't understand this. We don't understand the two men and what God did. You see that?

If you saw yourself in Christ only, you would leave Adam behind. Adam is one of those guys that won't ever shut up. That sin nature in you is screaming for recognition and expression. Because death doesn't mean that he ceased to function. Death means that you got separated from him. And once that transaction happened, he now takes it upon himself to convince you that that transaction is not true. Do you see that? If he can convince you that that transaction didn't happen, then he's got you. You'll never enjoy your reigning as a king in life. Never! Because you won't ever see yourself that way.

See that? But if you take God at his word, and these are good ones right here, Just buy this. Then you'll begin to see who you really are from God's perspective. And that's what reality is. You can't go to God and say, oh yeah, I bet. No, no bet monkeys with God. No way.

Everything is what God says is so and it's true. No matter how you feel about it or what your experience is. If God says it's so, it's so. Do you believe what he says about Adam? Yeah, pretty easy. The problem is, do we really believe what he says about Christ and my identification with him? That's why we're going to spend so much time on those Christ-identifying principles that are really true of us.

Position. Is that your illustration you had last week about the shipmaster? From the watchman, yeah, that he screams out orders to the crew and they respond to him or want to respond to him because they're so familiar with the voice, even though the captain is tied to the mast and he's been disposed. Yeah, that's really what happens.

If we believe that, well, I think that is true, but that's what our maturing process is. From day one, I mean, we may read it, but we believe it. I think it takes years, decades, to work that into us, that we believe this, what Christ did with Adam. Right. Not only what Christ did with Adam, but what he's done with Christ. What God has done with Christ. And you know what? What he's done with you in Christ.

That's the big pill to swallow. I think that's the process of getting away from listening to Adam. But Adam, you know, his holiness, he knows his end. Response, response, that's right. You can see now, based on what Courtney is saying, faith is a critical issue. Because when you act out of Adam, it's because your faith is resonant in Adam. Is that the second bell?

Oh, we've got to go. Dear Father, how we thank you for your word. Like your servant Paul said, Father, we desire to have our understanding open, that we might enter in and enjoy all that you have designed for us in your dear Son. We thank you, Father, and we pray in your Son's name. Amen.