Identification Truths

with the disciples' relationship to the Father. And then from 20 on, it has to do with all of those. My first question was, in verse 20, who are the objects that the Lord is praying for? Who are they? It's us who are here now. It's all those who would believe through their word. So 2,000 years ago, The Lord Jesus Christ was praying to the Father specifically about you, you and me, sitting here today.

So, it's critical that we understand, I think, that in this prayer, He's not talking about forgiveness of sins, is He? He's talking about not being of the world, but belonging to Him. And that doesn't mean that the guy switched service clubs. That's not what he's asking for.

So in verse 14, why does the world hate these people? Not of this world. I have given them thy word and the world has hated them because they're not of the world. You see that? Even as I am not of the world. So, from an identification standpoint, the Lord equates himself with them. Do you see that? He says, look, you occupy the same position in relationship to a lost sinful world as I do.

And because of that, you're going to be hated. Why would the world hate believers and the Lord Jesus? Now we spent two months three months talking about Adam in here, and what a terrific character he is, and his demeanor, and his temperament, and his viewpoint of things. Does every son of Adam hate God? What do you think? All of them. All of them.

So here comes the Lord Jesus into the world because he's not of it, he's not of the mindset, viewpoint, or has no association with the world, and so he takes these disciples who come over to his side of the ledger, the world just naturally would hate them, without cause.

Now, one of the guys I've been studying has made an interesting point about this. He says this, thus the soul must learn that as a distinct truth before it can know what it is to be here for him. In other words, the soul that belongs to the Lord must learn this principle before he can move on and realize that you're here to represent him.

If you don't get the fact that the world hates you, you can't move on. You have to take that into consideration as a truth, as a foregone conclusion. Do you see that? They're going to hate you. I think they hate because they see that love, and it's something that they can't reproduce, so instead they try and kill it. The same author said, if the rejection of Christ is not known and believed, then one will use human means and influences for service. You see that? If you don't know this principle, then you will use human means for whatever service you're involved in.

So, it's a foregone conclusion, and it isn't because You didn't brush your teeth this morning. Or you didn't take a shower this week. Or you just have a crummy personality. It's because you're of Christ. And once that's learned and understood, then your whole approach to a lost world changes. You won't use earthly means to win them over. You won't use their techniques to win them over. I don't know how many of you have ever been to one of those classes given on how to witness, it's like going to a sales training class. So, based on what we are studying, question 3, regards identification, why in verse 16 does the Lord say that they are not of this world? The answer is simple, because He's not of this world.

Now from an identification standpoint, as we're talking about, When we studied Romans 5, we talked about two men, Adam and all that come from him in Christ. And the problem with the setup in Romans 5 is that you're either from one or the other, and your identity is either with Adam or with Christ.

And those that are in Christ are hated by those that are in Adam. But the real issue for a believer is to change men That's more important than having your sins forgiven, although that's part of the package. But to understand that you have changed men, and God has changed men, is really important. John 17 talks about the fact that once the change is made, and this is a prayer long before the transaction even takes place, there is this overriding viewpoint that the world has of those who have changed men.

And that is that they hate him, because they hated Christ. And they hated him without cause. If you study the whole book of John, you'll find that chapter after chapter, the Lord Jesus reiterates that. They hated me without cause. They hate me. And then you study why they're after him from the beginning of his ministry. They're after him. Because he has the smell of death to them. Because he's God. And he's not from around here, is a good way to put it. He's from heaven. Now, your turn to talk.

Explain what sense did Christ sanctify himself in verse 19. The verse is, And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth. And I said, remember that sanctification means to be set apart. Sanctification doesn't mean to work as hard as you can to be as holy as you can. Sanctification only means to be set apart. The Lord Jesus set himself apart. Well, what did he do? What did he set himself apart from and to?

Think about this. he went to pray because he knew what was the in all man. Okay, let's look at some verses. Colossians 119 says, For it was the Father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in him. So in Colossians we're talking about this person of the Lord Jesus Christ in which all fullness, fullness of what? He was really a good guy? Fullness of what? The fullness of God in what? In a man. The fullness of God in a man.

In Colossians 2.9 it says, In him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. So this man Jesus Christ is God himself. The fullness of God is in this man.

Now, what he did was, is he absolutely and voluntarily set apart his whole person, his whole inheritance, his whole office, his very life itself to be the everlasting portion for you and me. In other words, the fullness of the Godhead dwelling in this man was sanctified.

He set himself apart from all of that. Do you see what I'm saying here? He is God, and we'll talk next week more about union. He is God, and he set himself apart from all divine prerogatives, all of the fullness of the Godhead. He set himself apart voluntarily, in his person from his inheritance, from his offices as the second person of the Trinity, and he set himself apart from life itself. He says, I sanctify myself for them. See what I'm saying? That's right. It was all prearranged between him and the Father.

So, in order to meet our need, he sets himself apart from being from all that the prerogatives he had as being God and became a man. Do you see that? That's what he sanctified himself from for our behalf and became a man. So when he's on the cross, the greatest need that we have is the issue of our sins and our sin nature. Isn't that the biggest needs we have? And in order for Christ to do that work, he's got to be a man to do it. And he has to set himself apart so that he can die.

That's what it means. It means that he personally, as the second person of the Trinity and as a God-man, sanctified himself or divorced himself from all of those prerogatives in order to set you and me apart to him. Does that make sense? Questions? You've got to have questions about this.

So he had to set himself apart from from the Godhead to then be associated with sin? He was associated with sin? He was set apart from sin so that we could be associated with him. Remember two weeks ago we talked about, we were baptized into Christ's death? Remember we talked about that? And I asked you the question, why then? Why at that particular point? Right?

And we studied the fact that he was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. In order for Him to be made sin for us, He has to sanctify Himself or set Himself apart from all of the godliness. How could God be made sin unless He did that? But once He did it, and then He includes you and me into it, we now have the same portion He has.

We now have the inheritance, we now have resurrection life, we now have it all that he is, because he was able to do it, or he said, as the verse says, and for their sakes I set myself apart, I'm doing it for them, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth. We'll talk about that part in a minute. That's a hard concept. Are you okay with that? There's a lot to it, because not only does it put us in heaven, Yeah, it does. We always look at the word sanctification as though we're growing spiritually, when in fact what it really means is just to be set apart.

But what did he set himself apart from? He set himself apart from all the prerogatives of being the second person of the Trinity. He became a man totally depended on his father, and even suffered the death of the cross. Well, why would he have to suffer the death of the cross? Because he was made the thing sin. And even though you're the son of God, if somehow through this transaction God can put the sin nature on you, what's going to happen to you? He's going to turn away from you. You're going to be separated from him. Which is probably the toughest thing for Christ, to be totally separated from his Father. Absolutely no question about that. No question that was the most... I mean, that's why he sweat blood in Gethsemane. Except for his deities and everything else, that's one thing that had to suffer the penalty of having God turn his back on him.

So, and hopefully over the next week or so, as we get talking about what it means to have union with Christ, and we recognize that the union between the Father and Son is something that we're just scratching the surface in terms of understanding, but for our sakes, He separates Himself from that union.

Isn't that something? And He did it, granted it's the eternal covenant, He did it, He sanctified Himself for us, that we might be separated from all of that to Him. See that? And so here, before He goes to the cross, He's praying about this very thing, this very thing. I'll read a paragraph for you, or a couple of sentences. He did in His love and in a covenant with the Father, and the Holy Spirit absolutely and voluntarily dedicate and set apart His whole person, His inheritance, His offices, His very life itself, to be their everlasting portion and supply for His people's need, their spiritual need and their temporal need, to be their divine and inexhaustible dollary for time and eternity. That's why He did it.

So what is the appointed means by which we are sanctified according to this verse? And I referred you to a verse, but what is the easy answer to the question? Back to the verse. And for their sakes I sanctify myself. We covered that. That they themselves also may be sanctified in truth. So what is the appointed means by which you and I are to be sanctified or set apart? Come on, it's not that hard. But what does the verse say about how we're to be sanctified? By the word of truth. Okay, you see that?

I sent you to Ephesians 5.25-27, you probably didn't have to read the whole thing. The husbands love your wife is used as an example. Husbands love your wives even as, and this is the most important part, Christ also loved the church and has delivered himself up for it, and here's the reason, in order that he might sanctify it or set it apart purifying it by the washing of water by the word, that he might present the church to himself, glorious, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it might be, the church might be holy, which is the same word, set apart and blameless. So how's he going to do it?

He's going to do it through the truth or the washing of water with the word. So make the connection. Why is the truth the thing that sets you apart? What does the truth in essence mean? How would the truth be the vehicle by which you and I are sanctified? What do you think? You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. Come on, think about this. Put your thinking hats on. There we go. Do you see what he's saying? The Word explains to you what Christ has done, and explains to you exactly what He's done not only for you, but more importantly, to you, by setting you apart.

You study Romans 5.12, what do you discover in 5.12-21? There's these two guys. There's some truth there. The truth is that there are two men. And it begins to dawn on a believer, boy, I've got to get away from this condemned man, and somehow I have to get associated with the Lord Jesus Christ.

So when you go to Romans 6, and we've only done the first few verses, exactly what's going on in Romans 6? the first part of it. The transaction that God went through to move you from Adam to Christ. Do you see that? If you and I don't get moved out of Adam to Christ, what happens to us? We get condemned, because Adam's sin nature is condemned.

Now, as you learn those truths, what kind of an effect is it supposed to have on you? It's supposed to have a conditional set-apartness. If you woke up tomorrow morning and you were totally immersed in the fact that, wow, I don't belong to the world anymore, I really do, I really am identified with Christ, I really am a heavenly person, I have no association with the world whatsoever, that truth would totally change the way you lived your life. Because your viewpoint would be totally different. You see that? you'd stop thinking of yourself as a saved sinner. For sure that would go away. Does that make sense to you?

So here comes the Word of God and here's this prayer between the Son and the Father that says, I'm going to conditionally sanctify them or set them apart to me by using the truth to do it. I'm going to tell them what I did. I'm going to tell them all about their union and their identification with me on this cross. and through their knowing that and believing that, what's going to happen? They're going to live set apart to me.

Where do you find the truth? You find it in the Word. You see that? Now, I know what you're thinking. If I'm so set apart, how come the world still influences me so much? So what's the problem with that? Your knowledge is the wrong knowledge. Well, maybe you have the right knowledge. then it's intimacy with Christ, if it's the right knowledge. What you find out in studying the Word of God, you find these incredibly cool truths about your union with Christ. Now the issue, once you see those, the issue is, you really buy them or not? Or is it just a bunch of nice, pious rhetoric? Kind of cool, you know? I can spout these 25 cent Christian words, it must mean I'm ahead of the game, but they're not designed to make you smart. They're designed to set you apart. Do you see that? And your role in it, the union with the Lord Jesus is the root and the source of our sanctification. Do you see that?

Now, I have to tell you, when it comes down to shoe leather, and you study things like this, you know, right away, You know, up comes all the little butt monkeys, I call them. But, oh, this is in my life, and oh, but, this is in my life. Boy, if I'm sanctified and set apart, how come I'm dealing with this, and how come this is such a big deal to me, and how come all of these little earthly cares and woes are always encompassing me? So at that point, what have you just done?

You've looked at God's Word and said, I'm not sure you're telling me the truth. Where you're concerned with the wrong thing. And here's another interesting thing from a principle standpoint. Once you see these truths and you believe them, now if you don't believe them, that's another issue, but if you do believe them, no matter what your experience is, hold on because you're going for a ride, because the Holy Spirit is going to implement those truths into your life. and you will be conditionally separated unto him. But you have one job, and that's to believe him, no matter how stupid it looks to you, or how un... you know, how could this possibly be true?

You understand what I'm saying? That's because Romans 7, when he says, who shall deliver me? You come to the Lord, and that is a basic foundation. Well, let's go back to the foundation. The first issue is, according to this verse, is do you believe the truth? Do you know it to start with? And second of all, do you believe it? Do you believe that when Christ was crucified, you were with him? I mean, right away you say to God, wait a minute, I was only born in 19... I've only been a Christian, you know. What are you talking about 2,000 years ago?

How could that possibly be? If he tells it to you, is it the truth? Answer, yes. What's your job? Believe it. So the conditional sanctification that goes on in your life is based solely on your believing the truth. And the truth is the truth. No matter how you perceive it, it's still the truth, and it is the method and the principle by which God is going to set you apart unto his Son. You've already believed, if you're a Christian. Not necessarily. The thing is, is to appropriate. Can I open this? You guys aren't talking with some of her sweating. I guess the tops don't open. Is that right? You bought these windows. I should have bought the good ones.

Yeah. about how high and mighty we think, and we put the covenant and the law boys together, and we say, if you're going to believe the law, you've got to take all 600 and whatever together. Well, you know, think of ourselves. We tend to hear all these truths, and I'll just pick those that I believe. Yeah, the easy ones. We're, you know, very similar, you know, thinking about how we beat up the law those under the law. Well, we pick and choose what we want to believe out of the truths that we have. So we're similar in action, but we pick and choose, well, we can believe that, but that's a little too far-fetched for me to believe or trust that God really means that. Yeah, there's a couple of things.

That's that old Adam nature, though. He didn't believe in the first place. Not only did he not believe, but when God gave the law to Adam's nature, which was designed to inflame the law, that the idiot Adam looked at it and said, oh great, now I've got something to do. He had no concept of the fact that the reason the law was given to him was to smoke out that sin nature, to make it exceedingly sinful. Adam's perspective was, oh great, now I've got a couple of things I can do, I'll be more pleasing to God and He'll leave me alone. I'll clear that up just a little bit.

Earlier you were saying that The issue is, do you believe this truth? Right. And then you have this B-U-T butt question in your mind about whatever. You're driving down the road, somebody cuts in front of you, and you internally flare off. Yeah, or externally. So the question is why, on a simple issue. So the question is, why is that first atom response still reacting in you? Yeah, that's a great question. but still you have that thing that flared off, so right there.

So right there, what is the issue right there? Once you flare off, and you're one of those guys that has been exposed to these identification truths, and at least you can articulate Romans 6, but here you go, in your mind, you flared off at this guy, and right away you're thinking, wait a minute, My flaring off somehow discounts the truth of what I know. Isn't that right? So my next question in my mind is, is God telling me the truth or isn't he? Is he or isn't he? We just love to do this tap dance around God and not get to the issue. You know what I'm saying?

But he won't let you do that because that that does the sin will suffer for you. You mean, let me flare off? He lets me sin all the time. Whether you're aware of it or not, there are consequences. Yeah, and I think that even if you're not aware, the issue starts to become in your life, boy, if I'm saved, how come I'm sinning so much?

What you're saying right there is that at that point, the response should be reckoned? I think so, but reckoning is always based on a fact. No, the reckoning comes before. No, it doesn't. If you look at Romans 6, and we'll go into Romans 6, the reckoning is in 11, the knowing is in 6. The knowing is in verse 6, the reckoning is in verse 11.

In other words, God is faithful in how he does. The first thing he does is he tells you what's up, lays the truth out to you, right? Isn't that the first thing he does? He says, here's the deal boys, and so you see it, Through the work of the Spirit, he reveals that this is from me and this is the truth, whatever it might be. Then, it's your turn. What came first, the chicken or the egg? The knowledge, the truth comes first. Faith comes by hearing, and how does hearing come? By the Word of God.

But you're already dead in that. Positionally. You may not be aware of it. That's right. And God's going to show you it. That's right. But you've got to know it first. You've got to know what to reckon on. I think, going back to Galatians, the law was the tutor. Now our tutor is the Word and the Holy Spirit.

That's right. And when the guy cuts you off, this is spiritual growth. This is showing you and demonstrating you through trials, through different things. Do you believe? And that's just the process of him imparting that or making it real in you. Well, the Lord is so gracious to us. He tells us this incredibly wonderful positional truth, right? At some point in our life, we read Romans 6.

I remember growing up as a Catholic, one of the problems I always had, especially as a teenager and there on, is that one of the conclusions I had come to was that there was no possibility in my life that I would ever stop sinning. so it seemed like a futile exercise to me to be fooling myself about all this religious BS, because I wasn't going to stop sinning.

That was a given. You see what I'm saying? I become a believer, and the grace of having my sins forgiven, I still knew in my mind I wasn't going to stop sinning. I knew that, but the fact that I was forgiven was a huge deal. Then later on, when I got introduced to these Roman six truths, It began to dawn on me, God has implemented a plan which is going to eventually, through the work of the Spirit, cause me not to sin as much, and maybe not to sin at all. The potential is there. Do you see that? There was never in my mind the potential of me ever stopping, because I just knew who I was. I wasn't kidding anybody. So that sequence then, that we just went through, Then you get to that point where you're reckoning this truth that you know. From that point, it's supposed to influence and affect and change your response.

Alright, let's talk about that right there, because that's a real critical point. When we get back to Romans 6, we'll study this, but we are not asked to do anything in Romans 6 other than to know, until you get to verse 11. And we're going to go through each one of those verses. Once you get to 11, then we are asked to do something, and that's to reckon, to count as true that I'm dead unto sin and alive unto God.

God says, that's what I want you to do. I want you to believe me. So you do. Fifteen minutes later, the guy cuts you off and you flip him off in your mind, or you do it overtly. And right away, the issues come back to mind. Which is it? Is the Lord telling me the truth? And do I continue to reckon even though it appears as though I acted as though these truths weren't true? Yes, that's exactly what I did. Is God telling me the truth or isn't He? As time goes on, it isn't up to you to implement those truths into your life, it's up to Him to do them. He's going to do them. The Holy Spirit is going to implement the cross in your life.

He is going to put that old man out of business. and the only way you know that is because he told you. That's how you know. Well, your job is to believe him through the process. It takes time, because the Romans 7 guy discovers a really important principle about this spiritual growth process, that the sin nature is more powerful than your ability to control him. You have to learn that, and just somebody telling you that isn't enough.

So once you learn about the strength of the old man, but then you also, at the same time, you're learning about that when the Spirit of God says to you, here's what I'm doing, that He Himself, the new principle of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus, has set me free from the law of sin and death. I'm free because of Him. My dependence is totally on Him. It's not taking from Him and me implementing it. It's not like that. It's me living by faith in the facts.

John 17, through the truth I'm going to set them apart to me. What's the truth? Those are the truths. And you're living a life of just believing God, you're free, conditionally. Are you okay with that? That's the sequence. The first thing is you've got to know the truth. That's the first thing. You've got to know what the facts are. Because you have to know what... Faith has to have an object.

And what you find out is that, yeah, I'm learning all of these really cool facts, but the facts begin to point to a person in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so your focus goes off of the preciseness of the facts, although they remain, and onto this person. And you begin to focus in on Him, and He's your very life. And Christ in John 17 is praying precisely from that viewpoint. that I'm their portion, I'm their life. The truth will set you free, but he said earlier in John, I am the truth.

So it becomes a person rather than just a doctrine. Do you see that? Not to the exclusion of the doctrine, but Myles Stanford used to say that the word of God goes from fact to love and affection with a person. Do you see that? So as you walk with Christ, your identity with Him, resurrected life, is implemented in your life.

It makes you think of this kind of sidebar. It makes you think of Paul. He had that thorn in his side wherever it was for his whole life. So I'm trying to understand where he really, at what point in this sequence did he really deal with that. Yeah, it's interesting. I've thought about that too.

Paul gets saved on the road to Damascus and he goes and spends you know, a couple of years preaching, but what's really happening is he's spending two or three years in the Arabian desert being taught personally these truths by the Lord Jesus Christ himself, personally.

Then he goes up to Jerusalem to check out Peter and the boys, and in essence what they say to him, why don't you go back to Tarsus, we'll call you, don't call us. So he spends I don't know, seven, eight, nine years in Tarsus. What's going on there? Yeah, he's preaching what he knows as the Gospel and what he's learned, but the practical working out, I think, this is my opinion, the practical working out of the truths that he knows are being worked out in his life as he lives in Tarsus.

And then the call comes from Antioch to come up and start helping Barnabas and those guys, and his ministry begins. But if you think about it, he spent a lot of years, maybe as many as ten, being suited out and equipped for his ministry. And he tells us in Philippians why.

He was taken up into the third heaven and he saw things of the glory of God and his position in Christ, that King James says it wasn't legal for him to talk about. If you study that, it says he couldn't talk about it because there weren't any words to describe what he saw. And what did he see? He saw the glory of Christ. But he has to come back. And so in order... Yeah, absolutely.

I thought it was the mystery. The mystery of the Church? That and the mystery of Christ. Well, I think he knew that before, but what happened was when he comes back, now think about the dilemma he has as a man with a sin nature, right? How long would it take for the sin nature to think, oh man, am I special?

Look what I saw. And I can go around and tell these people I'm special. He didn't really understand that, so the Lord sends the agent of Satan to give him a thorn in the flesh. He goes to God about it three times and says, in essence, can't we do this another way? And God says, no, my grace is sufficient for you.

My strength is made perfect in your weakness. What principle did he have to learn? The great apostle Paul had to learn, halfway through his ministry, that God's power was best manifested in Paul's weakness. How many in this room have learned that principle? I'm learning it, though he slay me yet on the cross. See? Do you see that?

I mean, you talk about a mindset change from Adam to Christ. The mindset change in Adam is God tell me what to do and I'll do it. The mindset change into Christ is my sufficiency is only of Him. I have no strength or power outside of Him. You see that? What a total mind change. Do you mean I get to throw away the Constitution? Yeah, out the window it goes. When I'm weak, then I'm strong. Well, I can't find that in any of the Declaration of Independence or any of that. The Declaration of Independence says when I'm strong, I'm strong. The Bible says when I'm weak, I'm strong.

What kind of nonsense is that? See that? What's that? Principles, right, but not founded on identification principles. That's the difference. It's interesting, if you and I wanted to start a country, and we wanted to be successful, we would start it on biblical principles. We would use the biblical principles to run it, and have it set up that way. These guys are smart enough to do that. The problem is that after a while, because we all have sin natures, we're going to throw God out and implement us into the equation, and once that happens, down we go.

It can't be founded on identification principles, because then it wouldn't be a country. See, when the millennial kingdom comes into play, it'll be a theocracy. Christ will rule and reign. But you'll rule and reign with him, which will be kind of cool. This is a point I want to make. I'll get right back to it. The questions this week and next week, if we have to spend four weeks in them, I'm fine, because this is stuff we need to learn, so we're not in a hurry.

The thorn in Paul's side, was that a realization of sin, that he would never be fully freed from? That he would stop sinning? I think it was a physical impediment. One of the lessons that you get to see in Philippians, because Philippians was one of the prison epistles, one of the revelations that you learn about Paul, that he learned by being in prison, is that he was under the impression that God needed him to accomplish his ministry.

So to prove to him that he didn't need him, he put him in jail. And his ministry kept going, kept growing. And Paul had to learn that he was just the conduit and he wasn't the key. He was put through that wine press. Yeah, he even says in Philippians about, well, they're preaching the gospel, things are moving on, and here I am, I'm stuck in prison, nothing's happening with me. And God was teaching him practically that God was the one who was the driving force in the ministry, not Paul.

That's a real important point to learn. Back to the issues. So we're sanctified through the truth, and the truth really means the facts and the good news that is in the gospel, the whole gospel, not just the gospel of salvation. And so union with the Lord Jesus is the root and source of his people's sanctification. Now, I was going to refer to Galatians 1, 15 and 16. You don't have to go there. I'll read it. Now listen to this.

But when it pleased God, and this is Paul talking about himself, and this has to do with separation. Now listen to what Paul says. When it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace. So when was Paul set apart by God, positionally?

At the moment he was born, even before that. He was called. You see that? It wasn't in the road to Damascus. It was before then. And here's why He was called. So that He might do great things. So that He might write all these great epistles. So that we would even be talking about Him today. Here's what He says why He was set apart. To reveal His Son in me. That I might preach unto Him, preach Him among the Gentiles. Immediately I conferred, not with flesh and blood."

Why not? If he's been set apart by God to preach the gospel to the Gentiles, why wouldn't he, by conferring with flesh and blood, means he didn't go to his buddies and say, what do you think? What did he do? Put it this way, why didn't he go to his buddies? Well, why wouldn't you?

If God does the separating, if the Lord Jesus Christ says, I've separated myself so that you might be separated by the truth, then once you realize that you have been separated, who are you going to go to and talk to about it? The Lord. Paul says, I didn't go talk to anybody in flesh and blood about this. What do they know? Do you see that? His conference, his discussion, his working this out was with the Lord only. And why? Because the purpose of his being set apart was real simple, that Christ might be manifested in him. Is that any different between you and me? No. No. It's the same issue.

Romans 8.28. You're called for what purpose? To be conformed to the image of Christ. Why? So that his life might be manifested in and through you. That's the whole reason. Question 6. Do you think there is a relationship between sanctification and identification? Yes and no. How many say, yeah, there is? How many say, no, there isn't? How many are too chicken to raise their hand? How many aren't sure? Okay, that's good.

I've told you before, and I read Galatians 1.15, it says, Union with the Lord Jesus is the root and source of his people's sanctification. So when you see the word union, what's the synonym for union? Identification. So if that's the core, or the source, your union or your identification with Christ, if that's the source, then how would... sanctification work out from that union?

If the answer is yes. Maybe the way we look at things, like Stoney says, it's not what we're saved from, but what we're saved to. So the practical conditional walk of the believer is based on what? Or it's a result of what? Your positional sanctification, is it not?

So, it's something that you possess in the Lord Jesus. You've been set apart to Him. And the way you got set apart to Him is through the cross. See that? Identification. I was identified in His death, burial, resurrection. I'm in Christ. I've been positionally set apart in Him.

The more you apprehend these facts, the more you understand them, the more that you own them, the more we will walk in the light as a conscious possession of those truths. Is that okay? You're walking according to the truth. Sanctify them by your truth. for conditional sanctification, conditional set-apartness to be a practical outflowing in your life, you must know the truth. And that truth is the thing that works into your condition every day walking around sanctification. If you're a person who believes that you are under any kind of a law system, you will never be sanctified, because it isn't the truth that does it.

Do you see that? In other words, if I said to you now, let's assume you're all non-believers, and I get you in a room and I say, now you guys want salvation? You all raise your hand, yes I do. And I say, OK, you have to make a commitment to Christ. You say, OK. And you all do it. Any of you saved?

Why not? Because it isn't the truth. Do you see that? That's not the truth. It's got to be the truth. And the truth always starts with God. In the Word. That's where it is. Do you see that? So is it important that we know exactly what to believe? Is it critical? It's absolutely critical. So if you've got, like me, I harbor in my mind all these little things that I think are true, but I've learned a long time ago that if I think them, I go to the Lord and say, well, if this isn't true, you need to persuade me, because otherwise I'm going to be following this rabbit forever.

I need to know the truth." So what do growing believers discover? They really have a love for the Word of God because they know that's where the truth is. And so they spend time in there learning the truth for acquaintanceship with Christ and for the freedom of being set apart unto Him. And these truths are right there.

John 17 speaks about this union with Christ that is just almost too much to take in. and then you jump up to Romans 5 and 6 and you begin to see, then you learn this little thing called the aorist tense. Do you know what the aorist tense is? It's a fact tense. So you discover that the truths you're learning are written in, the verbs are all in the aorist tense. What does that mean? They're already true. I don't make them true. My believing doesn't make them true. And my working really hard to be a good Christian doesn't make them true. They already are true.

Boy, what a great revelation that is. They're true whether I believe them or not. And that is grace? Absolutely. Absolutely. Whether you believe you were crucified with Christ or not 2,000 years ago, it doesn't matter. You were. You understand what I'm saying? It matters a lot. But the fact is that you don't make the crucifixion happen. It already did happen. And you were already involved in it.

You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. So, because of your union or your identity with Christ, starting at the point that he died, you died with him, from that point on, what happens is that as the Spirit moves you forward, you begin to walk worthy of the high calling that you have. And how do you do that? First, it's based on knowing the truth.

If the Lord says to you in Ephesians, I've blessed you with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus, and you read that and you say, yeah, but I don't have a Mercedes. Or I don't have a wonderful, big-time, recognizable ministry. Do you see how irrelevant those two statements are? to being blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus? You don't have that gold toilet seat. That's right. Or whatever. You're not understanding what the heavenly truths in Christ Jesus really are. And you know what? That's an heiress tense too. You have been. You're not going to be. You have been. You see that?

So that's why And what did Abraham do? He believed God. He just believed God that he couldn't tell a lie. That God couldn't lie. Right. And so he was accounted righteous, but it took God 20 some years to convince Abraham that when he called him to sacrifice his son Isaac, he did it without reservation.

So, take hope, you guys got 20 years. We got it close. So we'll pick up next week at question seven and I may not bring questions for the following week because it will take us a few weeks to get through this. Father, how we thank you. How we thank you for your truth and truth that specifically shows us how our union with your dear son not only was prayed for by Him, and foreordained by the three of you in eternity past, but is now a fact. And as we learn these facts and rest in them by faith, we know that You'll implement them in our life, Father. We thank You. We pray in Your Son's name. Amen.