Identification Truths

Okay. Terrific. Question five. What is the believer's relationship to sin? And then five says, does being justified from sin mean sinless perfection in the believer? Is that the question? Yeah. Okay. Everybody understand the question? Being justified from sin, does it mean that there's going to be sinless perfection in you as a believer? What do you think? No. Okay. Well, it's actually something different. This doesn't refer to an experience of deliverance from sin. It's a position. Okay? So, what's your question?

You said something about, something about being, Our new life is in Christ. It's His life that's being worked out through us. And he said something about sin. When we sin, that's not us either, I think. Well, I didn't say it exactly that way. You know what I'm getting at, right? Uh-huh. It probably goes more back to the last question.

If sin existed in this room only, let's say sin only was in this room, and you get up and leave, what's your relationship to the sin that's in this room? Separated from it, aren't you? So when Christ was on the cross, he was made sin for us, right? In other words, the thing sin was put on him. He was identified with it. He was in union with sin. You see that? So much so that when the Father looked upon him as sin, he turned away from him, because he can't look on sin. So when he did that, Christ dies, he separates. What does he separate from? The sin.

Now, where are you during this transaction? You're in him. So whatever's going on with him, if Wayne said, you know, this room is full of sin and I'm leaving and I'm going to terminate my relationship with this room full of sin and I'm going to carry you with me and out the door we go, what's my relationship to sin? Same thing yours is. Do you see that?

So we're not talking about sinless perfection, we're talking about a relationship or lack of relationship to sin itself. See, we're not in the improvement business, we're in the relationship business, maybe is the way to say it. And now, before our identity with Christ on the cross, what was your relationship to sin?

You were partners in crime. You were identified in union with the sin nature. Well, now that you've been separated from that union, you have now a new union. What's the new union? Whatever Christ's stand is or standing in His relationship to sin is now yours. Do you see that? You don't do anything individually on your own. You always do it as being united to Christ, as identified with Him. See?

Remember back when we talked about Adam? Why were you considered a sinner? Yeah, Adam sinned, I sinned, whatever Adam was doing, that's what I'm doing. But I've been separated now from Adam, okay? And Adam is the possessor of, or the, I don't know if you say the originator, but Adam is flesh and has a sin nature, and so I do.

So positionally I get separated from it, but I never as a human being operate positionally on my own. I'm either identified with Adam or identified with Christ. One of the two. I'm never on the yellow line. You understand? This friend of ours, Bob Strawn, used to have a great saying in his Bible class. He said, most Christians think of themselves, or most persons think of themselves, as living on the yellow line. And that if they go through their life and they go this way, they're doing good, and then if they weave over this way, they're doing bad. His comment was, is that when you're born in hell, and this is the best hell's ever going to be, you're born in sin, you're condemned at the moment you hit the planet.

And the deal is, is to change lanes. So, sinless perfection would be the attempt to take the old Adam and stop him from sinning. Do you see that? To make him function as though sin was gone in the flesh. It's not gone in the flesh. It's still there. Because you died to it, you have been declared by God to be righteous. You're not cleared before God of having sin in you, but you're cleared of the condemnation. because you're separated from it.

Does that make sense? Why would you? And this is a question actually that will come up probably next week. Hi David, how are you? Do you still have the flesh in you? Is there a potentiality that you're going to commit sins? And when you do commit sins, who's the author of that? You and Flip Wilson. That's you, you know. Paul says in Romans 7, in me, that is, in my flesh dwells no good thing. Well, he owned responsibility for his flesh, even though he was separated from it. See that? It's still there.

And so when it is in a position to take control of you, you're going to sin. You're going to commit the acts of sin. That's right. That's exactly right. And it's always whistling at us. Yeah. That's really right. That's because you're in here. Okay. Romans six Romans chapter six verse. You're right. OK. Answer. Yeah. All right.

Romans chapter six and verse eight. I know we're we're we're in sales. They call this paralysis from analysis. We're going really slow and we're almost looking at every single word and the reason we are is because it's so important. But maybe to help keep it in context, what I'm going to do is to read a few verses in context so we hopefully can keep the whole thing in our mind.

5. For if we have been united together in the likeness of his death, certainly We also shall be in the likeness of his resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away or put out of business, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.

For he who has died has been freed from sin." Verse 8, now if we died with Christ, we believe we shall also live with him. So my question in verse 8, does it tell us or take for granted that we did die with Christ? Is the flavor of the verse that it's taken for granted that we did die?

Yeah, because you could translate, if, as one of those first class conditional clauses, you could say since. Since we died. It's a given fact that we died with Christ. Do you see how that is? So you can take it for granted that our old man was crucified with Him.

Are you finding in Romans 6 that there's an awful lot that God is asking us to believe that's pretty tough? To say to Him, OK, yeah, no problem, I buy this, this is really good stuff. I believe you. That's hard, isn't it? So why does verse 8 say that we are to believe that we shall also be living with Him? Why does it use that phrase? that if we died with him, we believe that we shall also live with him. Because it's the new man, this reckoning is from the new man, not the old man. It's who you're in. Until you know your position in him, you can't reckon. It's interesting, out of Newell's Romans, he quotes three guys that comment on this verse.

F.B. Meyer says, Whosoever has died with Christ is now also of the belief that his life, i.e., the positive, active side of his moral being and nature, shall be in fellowship of life with the exalted Christ, that is, shall be able to be nothing else than this. Rotherham says, if we jointly died with Christ, we believe that we shall also jointly live with him. And Coinbearer said, if we have shared the death of Christ, we believe that we shall also share his life. Now, is it dependent on your believing?

Steve? It seems to complete the cycle of the thought. If one is accomplished, then therefore it makes sense that we also... Yes. It's like if we just died with him, it would be incomplete. Yeah, you don't just die and you're hanging. If you're a good Catholic, you'd hang in limbo forever long, or purgatory or some such thing. Why the word belief, pastoral? Why that word? I think Steve hit it. It's like Vern's discussion of these logical imperatives, that we believe things because they're logically, spiritually logical.

You don't just die and stay dead. You don't just get separated from the sin nature, because you and I can't function without a source of life. Do you see that? If your old man was crucified with Christ, and you were, and that was the end of it, then where are you? What are you left with?

It's like the saying, is there such a thing as a saved sinner? How many think there is? Come on you cowards, get your hands up. How many think there isn't such a thing as a saved sinner? Yeah, and tell me why. Because sin is condemned. Sin is condemned, but what's your relationship to sin? Separated. You're separated from it, right? So how can you be identified with sin? You can't be a saved sinner. Do you see that? So if you've died with Christ, you're no longer a sinner positionally, right? So now being saved means that you believe that you're going to live in his life. Everything conditionally. Even conditionally, there's no such thing.

If you're sinning out of Adam, your sin nature that's been condemned is sinning. It's your sin nature, and you're responsible. And what's the source of the sin? That's the whole idea of a believer having two natures. Now, you cannot be a believer and be identified with the old Adamic nature and have residing in you the new nature. You understand that? Everybody alright about that? Because once you become a believer, your identity switches. You are now united to Christ.

You still have the sin nature functioning within you, but it isn't your identity anymore. So, one of the most difficult things for growing believers to get straight in their mind and this is a work of the Spirit, is the fact that they have two natures and that they no longer view themselves as one single nature. Everybody does that early on in their Christian life. Well, I am who I am and I was born a sinner and now I'm trying to do better. No, that's not what the Word of God teaches. The Word of God teaches that there's been a total disconnect from all that you were in Adam And now a reconnect, a new birth, into a new man. See? And this man doesn't...

Do you think you're getting better in Christ? What do you think? Well, then you could say that Christ is getting better. See the logic? Christ is perfect. I mean, is that getting better, or you're just acting more who you are? You're entering into the perfection.

So, I mean, confusing the thought of getting better, you're maturing. Yeah. The thought of getting better means, really, your thought process is that all of who I know myself to be is improving. The biblical viewpoint is that I am now in Christ, and I'm being conformed to His image. I'm being perfected that way. Do you see that? In other words, I'm beginning to take on the characteristics of who I already am. And those characteristics aren't improvements. They're the characteristics of the resurrected, glorified Christ himself.

We're saved from the penalty of sin. That's not a problem. But now we're being saved from the power of sin. One day we will be free from the prison. That's exactly right. And when you're being saved from the power of sin, we like to talk about what we've been saved from, but we don't spend much time talking about what we've been saved to.

Do you see that? It's one thing to get out of jail. It's another thing, where am I going once I'm out? Do you see that? What am I going to do? You know, I picture the guy standing out in front of the of the penitentiary with his new suit on and his tie and his little suitcase, where's he going? It's not only that he went into death, but that he came out of death. He came out of death, and your union with him was in the coming out, too. See?

Okay. I think probably why a lot of times we struggle with that power is because we're not realizing who's doing the separating from that. We can try and do it ourselves and it just won't work. This verse 8 is an interesting verse because it's the first hint of how God wants us to function as resurrected believers. And it's by faith. And when we get down to 11 and on from there, it's all about faith. The issue, the freedom from the power of sin is because of a lack of faith.

I'm convinced of that. Initially, it's not knowing, but once you do know, do you really believe it? Or do you believe it? Was I really crucified? What is this thing that happened? And the next time you sin, in your mind, you say, well, I don't know. If I was really crucified, what am I doing sinning? And that's the purpose of the sin nature is to try to convince you that what you know in the Word of God isn't true, yet you hang by faith.

God said it. That's good enough. I buy it. Now down to verse 9. What's the reason given for the assurance that we shall keep on sharing the risen life of Christ? Read the verse. Knowing that Christ, you know this information, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over him. So you could say, Craig, knowing this, that death, that having been raised from the dead, Christ dies no more, death has no dominion over Craig.

Do you see that? Put your name in there. Because whatever is true of Christ now is true of you. Do you see that? If he's your life, Whatever is true of him is also true of you. It's kind of interesting if you go down and read through Romans 6, and wherever it uses a pronoun, put your name in there. It'll change your viewpoint of yourself. Like in 6, if you say, knowing this, that Mike's old man, my old man, was crucified with him, that the body of sin, my body of sin, might be put out of business. That I should, Mike, should no longer serve sin.

See that? Makes it personal. So, what makes the fulfillment of John 8, 51, which is, Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my word, he shall never see death. Imagine the Lord Jesus saying that. In John 8, 51, he says, I say unto you, If a man keep my word, he shall never see death. So what makes the fulfillment of that possible? His word is that he didn't just die, but he's risen.

Well, let's ask this question. Did sin at some point in time have dominion over Christ? No. I've got one no. Got any yeses? How many no? How many don't know for sure? I think about this. If he's made sin for us, then who's got dominion over who? If he's going to die, it's got to be the result of sin having dominion over him. He did sin at the very end. he was made sin. Now, what's interesting about him, it never had dominion over him before this time. Never. And death couldn't have dominion over him unless sin came into the picture. Do you see that?

If there's no sin, there's no death. One of the most amazing things, I don't know, I'm somewhat a fan of Ken Ham, but one of the most amazing proofs of creationism is this. There's no death until there's sin, right? So an evolutionist that says, well, these dinosaurs came into existence and then they all died off and then there was humanity and billions of years. Now wait a minute. When did that first death take place? When sin showed up.

So humanity is not built on the bones of dinosaurs. If Adam doesn't sin, dinosaurs don't die. Or anything else. Sin is the cause of death. So here's the Lord Jesus. He's made sin for us. So what happens? Death is the result. The soul that sins, that's identified with sin, it will surely die. Separation. So he becomes the thing itself, and there are wages. By the way, you have to earn sin. Did you know that? It's not gracious. You earn it. He worked for everyone.

So sin and death has a brief dominion over him, but once the death takes place and he's resurrected, now what? The dominion's gone forever. Do you see that? It's gone forever. So what about you? If you were in Christ, when he was made sin, you were baptized into his death, and he died, buried, and he was resurrected. Now, does sin have any dominion over you any longer? The answer is no, not positionally, it doesn't. So, you look at God and say, OK, that's nice, but you're not the one sinning. What is the author trying to tell us? Sin does not have to have dominion over you.

You don't have to fight it because it's already been taken care of by the cross of Christ. And you've already been taken care of by the cross of Christ. Identification, identification. You see why the word identification is so critical in the believer's life?

So Christ's death at the cross made it possible for John 8.51 to be fulfilled. So when the believer So what's Paul's word for believers? Our buddy Bob Strong, if God is going to take him home here in the next four months to a year, what word would we describe what would happen to him?

It's a word that Paul uses. That he fell asleep. See, you find if Paul doesn't use the term, Joe, my buddy, the believer, died, he doesn't use that term anymore. Says he fell asleep. A dirt nap. He already died. That's right. You've already died. Did you see that?

So Steve and I have had a couple of conversations this week about what's it like, what do you think it's going to be like when you're faced with the pink slip? You know, the doc says, oh yeah, you've got a week and a half, Buster. It depends on if you're at work or not. So, I mean, if you're grounded in God's Word, you look at that as, well, I'm going to get to go to sleep here pretty soon.

What was the guy's name that was here years ago, and he was at the hospice for quite some time? Morris Pierce. Anybody ever go see him in the hospice? There's a guy who knew this. And he lived this right to the last second. He knew. And so there was a rest and a peace about him. And he was transferable. Absolutely. You go in to see him? That's right. He was exhorting you. Because he was excited about this. I'm out of here. Finally.

Well, as these truths get settled in and cemented into the believer's heart, your viewpoint changes about death. So what does it mean for death not to have dominion over us anymore? Do you think that death did have dominion over you at one time in your life? You think death has dominion over what goes on out there in the world? You know, when you turn on the 6 o'clock news, you know what you're watching? You're watching death in action. Understand what I mean?

Death doesn't mean cessation of physical activity. Just go out, go over here to Evans Avenue this afternoon, stand there for 15 minutes. You'll watch death functioning for 15 minutes. It drives cars, it moves around, it, you know, answers the cell phone. It's death. It's like a fish out of water. Yeah. You turn on, you turn on your television when you get home. You know what that thing shows you? Death. That's all it shows you. I don't care if Pat Robertson's on. It's death. It's better to erase that off the table. Do you understand what I mean?

That death is the dominating force in the universe. Brought in by one man, sin entered the world. And death by sin. So death passed upon only Republicans. Because only Republicans sinned? No. All men sin. The thing is that death is the overriding principle on the earth over every human being.

What the Lord is teaching us here is that death no longer has dominion over believers, because you died to it. Do you see that? You still live in it, but it doesn't have dominion over you anymore, because you're now resurrected in Christ. Do you see that? Make sense? I mean, that's insanity to the uneducated even Christian mind. You sit down and talk to somebody who's law-bound and tell them how free they are, they don't want to hear it. They're too busy trying to get death to work for them. Do you see that? Christ left his burial clothes in the grave to die again. Others who came out Lazarus, he left the burial clothes. That's right, he left them all there. He left them never to die again.

I was reading the other day, I told Donna this, maybe it was in Darby or someplace, when the Lord Jesus was on the cross and he cried out, it is finished. You know what that word finished is? It is perfected. You know what the word perfection means? It means to enter into the fullness of the reason why you were made or created. So the Lord Jesus was created to do what? I mean, was made to do what? What did he come here to do? To do all of this. So when it was done, what did he say? It's perfected. It's perfect. It's all completed. The whole reason that I exist as a man is now perfected.

So the work of the cross has perfected forever the issue of sin. God could not just deal with the penalty of sins and not deal with the source. And what Romans 6 tells us is what God did about the source of sin, about death, and about the dominion of death over believers. So, death doesn't have any more dominion over Christ, so it doesn't have any more dominion over you.

Christ lives unto God, so do you, in a resurrection life that will never end. Now this resurrection life that we all have, will you get it until next Thursday and then you're off a few days? What's the deal? Do you get it when you go to sleep? No, you have it now forever. It's His life.

The cool thing about being identified with Christ is... When did we all become sinners? When Adam sinned, right? So as we sit here and look at our history in this man Adam, we can trace it back to where he was created by God. Once you switch men, then now your history changes too. So you look at Christ and you start going back, how far back do you go?

Keep going. Keep going. Doesn't the Word of God say that God knew you in Christ before the foundations of eternity? He's always known you in Christ. So not only is history going forward true of you, But history going back is true of you. Again, whatever is true of Christ is true of you. There isn't anything other than his deity about him that's not true of you.

That's reality. You see that? In Revelation 1 he says he's alive forevermore. We are alive forevermore. That also, that you'll never die, you'll never be separated from Him. That's the spiritual. That's right. So we'll never be separated from Him in our spiritual position. The 850M is talking about the spiritual, which we will never be dead or separated from Him positionally or spiritually. Think about the objective facts of a believer's going home. What's the reality? What are the facts?

Well, he's positioned in Christ already. His soul and his spirit and his sin nature abide in this body. So when the soul and the spirit leave the body, where is he going? To be absent from the body is to be where? Present with the Lord. What happens to the sin nature?

It doesn't get to go. because you're not hooked to it. So I'm of a mind that as all of us approach that day, that time that the Lord takes us home, that as we're grounded in these facts, we have an expectancy about what's going to happen rather than, oh man, this is the end. No it's not, it's the beginning. I'm finally free. I'm finally free. And I know where I'm going. I'm afraid that most theologians are going to get to heaven walking around with their books and run into Christ and say, excuse me, and walk right around him, because they don't know him.

Well, this information is designed to lay the groundwork for an intimacy with Christ where we know him now, because he's our very life. When you kind of look at the flow of the thought there in the mind, it says death is no longer master. And then it builds on that before, because the death that he died, he died to sin once and for all. But for life he lives, he lives to God. It's like that. It's not this, it's this. It's not this, it's this. This happened, this is the result. It tends the same way. For in that he died unto sin, he died once for all. But in that he is living, he is living unto God. So the question that I had on that verse is, did sin die? The thing sin itself?

What's the key word in verse 10? What's that? Dominion. Dominion. Now look at verse 10 closely. If the question is, for he that died, for the death that he died, he died to sin once, once and for all, but the life that he lives, he lives to God. The King James, instead of having the word to sin, has unto. That's the key word. So the point is that the word of God does not say that sin died, Does it? No. It says that we died unto it. And that makes sense. If the definition of death is separation, it makes sense. You see that? Only your hamster ceases to exist. You don't. Okay. So... In a way it does. Because it has no power over us anymore.

The conditional side of the position condition, in regard to these... I guess I'm thinking, when Christ was resurrected, there was no going back. There was no connection with sin. Sin was just left there to decay our bodies, pretty much. Yeah, that's exactly right.

And as we go on into next week, there's issues about... sin finding expression in your body and what do you do about it? What's interesting is that the sin nature is still there. Spiritual growth is really growing up into what you already are and the more that you abide in Christ, the less active the sin nature can be because they both can't be active at the same time. In Corinthians Paul says, death works in us, so there might be life in you. The degree to which the cross is applied to the old man conditionally in your life is the degree to which the life of Christ comes out and is manifested. So a lot of times when the Spirit is applying that cross, He's applying it to the good part of you, you think, oh gee, I thought this was okay.

There's nothing from Adam that's acceptable to God. It's totally a brand new thing. Totally. It's all we know. That's right. We don't know. It seems painful. It's cool though. I find it amazing that God would tell us what he did. He would clearly set forth what he did about that source of sin in you and me. Does it get any clearer? It doesn't, does it? That's no secret. It's not a big deal. And you know what else is cool about it?

It's in Romans 6, the sixth chapter of the first book of Christianity. From there on, all the way through up to Revelation, it's assumed that this is information that every believer knows and rests in. This is not some high spiritual thing. This is Christianity 101, is what this is. This is the basic stuff. But a lot of churches today, it's Christianity 1000.

I know. Well, if I can keep you, if I'm Satan, and I want to keep you from being of any use at all, I want to keep you away from these truths. I want to keep you stuck and working on yourself all the time. You see that? I don't want you being free. You're dangerous if you're free. I can keep you going to church and doing spiritual push-ups and keep you away from this information. You're no threat to me. So sin didn't die, we died to it. Does God intend to change the old man? He's not going to make him better? Really? You mean if you memorize scripture you won't be better? It's like looking at the old Ford with no motor in it and saying, man, is that a cool car?

So, my last question was, if God is done with your sin, how come you're not? That's right. So, if your history began anew, and God took care of your sin, then you ought to be done with it. Do you see that? And, granted, you can't just decide this morning, I'm done with sin. But you now have enough facts, don't you?

And enough facts to believe. We are, as Christians, we're believers. And we have to have an object for our faith. We need to know what we believe. And so if I say to a Christian, well, what do you believe? And they'll say, well, I believe that Christ died for my sins. That makes me a Christian. I say, well, what about your sin? Your sin nature? Do you know what happened to that and do you believe it? Same thing.

If you're to live by faith, you live by the faith that these kind of facts do. Do you see that? Because these facts are more important than your salvation. Because this is the cement that your salvation, the foundation that your salvation is based upon. If you're worried about sending your way back to condemnation, and you understand identification truths that the Holy Spirit united you with Christ in His death, prayer, and resurrection, and now He's seated in the heavenlies and you're seated with Him.

How are you going to get back over here? Because in order to be lost, you've got to get over here. How would you do that? Christ would have to go back. He'd have to come back to the earth, go back in the grave, come back up alive in sin, up on the cross, down from the cross, and then at some point you get released from it. Now you're stuck back with Adam again. Do you see that?

So your history as a sinner was because you sinned in Adam. Your history as a believer is because you're alive in Christ. So your destiny, your future, and your existence right now is dependent on him, not you. You don't have to believe really hard to hold on to your salvation. You know what? it's too late for you. You shouldn't have believed in the first place. Because once you did, you died.

Did you see that? I mean, the game's over. Sorry. See? And so the more you learn about what God did, you will, in fact, begin to be free from, or just, I'm free from sin. That doesn't mean I don't sin once in a while. But my frame of reference now is, wait a minute, God is done with my sin, I should be. And I have the facts to back it up.

You okay with that? It seems too good to be true. Way too good. Once you believe, you can't go back. And that is overwhelming enough. There's nothing you can do. It's Christ doing everything. It's too good to be true. Salvation is too good to be true, at first. You think about, as you learn the grace of God, it's all too good to be true. All of it is.

Only our God would come up with a plan like this. No other society and no other religion has ever even dreamed of something like this. It's all based on you getting better. The problem with the 7,000 virgins is that the same old Adamic man is involved with the 7,000 virgins. This guy doesn't care about 7,000 virgins. He cares about Christ only. There isn't any fleshly satisfaction that appeals to the believer resurrected in Christ. Do you see that? Yeah. Their faith seems to feel that they have no fleshly needs or demands or desires or whatever it might be. Yeah, it's all built upon that. Yeah, it is. Totally built upon that. Totally built upon that.

Okay, we'll spend five minutes in the next set of questions. At the end of verse 10, the positional aspect of the doctrine is now over. And starting in verse 11 is when we're exhorted to do something about what we know. You see that? Now it's your turn, so to speak. God has given you the message, now here's what he wants you to do about it. So in 11, he says, likewise, you also reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God, in Christ Jesus our Lord.

What does the likewise mean? Just as Christ did. If this is true of Christ, then okay. Same stuff. So as we arrive at this point, what does the word reckon mean? Because that's what he's telling us to do. In Greek it's not the word pastuo, which is believe, it's the word logizimai, which is a different word. Count as true. Does your counting to be true make it true? It already is true. So, because of the facts preceding, we are to reckon or logizimize. Newell says that it's both a court word and a counting room word. From a court standpoint, if the judge says, okay, you're free to go. And when you turn around and walk out the door, you logizimize. you reckon that he's telling you the truth, right?

From an accounting standpoint, if, well, probably the best is the, you know, have you ever looked at Corinth on a map? It's a little skinny thing between, you know, at the top of Greece. And the reason Corinth was such a wealthy city is because the guys would bring their boats in there. And it was just, I don't know, 11 miles across the Isthmus to the other, whatever that gulf is over there. Rather than spending a month sailing around, they'd unload the ships, haul them up, or haul the whole ship over this 11 miles and then put it back in the water over here.

Well, when they counted the cargo in the ship, you know, there were 400 pieces of cargo. And the guy said, well, I showed up with 400. This guy counted it. He said, I reckon there's 400. It's not a Western term. It means there were 400. You understand? When the reckoning means that you're just assenting to something that's already true. See that? If I pull 20 cents out of my pocket and put it down here and say, Craig, count it, you'd say, I reckon there's 20 cents there. Why? Because there is 20 cents in there.

It's not about. Well, Gizomai doesn't mean about. It means exact. It's the same word as in Romans 4. Sure. Yes. And it was counted to him for righteous. He uses it 11 times. He uses the same word 11 times in Romans 4 in verse 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 22, 23, and 24. And this is more than just an expression of belief. This is an attitude of belief.

Have you noticed that in your Christian life, that you have gone from an expression of believing a fact to you have now an attitude about it? That it's just the way you are? It's an attitude? So here God doesn't say to you, I want you to believe this. I want you to have an attitude about this. I want you to reckon yourself to be dead and deed unto sin. This is to be the fact and the attitude that you function based on today.

You don't pump it up when sin dogs your door. This is your frame of reference all the time. That's what reckoning means. And you don't have to pull a ruler out every time to see if it's a foot long. You don't have to once or two or five or a hundred times a day say to yourself, I'm saved.

You see? You reckon it to be so. It's part of what you are. You're being crucified with Christ, separated from sin and alive unto God, it's supposed to be the same way. That's why he puts that language the way he puts it here. Reckon yourself indeed dead unto sin and alive unto God. This should be your attitude. Now, let's say it isn't your attitude. What do you do? Beat yourself. Yeah, get the hair shirt out. Well, is it a command? Is reckon a command? Answer, yes it is. But it's one of those logical imperatives.

So, based on the accomplished fact. How do you get from believing these facts, now that you know them, to the point of reckoning them to be true, where it becomes your frame of reference, it becomes your attitude. I think before, or at the beginning of this class, or your earlier classes, I've heard these things before, and I'm like, okay, this is what the Bible says. Sure, okay. But now it's like, it's kind of, it's making more sense, just from repeated, just the same over and over, like the Bible says.

So, you'd say repetition will go from just simple belief to reckoning? No, I think, I think just staying in God's Word, just... Resting. Spiritual growth. What do you think? Anybody else? Who's the implementer of these truths? The Spirit himself, right?

So God says to you, believe me. So he came to you as a lost sinner and he said, believe me about my son. You're lost, you're condemned, you're at toast. Here's my son, he's the savior of the world, he's God, and he died on the cross for your sins. If you believe me about him, I'll save you for all eternity." You say, okay, I believe you. But a week later you think, oh gee, I wonder if I really did that. Or the next time you sin and it's an issue, you think, oh, I wonder. But over time, what happens?

You get persuaded about being saved, don't you? And you're convinced. You cannot be unconvinced. How did that happen? You read it enough times? The Spirit of God persuaded you, spiritually locked it in. So you read these truths. And God says, you believe me about this? You say, yeah, I do. Here comes the Spirit, hang on, because here we go. The Spirit of God over time will lock this into your mindset and your viewpoint so that reckoning will be, this is what you're about. We're actively engaged in the process. Yes, we are.

You know, there's little even justification by fake truths in most churches today. I can't see how a person can even get a hold of these truths without even understanding justification truths. The point is you can't, Mike. That's a good observation. You know, I mean, listening to some people Oh, just say this prayer and stuff, you know, and then you're saved. Yeah. We got to go. That's close.

Dear Father, how we thank you for what you've done, not only for us, but to us. And as we grow in the knowledge and grace of your dear son, that we would reckon to abide in him more and more every day. And we thank you. We pray in his precious name. Amen.