The Position & Possessions of the Believer # 32 (Lesson 34)

I was going to finish up something from last week, right? Those of you who are here, do you remember? I forgot to look. Yeah, that was it. We were talking about actually we've done a guy. I made it. I made a mark. I know where I was. We've gotten through question nine and We're talking about the first fruit and the earnest of the Spirit and most of this lesson had to do with the work of the Spirit in the believers life and Let's go right to 11 and the last thing was is do you know what is meant by the anointing of the Spirit? What do you think? Do you know what anointing means? When the Spirit of God, and actually there's kind of two ways to look at it. One is in the Old Testament. As a matter of fact, the word Messiah, you know what the word Messiah means? It means anointed one.

In Exodus 29.7 Aaron was anointed high priest.

In Exodus 11.9 there is the anointing of the tabernacle and all of the furniture.

In 1 Samuel 16.13 there is an anointing of the king.

1 Kings 19.16 the last It's the only case where a prophet is anointed.

As a rule, there was no successor of prophets. They just came along. In the Old Testament, the word anointing meant, I think, this. Called of God for a specific purpose. And no one could really, usually, except in this one case, take their place. They had a unique calling of God for a specific purpose. So that's why kings and priests were anointed, because they had specific jobs and they were set apart to their respective offices for special and exclusive service to God himself.

That's what anointing is. Now in the New Testament, how about the Lord Jesus Christ? Was he anointed? Sure. He's anointed for a specific and definite and official task which was to go to the cross. How about you and me? Are we anointed? Look at 2 Corinthians 1.21. Anybody there? Go ahead and read it if you have it. So, every one of us have been anointed. Have we been anointed for a specific and special and exclusive service? What do you think? And if you say yes, then my next question is, what is it? To glorify God, yeah, but we have service.

One other verse, 1 John 2, 20 and also 27. But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you all know, and as for you, the anointing which you receive from Him abides in you, and you have no need of anyone to teach you. But as His anointing teaches you about all things and is true, And it's not a lie, just as He has taught you, you abide in Him. So what's he talking about there?

Maybe ask this, in the Old Testament when somebody was anointed, what really happened? Could you say that the Spirit of God came on them for the specific service that God called them to do? What do you think? Yeah, that's exactly what happened. So has the Spirit of God come on each one of us and anointed us for certain things? What do you think? Absolutely. And so, what would some of those things be? We've been set apart, ordained, anointed for good works, or you could say every single believer, by virtue of the fact that they have been dwelt by the Spirit of God, that alone is the anointing.

Because we have Him permanently. And not only is He in us, but we are in Him, in Christ. And we are ambassadors of the reconciliation. That's one thing that every single believer has an anointing for. An ambassador is one who represents his country or his creation and he speaks, an ambassador only speaks the language and the information that the country tells him to speak. He's not entitled to his own opinion. So we've received this anointing from God and according to one John, we don't need any human wisdom or knowledge or anybody to teach us about what it is. Because we have it and we have the Spirit of God to teach us. So, you have an official and distinct designation. The other thing is that every one of us has at least one spiritual gift. Right? Think so? We all have at least one.

And that gift is designed just... What's a spiritual gift designed for? Who's it for? For the body, not for you in that sense. You are edified, but it isn't for you, it's for service of the body. You're a conduit through which the Spirit of God ministers to the body of Christ. Now there's one spiritual gift which is, I call it recruitment. And every other spiritual gift is for the edification of the body. Only one is for outside the body. Which one is that? Sure. Sure.

The evangelist is the recruiter. But all the other ones are designed for the edification of the body of Christ. And that's an anointing of the Spirit of God. It's a specific, special enablement by Him to edify because we grow from within. We are conformed from within.

The most important thing that the Holy Spirit teaches me to do is what? What do you think? be a good member of Holly Hills Bible Church. What's the most important thing that the Spirit of God does? He teaches me to do what? To abide in Christ. To behold His glory. That's the most important thing He does. Which allows us to cleave to Him. Any questions about anointing? All right, let's go to Lesson 34, Glorified.

And I know in the questions I gave you, I just gave you Romans 8.30, but I probably should have given you 28 through 30. And I'm going to read those three verses.

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose, for whom he did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover, whom He did predestinate, them He also called. And whom He called, them He also justified. And whom He justified, them He also glorified." So my first question was obviously, what does the word glory mean? We hear it all the time, don't we? Isn't glory a big deal? What does it mean?

We had a neat experiment on Tuesday, thanks to Ben. Ben said, look, everybody has a different idea of what a word means. OK, so we were talking about grace. So I said, OK, let's go around the room and you tell me what you think grace is. And what was interesting is by the time we got to the end, we had a total definition. So, let's start over here. What does glory mean? Everything he's made of? Okay. All of his attributes? God's opinion of himself? I haven't heard that one before. The essence of who he is? Fine. It's who God is.

The word in Greek can mean dignity, obviously glory, glorious honor, praise, worship. It means to be of good reputation. It also means to think that you have a good reputation. Louis Perry Chaffer describes it this way, It would be natural enough to conceive of glory as some supernatural illumination with an appeal to the range of human vision, but it rather includes the ecstatic state of mind and physical enjoyment which belong to the celestial realm. Let me read that last part again. But it rather includes the ecstatic state of mind and physical enjoyment which belongs to the celestial realms. Glory.

T. Austin Sparks, here's what he has to say.

As to God, talking about God, his glory can be divided into two categories. The first one is the essential or the intrinsic, which is kind of what everybody was talking about. God in himself is a glorious being. Glory belongs to him as light and heat belong to the sun. His glory is concentrated in himself. It is because of what he is that glory belongs to him and only him.

The second part of it is what he calls declarative. The glory which his creatures accord to him, which we accord to him, all his creatures, as all his works, declare a certain degree of that glory. See that? Just by the virtue of the fact that you're here, and existing human beings in some way declare the glory of God. Now, there's another glory which concerns you and me.

The child of God is more peculiarly is the essential glory itself. I've always defined it as the sum total of God's intrinsic attributes, which is kind of the way most of us talk about it. Now, God is at the center and the essence of His very person is His glory. who he is. He's the only one that has it. So because he is God and because he's a creator, everything that he creates in some degree or some way manifests the glory because that's why he does it.

He does it to glorify himself. So even though we live in a fallen world still, the glory of God comes through and you see it everywhere. All you got to do is get up early in the morning and go look at the mountains. Or put a mask on and a breathing apparatus and go down on a reef some place. Or lay outside the city some night and just look at the stars. Or just look at another human being, how wonderfully they are made. So he is manifesting his glory in everything that he does.

What's interesting about what we're going to continue to talk about this morning is that God has desired and has determined to share His glory with us. Isn't that interesting? It's His, so that's going to be a future time, right? Has the Lord Jesus been glorified? Answer, yeah. Has His glory been manifested?

No. No. Except to us. We're the only ones that can see it. And we see it reflectively. But God has a whole object in mind, and that's to manifest and demonstrate his glory, and he's going to do it through people. So what I would like to get away from, maybe, is this idea that glory is some sort of radiance that appeals to human senses. You can feel it, see it, feel it, experience it. It's way more than that. Way more than that. It's something that's experienced, as Chafer said, on a celestial level, on a spiritual level.

Anybody want to add to definitions? Now, we just talked about anointed or ordained. My second question was, are we ordained to be glorified? What do you think? Answer, yeah, we were. Do you want to tell me when that was? Beginning of time. Is the foundation of the world the beginning of time? So it was before that, right? You guys have probably, actually you probably have just read this. How many of you have read that thing called Interior to All? You ever read that that Miles put out? I'll read it to you. Once upon eternity, there was but infinite non-existence. No atom, A-T-O-M, no universe, no world, nothing, nothing, nothing, but God.

The eternal triunity of love, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Isaiah 57, 15, For thus say the high and lofty one who inhabits the eternity, whose name is Holy. Contrary to fickle scientific theories, the time, space, and the universe is not eternal.

Let your heart, dear friend, be drawn back there and contemplate the beloved Son eternally in the bosom of the loving Father, receiving and reciprocating that divine love in all its unutterable purity and ardor in the spirit of love." So that's what's going on then. Back there in eternity, before anything had been brought into being, environed in the pure essence of divine life light and love, in the mind of the Father, the heart of the Son, and the hands of the Spirit, by and for His love, God conceived you. That's when He did it. Then. through thought of in eternity past, brought forth in time, for eternity future, forever loved. That's when God determined that you would be glorified. That's a pretty cool thing, don't you think?

I mean, it's neat to know, whoa, God was on top of this thing before I ever thought about it. Before I ever was thought of, He thought of me and determined then. In the secret place of the Most High, in the bosom of the Father, before anything was created, the Father fashioned you and me in the heart of His love. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unformed, and in my book all my members were written. which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them."

Isn't that great? That Old Testament verse from Psalm 139 fits perfectly with what God has done. So, when you're looking at Romans 8, 28, 29, and 30, especially 30, for whom he did predestinate, then he called and justified, when did he do his predestinating Maybe I'll make it easier. If God, way back when, conceived Alan in the mind of the Father, in the heart of the Son, and by the work of the Spirit, from that point, before there was ever a creation, God knew Alan. not knew what he was going to do, knew him specifically, created him in his mind specifically, and predestinated him for a certain end.

Is that true? Did he do that? Yeah, he did. And not only that, he gave Alan free will. Well, I'll take that back. He gave him will. Now, what's interesting is that God has predestined that you should be a certain kind of being. And the ultimate end is that you would be glorified with him. He's already determined that.

Isn't that interesting? So, he brings Alan forth in time. has him come into a physical, material existence in Adam, in a fallen race. At a point in time, Alan believes in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ and he enters into his position in Christ, which how long has he had this position? Right. So now God has him where he's always known him.

And now the predestination predetermining factor in Alan's life of what God's going to do to glorify himself through Alan and glorify Alan is now tracking. Now, what I want you to notice in this verse is what are the tenses of the word glorified and called and justified? What are the tenses of all those verbs?

What's that? Past. Done. Already done. OK. It's heiress tense fact tense in this case. So the word called as an heiress active indicative, which means it happened. Active voice means what the one who did it. It points to the one who did it. It isn't you who did it, it's God who did it. An indicative mood means it's a mood of reality.

Now, I know I'm doing a lot of reading this morning, but some of the stuff I found is worth reading. This came out, I think, of Kelly in terms of called. Called here does not mean invited. as in Proverbs, for instance, unto you men I call. That's an invitation.

For this would be an appeal to man's will instead of a description of those who are the object of God's will. Do you understand that? We're the object of God's will and his purpose. Called in the sense of Romans 8 as illustrated in 1st Corinthians 124 where Christ crucified is declared to be a stumbling block to Jews to people whose thought was religion and foolishness to Greeks, to those whose life lay in philosophy, but to the called themselves Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Now here's the substance of this. Here the called are seen to be a company whose mark is neither religious response nor intellectual apprehension but the electing grace of God which has marked out the sphere of their being They are named the called. Now that purpose is not merely an expressed divine desire but a fixed and vast will that itself subordinates necessarily all things, submerges all opposition and affects its object. So you are called one. Are you going to miss the train when it leaves the station? Why not? We had nothing to do with it. Not only that, but when did you get on? Who put you on the train? You did see.

So it's really cool. I mean, when you think about it, if you want to, you want to think about resting. It's kind of nice to know these cool facts about. all under the heading of glorified? When did this glory begin and start and when did God determine it was going to be the way it was?

It was then, because we're one of the called. I over-emphasize, being the called is not an invitation. We're having a party on Thursday and would you like to come? No, it's not that. God's purpose in regard to the called, His elect, does indeed arise out of His desire as well as being according to His infinite wisdom.

This is shown in Jehovah hath chosen Zion, He has desired it for His habitation, here will I dwell for I have desired it, Psalm 132. Also because He Jehovah loved Israel's fathers, therefore He chose their seed after them. He did all of this. Even those chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world are said to be loved in Christ our Lord. God is love and acts according to that nature. Out of His infinite, holy desire arose His purpose. If you reverse this order, you have the God of the fatalist, not the God of the Bible. Isn't that interesting? And that was all in response to who are the called. I know that's probably boring when I read it like that. So are you settled on the fact that you're the call?

OK, what does it mean to be justified then? OK, again, this is an aorist active indicative. The word can mean free. Who said made righteous? OK. Anybody else? Right standing before God. That's I'm sorry. Rendered just. Let me ask you this question. Is it that God declares you righteous or is it because you're righteous in yourself? So were you made righteous? It's a trick question, so think hard. We in and of ourselves were not made righteous. We are made in a right standing to be righteous before God and Christ. Okay, so when the Word of God says that you are the righteousness of God in Christ, whose righteousness is it?

It's his. And you're in it. He didn't give it to you. He brought you in Christ, recreated you. Now, the contrasting view is Abraham was accounted righteous, right? He was justified because of his faith. Was he in and of himself righteous? Absolutely not. But God made the declaration. And if the definition is to have right standing before God, then God is the one who decides who has standing before him or not. It isn't the human, it's God who decides that. So Abraham was declared righteous because of his faith.

He has right standing, but he doesn't have a position in Christ. So you cannot say about Abraham the same thing you would say about Peggy. Peggy has the righteousness of God in Christ. You wouldn't say that about Abraham. You would say Abraham was righteous. and justified, right? See the difference? Everything has to do with position. Where are you? Make sense? OK. I found I found something else about this and maybe you'll challenge me. I was reading William Kelly. William Kelly made this point.

An answer to the question, is Paul the only apostle who equates justification with faith? Is he the only one who does that? Kelly says, yeah, he's the only one. He says that neither James nor Peter, neither John nor Jude treat the justification before God by faith in Jesus Christ alone. Paul is the only one who does that.

Isn't that interesting? But it is given to Paul and to Paul alone to communicate this great truth in his epistles and he alone has used the well-known phrase. None of the others have touched it, not one. They have undoubtedly taught that which is consistent with it and even supposes it. They have pressed other truth which is incompatible with anything else but justification by faith.

Isn't that interesting? But Paul is the only one who lays out this issue and uses that phraseology, justification by faith. Interesting, huh? Why doesn't this verse 30 speak of the word sanctification? Back to the verse. Whom he did predestinate, then he also called. And whom he called, then he also justified. And whom he justified, then he also glorified. How come there isn't between justified and glorified, sanctified? How come that's not there?

Shouldn't it be there? Wouldn't you think it would be there? That's part of the answer. What do you think? Did the translator just sort of miss that part? Maybe the printing press hiccuped when we got to that. Sanctified means to be set apart. That's really all it means. When you're called a saint or you're called sanctified or holy, all the same word. It means to be set apart. Why isn't it there? What do you think? I'm not letting you out of here until you give me an answer. Because all of these declarations being heiress, active, indicative, are positional.

Have you already been justified? Have you already been glorified positionally? Sanctification is a conditional process. that goes on, at the point that you were a called one, were you sanctified at that point? When God conceived you in the Father's mind and in the heart of the Son, in the hands of the Spirit, in eternity past, were you sanctified then positionally? Yeah, you were. I mean, you were created in God's mind, sanctified.

Now sanctified, when you deal with these verses, especially sanctification, you have to put sanctification under one of two headings, either positional or conditional. These are positional issues, and that's why I think sanctification isn't there. Because you already are. Is it also because we were not in Adam at that point in time?

At that point in time, your whole identity was in the mind of the Father. The man had not even been created yet, except you. Now it's interesting when you start dealing with God's eternity, the fact that he's an eternal being and when he, it would seem to me, well put it another way, I can't conceive of the Father at some point not creating me in Him. God creating, not creating me, and then another time He did. Because I think time-space. I think sequentially. God doesn't think like that. He's always known me in Christ. Hasn't He? Or not?

One of the things that Courtney and I have talked about a lot, And I think this discussion is designed specifically so we can maybe get a little bit of an understanding of why God can say things a certain way. Disregarding all of that interior to all business, here's a human being who shows up on the planet and he's identified with Adam, right?

You cannot say about that person that God knows him in Christ at all. As far as to observe that person's existence, he was procreated on a certain day, born on a certain day, and here he is. And before that, what do we know? But then the person believes in the person and work of Christ and becomes a Christian. Well, what happens to him is, the whole reason for our course, is that God takes him out of Adam, through the cross, and puts him in Christ.

He comes out of a time-space being and enters into an eternal being. So God could reasonably say, Oh, I've known you in Christ for all eternity. Why? Because from his perspective, You've always been in Christ, because there isn't any time over here. Does that make sense?

Maybe put it another way. At any point in time, I can look back from my Adamic viewpoint, and I can weave a history of me all the way back to the day I was born. But there's no history beyond that. But maybe from a biblical standpoint, I could weave it all the way back to Adam. Right? So here I am back at Adam. Is there anything before Adam for me as being identified with him? No. So my entire history from this point back goes all the way to the garden. Once I'm taken out of Adam and placed into Christ, now where does my history go? Back to interior to all. Doesn't it?

And that's how God knows me. He knows me there. He doesn't know me in Adam anymore. Now we know no man after the flesh. See that? So my history changes in the sense that I don't have this Adamic history anymore. Now I have the history of the Son of God. And when did his history begin? It never had a beginning. See that? That make sense? Well, I shouldn't say does that make sense with a finite mind trying to figure out. Let's see.

In John 17.22, and I'll read it, And the glory which thou hast given me, I have given them, that they may be one even as we are one, begins to describe the extent of this glory we are to have. Expand on that. And what the question is designed to do is for us to maybe think about, well, let's see. What kind of glory do I get? Do I get the good, the better, or the best? Do I get 40%, 60%, 100%? And if I get 100%, what does it look like? So in this verse, prior to this verse, up in 4 or 5 someplace, the Lord Jesus, in praying to the Father, said, Father, glorify me with the glory that we had before the world began.

Well, why would he ask? Wouldn't he already have it? Why would he ask? You don't ask if you don't have, right? Why would he ask? Because he's asking as a man. He's asking as a human being. He's 100% God, 100% man, but he has set aside the glory of God and become a man. And he is functioning up until this point totally as a dependent man. And so he says to the Father, as a man now, glorify me with the glory we had before the world began. Now, the sum total of the answer to question one is going to be resident in a human being for the first time.

Then it gets to this person, what does he say? He says, hey Father, The glory that you've given me, I'm going to give them. So my question is, do you get the good, better, or best? What do you get? That's exactly the point. We get exactly the same glory that God is. And that's something you're here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it does.

Well, it's interesting because because the only how do I say this? The only principle. that makes this understandable to our minds as the principles of position and condition. When you read these things, you think, well, gee, is the glory in the trunk of my car? Where is it? You know, I don't see it. How come if these words are in the Aorist tense, I don't seem to be experiencing, noticing, entering into, walking in this glorification, what's the deal? How do you put that in a box that I can understand? I think the box is position and condition. I think there's a position before God we are already glorified. It's like the Lord Jesus is in glory right now, manifesting the full attributes of God as a man. But who sees it? those that are in the heavenly see it.

So the whole creation hasn't been manifested to the whole creation yet. It's still going on but it hasn't been manifested. So I think that helps answer the fact that there's a future for us somewhere sometime when the glory will be manifested through us. It's already our possession It's already our position, but it hasn't been manifested yet.

Now, the Lord's whole object is to bring about glory in His people progressively now. Notice back up to verse 28. We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are called according to His purpose. What's His purpose? In the next verse. Man, it's not that hard. So God has purposed that we should be conformed to the image of his Son. Now when does that process begin? When? The very second we believe. So here's this process. Now, question nine. How does the purpose relate to our being glorified? The purpose is to be conformed to His image.

Whose image? The Lord Jesus Christ, right? He's had several images, has He not? As the Messiah of Israel walking around on the earth, He had an image. Was He glorified then? How about when He was on the cross? How about when He rose from the dead? What do you think? Is that the image he's talking about here? How about Pentecost? What image are we going to be conformed to? What image?

That's right. That's exactly right. So right now, you and me, as believers, we get to peek. We get to look in there. It's interesting what he did. He gave us the Word and he gave us the Spirit of God to effectuate this conformity process. 2 Corinthians 3.18 says, Beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord. We are transformed or changed from one state of glory to another state of glory into his very image even as by the Spirit of the Lord. Right? And I've left out unveiled face. So think about what's going on right now. If the Spirit of God has been sent and we get to behold the glory of the glorified Christ right now reflectively, what's the reflector?

Where do we see this glory? The Word of God. We get to see the glory of the Lord in the Word of God, and as we behold His glory, there is a corresponding effect on me, personally. What's the effect? This conditional conformity from one state of glory to another. So, guess what? To some degree, this incredible glory that God is, begins to start to leak out of you and me. But it only happens as we behold. Do you understand that? You start looking for the glory and it ain't there. Do you see that? And whose glory is it? It's His. But He's going to share it with us, the total sum of it. Hal Malloy left this planet and went to be with the Lord. What happened to him in regards to glory? Not only did he get to see it all, but he became it all. So, I mean, we sort of joke about this with the guys on Tuesday, he and Richard and some of the other guys that have left our Bible study and checked out. How come they don't take a Tuesday off and come back? That's right. Are you kidding? Here's the other interesting thing about it.

The Lord Jesus himself actually prayed to the Father that these events would take place. He said in John 17.22, that the glory which you have given me, I've given them that they may be one even as we are one. I in them, thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that Thou hast sent me and hast loved them as Thou hast loved me." So, if God's purpose is conditionally to conform us to the exact image of the glorified Christ, thereby accomplishing conditionally what He's already done positionally. See that? He starts with position in eternity past and has begun already to accomplish what He's determined in eternity past right now. To me, that's awesome that God would even do such a thing. Let's close.

Dear Father, how we thank you. Again, that we might enter into more and more of all of your blessings and the positions that you've put us in. That your grace may be so attractive to us that we would desire only the glory of your Son. We pray in his precious name. Amen.