Who You Are In Christ

So this class has been called various things. I'm not sure exactly all the names it's been called. But this class, as you're going to see, is a compilation of truths from God's word that the believer has as a permanent possession the moment he believes. And it may be kind of startling if you hadn't really considered this before, but the believer has a whole host of blessings that he has. He has a resume. And actually, as we usually pray before the service, and Vern had a little thing in his pocket.

Who am I? And this class is going to, in essence, tell who you are. Who you are as a Christian. What is your resume? If someone were to ask you for a resume for work you used to go and you put in your high school or your college or whatever military experience, you put it all in there and you say, here's my resume. Well, this is a resume, so to speak, of a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.

This is what he's about. What you're going to find is it's all of God and nothing of man. You say, well, what's man's part in all this? What do I have to do? I should be doing something. Well, how did you come to the Lord? You came to him by faith. And he asked you to have faith in what he's done for you based upon all these wonderful truths. So today's overview, we're going to go through point by point in the next nine months.

OK, so with that said, and what I've done here, Dr. Schaefer, Louis Schaefer, has kind of cataloged these. Others have cataloged these as well. The exact number, and actually, it would be neat if you would go through and create your own number. He cataloged them a certain way. If you count them a certain way, you'll get his 33. But if you count them another way, you can get, some have 240.

The numbering is not important, but knowing what you have in Christ is important. Basically, we're first going to review the Bible's doctrine of salvation. We're going to look at the things that are included for the individual when he believes. You may think, I came to the Lord Jesus, all I really knew was that he paid for my sins on the cross. He died on my behalf. He paid for the penalty for my sins. But there's so much more that was accomplished at Calvary on your behalf. And that's what we're going to be looking into here. And the sum total of these has been designated by Dr. Schaffer and others as the riches of God's grace in Christ Jesus. These things again are accomplished. at the instant a person believes.

And we're going to see that there's not a waiting period. Well, you've got to wait. Sometimes you have to wait so long before you're allowed to do something next. There's no waiting period. But there is a understanding and perception period that always seems to be there. We have to know that we have these to count upon these. So that's kind of in view here. Okay, so now this is kind of a review.

And maybe before I start, if you don't look at your Can someone tell me, without looking, what are the three tenses of salvation? Does this have any meaning to any of you? Is this something you've heard before? What would you say about, is God's salvation, Calvary happened at a point in time in history, right?

And the believer believes in that, trusts in that. Is that sort of the end of the deal? I mean, we believe that, and we say, okay, I'm finished with that, and let's go on with life. Is that what the Bible talks about? Or does it talk about a more expansive program? And I'm trying to get you guys to... You're really killing the answer. I know, I'm terrible with questions, I apologize. So how would you describe it? I have a way I'm going to describe it here. How would you describe it? Okay, that's good. Okay. Okay. Excellent. Okay. Very good. Okay. I like that. I like that. Okay. So what I'm going to share here is just what's kind of neat here.

You can look at We're going to look at verses, and you can see in certain verses it talks about a past aspect of salvation. We were saved from the penalty of sin. And the verses will say you were saved from the penalty of sin, so to speak. We're going to see other ones that talk about the present aspect of that. We are being saved from the power of sin. Sin is still present in us. has no problem with sin. Sin's no problem, you know. So if sin's no problem, then the present tense probably doesn't have much meaning to you.

But it should. It should have some meaning to you. It should be important to you. Because we see that even though we know the Lord Jesus, we trust him as our Savior, sin is still an issue in our life. So there's a present aspect of God, and that's all under the aspect of salvation. And then there's a wonderful future tense of salvation when the Lord will take us. We just finished with Thessalonians. The Lord will come with a shout and take us. We'll be caught up to meet him in the air and be with him forevermore.

So there's three aspects of this. And I sort of have charts that kind of amplify that. So does that kind of make sense? Is that something you've heard before or have some interaction with? I mean, hopefully this will be helpful. All right. So the past tense. I'm a bad question asker. I ask the question after I've already answered it. So what happened here? This aspect, we were saved from the penalty of sin. Christ took our place. He was our substitute. He died on our behalf. And to enter the ballgame, to be a Christian, you have to have gone through the past tense of salvation.

You may be kind of fuzzy on the present tense. You may say, well, I don't know. I do pretty well, you know. Present tense, why do I need to know that? But the past tense is absolutely a necessity. Without that, you're not a believer. We refer to salvation as being holy past. But what we're going to see here, many of the truths as described in scripture are going to be stated in the present, but kind of focused on the past. It will say, I presently have peace with God. Well, why do you have peace with God? Well, you've got to step back and look. He paid for your sins on the cross, so you can have peace with him. So many verses will talk about a present tense aspect, but referring back to what happened in the past.

Next point. The past tense is completed, unchanging. It was done once for all. Christ died once. He didn't have to die multiple times. And it's a once for all deal for the believer. The believer believes one time. Not to say that he doesn't need to grow in his understanding, but once is sufficient and God honors that.

One of the questions you like to ask in this is you were saved from what to what? You were saved from eternal death. You know, it's interesting. I did a study one time where you go through and you look at the New Testament, and it calls the people who are unbelievers, the dead. And Christ says, let the dead bury the dead, which is just, you know, like how to rock your socks. That's pretty strong language. The ones who are not in Christ are called dead. They're dead. So you went from eternal death to eternal life in Christ.

In Ephesians 2.8, and here's some examples of verses that kind of speak of the past aspect of salvation. For by grace you have been saved, not you will be saved, you have been saved.

Past tense, past completed action. Another one, this one sort of states in the present. He who believes has eternal life and has passed out of death into life. Actually I had another one here I wanted to share. with you, I thought was even stated in the past. Let's look at 1 John. I'm going to get someone to read 1 John chapter 5. And this is another one that states a past aspect of salvation. 1 John chapter 5. And if someone could read verse 11.

And this is the record that God has given to us eternal life and this life is in His Son. So basically, it's the gift of eternal life. We didn't earn eternal life. We're going to see that all through this. It's not our efforts, it's Christ's efforts. And we're trusting in what Christ has done.

And just key things. And it really helps you to kind of slice through What you see in Christianity today so much is related to my works and what I can do and how I'm pleasing God Well, the only one that pleased God was Jesus Christ and he can and the only one that can continue to please God is Jesus Christ so I if you don't have that in view you're going to be off in the schism of that schism and you're going to, it's going to be, you know, you may be a believer but you're going to be, you know, disappointed and probably, you know, not where you should be.

Bobby, do you have something to add? Yeah, well that came out last night, I think, with the whole concept of sharing the gospel with the Muslim. Right. In terms of, you know, as Christians, he used a fairly pejorative term. The horizontal vision always gets us into trouble, doesn't it? or even outside the body, but Christ could be a stumbling block, right? Right.

Well, it's interesting, he said, the Muslim, I got to get right here, help me out here, which one is the ethnic, which one is the culture, which one is the religion? Islam is the religion. Thank you. The Muslims are the people, okay. The Muslims just love Jesus.

I mean, that was what he said. I mean, you think, huh, I mean, that just kind of rocked, I said, how can they love him? It's not like they're, you know, 180 out from that, but it's interesting. The Koran has more about Christ than about Mohammed. But he was just a prophet, right? To them, he was just a prophet.

Right. That's an excellent point. They don't see him as Lord. That's a very good point. The Jews see him as a teacher. Right. Only the Christian, only the one who puts his trust and faith in Christ can see him for who he is. He's truly God, truly the God-man. OK, excellent, thank you. OK, John 10, 28.

They shall never perish. No one shall snatch the metal of my hand. The permanency of the past tends to salvation. There's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because Christ took our condemnation. All these you can relate back to this wonderful event at Calvary, that Christ took our punishment. He's our Savior. And we are free. We're to be free. We're not to be uptight. We're to be trusting Him for what He accomplished.

Any questions about the past tense of salvation? This is going to be This is going to be the focus for what we're going to do the next nine months. We're going to look at, and I only have a few verses, there's 33 and plus. There's just tons of information here about what we have in Christ. This is going to be the focus for the next... I'm going to cover the other two things just to kind of put it in perspective. Stan?

Roger, on the last one, no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Is that also because he fulfilled the law and so the law was fulfilled and completed, and the only way you actually can be condemned is through a legal system. Which is what Mike was talking about at the end of the class today.

That's good, that's a good point. No, I agree, that's good. But what's even more wonderful is there isn't condemnation in the sense that, well wait a minute, I didn't love my wife as Christ loved the church. There's a commandment to the believer, a Christ commandment. Well, are you condemned for that? No, we're not condemned for that either.

And that goes with grace. Exactly. The definition of grace? Unlimited and unmerited. We're totally, and we'll get into part of this as we go on, we're totally under a grace system now. Grace is the operating principle of the Christian life. And there's no condemnation when we When God gives us a gracious command and we don't fulfill that, we're not condemned for that either. Wow, how can this be?

It's an impossible system. A system that man would never invent. Man would invent Islam. They would invent that system. Because that system allows all the passions of man to be totally, oh yeah, whatever you want to do, just do it. And that's going to be heaven. That's another astounding thing. Heaven's going to be all the passions of this life. And you think, boy, what a drag. Is that going to be?

Roger, I think it's always important though in terms of Romans 8.1 to note what precedes it, O wretched man. Excellent, excellent. And that's the Christian whose walk is being questioned by. Right. All that Adam is about, right? Right. So, O wretched man, Christ Jesus. Right, excellent, thanks Bob. Okay, let's move on to the present tense.

I was going to say, you know the most important thing there is for those who are in Christ Jesus. I mean that is the real crux of the whole thing because it seems to me that there are so many believers who don't understand that they're in Christ Jesus. I mean it's not what would Jesus do, which is so much of Christianity. If they understood that they were in Christ Jesus, And that's a light. It's not, you know, how do I behave, and what do I look like, and do I say the right things? It's Christ's character. Well, those are the people that maintain the second part of 8.1, right? I remember 8-1-B that has been eliminated. Right, yes. The conditional aspects of no-condemnation.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's just such an important... It is. It is. You know, understanding what you... I mean, knowing who you are and what you have is the beginning point for the Christian life. And unfortunately, that takes a long time. I shouldn't say unfortunately. I mean, in a way that's... Think about it. God wants us to be interacting with him. When you see that you're falling short, and most Christians realize that pretty early on.

It's an impossible system. I can't love my wife as Christ loved the church. That's an impossible description. I throw my hands up and say it's impossible. but do you just give up? You say, well, okay dear, I'm sorry. That's an impossible thing. No. You say, Lord, how do I do that? How is that carried out? He gives you instructions. He tells you about the ... Vern's going to be covering that coming up here.

That relationship between the husband and wife is the most difficult relationship, I think, most people would agree with that. It shows that because of the tremendous divorce rate we have. People give up on it. They say, I can't do this. And they can't.

I think it's one of the neat things. I think God designed it to drive people to him. I really think so. It's the most wonderful relationship, but one of the most difficult relationships. We're kind of getting off the track here. OK, present tense. This is the one that a lot of people are fuzzy on. They think, well, I don't know. Do I really need to know about this? But this is the one where we all live. This is where we're all at day by day.

Salvation from the reigning power of sin. First of all, you have to realize that sin can be reigning. It shouldn't be reigning, but it can be reigning. We are to walk by faith, wrecking ourselves dead to sin. From what to what? From the power of the sin nature to being alive to God.

Romans 5 and 6 just tell us a tremendous amount about that present tense of salvation. Knowing this, that our old self or old man was crucified with him, that our body of sin might be done away with. Better rendering of that, it's not annihilated, it's put in idle, taken offline. Christ's life, our new nature is to be in gear and online in the Christian life. And this is really rough, and actually we have several classes here that cover this aspect of salvation. Romans 6-11, even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

And this is often called the identification truce, that we've been identified with Christ and his death and his burial and his resurrection. And there's just a wonderful understanding that comes with it. But kind of as a precursor to this, it's so wonderful to know what Christ has already accomplished for you. And that's kind of the beginning point of understanding my present tense, how I can be delivered from the power of sin, how I'm identified with Christ, how I'm in union with Christ. I can't be separated. I never can be separated from my Savior. Okay, so that's a really quick... Can I just say... Sure, go ahead.

You know, what helps me with this is to always think about it If the Lord is up here, and here's Christ, where I am, that I'm identified with Christ, and the Lord never sees all this garbage that I do over here, because He only sees me in Christ. It doesn't mean that I'm not convicted of that by the Holy Spirit, and I can confess that and go on, but the Lord never sees any of that. He only sees me in Christ.

Isn't that incredible? And the thing is, you know, and this is so funny, people want to say, well look what I've done. But all that can't measure up to anything that Christ has done. He's done it perfectly. But people want to get out their few. good works in the flesh and highlight them, God says, no, it's only Christ's work that I can accept with me. You have to have equals. You can't have sinful man in front of a holy God. That can't happen. But you can have a sinner in Christ in front of a holy God. That works. A sinner without Christ does not work.

Something else you wanted to? Well I was going to mention, you know, 1 John 3, 9 says, Go ahead. Whosoever is born of God does not commit sin. How are you doing that, Bob? I understand. The truth is that God doesn't see us. meaning us, and he cannot sin because he's born of God.

You know, the thing about... John will trick you up unless you're founded in Paul first. Exactly. And I think the Lord honestly put first John near the end of the New Testament, because you've got to be founded in the principles of position and identification before you get into John's. I agree with you.

And so if you go to first John, it's all this black and white stuff. And the only way you can interpret 1 John is to put into context who we are in Christ and have God see us with no contradiction. So this, you know, he who is born again does not sin is just a ridiculous statement. And back to this issue of contrasting, you know, one aspect of God's nature versus another, actually understand this. No, I agree. I can remember trying to understand 1 John and not understanding the Nefrication truths.

And he's like, how could this be? This is making a statement I can't keep. I mean, it's an impossibility because only Christ can keep, you know, only Christ can please God. If you have that in your mind, you say, well, that means I have to be in a relationship with him that's ongoing, that pleases him. And that's grace. That's the operating system that has to work. Otherwise, it can't work.

These verses all exemplify being dead in the sin. Right. Exactly. Before God, we are dead. Right. Separated from the sin nature. Death is separation. That sin nature shows up all the time. Go ahead. I'm sorry. I have a real hard time with this. As far as God doesn't see our sins because we are now in Christ, what's that all about? Well, it's not that he doesn't see them.

He's already paid for them, right? Christ paid for all the sins past, present, and future at Calvary. God looked down the ages of time. Every sin that's ever been committed or will be committed was paid. So it's not that he is overlooking them. He's already He's already dealt with them. That sin has been dealt with. The sin that you'll commit tomorrow or the next day. He's forgiven us.

He's forgiven and it's been paid for. And he only sees us in Christ. Right, he only sees us in Christ. That's all he sees. God isn't forgiving. Forgiveness is not the idea, well, I just won't look at that sin. I'll just let it go. Okay, boys will be boys and girls will be girls. No, Christ's death on the cross.

He took his death on the cross to pay for every single sin, past, present, and future. I mean, Newell said very nicely, I think, to be disappointed with yourself, and I think we all fall into that trap frequently, is to have trusted yourself, right? Or depended upon yourself. And all sin does is break our fellowship transiently, right?

There's nothing that's permanent. Stan? The passage about being transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light, at the point of believing, that's kind of the essence of identification. because you're no longer identified with this physical world because your position is in the heavenlies with Christ so God sees you not in the physical sense of this world or the kingdom of darkness because I see Satan having control over our physical existence here and that's where sin comes from the old nature that's in our body Christ doesn't see that or God doesn't see that anymore because we're now positionally identified with Christ in the heavenlies so it's the spirit that he looks at the kingdom of life.

And to me, I don't understand that. I just know that's what that passage means to me. And how that works, I don't know. But it has to do with the identification. I have to accept that, as a Christian, that that's what happens in the process of faith. Well, you know, may I clarify a little bit?

In terms of in terms of, once we've trusted Christ as our Savior, and we're walking with Him, He desires us to walk with Him, realizing, and like these verses say, we're realizing, knowing this, that our old selves was crucified with Him. We've been separated. We're no longer in union. Prior to knowing Christ, we were in union. We had no choice. Now we have a choice. We can walk in fellowship or not in fellowship. That's what 1 John talks about that a lot, being in fellowship or not in fellowship. Just a second, bud. I'll get to your question in one second.

The kingdom of light thing, we've been transferred. In fact, we're going to cover that verse exactly. That's one of the riches of God's grace. Transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. The kingdom of light is all about Jesus Christ. That's all about him. The kingdom of darkness is everything that's not about Christ.

I really wouldn't and maybe hold your question until we get to that one, but I would say I really wouldn't spend a lot of time, you know, staying up nights when God says I've been transferred in him, into his son, accept that as what he says by faith and, you know, that's my little...

Bud, you have a thought? Well, I'm back to 1 John again. Okay, sure. 1 John 1-9. Okay. Everybody uses that a lot. Right. It's very vital. And he says that, really, forgive us. If they confess our sins, he's faithful and just forgive us our sins. In other words, he knows about our sins. He wants agreement that we know that he knows. And that's why it seems that You're right. I am wrong. Right. Exactly. I agree with you. I think we kind of touched on that. That's the fellowship aspect.

It doesn't change your salvation. Your salvation is secure. It may change your fellowship, your interaction with the Lord. Your present tense of salvation may suffer, but your past tense will never be changed. It's unchangeable. We better go on. Future tense. This is probably an easier one because most people kind of grasp this.

The Lord is going to come for us. Salvation from the presence of sin. We'll no longer have a sin nature. We'll no longer be capable of sin. Full conformity to Christ. Yet to be revealed in the last times. From the presence of the sin nature to the absence of the sin nature. This wonderful time will be with the Lord forever.

In 1st John 3 2 it has not yet appeared what we shall be when he appears we should should be like him 1st Peter protected for salvation ready to be revealed in the last times and then Philippians 1 6 Will perfect it a good work in you until the day of Christ Jesus. I Okay, now, one more. We haven't even got to the introduction to it yet.

This is another point I think is, and this has kind of been mentioned in our discussions here, kind of really critical to realize that there are wonderful truths about the believer positionally, and there are truths about the believer conditionally. And we're going to spend, again, notice I've actually put who we are in Christ. This is the aspect we're going to be looking at. In addition to being the past aspect of salvation, these truths are also what's called our position, our who we are in Christ. This is our standing before God.

There's also a large amount of verses in scripture that talk about our condition, our moment-by-moment walk. Let me just give you one to think about here, just as a contrast here. Can someone read for me quickly? Colossians 2.6, chapter 2 and verse 6. This would be an example of a verse that would talk about our condition and how our condition is to be lived out. Randy, do you have that? Thanks.

Therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him. So how do we receive Christ Jesus the Lord? We receive him by faith, right? So it says the Christian life is to be conducted moment by moment by faith. So if you're looking for something to do in the Christian life, this verse tells you what to do.

The same word in the Greek is faith, trust, believe are almost identical words in the Greek. They all mean relying upon Christ for your daily life. And you can't do that unless you don't know what you're relying upon. what you have. Once again, it's knowing what you have with him in a positional aspect will fold into what you have moment by moment.

The more we know this, the more successful, I'll say that, the more potentially successful will be here. And that's the whole reason for studying it, to know Christ, to know him. And we're to grow in grace the knowledge of him, that I might know him, and the power of his resurrection, the fellowship of his suffering. As we know him more and more, our Christian life will be one that more and more is pleasing, more and more in fellowship with him, And there's various charts that we've presented, different time periods. And that's where the growth occurs down here in your moment by moment walk with the Lord. This is secure, never to be changed. Eternal, unchangeable. This is temporal, which is changeable. So this is kind of the groundwork.

So now, after that, let's look at quickly here. These five points are from Dr. Schaefer. And I think they're kind of just, and we've already kind of maybe talked about these to some extent. The character of these wonderful riches of God's grace, this position of the believer in the heavenlies, they're not experience. We should be looking to experience. They're not progressive.

I'll give an example. We don't start out as a son. We're a son from the beginning. We don't become a son after some trial period. They're not related to human effort, human merit. We're not going to gain brownie points with God. They're eternal in their character. In fact, since God is eternal, everything he gives to us is an eternal blessing. They're not a temporal blessing. And then lastly, the source of these is not going to come from the reader's digest. It's going to come from God's word. Or it's not going to come from Oprah. I don't have a real problem with Oprah. I get kind of weary sometimes. She's actually starting to do a good job. In her mind, she's helping. Maybe she does help some people. Not eternally, maybe, but maybe temporarily.

I have watched it maybe three times. It's odd when I come home sometimes. That's terrible. The TV just jumps on. I've got all kinds of questions about that. Go ahead. What's number one? Can you expand on that? Actually, good point. Since we don't have a lot of time, this is number one. They're not experienced. These facts of the new life in Christ There are ones that will allow us to grow.

For example, justification. Have you experienced justification? How would you experience justification? First of all, what is justification? Rather than spend a lot of time, God basically, based upon what Christ has done, declares us righteous. Not upon our merit. An act of God. Can we really experience justification? It's not something you experience, it's something you believe, you trust in. If God says, I've justified you, you trust that he's done that.

I actually have a verse here. Therefore, having been, notice it's a past action, having been justified by what? By my good efforts? By my helping out the poor? Whatever? No. By faith. And as a result of that, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. So two parts to that, we have been justified, and as a result of that we have peace with God. So hopefully, Stan, does that kind of help? Good.

It's not, I guess, you know, the thing is that we don't, we don't experience these things, but we may have an emotional reaction or an experience in response to these things. I agree. I agree. The peace that you get is an emotional or an psychological state as a result of those things.

Yeah, but we shouldn't go around looking for warm pleasantries. No. No, no, no. Then it proves this. This has already happened. It's a fact. The justification. It's not something we're going to experience in that we have some vision. Right. There's no mystical experience that you have justification. I'm not being mystical. No. But I think what Randy's pointing out is... Please no. What Randy's pointing out is that indeed, we say, wow, I've been justified. I've been declared... I mean, I didn't do a thing.

I just trusted Christ. I can't be at peace with God. I don't have to worry that God's going to bang me over the head. He's not going to, oops, you messed up again. No, he's not going to do that. And then, maybe we'll just, go ahead, I'm sorry. Would it be a little clearer to say that your faith did not create the justification, God did the justification, and that's where your faith is?

Right. Your faith is believing the facts, right? Counting upon the facts, trusting the facts, I don't know, there's various words you can use in there. believing what God has revealed. As we go through Scripture, we're going to see all these wonderful statements about God's action on the believer's behalf being justified.

He wants to clarify that. He wants to say, I didn't just justify you willy-nilly. Your faith and what I have done is how you appropriate that. I don't know, is that helping or hurting there? Stan? You're basically saying that it's not been experienced. In other words, you don't even know that it's happened. You just accept it through faith. In fact, many believers may not realize this. Hopefully most would, but some would not. That's been done for you, and you appropriate it by faith. You make it real in your life by faith.

I'm going to skip this next one. Let's just go on. They're not progressive. And what I mean by this is they don't grow or develop from a small beginning. They are perfected and completed at the instant you believe, basically. And this is an example that Dr. Schaefer used.

Sonship does not grow into full sonship, even though a son may be growing. An older man is no more or greater a son of his earthly father the day of his death and the day of his birth. You're a son from the very beginning. When we become a believer, we're a son and we'll always be a son. Just like an earthly son, your son at his death, he hasn't changed his position as being a son.

That's the idea here. There's some examples. Let's see if there's something here that I wanted to point out. I'll just read the Galatians 3.26 is for you. You are all sons of God, once again, through faith in Christ Jesus. You've got to see that as a kind of a constant theme. Through faith in Christ Jesus. These wonderful truths are appropriated by faith in Christ Jesus. We'll skip the next one. Number three. They are in no way related to human merit. There's no human merit that's involved here.

In Romans 5.8 it says, it was while we were yet sinners that Christ died for the ungodly.

There's kind of a misconception about Christianity. Somehow I have to get to a state where I'm good enough and then God can accept me. No. There's no state that you'll be that God can accept. He cannot accept you. He only can accept Christ. While we were sinners, Christ died. God took the action and managed to respond to that action, managed to believe that action.

That's part of the human merit. This is talking about a good son, a bad son, but they're all sons. There is certainly chastening. Our standing is upon the unchanging person of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Christian is accepted in the Beloved. There are a couple of verses I have here again. These talk about God accepting us. We are accepted. We are accepted in Him. Then Romans 5, 7 says, Accept one another just as Christ also has accepted us. We were accepted just as we are, a sinner, in need of God's grace.

So there's no human merit involved in any of these. Number four. As God is eternal, these are eternal in character. The imparted life of Christ is eternal in his character as is a fountainhead. These are Schafer's words. Hence the word of his grace, I give unto you eternal life and they shall never perish.

So what I did is interesting. I was kind of curious. and we don't have time to go through. I have about five verses. I did a little search on my computer about eternal. I did eternal life. We get a whole tremendous bunch of those. And they all kind of, there's some down here that show up here. They're all about eternal life. They talk about behold the Son and believe. He who beholds the Son and believes has eternal life. And this one talks about John 17, which is interesting. Eternal life. is knowing Jesus Christ. That's kind of an interesting one.

But what I did, I looked in here and I said, okay, what other aspects of God does he declare as being eternal? And basically he declares in 2 Peter, entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We have a building, a house, our new bodies will be eternal. Grace is eternal. Having obtained eternal redemption. Promises of the eternal inheritance. and the blood of the eternal covenant. Everything about our relationship to God, he acts in the eternal domain.

That's his operating area. We're here finite. He acts in the eternal domain. He gives us blessings based upon who he is and what he's done. Just incredible. Incredible stuff. They're known only through the word of God, basically. There's no other source. only by believing the word of God. The eternal riches of grace are for the lowest sinner. I'm not sure there's such a thing as the lowest sinner. Paul said he was the chief of sinners. He was the lowest sinner, so we're all on the same run. We may think there's degrees, but we all fall short. There's some examples there. And actually, the one year in the first Thessalonians, maybe we can just read that. Randy, if I could. Yeah. Yeah. I think on you again. That's OK. I want you to call me names.

For this reason, we also constantly thank God that when you received the Word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the Word of men, but for what it really is, the Word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe. Right. I always like that verse because it points out that as we present God's Word, you know, you may think, well, Roger has some good ideas or Mike has some good ideas, but it's not that. I mean, if we have good ideas, that they need to be God's. We need to recognize God's word for what it is. It's truly his word. It has the power, as we learned last night, to change lives. It is changing lives constantly. It's God's word that needs to be put forth and proclaimed. Those are the five points. You guys have this in a little bit different format.

So here are the 33 riches and they're on like three pages four pages actually five Anyway, if you kind of scan through that you'll notice that Schaefer does some interesting things He kind of does some grouping, you know, you really you really could have each one of these as an individual blessing individual Point, but he combines them together. That's why there's a little bit of difference on the number how many you get and And like I said, it's not, well how many can I get? I get more points for getting more, less points for getting less. It's more about understanding what this means to you in terms of the Christian life. So, like for example, Bob's going to have a whole slug next week. And then the following week we're going to have redemption and so on. So it kind of goes back and forth as you go through this list. Some have a lot of sub points, some have none.

So Lord willing, we'll be able to get through them all. I think you'll really benefit by this, knowing, having this as your resume in your mind and in your heart, what you have in Christ. And some may be surprising to you. Hopefully they'll be valuable to you. Any last questions or thoughts, Stan? Can you explain to me briefly, okay, we do not receive salvation through works, I understand that. Okay. But the gift of God is to all people. So there is a requirement of man to do something. Okay. Just to have faith. Okay.

Okay, so Where does that come from? I mean, does that come from man or does it come from God? Well, Stan, you'll be happy to know that people have discussed that point for a long time to come. That's been a hot topic. I said briefly. Briefly? I don't know. Scripture indicates that the Holy Spirit draws us to him, but that man behaves in our response and faith, there's an aspect that we couldn't do it without the Holy Spirit calling us, but we respond.

Mike Doyle always says, it's the last act of the flesh is to have faith, and then it's God. Go ahead, Bob. To build on that, Randy, I think God says in Romans that he's revealed himself to us through the creation, number one, and through our all men unto himself.

So that act of faith ultimately builds on a firm foundation of the creation and the conscience he gives each and every one of us. Now the problem with creation is people can look at it and believe it's there because of evolution. The problem with conscience is that's entirely or often very influenced by the environment in which we live. So if cannibalism is part of your culture, obviously that becomes accepted as part of your conscience.

So I think it's complicated, but God has revealed himself to all men. And so the Spirit's bringing all men unto God, the ultimate, you know, ability to make that final decision. Is that flesh or is that, you know, written in the book of life before that time's eternal?

I mean, the point is, we're going to talk about that next week, so I'm about being chosen. Well, let me just add one additional point. I think it was randomly an excellent point that the Holy Spirit is involved with every man, woman, and child in this universe.

And the word is used is convicted in the King James, actually also I think in the American Standard, but actually it's more convince. The Holy Spirit's job is to convince them that they need Christ. So his job, he's searching the hearts and lives of every person that exists, and he's convincing them that they need Christ.

And as was pointed out, We're to respond to that. It's a response. Some have said, well, I have to get the gift of faith. I have to receive something from God. Well, I don't think it's that way. God presents, the Holy Spirit is doing his job, and man is presented with Christ. And he can say yes to that or no to that. We were told that the word in Greek for faith is P-I-S-T-O-S. Pistis, yeah, pistis. And that has actually three aspects. And one of the aspects is surrender. So you're kind of saying the same thing here.

The Holy Spirit draws us, He convicts us, works with our conscience. A lot of the things that we don't even know exist within ourselves. And then we make the decision, right? To surrender to that calling. And once we do that, then we are in faith. Which is a difficult thing, because everybody always says it requires nothing of man. But in fact, it does require something. It requires surrender. Well, the word surrender I don't think is really in tune with the word pistis. Pistis is a word for faith, trust, belief. It has nothing to do with surrender.

Those are... It is in the vines. What's that? It's in the vines. Okay, I have looked at that. Surrender in my mind is not a good translation of the word pistis. Trust, and I can bring it up some time next year, we can do it on the time, but basically faith, trust, belief are good synonyms for pistis. So those three words give man's action, and that's what's called a non-meritorious, we don't get, our faith, for example, you're a son or daughter, if you have a son or daughter, when they trust you, I know my son, Dad, what should we do? We'll do this. Okay, Dad, that's fine. It's simple, it's not a complex operation, it's a very simple operation. But they're surrendering to your father. Well, be careful.

The word surrender is not a good synonym. I would not use the word surrender. I would use faith. Actually, what the translators do, they translate the word pistis in three ways, faith, trust, and belief. I would stay with those three words. I would not surrender.

In my mind, it puts a whole new spin on it, and I don't think that's scriptural. And I'd be happy to talk with you about that. Thanks for your questions. It's been great. We continue on with this. If we haven't answered the question today, hopefully we can do it another time. Okay. Dear Father, we just thank you so much, Lord. We thank you for your word. We thank you that it's complete and accurate, and we can trust it, Lord, and we thank you for this time. In Christ's name, amen.