Intro - You In Christ and Christ In You

This class is called Christ in You or You in Christ. If you thought it was Ephesians, you need to be somewhere else. What we're going to do, we're going to actually do kind of three classes over nine months. And the three classes are going to be the first three months or so will be Christ in You and You in Christ, which if you had to shrink it down into one word would be identification. We'll talk about that and then the second three months will be discussions on position and condition to try to get that as clear in our minds as possible because it's important to know when we read this Word of God what's my position and what's my everyday walking around condition and how do the two relate.

And then the last focus on the issue of grace, define what it is, and then really try to make it as clear as possible in terms of that it is the operating system in which we as believers live. We do not live under law of any kind. And I'm convinced that grace is one of those things that we're most ignorant about. We don't know the principles of grace and so therefore if you don't know how grace functions and operates, you by default are looking for some sort of a law that you can fall back on so that you can at least gauge your behavior rather than understanding what grace is and how all-encompassing it can be and should be in the life of a believer. Now, having said that, you can't teach one of these without incorporating all the rest of them in there as you go along.

So we will talk about Christ in you and you in Christ. We will talk about grace. We will talk about position and condition a lot. But the focus will be Christ in you and you in Christ. Then position, condition, and then grace. But all through this, we'll be weaving those principles in and out. The notebooks you have will things up you can. I wrote down all these principles must be incorporated into one's heart in order for us to have a walk that's consistent with our salvation and the new life that we have. You'll find that as we progress we'll be explaining aspects of all three principles even though we're going to focus individually on each one.

The first one is Christ in you and you in Christ. To be honest with you, it's going to be, at least initially, pretty difficult to explain. Especially, you can't explain Christ and you and Christ without talking about position and condition. You just can't do it. So, first question of the class. How do you describe Christ and you?

How would you describe what that is? I got a dollar in my pocket. Is that what it means? Christ in you. What thought comes in your mind when someone says, oh Christ is in you? It's a new life. difficult to, when you just sit down and think about, well gee, I see this term all over the New Testament, I see it every place, Christ in me, me in Christ, the spirit of Christ is in you, in, in, in, this word, in, E-N, is a word that means, it's a preposition denoting a fixed position in place, time, or a state in a relationship of rest. That's what the word in means, the N, Greek word in. And so it's a position that you're in, it's a position that Christ is in, Christ in you.

I think the key is what Peggy said, it's a life, because I think a lot of people try to make it with the identification of the old man trying to make a process, a copying, an imitation, a manner of life, a manner in which you act, a manner, you know, this is the way a Christian looks. life in us.

His life is our life. And that makes it completely different than a process or a copying or anything. The Corinthians, it's the new life. A new in kind and that's the key between the way most people look at it. It's a set of rules, a set of the way you're supposed to act and it's not So he can explain it, maybe define it by what it isn't. And we'll discuss more about what it is.

Now, what's interesting about the Word of God is that it describes, especially in the epistles, it describes human beings as being in one of two locations. One of the reasons I like in Christ is because I'm a realtor and location is everything to me. So every believer, every human being is either in Christ or in Adam. You're in one of those two positions, right? You think of any location that you might be other than that? You're either in Adam or you're in Christ.

First Corinthians 15.22 says, as in Adam, all die. So also in Christ shall all be made alive.

Every human is conceived and born in Adam. Anybody have a problem with that? Every human being is conceived and born in Adam. Now one of the things we'll discuss over the next couple of weeks is out of the book of Genesis, how God did all this and how he set up the principles so that we are associated with Adam. Every human being is born dead because he's in Adam.

He's separated from God and he's separated from the life of God. So the issue is, if you want to put it sort of pedestrianly, one must find his way out of Adam and into Christ in order to find life. You've got to find your way out of Adam and into Christ.

Now, right away, you notice the difference in the viewpoint of, sometimes you believers look at salvation as something being added to them and nothing ever changes about them. But what the reality is, is that there's a movement from the person out of Adam into Christ. Most believers see their sins forgiven and know that they have life, but they don't know the truths regarding being in Adam or being in Christ.

They don't understand that. If you talk to anybody who comes from a covenant environment, they do not understand what it means to be in Christ or to be in Adam. If you talk to somebody who comes from a charismatic environment, it's all about fixing up that, making him to function and work like a Christian. Now I quoted, I'm going to read a couple of quotes to you that I got out of the hungry hearts from last week.

There are vast numbers who profess to believe in the atoning value of the death of the Lord Jesus, but who do not see aught therein beyond the forgiveness of their sins. They do not as yet see the crucifixion, death, and burial of the sinner, the entire displacement of the old system of things belonging to their first Adam position. In a word, their perfect identification with their risen and ascended Lord. When I see the blood I will pass over you. sure, he is safe, but not clear of the power of the enemy, not clear of Pharaoh and the Egyptians.

That is really where most Christians are today. Position is everything. Where you are matters big time. So what would it mean then to be in Adam? If you understand that human beings are either in Adam or in Christ, You're in Adam. What does that mean for you? You're separated from God. Separated from God. What else? You have a sin nature. What's that? You have a sin nature. You have a sin nature. Separated from God. Separated from the life of God. Toast. Condemned. You're condemned. Absolutely condemned.

Your identity is in Adam. Your whole identity is in Adam. Now that's a big problem because if God stands looking over humanity and he sees you in Adam, you're in trouble because you're going to go, you're going to suffer the consequences of the condemnation that he already inflicted on Adam. That's a big problem. So there's a lot of downside for being in Adam, right?

There's no upside for being in Adam at all. Not a single thing. And if you get a hold of the idea that there isn't any upside for Adam, maybe as we progress you'll abandon Adam. Stop relying on him. Could you say that Adam, you have no hope either? No hope? Might have a lot of faith in him. But you have no hope. There's no hope in Adam at all. he's comfortable in this world, this is his environment.

Everything around him was created by God to enhance his existence on the earth. Now the problem is that Adam sinned and the whole creation fell and he's still comfortable in his fallen environment because that's where he lives. It's like if we're going to take a mission trip to Guatemala and we go down to Guatemala and none of us speak Spanish and we're kind of there for two weeks it becomes really clear to us that we ain't from around here but the Guatemalans are real comfortable with being in Guatemala Adam is real comfortable with being on the earth and being involved with all the stuff that goes on the earth the fleshly things but the man Christ isn't comfortable here Because when he came, what did they do to him? They crucified him. He's not an earthly man. He's not an Adamic man.

And we'll discuss that as we get into it. Now I'm going to go through a whole bunch of questions that hopefully you don't tilt on me. But here's what we're going to try to answer as we go through this class. Why did God create Adam? What were the principles God incorporated into Adam and into his creation? Why is the study of Adam so important to me now? Why would I even concern myself with him? What is every man's and my relationship to Adam? We'll also ask, why did the second person of the Trinity come to earth as a man? Why did he do that? What principles were incorporated into Christ and his creation? What's the principle of reproduction as it relates to Christ? Does Christ reproduce himself? What is every man's and my relationship to Christ?

We're going to have to talk about sin and its consequences too. Why am I condemned when it was Adam who did the sin? How come I'm getting condemned? He's the one that did it. Have you ever considered that there may be a difference between sins you commit and the principle of sin itself? Ever had that thought? sins are the things I commit, but what about the thing, sin itself? What is death and is it a reigning principle? Does it control things?

Why is the concept of a representative man or a federal head of a race? What is that? Is there such a thing as a man who is the representative man of the entire race? He is the one who is, because he's the head, things that happen to him to the benefit or to the demise of all those that come from him.

And why would God put that principle in place? Ever thought about that? Why would God do it that way? It seems that if the principle of a representative man or the head of a race, that whatever he does is a consequence that the race ends up being under, that sounds like a really bad decision on God's part because I'm not getting the best benefit out of that. What Adam did in the garden, I'm suffering the consequences for, right? We'll talk about, we'll answer hopefully that question. Then we'll talk about what's the purpose of the law? Why did God even, you know, why did God give Adam a law? He gave him a law. Is the purpose of the law still relevant today?

Did Christ do more than just die to pay the penalty for my sin? water baptized when Jesus told the disciples that the world would hate him what did he mean when the world tells me that I was crucified when the word tells me I was crucified with Christ what does that mean and what's an old man and do I have one if I'm in Christ how should that affect me so there's a bunch of questions that hopefully over the next three months will answer The term identification truth is seldom understood in today's theological dialogue. To be honest, it's a relatively new discussion. When one considers that Christianity has been around 2,000 years, with its salvation by faith in the personal work of Christ, identification was only explained and expanded in the early 1800s in English. It has always been in the Bible, but it has not been examined as it has been over the last 200 years.

The guy that brought it into focus is a guy named John Darby. Some 350 years after Martin Luther brought back into vogue a substitutionary death at the new birth, God restored the truths of identification and growth and he did it through this John Darby. Every single person that writes anything on identification and spiritual growth today can trace that lineage to John Darby, because before him there were a few people that sort of referred to it, but nobody explained it like he did. Foundational and far-reaching as the Reformation was, it proved to be the groundwork for a vast array of growth and related truths that unknown one John Nelson Darby.

He lived from 1800 to 1882. He was a lawyer. He withdrew from the bar early in a promising career, responding to a higher calling. Two years after his subsequent ordination, he resigned his courtesy with the liberal Irish Anglican Church as a result of its low spiritual condition. Knowing better than to try to reform what he considered to be a ruined church, He set out to make all things new. New Testament. So listed below are some of the vital doctrines that have been formulated and clarified by Darby.

It's going to be interesting as I read these to you. The full assurance of salvation is John Darby. The unconditional internal security of the believer is John Darby. The complete acceptance by the Father in his The church as the body of Christ, John Darby.

The distinction between Israel and the church, and therefore between law and grace, John Darby. The basic dispensations in the rightly divided word, or stewardships. The pre-tribulational and pre-millennial rapture of the church. A whole bunch of light on prophecy. Our identification with Christ and his death unto sin, his burial, his resurrection, and his ascension, John Darby. The deliverance from the reign of sin, the old man in Romans 6, John Darby. The freedom from the principle of law via Romans 6 through Romans 8, John Darby. And God's purpose in the English language by John Darby. Up until him, nobody ever wrote about those subjects.

You had Calvinists and you had Jacobus Arminians, who was a Calvinist who started out. And Calvin was very clear on salvation by grace, but then he said you must live under the law. There was no discussion of identification. There was the Calvinists would say you are eternally secure but they wouldn't base their eternal security on the fact that you were identified with Christ in his death, burial and resurrection. They knew about grace for salvation they had not a clue about grace for living the Christian life. Not a clue.

So what you have in 1800 to 1880 with John Darby is a whole new system of theology that is being brought into the discussion of an environment in which you have Catholicism as opposed to Protestantism, and Protestantism is primarily Calvinistic. Jacobists, Armenians, the Armenians are beginning to have some sort of sway, but not a lot. And from the Catholic side, you have the viewpoint of Augustine, does today.

So Darby is a very very important man when it comes to talking about Christ in you and you in Christ and this whole discussion of identification because he's the guy. Now there's been a lot of guys right from him but even today in Christian circles who knows the name John Darby? Somebody who's never been into a Bible church or never been in an environment where they discussed identification, ask them if they've ever heard the name John Darby.

And they'll say no, I haven't. The brethren probably have. But even the brethren have trouble today understanding what Darby was talking about. And if you've ever tried to read John Darby, it's a little bit The eighteen hundred English is plus he must have been a brilliant guy because his senses go on. What was the point was he making? So there's a lot of guys to read. There's William Kelly, who was his editor, and a lot of these other brother and guys that sometimes are a little clearer than Darby, but they're well worth it.

If you ever get your hands on Darby, any of those brother and writers there, they're valuable to have. And if you want something, let me know. I've got a catalog from Kingston Bible Trust. You can order anything you want from those guys and they have it all. I was just going to ask, in conjunction with this class, is there a book by Darby that you'd recommend that would be a good overall reference? You know, not really. Not really. If you know the Brethren writers, the way they did things, they didn't write a book. John Darby wrote a thing about this, why? Of 45 books.

And subjects that were all over the lot. Because I think the way, the reason it's like that, he did commentaries and synopsises on all of the works of the Bible. But I think that the form of communication in the 1800s was through periodicals, through magazines. And dialogues would go on between two people for months at a time. Like Roger and I would, Roger would have a theology and I would have a theology and I would write an article and Roger would read it and he'd write a rebuttal that got published next month and then I'd rebut him and that's how it went. Back and forth.

There's a set of books, I don't know if you can still get them, called the Bible Treasury. And there are about this many. I think there's 24 of them. And what they really are, are just articles written by these guys about every subject under the sun. And it's worth having them.

Boy, if you ever get a chance to buy the Bible Treasury, buy it, because it has a reference book So I was going to kind of be a smart aleck, Steven, say, yeah, we have one book. It's called The Word of God. Let's say I want to talk about a couple of scriptures that may. Romans 8, 9-11.

However, you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him. Verse 10. If Christ is in you, though your body is dead because of sin, yet the Spirit is alive because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised up Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.

1 Corinthians 3.1 And I, brethren, could not speak to you as spiritual men, but as men of the flesh, as to infants in Christ. There's that term, in Christ.

1 Corinthians 4.15 and 17. For if you were to have countless tutors in Christ, Yet you would not have many fathers, for in Christ I became your father through the gospel. For this reason I have sent Timothy to you, who is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord. And he will remind you of my ways which are in Christ, just as I teach everywhere in every church.

2 Corinthians 13.5 Test yourselves to see whether you are in the faith. Examine yourself. or do you not recognize this about yourself that Jesus Christ is in you unless indeed you fail the test?

Philippians 4.21 greet everyone greet every saint in Christ the brethren who are with me greet you Colossians 1.2 the saints and faithful brethren in Christ who are at Colossae Colossians 1.27 to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this glory.

Just for a second, two things I want to discuss here. Christ is actually in two entities. Can you tell me who they are? Christ himself is in two entities. Can you tell me who that is? No. He's in you individually, right? And he's also in us as a body of believers. Understand what I just said?

He's in each one of us individually, but he also inhabits us as a body of believers. And the reason I think that's significant for us is that we focus a lot on the fact that Christ is in me individually, and that his life is to be lived out through me, individually. But that's also true of the local body of believers. That he inhabits the body of believers and they corporately are to manifest his life.

Isn't that interesting? Have you ever thought about it that way? That we at Holly Hills, not only individually are indwelt with Christ, but as a community we are indwelt with Christ. And as we manifest the life of the Lord Jesus as a group, that that's as important as individually. That's really important, I think.

A couple of things, those of you who read The Hungry Heart, if you're like me, I like it, I love it, actually I've been reading it a long time. There's an introduction to the whole book had not rolled around, but I read the introduction and I thought I'd read some of it to you. I had to see about some work being done the other day, and this is from J.B. Stoney, and was asking the contractor how much would it cost.

It won't cost very much, he said, because we can use all of the old material. Now that is precisely what God could not do. There must be a new start altogether. God rejects the old material altogether and begins entirely new. And the one who is born again begins to learn the true character of the old material, i.e. that all that he is as a child of Adam and a man of the flesh is to be as dissatisfied with it as God is.

You may see this in Job and Saul of Tarsus. One of them said, I abhor myself. And the other said, I know that in me that is in my flesh dwells no good thing. Such language as this is the mark of one born again. He identifies himself with the new inward man, which is of God. And he judges everything on a contrary nature to be sin.

In itself, this is not a happy experience. It is not very pleasant for one who has been self-sustained and self-satisfied in a moral and religious life to find that there is not one bit of good in him. Some may discover this by a single flash of divine light, as in the case of Saul of Tarsus, and others, like me, may have years of struggle and disappointment before they learn it, but it must, and will be, learned sooner or later by everyone that's born of God.

What do you think about that? Do you understand what he's talking about? Do you understand what he's saying? Do you understand that your old man, everything you know yourself to be is not acceptable to God? Everything you came from in Adam, all the remnants, your mind, everything is not acceptable to God? So that hopefully you'll stop putting holy water on him?

That's a very freeing path to go down because otherwise you always want to bring something along like I have this little part that's really good in me, and then God just built upon that somehow. And that's all foolishness. And when you really grasp that you have nothing to bring at all, and you have to depend totally upon Christ, that's a wonderful place to be.

Should we do the how honest are you question? How many of you, since the day you were saved, you may not think this thought today, but at some point in your Christian life thought, you know, God did a good thing by saving me. You know, I don't drink smoke and do all these other really bad things that these other people do. You know, I remember when I was sick, somebody said to me, oh, the Lord can really use you.

You're going to raise a lot of money for him. OK. How many churches, when somebody comes in the door who's a school teacher, they make them a Sunday school teacher? How many churches do that? whether he's qualified or not. But he's qualified in the flesh, that means obviously he's qualified for spiritual activity, I don't think so.

Did you ever have that thought that, like Roger's saying, you know, there's something here, I'm a pretty good guy. You know, I didn't do all that, I did most of the stuff that those bad people did, but I did a couple of good things, and God can honor that.

Or the mentality is, I get this in the Tuesday men's Bible study once in a while, I get this mentality as a you take all these works and you keep throwing them up the wall and some of them are going to stick and God's going to say, oh that's a good one, and that's a good one. Don't you have that mentality? The mentality itself is going to be abandoned. The whole entire way of thinking in Adam will go.

I think the important part about thank you, because otherwise I've got to do something for it, or I'm going to measure, and you're always doing that until you know about that old man. That's the old man, under grace. Everybody understands, I think, the free gift of salvation, but then we move immediately into, I've got to do something for God for the rest of my life here, and I've got to do something. And it's that old man that wants to do something.

And I think until you understand that, it's very hard to understand grace. And to be accepting of grace. That's why I think when you study identification, positioning, conditioning, grace, they all really have to go together. They just do. Because it's a life.

And what we're describing are principles and characteristics of not only the position of the life but the condition of the life how it looks, how it functions reading on you might be very well up on the doctrine of deliverance Galatians 2.20 and yet all the time be secretly attempting to correct and improve yourself and suffering a good deal of private vexation and disappointment on account of the failure of your attempts I know how long I struggled on in this way myself, praying and striving to be more holy and Christlike and continually disappointed with the result. I do not think that it ever occurred to me in those days that I was trying to improve the man whom God had set aside. It was at a moment when I was utterly discouraged and ready to give up the whole thing and complete despair that God showed me material which he could only condemn, and that my disgust and despair as to myself were only a feeble echo of his, I shall never forget the joy of finding out that in the depth of my disgust with myself I was thoroughly at one with God. God had ceased to look for any good in me and had Christ before him. perfect and infinitely acceptable object of his heart, and I, in my nothingness, had ceased to look for good in myself, and was tasting the deep joy of being in Christ, and free to have him as my object, while as to life, I entered in some degree into the blessedness of knowing that it was not I, but Christ lives in me.

Okay? I mean, if you have a hungry heart, go read the introduction, because that's what it is. It's really good. A couple of questions. Why do I do homework? Why do I give you homework? Why do I give you things to do during the week? Why do you think I do that? Get you in the work. Get you in the work. That's right. And why do I give you notebooks? Why would I give you a notebook? Preference. What's that? Reference. Reference?

What do you think we do around here? What's the whole purpose of us having classes and hanging out and learning and teaching? What are we really trying to do? Fill up your stack of stuff at home? No, our job as teachers is to equip saints for the ministry. That's our job. And as I thought about this the other day, We have two really good examples. One of them is really quick and visible. Another one isn't.

Everybody knows Brian White, right? Brian White came here as a 20-year-old young married guy whose wife had just graduated from college but in order to finish up her degree she had to do an internship and the only people that could do this musical internship And through a guy he knew in Virginia, he calls me on the phone.

And so he finds his way into Holly Hills. He sticks around here for about three years. And he goes through all of the classes, including the Greek classes. He's a young guy. And the ward gets a hold of this guy. Two years ago, three years ago, he gets a degree. And on top of that, he gets a college degree and graduates from college. So he gets a job, and he moves to North Carolina. Now here he is, he's 24 years old at this point.

He goes to North Carolina and of course he's spoiled because he can't find a good church like Holly Hills. So he's looking around and he goes to some small churches, he goes and has lunch with the pastor and he finds it. And after about a year and a half, and now he's got two kids, he ends up in a big church I'm just going to have to suffer through it. You know, I can't find anybody to fellowship with.

And so he gets in a big church and the first thing they do in a big church is they say, well you are going to need a group and you're going to get together on Thursday and have a Bible study. You six people. So that's what they did to him. So he goes to the Bible study. All of them young mares just like him with kids. He sits there for about a week or a month or two and they, you know, questions He does. After six months they said, you know what, why don't you lead this Bible study? He said, okay. So now what's he doing? He's running the Bible study with about a dozen souls and where's he leading them? Right down the path we're going down. He's teaching these people things that nobody else could teach. He got equipped here for that ministry.

Here's another example. Anybody remember Noreen Bruns? Yes. Noreen said was around here for years. Came to class, notebook, decided that she was getting older and she wanted to be close to family. Her daughter lived in Oklahoma City, so she moved to Oklahoma City.

And she's, you know, well, got to find a church. And she was a seamstress. She's a really good sewing person. And she finds her way into a women's Bible study. Dawn's unheard of her after about a month or two that these women don't know what they're doing. and no understanding about what they're reading and so she begins to... well I... you know she calls me up one day she said you know all those years in Holly Hills I didn't know God was equipping me for running this Bible study. That's what she's doing today. She's running that lady's Bible study and guess what?

She's got notebooks. She's got information. She's ready. That's why we do it. So that whenever God calls you to minister to somebody else, you're ready. You don't have to say, well, where is that? You can go to the information that you gleaned from all the classes here. So these things really are valuable, and you should hang on to them, and write as many notes in them as you can, and keep them around, because they will be beneficial to you if God equips you to minister to somebody else, and it may be children, it may be grandchildren, it may be the guy across the street, it may be the nursing home that you end up in, who knows? You may have a job transfer, you may have no idea where you're going to go, but you're being equipped now for ministering to the body of Christ and the saints.

Not to go to Uganda, but to go across the street, to walk up to the guy next to you, you know, to a neighbor, to anywhere God would have you, you're ready. That's what equipping is about. It isn't equipping you to be pastor of the first church of the what's happening now. That's not what it's about.

The identification and the growth truths and the deeper life truths are communicated one-on-one, two-on-two, one-on-four, hardly ever talked about on the pulpit. So, when the class is completed, our prayer is that these principles will be understood and believed to the extent that your viewpoint will be changed. You will no longer see yourself as being an Adam, but only in Christ. blessings towards us, how dependent we are on you as we go forward in this class and learn more and more of your Son and our position in him, Father. Thank you for your grace that comes at us full on all the time. We pray in your Son's name. Amen.