You In Christ and Christ In You, Death and Burial, Rom, 6:1-3

We're working through lesson five, six, six. Right. And what we're doing is that we were primarily working, going to work our way through today in the next several weeks through Romans five and part of most of six, part of six. And so far in five Romans chapter five, we have. learned a couple of things.

One, that there are two distinct men in the history of mankind that matter. Adam and Christ. Every human being born on the planet is born identified with or connected to Adam. He brought sin into the world and brought death into the world and everybody comes into the world in that condition. The second man is the Lord Jesus Christ who brought life, righteousness through his act that really countermands the act of Adam. But like Adam's act accrued to all men, Christ's act goes out to all men, but they must believe to benefit from it.

You didn't have to believe anything to be from Adam. You just had to be born. Just had to be procreated. So we've gotten to the point where we've discussed two men, what they brought to the table. Every human being is identified or aligned with one of those two men. Nobody is in the middle. Nobody is a Republican or Democrat. You're either from Adam or from Christ.

So then last week we talked about that the law was brought in. alongside of, not Adam, but the sin nature. And the reason that the law was brought in next to the sin nature was to cause sin to abound. The law was not brought in next to Adam per se, just the sin nature. Oh, by the way, a Jewish sin nature. The law was given to Israel only. Again, it wasn't given to the Irish. It was given to Israel. Now, what did the law accomplish regarding sin, which was question 10? Through the law is the knowledge of sin. What's interesting about the law, before the law shows up, are people committing sinful acts?

Sure. But they're not catalogued. You understand what I mean by that? There were 600 and however many laws given to Israel by Moses and lots of those things people were committing all along had no idea they were doing them. So what the law does is it defines and delineates violations. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, you know. because it delineates these things and commanded those who are under it not to do it, but gave them no power to obey, it couldn't be complied with.

As a matter of fact, it caused the sin nature to explode, is really what happened. So is it possible to say that there was less sin before the law? There were less violations, there were less transgressions, but there was still the same amount of sin. Do you remember when we talked about someone born in Adam who's not a believer, is there ever a time in their day that they're not sinning?

Not a single second. Because they live by unbelief, and that's the big thing. What is the term that could bring up the law as being a schoolmaster? A schoolmaster to Christ, yeah. It's interesting, when Paul talks about that, he's referring to the law system keeps us moving until we get to Christ. In other words, the law isn't going to save or help anybody at all, because in Romans 1 and 2 he says there's The Jews under the Mosaic Law have no excuse. And those who are Gentiles who are law unto themselves, God says, OK, I'm going to judge you based on the law you came up with. How are you doing? Answer, not too well.

So it's designed, you would think it was designed to keep us sort of in a box. But really what it's designed to do is to teach us to show us our violation, and to show us what sin really is. Because without the law, we wouldn't know. We would not know. Like this one that we have some friends who, you know, when we get in discussions, are we under the law or not?

And they come up to this one, and it's in Galatians 3.24.

Therefore, the law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith. They stop right there, and so that the next verse, But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. And those who love the law stop right there, and then the very next verse says, we're not under the tutor anymore. So yes, to lead us to Christ, but now by faith we don't need the law anymore.

The tutor is gone. The deal about the law is that man would not have discovered his weakness and his inability to perform the law if it wasn't there. And that's, I think, a critical point, that breaking the law, you realize you're weak and can't do anything about it. And then if you look to the law to rescue you, you find the law has no power. It's like this stuff they enact in Washington. They give it to you, but they don't give you any power to comply.

They give you a checkbook, say write the check. So old man, new man, law comes in, sins abounding, right? Where sin abounded, grace superabounded or overflowed. So how does grace superabound where sin abounded? How does that happen? Anybody want to tell me what grace is? Maybe that's the best way to go at it. Good? Unmerited and unlimited blessings from God, based on what? Based on the totally adequate work of Christ. You can't forget that part.

There's evidence, when we go through two or three months of grace, we'll talk about grace in the Old Testament. There's some evidence of grace in the Old Testament, but not like now. That Christ gave us the grace, right? God give us the grace, Will, or what?

Well, I'm not sure that I would say it that way. I would say it that grace is not a commodity. It's not like milk, or it's not like gasoline. It's not like... It's not a thing. Yeah, it's an environment. It's a system in which we live. It's an operating system like on your computer.

Sin and death is one operating system, grace and life is another. So because of the work of Christ, even though the law came in and sin superabounded, grace superabounded over that. So when you get down to the end of 5, and it says in 21, so as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness, through eternal life, through Jesus Christ. I'm going to give you a couple of quotes.

Lewis Barry Chaffer's definition of grace, it may be concluded that the word grace is used in the Bible in relation to divine salvation, represents the uncompromised, unrestricted, un-recompensed, loving favor of God towards sinners. It is an unearned blessing. It is a gratuity. God is absolutely untrammeled and unshackled in expressing His infinite love by His infinite grace. So, my question is, where does grace abound?

With His faith. In Aurora. In Aurora? Yeah. San Francisco. Where does grace abound? Vocation. In the life of the believers? Close. In Christ. That's where it is. So with the two men, where is it important for us to be? In Christ. Why? Because that's where grace abounds. It's in Him.

I've always been fascinated by this phrase, where sin reigned, grace might reign. How is grace going to reign now? There's no question when you study up to this point that sin and death is a reigning principle. It's a kingdom, isn't it? Every human being that shows up on the planet shows up in the kingdom of sin and death, right? And it controls them. There's no constitution in sin and death. It controls you. What God says, now wait a minute. Sin and death reign.

My purpose is to have Grace be the reigning principle. Wow. Reigning principle. Are we Americans because we think we have freedom? I don't understand a lot about reigning principles. So how is grace going to reign now? Number one, is it possible? Is it possible for grace to be the reigning principle?

And by reigning principle, I mean the controlling entity of your life. Yes. Absolutely it is. Because sin and death has been. It's possible for grace. The Bible says where sin abounded, grace abounded. That's right. So all the divine claims for righteousness have been met by Christ, right? So the beginning understanding of grace is that God is totally satisfied about the sin and death issue. Is he not? In order for us to enter into grace and to live in it conditionally, we have to know and understand and believe that all of the impediments to grace have been cleared away by Christ.

There's nothing left for you to do. No spiritual push-ups, no Hail Marys, none of that. Except you have to believe. Yeah, but let's talk about that for a minute. You do have to believe so you can say, God, I'm believing, you owe me. You owe me? I'm believing. Do you owe me? What do you think?

Now think about what faith is. What is faith? Faith? What's that? You believe in God and Christ. Okay, so where's the value? In your faith or in what you believe? In what you believe. That's right. So all the value is in Christ, right? It's not in the fact that you believe.

So faith is the one thing a man can do he doesn't get any credit for, because he didn't contribute anything. He believes that somebody else did it for him. So our faith in Christ allows us to enter into grace, but we can't go to God and say, you owe me, because he says, well, what did you do? You didn't do anything. I did it all. Thanks for believing me. That's what faith is. And that's how grace is going to reign. We're going to believe him. That's how it's going to work.

Now, if you and I are condemned in Adam's sin, it is plain that to be justified, we must be cleared, not only of our sins, but of our condemnation in Adam. Right? There's more than having your sins forgiven here. You see that? We've got to somehow get disconnected from Adam. We've got to somehow, you know, when God looks at us, He doesn't see us hooked up to Adam. If he does, we're in trouble.

That's like the oxymoron, is there such a thing as a forgiven sinner? In Christianity, is there such a thing as a forgiven sinner? There is no such thing as a forgiven sinner, because once you believe in the person and work of the Lord Jesus, you're disconnected from the guy who's a sinner, you're placed into Christ, and now he doesn't look at you as a sinner anymore. Remember we talked about what did he do with your old nature? Well, forget that. I'll ask you that later. I'm going too fast.

Well, you know, I said that to my mother, who's 93, and she's so depressed. And she said, well, when I die, I hope God will have mercy on me. And I said, well, if you believe, then your sins will have been forgiven, and so you shouldn't have to worry about it. So did I say the right thing?

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Right, and I said to her, you don't have to say, well, on Thursday, August the 12th, I did such and such because you've already been forgiven for that. Because it's already been paid for. Right. See? Yeah, I did tell her that. Yeah.

My mom, right before she died, you know, she was a Catholic and a good one. Mass every day of her life. You know, we had a discussion the day before she died about the Lord coming. She asked me if she was going to die. And I said, well, the Lord is going to come and take you home, so go with Him when He shows up. She said, okay. And she didn't have any problem with sin, which convinced me that she understood that Christ had dealt with all of her sins.

But we're starting to talk more now about, not about the sins committed, but about the sinner himself. See, God forgave the sins, But he didn't forgive the sinner, and we're going to find out what he did with him. Moving on to Lesson 7 now, we're going to cover the first three verses of 6.

Paul starts off by saying, what shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may allow? God forbid. How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein? Know you not that as so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death.

So, this is a very interesting question because my first question is what does continuing sin mean? Because you have, in the Greek this is called a deliberative subjunctive for all you geeks. It means may we or should be, but best rendered in English are we to go down such a path? In other words, based on the information we have so far, should we keep doing this? It's one of those questions, well let's see, sin abounded, grace super abounded over that, should I keep sinning? No, but we do, we don't even know it.

I know, but that's the question. What we have learned in the past, it seems to be like in this, is that you have the definite article for the word sin. You're referring to the old sin nature. That's right. Do you understand what Joanne just said? This is not, should I keep on committing sins? That's not what the question is. The question is, should I keep on abiding in or living in sin? The sin nature. Should I stay there? Should I let the sin nature control me where grace is abounding?

And the answer is going to be no, but he gives the answer before he gives the explanation. See that? He says, no way. And it's like in contemporary English, when somebody asks you a question, you'd say, no way. That's kind of how this is. Should we continue in sin, the sin, that grace may abound? The answer is no way. That's kind of the flavor of it. See, it isn't no. It's no way. I mean, it doesn't make any sense. And here's why. It means that are we to keep on living in identification and control of our old sin nature? The question arises constantly. Now here's the two groups of people that bring it up.

Uninstructed believers and not blind non-believers. If you sit down and talk to a non-believer about this, they will logically conclude, in their mind, that because grace is abounding, they're free to sin. Because grace has got me covered. The uninstructed believer will look at it the same way. Oh, hey, I'm covered. You know, like we think liberty means I can do as I please. You don't recognize that living under grace is a controlling environment? So it's really a question for uninstructed believers is probably the best term to use. It's a message of simple grace apart from all works to the poor natural body man. And it really does, to the natural man, seem totally inconsistent and impossible to do. Right? Doesn't it seem? How many of you are absolutely Boy, you're honest, I've got to say that for him.

Moreover, the uninstructed Christian is also afraid that if we are in the reign of pure grace, what will control our conscious evil tendencies? Right? If I'm an uninstructed believer, or just a stubborn one, I can't live under grace because what's going to control my sin? Because I feel like what grace means, I've got too much freedom. And I have learned somewhat about how aggressive and uncontrollable my sin nature is and if I live under grace that baby is going to go wild. Wrong.

And that's really all encompassed into this question. We fear that such freedom would not allow us to live a holy life. So we think that we've got to have some laws to live a holy life. When I was down teaching your friends, several of those people specifically said that. Well, we've got to have the law so we know what to do. We've got to have the law so we know how we're doing.

You know, I'm going down the road and here's the speed limit sign. Oh, good. There's a law. I guess I'm doing OK. Grace doesn't have any speed limit signs. So by what logic would grace increase if we continued in sin? What's the logic here? Simple. If God says where sin abounded, grace superabounded, so what's the logic? The more sin, the more grace. Isn't that the logic? My third question is, is that true? Is that true? Or is it just God is sort of kidding? Is He going to lavish grace on us because we're sinning? Not because. If I continue to sin, is His grace going to get shut off eventually? No. Is He going to say, boy Doyle, I've had enough of your nonsense. You're trying me. But people always sin.

We are going to be more aware of, you know, if I take the newspaper from my neighbor every morning before he wakes up. Oh, that's a terrible thing. So I won't do that. But I do other things that maybe I'm not even aware of. But I will always do it. And since Christ died for us, I will be forgiven. But it's not like with the newspaper bit, I'm going to do it on purpose. I want you to keep in mind with me, we're not talking about sins here that acts the bad things we do. We're talking about the sin nature, this nature that is the source of my sins. Have you always had that? We have it, but we don't own it. We don't own it?

Well, I'll explain that later. What I'm after right now is that if I'm a believer and I have a sin nature, If I say, well, you know, grace is going to abound, so I can just let this in nature do what it's going to do, and grace will cover me. Is that true? Will grace cover me? Answer, yes, it will. Yes, it will. chasing us. I mean, the sin, the violation, whatever it is, if it's serious and people chasing us. There's child training involved.

There's no question about that. But what the point that I'm trying to get across is that you cannot, as a believer, out sin grace. You cannot do it. You can never arrive at the point where you can say, God must be done with me because I've tried to stop this, whatever it is, and I just can't do it. He has to turn his back on me because I'm just the worst sinner there is.

The point is that grace superabounds all the time. Now, having said that, grace being the controlling mechanism in the believer's life, the child training done in love will educate the believer about his position in Christ and the grace he lives under and the grace will ultimately be the motivator that causes you to abandon sin. It's not a law that's going to do it, it's the grace that's going to do it.

Did you see that? Donna? As you go down this path of logic here, don't you have to set aside the understanding of the two men in order to go this way? Do you understand what Donna just asked? That's a great question. Not because she's my wife. I didn't miss that opportunity. Did you understand her question?

In other words, if you're going to sin, do you have to start to set aside the doctrine of the two men that we've learned so far in order to do that? Yeah, you do. You absolutely do. You have to engage in an environment of unbelief. Okay? That make sense? That's a really good question. I had never thought about that before.

So, people say that if sin abounds, grace overflows. The more sin, the more grace. Pretty simple. So, would grace increase? 520 and 521 says absolutely. So what's the answer then to the question in verse 1? The question is, what shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? What's the answer? And the answer is more than just yes or no. The answer is no. Why? Read the verse. May it never be, how shall we who died to sin still live in it? Wow, new bit of information. What's the information? We died to the old sin nature. We died.

What does death mean? It means separation right? It doesn't mean annihilation, cessation of existence. Separated. I'm telling you about the day my mother died. What happened to her? She separated from her body and the planet. Went somewhere else. That's called death.

Paul says, how shall we, who were separated from sin, live any longer in it? From the sin nature. From the sin nature. The sin. Not sins. Not those little bad things you steal in the newspaper. talking about we're talking about the source of sin in you that that nature you have that is the source of your sinful acts and what what Paul says look how shall we who died to that sin nature doesn't say the sin nature died says that I died to it if that's true and he assumes it is he said how come how shall we live as though we didn't die, is what he's saying. So my question to you is, is he telling us the truth? Did you really die to sin? Did sin die? Did sin nature die? No, it didn't. You're the one that died. You're the one that got separated from it.

So, now how does the logic look? Should I keep on sinning that grace may abound? The answer is, well, if I died to sin, why would I do such a thing? Do you see the logic he's using? So now we're faced with, you're talking about living by faith, now we're faced with the first big issue of a growing believer's life that he needs to exercise faith about. He knows he's safe, he knows his sins have been forgiven, Does he believe that he died to sin? Do you believe that? True. It's really hard because we die to sin yet we sin.

It's a nature. I like the picture of the tree. It's a fruit. The tree is a sin nature and the fruit is a fruit of that tree, right? So it's a nature we're talking about. There's nature. and the fruit of the nature. They're two different things. So we've died to that nature. The sins are still there. We still sin, right? No one can deny that. But we've died to that nature.

So we don't have to follow that nature. I like the idea of like if you were a Russian citizen and you became an American citizen, you died to that citizenship as a Russian. Maybe the KGB from Russia comes over and says, I'm going to get you Monique. And you say, no, I've been separated from you. I'm American now. That's a good analogy, and I have one similar to that. Here's the thing.

If we as believers are to live by faith, are we not? We're not to live by feelings, we're not to live by emotions, and also, we're not to live by circumstances. So, if I go steal my neighbor's paper, and then the Spirit of God says to me, Now how can you, who died to sin, be stealing your neighbor's faith? And the question comes, do you believe that no fanfare, no emotion, nothing.

Do you believe me when I tell you that you died to sin? Yes I do. Then why are you going over there? Are you dead or aren't you? To sin. That's really what it comes down to. Do you believe me or not? And that's why faith is the key issue in walking in the Christian life. Our faith has to have an object, right? We've got to know specifically what we believe. Well, here's a heck of a truth and a focus.

I died to sin. And even though I'm continuing to sin, commit sins, I died to sin. And only because God said so in his word. That's the only way I know it. I don't feel it. I don't see it. Maybe five years from now I look at the paper and walk by. Hey, I did. I said, I'm not stealing that paper anymore. I don't need it. I don't want it. I didn't.

You know, I think this is, you know, six is kind of the whole crux, I think, of all the demonification stuff is our crucifixion, our separation. You know, this is, you know, we've let up how, you know, federal head were under Adam. We have to. How's the only way we can get out of that is by death. So this is, you know, the death.

And I think this is the first step in when we say it. And that's where I think, as maturity comes, that's where I go to, is that it's not only that I've died to sin. As I mature in Christ, all the logical imperatives, if you're in Christ, you'll do it this way. That's right. And as you see the life side of stealing the newspaper, that's not who I am in Christ. That's right.

I just want to say there's two sides, death to it, but then a life to it. Where life is, if life in Christ, that's in the maturity side. And Paul does that, death and life, death and life, death and life, and it goes together. And as we go down through this, you'll see this death and life, death and life. So, is it normal, is it the norm for a believer to no longer be living under the tyranny of the sin nature? Is that normal for a believer? Absolutely it is. Absolutely it is. Ladies first.

I was just thinking about poor old Paul when he was talking about the things that I do, the things I wouldn't do, these I do. All that stuff is kind of a reflection of the continual battle. And you know what's interesting about that? We just said that what did law come in to do? It came in alongside the sin nature. And what Paul is discussing in 7 is that he's gone away from faith in the facts and trying to correct the sinning by implementing law.

And so what happens? He discovers more and more understanding about this sin nature and how it works and what this relationship to law is for one simple reason. So he'll abandon it and abide in Christ in the simple fact that he was crucified, buried and resurrected in Christ. Don't need a law. When I think about this, and tell me if I'm wrong, Christ died for the sins of the world, all sins past, present, and future. He died unto the sin nature. He nailed it to the cross.

And so, therefore, we have, as believers, we have the power not to live under the reign of the old sin nature because we have the Holy Spirit residing in us. And if we turn to law rather than to the Holy Spirit, then we're negating the work of the Holy Spirit. That's true. Yes, we are. And we're not living by faith.

That's kind of a simple way of thinking, I guess, but that's... When we get over the next two weeks and we get down through 6, 6, 7 and there, when the whole picture comes into focus, we'll recognize that when Christ was taken down off of that cross, the sin nature, your sin nature, my sin nature was still up there. still nailed to it. Now the problem we got is that it's still in us. I like to say it this way, the non-believer is in Adam and in sin, and Adam and sin is in him.

Right? Isn't that a good way to describe it? The believer is in Christ, but the sin nature is still in him. See the difference? He's in Christ, he's got two natures. A Christian is the only creature on the earth that has two natures. Nobody else has two.

We do. We've got the Adamic sinful nature and we have the nature of the resurrected Christ. The nature of the resurrected Christ operates on faith and grace. The nature of Adam operates on experience, circumstances, feelings and emotions. So right now, when you start to study Romans 6, what you get is an awful lot of facts. Romans 6 is all position. All position. No feelings.

Stated facts. Stated facts. Stated facts. And your response to stated facts are simple. What should your response be? I believe you, Father. I may not feel it, but you say it. It's good enough for me. I'll let you work it out. So then to say that the other way, we're in Christ. Sin nature is in us. But faith is the access to the life. Good way to say it. Right? Yeah. That's right.

Faith is the access to the new life. And we come out of Adam in a life that doesn't need a lot of faith to be lived, right? We live by feelings, emotions, experience. If it feels good, we do it. If it doesn't, we avoid it. If it's painful, nah. to a life of faith based on the facts of the Word of God and the Spirit of God implementing those facts in our life. You talk about a paradigm shift. Very different. Because we're always looking for experience. And God says, wait a minute, let me lay out the facts to you. You believe them, then we'll work on the experience later.

So, who controls the sin nature in the believer? Now, we've discovered, or we've said, that it doesn't control you, here's me, here's the sin nature in Adam. When I'm crucified with Christ, when Christ leaves the sin nature, so do I, and now I'm attached to Christ. But the sin nature is still in me, still floating around, still trying to express itself. Who controls it? The devil. Anybody else? God controls it. You don't control it. God controls it? Yeah, how well did you control it before? By faith. By faith. By faith. It's your faith.

What Christ has done will control the sin nature. So God has controlled it. You can't control it. That's what, who brought up Romans 7? Wait a minute, God controls the sin nature? Uh-huh. Based on your faith. The thing about it is, is that if I'm crucified with Christ and we're separated from the sin nature, okay? Now I'm in Christ, positionally, and I have just discovered those facts, wonderful facts. What controls, or how is the sin nature going to be controlled? The best way to control the sin nature is not to mess with it at all.

So if I have been separated from it and now I'm in Christ and now I have the privilege and the freedom to behold the glory of the Lord Jesus and spend all my time and all my energy beholding his glory, why would I want to take 15 minutes off to deal with the sin nature? I wouldn't. Why would I? I'm free from it. So who controls that? Because of faith. See, my faith in the facts means I don't have to go there. Now who controls the sin nature? The Spirit of God does.

And you know what? He uses the sin nature for your spiritual growth. Isn't that something? Isn't that something? Not to condemn you, but to approve you. That's wonderful news. So, God works all things together for good? which includes my sin nature. That's pretty awesome. I ask the question, when you conquer a country, what do you do with the people you conquered? You put them to work for you.

Right? So, do we have the freedom to plead with God about the power of a tendency to sin over which we don't have any control? Do you understand the question? In other words, can I go to God and say, you know, I'm stealing that newspaper Will you help me? I've done it. I've thought about the paper and thought about other things. Haven't you done that? Absolutely. We still have the tendency to sin, do we not? Is it more than we can control? Depends on what it is. You know, I sat down with a young man a couple of months ago and we were talking about a sinful issue and he said, I'm past that.

Fine. He might be, but the guy next to him might not be. You know, I might not have any trouble stealing newspapers, but you do. But I got a lot, I have a lot of trouble resenting you, but you don't care. Do you understand what I'm saying? In other words, there is at least something going on in my heart that's a tendency to sin. Right? Like in your case, stealing a newspaper is just a great example.

I never did that. Let's go through some steps. Is that the first step? it would not become the child of God to live any longer in sin. It doesn't fit with who he is, right? Even though the tendency is there. So why is it not necessary to live any longer in sin? Because we died to it. We don't have to go there. Can we plead with the power of tendency over sin which we have no control?

We still have the tendency, but do we have the control? What do you think? Has God provided the deliverance over a tendency to sin? Answer, yes he has. How do you implement the control? By faith. In what? Fact. What's the fact? I don't have to go there or die to that. Real simple fact, right?

Here's the raging bull of sin. And for a thousand times in my life, every time he raged, I went for it. Now I have a bunch of new facts. A really critical one is that I died to that whole sin nature. It rages. And by the work of the Spirit teaching me this truth, I can stand up or sit down or whatever and say, you know what? Because I died, I don't have to go there. I do not have to respond. You dog, you've had me under your control forever. Not anymore. Go pick on somebody who you can control, because you don't have to do it. I don't have to go there now. Why? Why? Why? Because we all died.

I use this example. I keep bringing my mom into this. My mom dies, right? Take her down to the funeral home. put her in the casket, people go visit her. Nobody walked in with a deck of cards and shuffled them and said, hey mom, it's your deal. Why? She's dead. That's right. She's not there. If I'm standing in Christ and the sin nature said it's your deal, what can I respond to it? Don't have to. I'm dead to you. I'm not there. See the example? I don't have to go there because I died. So that's how temptation is really dealt with. The propensity or the temptation to sin, that's really how it's dealt with.

I don't have to do that because I'm informed and I'm functioning by faith and I'm persuaded by the Spirit of God and I don't have to yield myself to that. When we get down through more of six we'll see. Believers are dependent on God alone for deliverance by his spirit. We are dependent people, so we depend on him and his facts and his spirit to deliver us from the power of sin. So, what happens? The power of sin is broken. Believers are free to move on another plane, new creation. The arguments of this passage are based upon the believer's vital union by which we are organically united to Christ through the baptism of the Spirit.

So, I'm going to start into this, but the bell's going to go off, but I'll start anyway. Three, or do you not know that as many of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus, we were baptized into His death? So what's the word baptism mean? gentrification. It means... We'll start with question 8 next week. Let's pray and then I'll pass out the next ones.

Our dear Father, how wonderful it is to discover that we have been freed from sin because we died to sin in You, in Your Son. We're so thankful for that. As we continue to grow in the knowledge and grace of who we are in your dear Son, it continually and progressively frees us more and more from sin in our life, Father. We thank you, we pray in the Lord's precious name. Amen.