You In Christ and Christ In You

We are in Lesson 22, right? Question 6. What we're talking about here is authorities and how God has delegated or shaved off some of his authorities to certain humans in certain circumstances. Question 6 was Romans 13.1 and Ephesians 5.22. What's it say about the origin of human authority? What was your answer?

Romans 13.1 is every person is to be a subjection to the governing authorities for there is no authority except from God and those which exist are established by God. So I think that pretty much all human authority is derived from God as designated by Him.

I remember in college, I went to a Catholic Jesuit college and of course we had to study Catholic philosophy. One of the issues I remember studying was where did laws come from? Where did the moral law come from? How did it arrive? I don't remember all the nuances about it, but they attributed to God and that from the beginning of from Adam and Eve on down that there was authority and there were laws that were put in place and God was the source of them. And I don't think there was much argument about that, you know, because being a Catholic school, they recognize the authority of a God.

And so, if you reject the authority as designated by God, then who would you reject? You reject God himself. So, if you get stopped on the way to church this morning for doing 55 in a 35, and you say to the policeman, I reject your authority, who are you rejecting? Him? Sure, God. In any of these authorities that are delegated by God, because God is the ultimate source, if you reject the authority, you reject Him. And the person who has it.

Why would you be subject to these authorities? Why would you do it? It's for our own good, isn't it? It's for your own good. What would be the main reason why you would subject yourself to an authority as a believer? Because God set it up. Yeah, because God set it up. That's the real reason.

Scripture tells us certain things, and because they're from the Lord, they're not a problem for us. We don't view them as harmful or, gee, you know, controlling my freedom somehow. Like children to obey your parents and these things are well pleasing in the Lord. It's to keep the society organized the way He wants it. Children should obey their parents for one reason, because it's well pleasing to the Lord. That's the reason, whether they do or not.

And not because they have really wonderful parents. or not because it's contrary if they disobey them because they're terrible in a child's eyes. Do children get to decide? I'm serious, do they get to decide whether you measure up to whether they should obey you or not? Not really, but our society's kind of gone that way, hasn't it?

Well, why can't I decide about a traffic ticket then? If I have enough money, I can. Well, obviously a lot of people have because, what are they, 20 million in uncollected parking meters? Denver has 20 million dollars in uncollected parking meter fines? You're kidding. No wonder we're short in the budget. Well, and I, you know, not to, I probably ought to shut the mic off.

But this woman that just got appointed to be a Supreme Court Justice, in her mind, the obedience to laws is totally subjective. It has nothing to do with the authority that gave the law. She gets to decide. And the elements that influence her decision are her culture, her experience, you know. It's interesting.

We have taken God out of our society, so we've taken him out of our thinking. Which means that we're not subject, really, we're not subject to anybody but me. And we call that freedom. If you study your Bible, you know that it's absolute subjection to the sin nature.

Pete, you know, I had an interesting experience yesterday, coming home, getting off the off-ramp at Parker and 225 pulled me over and was going to give me a ticket. I was going on the speed limit. He was honest enough to admit that he got the wrong car. He walked out the window and said, sorry. I mean, he could have said in this my word against his. There was a Cadillac that sped by me. He missed that car, got me. And if he had not been honest, I would have got the ticket. I'd have had. There's no way I could have. I mean, it's his word against mine.

Yeah. That's interesting. Generally, it's Murphy's Law. So from Colossians 3.18, let's look at Colossians 3.18.

It says, wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and do not be bitter towards them. Children, obey your parents in all things, and this is while preaching to the Lord. Fathers, don't provoke your children lest they become discouraged.

The question is from Those same passages in Colossians, what do you say about the spirit of that authority? Do you understand what I'm asking? How much authority does each one of those persons have? Colossians 3.18 says that wives should be subject to husbands. Whose husband? Their own. We talked about that last week.

I tried to get some of you ladies to do some stuff for me. So the point is that human authority, what's the key word about human authority? It's limited. It's limited to the degree to which God has given it to you. And what you find is, as you and everybody in this room at some point in their life has been, where you're implementing the rules. It's a very humbling place to be. Very humbling. Those who have never been in a position to implement a rule don't understand how humbling it is, especially for a believer, because you're subject to authority. And if God shaves off some authority for you as a husband, a father, a mother, or whatever, a boss, you recognize that You're acting and functioning under the authority of the one who gave it to you. So it's the responsibility that you have in the implementation of the authority you've been given is humbling, I think so. You know, parents don't have authority over anybody else's children unless it's given to them.

I teach the kids in Sunday school. Do I have authority over those kids while they're under my care? Sure we do. But it's limited. Do I as a husband have authority over another woman's wife? No. How much authority does a government have? Too much. They do. Don't know if they do. What is the basic authority that God has given the government? It's pretty limited.

If you look at Romans 13, 3-5, rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior. And the traffic ticket or the policeman stopping you, he's there to deal with evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good and you will have the praise of the same. That's a good example of a policeman recognizing, and what did he do? He didn't give any grief or anything like that. For it is a minister of God to you for good. I have to tell you, if you're in a situation where you need police power, and you need it, you're all about what they're coming there to do is for the good. But if you do what is evil, you should be afraid. Interesting. For it does not bear the sword, they do not bear the sword for nothing. Those pistols that those cops carry, they're not there for show. They're there for a reason.

For it is the minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil. Limited authority. How much authority does a policeman have? He has authority within that realm. He terrorizes evil. That's his job. And his job is also to praise the good. And most policemen do that, I think. They do.

That's how much the government is limited. The government shouldn't tell you where to go and what to do in terms of most of the decisions made in your life. They're trying to. They're usurping and going beyond the authority granted to them by God. What will eventually happen when government does that? We've got 10,000 years of history. Come on. Somebody's going to know. Yeah, it'll fail. The government will fail. That's what will happen. OK. What about are we supposed to be under the authority anyway, even though it's outside the power designated by God? What do you think if the authority exceeds the limitations, that God has given it.

What do you do about that? You're speeding, the guy stops you. He's going to give you a ticket for doing 85 in a 55. You say, wait a minute, I was only going 75. He's exceeded his authority? What are you supposed to do? How do you exceed the limitations? Maybe that's a good way to go at it. How would you exceed the limitations that God gave you?

To me it's when it directly goes against something that is in the Word. Yeah, if I demanded that your children obey me, I've exceeded my authority. Or I say that everybody in this room is a wife and because I'm a husband you have to submit yourself to me. Right? But I don't have to do anything about it. or any violation of the Word of God in terms of authority that's been granted.

Acts 4.18 says, And they called them and charged them not to speak at all, to teach in the name of Jesus. Peter and his fellow boys are called up to the Sanhedrin. They don't like what they're teaching Christ, and they order them not to.

What's their attitude? Oh, okay. You say so. What was their attitude about it? They had to obey God. But Peter and John answered and said unto them, whether it is right in the sight of God to listen unto you rather than to God you judge, because we are not going to listen to you. We are not going to listen to you. Now try that out the next time you, well none of you have probably ever been in court. Peter and John said we must obey God and not you. Okay? We must obey God. Now, do we ever find ourselves in that position? How would you? How would you in our society find yourself in that position?

Well, one of them, and you see this on the news, like, I mean, maybe this is not what you're thinking, but, you know, some of these people that their kid's got some kind of terminal disease and they're not you know, allowing the doctors to, because of the social services, to tell them to take them to the doctor, and they don't, and then the kid dies.

I don't know, is that along the same lines? Yeah, isn't that interesting? Because there are groups that think that, faith healers, that think that if they pray, God's going to heal, and then they say their child dies, and then the society prosecutes them. What do you think about that? Does the society have the authority, number one, to say to you, if your child is sick, you have the responsibility to seek medical help that's available to them. If you don't, you're neglecting the child.

I have to tell you, I think that's perfectly reasonable. Perfectly reasonable. Because the health and the welfare of your responsibility to take care of that child, with the means that God has supplied, It's interesting when, I remember, how long has Sharon Echol been home with the Lord? 15 years.

When I first learned that she had breast cancer, you know, and Bob was, because he's a doctor and had resources, he said, we're going to pray about it, but we're also going to utilize every secret that God has revealed about how to fight cancer. That made all the sense in the world to me.

I was just thinking along that line though, that same society says that you can abort the child and that's okay. So how about if you were living in China and they were forcing you to abort? Can you resist that? Should you resist it? Absolutely you should. I just read a book called China Road. that Margaret had recommended. It's a travelogue which I usually don't read.

But this guy traveled. He had lived in Shanghai. He's a British reporter. And he traveled across country to the far western border where Kazakhstan is. And riding with people and riding the bus and hitchhiking and all kinds of things. And in one village he happened to arrive there at the time the people that do the abortion survive. And apparently there's a team of two or three women who go from village to village.

It's their job. They go around to the various villages and they round up by force all the women that live there of childbearing age. And you cannot escape. And they force you to have the abortion. They do it while they're there whether you want it or not.

And if the child survives, they stick it in a bucket of water Well I can remember my dad telling me when he was a young man before World War II he went to China on a boat and then when he got to China he was going up the Yangtze River and one evening he's on the deck and these little bundles are floating down the river and he asked somebody what they were and they said they were female babies because the females couldn't work as hard as the males they threw them in the river Our society, we freak at something like that, but that's the way they did it.

The point being is, what should you do when the authority steps outside the sphere that God has given it? I think you resist it, but how much do you resist? What do you think? If we get this health care bill that's coming down the pipe, there's going to be decisions having to be made by believers about what's going to be forced on you and not forced on you. I don't know if any of them rise to the litmus test of what we're talking about today, but they might.

If you see that an authority has been overextended and the principles can cause a problem and they don't operate biblically, what do you do about that? Most of the time in our society we can continue to move ahead and live as we decide on the moral basis that we want to live and the government Because one of the overriding principles is that the police power is there to deal with terror. And as long as we're not making waves, we're not going to have a problem. Right? Because nobody's coming to Denver. Three women are coming to Denver, rounding up all the pregnant women and forcing them to have abortions. Not yet. Right?

So we can pretty much escape most of this kind of thing. But there are people, like Christians, come to me and say, well, we're going to go demonstrate at an abortion clinic. What do you think about doing that? Is that within the scope of what God would have you do to resist the authority? I think a better use of time. Better use of time? What do you think about that? Do you think God has called specific people to go down there and demonstrate against abortions? What do you think?

I don't sit on your hands, let me tell you. It's not that you don't break laws or do anything, that's fine. If you're not breaking a law or doing anything, you can, under the government that we have, that's established by God, free speech and other things, so if you're operating within those bounds, not breaking laws, not violating somebody else or doing anything, that's perfectly within the bounds of the authority that we have. You alright with that? Would you go and demonstrate against abortion just because you thought it was a horrible thing? Why would you do it? What would motivate you to demonstrate? To change the heart of a young girl who might keep a baby?

There's a woman I know named Penny Salazar who runs in downtown Denver an abortion option clinic and what she does, I think she's retired now, but what she did and what her group does is they counsel young women who are thinking about getting an abortion, they counsel them the other way.

And they've been very successful in eliminating a lot of abortions that they can just get the girl to sit down and talk to them. Just sit down and talk to them. Because they point out the obvious things about what an abortion really is, not only psychologically, but spiritually. What it really is and what's really happening. And what most of them are trying to do is eliminate what they consider a problem that creates even a bigger problem emotionally for them. She's been very successful at doing that. And I think God called her to do it. I don't think it's only the individual.

I think when people spoke out against partial birth abortion, you know, if you didn't say anything. And that was just under the rights to be able to tell people to change the authorities and those people in authority to change those things. And I think even now with the latest poll now is over 50 some odd percent leave Roe v. Wade is bad law. But that, you know, so I mean, there's people voicing opinions to change the government that is established as well as individuals. I think it goes on different levels as long as it's within the the authority that has not stepped out of authority, then it's fine to do that. Yeah, it's interesting.

We have such a different view of authorities in this country than most other countries do. Most other countries don't have the kind of liberty that we have to even make decisions like that. Talk to people that... We live in Mexico, for example. They don't have near the freedom that we do. to make decisions like that. They don't have a choice. So how about if you have two authorities that conflict and here's the poster child set up.

I'm Donna's husband and Jack and Winnie are her parents and they tell her to do something. What do you think? Why not? They're her parents. She's under your authority. She's under my authority now, right? How about she grows up, goes to college, graduates and moves into a single swinging apartment. Her dad calls up and says, no, you've got to move back home. What about that? She's 24 years old. has a career, dad calls her up and says, I don't like the way your life is going. You need to come back home.

Now, see, we would say no, but last summer we were on this cruise and one of the ladies that was serving our table, what was her name? She was Anita. She was in her mid 20s, wasn't she? And she was from Bogota, Colombia. and she lived she was a single woman she was on a cruise boat six months a year when she was off the cruise boat she was back in Bogota living in her father's house under his authority I asked her about that I said you mean yeah that's the way our whole family is and my brother lives there with his wife and they're under my dad's authority they thought it was proper So is it a cultural thing?

What would the Bible say? What would the word of God say about that circumstance? The first thing it would say is that husband you're supposed to leave your father in claim to your wife. Cleave to her. You're not supposed to stay in dad's house. But if you live in a society where the only housing around is dad's, Then you have to set some, and the guy who owns the house, if he happens to be your father, says, look, if you're going to live in my house, you have to live under my rules. But you have to, I think you sit down and talk about, I'm the husband and here's my family, and we're going to occupy space in this house, but you don't have any authority over what we do in our family. You do have authority over what happens in the house. You agree with that? So she seemed to be pretty comfortable with the fact that As a single woman coming home to live for six months, she and she, I think her money went to the dad. He got her income.

Well, we wouldn't tolerate that here. Yeah, there's so many of you that I would say one of the one examples of saying, you know what, what you have for Donna and whatever. And what I have for Ingrid. is I can't tell you what to do with Donna. It may be perfectly fine for you, but I would never do that with her, or vice versa.

Let's talk about that. And I think that's where, you know, and I'm going, how could you do that, Mike? Well, you've done that to me several times. It's only an example to use in class. Let's, as we talked about this, Here you have a marriage, a husband and a wife, and the husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it.

The sense of responsibility for that imperative from God is almost overwhelming. The husband is serious about that. It's an impossible commandment. It's an impossible commandment, but his heart is such that he loves the Lord and he loves his wife and that's what he intends to do. And so here he goes down that road and he's dependent on the Spirit of God to implement and he's subject to the Lord Jesus Christ. And his wife sees that in him and she sees the command to submit herself to her husband. She doesn't have any problem submitting.

What's interesting is that we like to come up with scenarios where the husband is being unreasonable or he has some sort of quirk in his personality that he doesn't want the wife and he forgets what his role is. She doesn't really remember what her role is. Aren't we partners in this deal? You know, kind of thing.

I think that if the top of the the top of the food chain, or the person with the ultimate authority, is the one who is most dependent. Understand what I mean? If I'm a husband, from a biblical standpoint, I am the most dependent person to the Lord there is in the triangle under me. I'm the most dependent.

They're not. I am. And if my goal, because the Lord has put it in my heart, is to present her blameless before him. Wow, what a responsibility I have. And what a dependency that puts on me. Because I know I can't, like Roger said, I can't do that. In my strength, at the end of the game, I bring her up to the Lord and say, OK, here she is, holy and blameless. I did a great job. That's not going to happen. Here she is, holy and blameless before the Lord, and thank you Lord for doing it. Do you see that? She's the same way, the kids are the same way.

All up and down the line, the dependent one is the one that's the most obedient one. Or the one that listens under the best. You understand what I'm saying? It's a dependency thing. Does that make sense? That's within. This is where authorities go over each other. And it's either Yodana and Ingrid and I or people who overstep. Well, we don't own a TV. You own a TV. And I invoke my principle or whatever it can be.

You dance? You do dancing? As a board member at the camp, we've had that issue. You mean when we go down there, we can't dance? You can't dance. But those are within families. If I want a TV or not a TV, that's under my authority. I can't tell you not to have that. So many homeschool, public school, dancing, no dancing, food. That's within the authority of my household. But I can't tell you about your household. And that's where a lot of the conflicts come, is when I take my sphere of authority and go, let me just include you in mine. And tell you that that's wrong, that you have a TV. You have a big flat screen. I can have a TV but not a flat screen.

I think the problem in general for the church is that it's telling us or telling the husbands to examine and pay careful attention to what does it look like that Christ loved the church and gave himself for it and how does that work. in the relationship between him and the church and how does that transfer over into the home for the two of them and I think a lot of times probably in most cases it's a legalistic conclusion that we draw and impose on the family member and that's why I talked about subjection the one with the ultimate authority the husband or the father needs to be the one in most subjection I know from being in the military, they'll tell you the reason you start out as a private and not a sergeant is you must learn to follow before you can lead. That's a principle that has been in place forever. You must know how to follow before you can lead. Now you may be a person who is a born leader, but that means you're also a born follower. What's wrong with being a follower? I go down to Camp Elam with this guy, right? We go in the kitchen, he's all of a sudden a leader. And you know what?

It's perfectly fine with me. I don't want to make those decisions all day. I want him to make them. Tell me what to do. We're down there, we have a goal, we have a purpose. We want to feed these kids and clean up when we're done. He knows how to do it. Um, let's see. But that actually is really a great example too, because he has a goal in mind, which is to feed all these kids. That's right. You know, what you're talking about too, the husband has a goal in mind, and that's to present his family. That's right. You know? That's right.

I think the conflict, going back to the conflict though, is when, you know, you're in subjection and you, you know, that's right. And you look at me, and I'm like, Courtney, man, what are you doing? And the tendency, and it's always individual, and that's what, you know, a relationship is individual with the Lord. And we tend to, where the conflicts come, is when we step out of that authority. That's the whole key of this thing, is that, you know, like, I can't believe what you do. Well, you have been in subjection, and the Lord has dealt with you. And unless it's totally unbiblical, that's something that I would say as a friend, but otherwise, I'm stepping out of my authority to tell you these things.

Okay, Roger and I are elders. With that comes certain authorities, limited authorities. We have to find out, figure out from the Word of God exactly what does that authority entail? How limited is it? How expansive is it? What can we do and what should we do given certain circumstances?

Because one of the problems you have in being in an elder situation is, you don't want to upset the apple cart things, and I'm going to shirk my authority. I don't want to have to go to so-and-so and tell him, look, you can't be teaching what you're teaching. I don't want to do that. Sometimes I have to. How far does my authority as an elder extend? The best synonym for an elder is an under-shepherd. You got that out? Under-shepherd. That means I'm under the chief shepherd and what do shepherds do?

They take care of the sheep. They have two jobs. We have to feed them and protect them. Well, feeding them turns out to be the easy part. The protecting part gets to be a little nervous sometimes because sometimes you step on some toes in this protection process. A line has to be drawn. And so, you know, like Courtney says, the sheep get stinky.

They do, and they have their opinions, and you know, they're all American sheep after all. So that authority line needs to be defined, doesn't need to be fuzzy, but everybody who has authority recognizes the most important thing about his authority is that it's limited to what God has given you within the realm and the framework that he's given it to you.

So, having said all of that, how does grace and obedience coexist within the framework of God's blessing? Understand the question? I'll read it again. How do grace and obedience exist, coexist within the framework of God's blessing? There's one of our elders getting out of hand up there. It's a logical imperative. So it's a logical imperative, so I'm told to do it, so I do it. Is that gracious? I think it goes back to your grace circle.

Okay. God loves us. We love him because he loved us. Okay. And we obey him because we love him. Okay. I think you're on the right track there. Everybody understand? I've written down obedience or listening under. I love the term listening under. I think obedience is one of those hot button words that are, you know, sort of great.

But listening under is a result of grace known and appreciated. listening under is the result of grace that's known and appreciated. What does that make grace? It makes it motivating. When one lives in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, one can't wait to respond to Christ's wishes. You all right with that?

So we can say liberty is not the freedom from authority. When you come to a class like this that talks about grace, what it's designed to do is to get us all knowledgeable enough about grace, not only from an intellectual standpoint, but from an experiential standpoint, that we will respond to the logical imperatives that God says to us. And he never says anything to us from a position of, well, I'm in the white tower, you're not, you need to obey. It's not like that.

He always comes at us with the grace. As we learn and appreciate the grace, we don't have a lot of trouble responding. Do you agree with that? If the husband comes at the wife She doesn't have a problem responding. How about parents with their kids? Go at your kids graciously. Will they respond? How many think, yeah, they will? How many think, maybe not? Come on, get your hands up.

Are children under grace or under law? They are under law, aren't they? Aren't they under the law of their parents? The interesting thing about living under grace, it assumes that you have knowledge and you appreciate it. Does a 5 year old have knowledge about the grace they live under?

And do they appreciate it? How about a 17 year old? There's some appreciation, isn't there? And there's some knowledge about the grace, but you know, really, how much grace is extended? Actually, there's a lot of grace, but how much grace is, how responsive would they be to the grace?

It depends on the child. in the work, whether or not he has been open to that and studied and learned. When you think about that, no? I think Chet's position with his kids were they're learning and they don't always know the best. And so he treated them like they really don't have the experience. I mean, that's kind of a hard thing to say, but have the experience to get through the grace concept when they're under their parents' authority. What I find with kids, most of them are really smart, but they don't have any wisdom. They don't know how to implement what they know. And usually it's because there isn't any experience.

If you say to them, you know, they say, well, I want to go to Castle Rock. And you say, well, don't go this way. Because I was down that way last week and the road's out. And they look at you like, I'm going to go that way anyway. Right? What did you try to impart to them? Knowledge and understanding and wisdom. What did you get back? What did they learn by going their own way?

That's really kind of how it goes, isn't it? I mean, I know, I have a 17 year old and this one, you know, they look at you like, Dad, You were born in the olden days, weren't you? John said that to me camping this week. That's what he used to do. What's changed? What's different? There's also the aspect that you lovingly let your children go their way within the bounds. You try to protect them so that they will experience lack of wisdom.

That's true. They'll realize the road's out. They won't go into the ditch. They'll hopefully come back and go the other road. Sure. That's exactly right. And that's always the dilemma with the parent is how much rope do you lend out? And then all of a sudden there comes a day when the society says, okay, you know, they can die for their country. They can vote, but they can't drink a beer. So let them go. First go. Yeah. So go ahead. What's that? So what did I do? You said so you're going to finish the thought that I think the train left.

So what is the answer as far as. grace, they are under grace, right? Are you talking about relative to parents? Relative to the parent's authority. And if the parent seems arbitrary in making like curfew decisions or whatever, those are not done in grace. Those are done in protection. You know, if my son or daughter says to me, well I'm going out with my friends and my I don't think so. Well, you're going to have to prevent me from leaving the house.

OK. I'm up for it. But if they say, well, I'm just going to go hang out with my friends. What are you going to do? Hopefully, you know enough about their friends and they've demonstrated through their behavior that maybe their friends aren't all believers, but they're reasonable. You know? They're not... that kind of thing. So, can I, like Courtney, wouldn't let his daughter go see an R-rated movie? Would I let my son? Do I make that decision? Who decided R-rates are good or bad? You know?

You can't look at primetime television today. There's not one single program that portrays the family from a biblical standpoint. Not one. So we're going to throw away the TV. I don't get to watch the Broncos anymore. That's hard. All you people that think the Broncos, you shouldn't go to them because they're sinful, I'll take your tickets anyway.

My question is about authority as a relationship to what it looks like in the millennium. In the millennium? Interesting. There will be two groups of people in the world. There will be Jews and Gentiles on the earth, subject to the authority of the King, the Lord Jesus Christ. The Jews are going to have it easy, because the law is going to be written on their hearts. They are not going to have to teach each other about God. They are all going to know Him. All of them. Not true of the Gentiles. The Gentiles are going to learn about God from the Jews.

What are we going to be doing? But we are also going to be ruling and reigning with him. Now I don't know to what extent that authority will go to, but we will not be ruled over in that sense like the human beings on the earth. We won't be. So there will be no outside influence on human beings from Satan and his minions. But they're still going to have sin natures. There's still going to be sin. But God, the Lord Jesus said there will be immediate dealing with the sinfulness of humanity.

That's what I think we're going to be involved in doing. That doesn't sound like a fine job to me. But I think that that's what we'll be involved with. You know? Yeah, I wanted to ask you to repeat what you said at the beginning of this question here. What did I say?

When you said listening under and then every thought of Listening under is the result of the grace known and appreciated. When one lives in grace, in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, one can't wait to respond to his wishes. The best example is the book of Romans. You go all the way through the book of Romans, all the way to chapter 6, verse 10, before God tells you to do anything. That's a lot of pages of grace. And then he says, Reckon yourself indeed dead unto sin or alive unto God.

Why? because he's already done it all. Then he asks you to present. Do you have any trouble presenting if the grace and the information are known by the time you get there? None whatsoever. You get to chapter 12, verse 1, and he says, I want you, by the mercy of God, present your body of living sacrifice to me. Are you going to struggle with that if you understand and know the grace that got you to that point? No. You're going to, oh, thank you, Lord, for telling me what I should do with my body.

That's great. Do you see how that works? I think also real quickly before, it's one that always comes to mind with Peter 2. It's all through the subjection, subject, subject. And then it puts in there, act as free men. I love that. It's like, that just seems so contrary. But if you're under grace. You're acting as a free agent. You're acting, yeah. Yes you are. It's not. Missing. OK. All right.

Next week, we're going to start on the questions for the paper I gave you. And I'm thinking we're going to take two weeks to get through that. Everybody have a copy of that. Everybody have a copy of the questions. The questions actually are the paragraph headings. But you're going to find that the answers are more expansive than this. Simple questions. I finished mine up yesterday and I got nine pages answers.

Father, how we thank you for your word and how we thank you for the grace that we live under and the system that you have us in, Father, that makes us dependent on your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And we thank you, we pray in his precious name. Amen.