You In Christ and Christ In You
Mike Doyle · Aug 16, 2009
You in Christ & Christ in You, No. 33
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492614105068

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Everybody have a copy of the paper, The Fundamentals of Grace by Lewis Barry Chaper. I have that. Another twenty three. We still have a few questions to finish up, I think. I need a lesson. Twenty three. Too bad we don't have any more. Oh, how many? How many do we need? One, two, maybe four or five. Thank you. So we did. We did. We didn't finish up at 22, did we? No. Where do we stop? Seven. No, we did eight, because we talked about stepping outside the authority. Nine.

Are there priorities in human authorities? Let me set it up. What we've been talking about in this lesson is God, well, shaves off is probably a good term, but God delegates some of his authority to us. And as we've talked about, he gives public authority or police authority to the society.

He gives authorities within the structure of the family, fathers, husbands, wives. Husbands are to love their wives. Wives are to be subject to their husbands as is fitting. Children are to obey or to listen under their parents in all things. And the reason is because it's well pleasing and it's right for them to do so.

We talked a little bit about that these authorities can conflict. If Donna's dad and mom, Jack and Winnie, were to come down here and give her some instructions as to that she should be at their house tonight and not be later than nine o'clock. And she would say, what? I don't live there anymore. So sometimes authorities conflict.

They shouldn't, but they do. And some authorities do supersede others. I, as a husband, have authority over her, but I don't have authority over anybody else's wife, just her alone. My authority over my wife supersedes her parents. but she has an obligation to honor her parents. They can conflict if one of the persons who has authority tries to go beyond the limit of what God has given them.

Does that make sense? It's a fairly simple equation. Although it sounds simple, sometimes in the everyday practice of it, it gets a little confusing. That's why, especially in marriages, right in Genesis, is the leave and cleave principle. I'm going to go to question 10. Can human authority contradict God's authority?

And I refer you to Acts 4.17-21.

But so that it will not spread any further among the people, let us warn them to speak no longer to any man in his name. Peter and John were before the Sanhedrin and they were instructed by the Sanhedrin, which was the political authority. They were summoned in and they commanded them not to speak or to teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered and said to them, whether it is right in the sight of God to give heed to you rather than to God, you be the judge. for we cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and what we've heard. So they had been given authority just to preach Christ and even though a civil authority or a religious authority told them not to, they and openly said no we can't obey you because of higher authority and also if you go to Acts 5, 27 through 29, same thing.

Where does, maybe to put this straight, where does human authority derive its authority from? They derive it from God, so therefore would God ever have human authority contradict his authority or violate his will or his word? The logic says no, he wouldn't. So, if you are in a position, well first of all we are to obey every human authority, do you agree with that?

Sure you are. Who put them there? God put them there, so you're to obey them. That's the first principle. But what happens if they step outside the sphere of their authority? That's when you have to make the judgment. Are they to be obeyed or not? Is it outside the sphere that God has given them?

If we had a country that forced abortions, like they do in China, you would have to resist. You okay with that? If it contradicts God's authority, then you don't have to comply. And you shouldn't comply. So, how does grace and obedience coexist within the framework of God's blessing? Don't you find the word obedience to be kind of an offensive word?

Do you like that word? I don't like it. I don't like it at all. Do you? If you didn't have it, you'd have chaos, wouldn't you? Even so, let the other guy worry about chaos. I don't want to obey, right? Isn't that right? I mean, that's a terrible word. And it's a word that's used in the confines of Christian environments. It sounds like handcuffs going on to me. Doesn't it to you?

Obedience, yeah. And if you don't obey, put the electric collar on it. That's what covenant theology does. If you don't obey, you get the electric collar. The thing is, I love what Malloy did years ago when he defined the word obey as listening under.

Now, if you come at it from that perspective, and you recognize that listening under is the result of grace, you understand that? It's the result, it isn't the cause, you are not going to be blessed because you obeyed. Everybody okay with that? God is not going to bless you because you obeyed. Am I right about that or not? That's right. That's exactly right. But if you're honest with yourself, you're always looking for the, what can I obey so that God will bless me more?

Which means that our ignorance of grace is monumental. That's why we spend so much time repeating the principles of grace, so that we recognize that we do live under this unmerited blessing from God all the time. And that is the motivation for me to respond in obedience or listening under.

If you do not know the grace, you are going to automatically obey from a legal standpoint that God will bless you more if you do it. That's totally outside the principle of grace. The thing that's interesting about that is Today, in our society, obeying is a mindless activity. You do it without having to have any kind of understanding at all.

Whereas listening under, I think, is an intellectual as well as spiritual. You arrive at that because you know the Lord. With the relationship comes the obedience. I agree. That's good. Yes, so you do it automatically. You don't have to think about it. It is almost automatically, isn't it? Right. I think so.

If you realize, and not only realize, but accept the facts of grace, then the response to God's commands, or even his requests, or even if you suspect he might want you, you're eager to be compliant. If you, in any sense, think that I have to do something to get God off the nickel so he'll bless me, that's law.

That's absolute law. You know, like, who was it, Louis Perry Chaffer? Or no, it was Newell. Newell said that if you can go through the Word of God, especially the Paul's Epistles, and you can find one blessing, one spiritual blessing that God has not already blessed you with, then the whole thing is a fraud.

I agree with him. Because Ephesians says we've been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus. Find me one that you haven't been blessed with. Maybe you don't have the new Toyota, but that's not a spiritual blessing. See? understanding the identification, you know, the old man is wondering. The other subtlety about that is this, and we don't talk much about this. The Old Testament Mosaic system with the 600 plus commands, the problem with that system was that God did not, with the commands, give an enablement to respond. You understand what I mean? He told those Jews, you do this, and if you don't, you're going to be cursed. If you do, I'll bless you.

The whole thing was given to them and they were to respond based on their energy, their willingness to comply. The believer is blessed and he's also given an enablement. What's the enablement we've been given? The Holy Spirit. So there's a dependence on him to carry out the commands under grace that we have been given that are, as Schaeffer calls them, superhuman. And they are superhuman. Anybody who reads reads the New Testament, especially Paul's epistles, and you get to the command part, if you're honest with yourself, you go, no way, not happening.

Love my wife as Christ loved the church? You've got to be kidding. And I don't mean to be sarcastic about that. That's the reality. A wife says, submit myself to my husband as is proper in the Lord? Fat chance of that happening. I'll fake it as long as I can. You know? That kind of thing.

But we've been given the Spirit of God to do what? Enable us to abide and live as God has directed us. And to do it cheerfully and easily because we depend on Him. That is not, in the Old Testament, they were not given the Spirit of God to enable them to keep the law. Now in the Millennial Kingdom, with the Jews, how's that going to work with them? They're going to have the law written on their heart. Isn't that something? And they're going to be given the spirit to do what?

To obey the law. To sum this paper up, liberty is not freedom from authority. In other words, really what liberty is, is moving from one authority to another, moving from the dominion of sin to the dominion of the Spirit of God. There can be two forms of slavery, and you don't have to go here.

Galatians 5.13 says, For ye, brethren, were called for freedom. Use not your freedom for an occasion to the flesh, but through love be servants one to another.

Galatians 5.1, For freedom did Christ set us free. stand fast therefore and be not entangled again in the yoke of bondage. Galatians 5 says to us, now that you're free of sin and the dominion of sin and the flesh and commandments and the control of the world system, stay right where I put you in the grace, don't move.

Notice he doesn't say get in the grace, he says just stay where I put you. Stand fast therefore in the liberty with which Christ has made you free. You're there, stay there. And then don't be entangled again. Don't exercise a lack of faith and put yourself under some sort of lost system again where you would be in bondage to it.

Perfect freedom in my mind is always doing the will of God. That's perfect freedom because that's the way we were made. Two tests. Two tests, experiential tests, 2 Peter 2.19, promising them liberty while they themselves are bond servants of corruption.

For of whom a man is overcome be in slavery of the same as he also brought into bondage. Remember we talked about how do you know whether you're in bondage to something? Does it master you? You already have a master, who is he? So if there's something in your life that masters you, and trust me, there's been several things in my life that really sort of controlled me. I did what I did, all serving whatever that master was.

Maybe the best example is, if you've ever been around anybody who's an alcoholic, their idol is Jack Daniels, or whatever happens to be the drink a choice today, and they will sacrifice their family, their marriage, their business, everything for that idol, that slavery. As Christians, you can be enslaved to something, something about the flesh. Your job, men, it's a real danger with men, you can be enslaved to Christian service.

So you always have that temptation. Yeah, you do. You do. And then there's the other test, the doctrinal test. You can look at your salvation in three tenses, and I've already been saved from the penalty of sin, right? Is that true? I am right now, this very minute, being rescued or saved from the dominion or the power of sin over me. Right? Now what's going on?

And there will be a day, when we get to check out of here, when the very presence of sin will be gone. We will be saved from its very presence. So what's going on right now, from a doctrinal standpoint, is we are being saved from the power of sin right now.

The problem that I see with that with most Christians... anybody read The Hungry Heart this morning? He addressed that specifically about trials and tribulations that come in your life from God to design to bless you and to wean you away from the power of sin.

And if he didn't use those kind of methods to bless you, you wouldn't be free. You wouldn't be... In order to find out how strong and how powerful the sin nature is, you have to learn not to depend on it. You have to go through the process, I think, of depending on it and it failing and you being disappointed. Otherwise you'll keep depending on it, won't you? Because that's all you know for your everyday living over the power of sin.

Am I right about that? Okay. Any questions? OK, let's let's go to lesson 23 and hopefully you've read the paper. And I say that because the paper was written originally, I think, in 1927. And he uses some words that are a little complicated for us to understand. But the substance of what he's talking about is really terrific. I think in the 20th century, this man and a couple others, but mainly Lewis Barry Chafer, understood grace better than anybody. And so part of what our questions will be, not only to decipher what he means, but maybe to expand on the understanding of some of the words he uses.

So the first question I asked, which had to do with the very first paragraph, His very first paragraph after the introduction is, Grace is not withheld because of demerit. Demerit is a word we wouldn't use very much today. So my question is, why is grace not withheld because of my deficiency or my misconduct? Why not?

I have to just read into what I wrote in. It says, grace cannot be exercised until there is the slightest degree of human merit to be recognized. Salvation is by grace alone. Can everybody hear him? If there is just a hint of human merit, it's not grace.

In other words, if God could say to me, I'm going to withhold my grace because you're a worse sinner than Courtney. What would be the problem with that? Well, like Chafer says, and I like how he phrases it, grace ceases to be grace if God is compelled, God is compelled to withdraw it in the presence of human failure or sin.

Now, you know what's great about that statement? All religion is based on that premise. Isn't it? I grew up a Catholic. I've got to tell you, I was taught, boy, if you compel God to withdraw his grace from you because of your failure of sin, you're in trouble.

But we'd never get grace. We would never get grace. We'd never accept it. See? How many of you think that you've done something since you've been a Christian that would cause God not to bless you? We've got some honest people in the room. Got some liars, too. OK. OK. OK. In fact, race cannot be exercised, whereas the slightest degree of human merit is recognized.

You hear me talk about salvation all the time. I think salvation, the way it's presented today, sneaks in human merit here and there. And so these people, they do probably get saved, but they've got that little bit of mindset that I had something to do with it. If you're not solely saved on the basis of grace, it's very tough for you to grow in grace.

Very tough. The other side of the equation is that human sin has to be disposed of. Do you see that? It's got to be taken out of the way. And as we go forward, we'll expand on that. Christ, the Lamb of God, having taken away the sin of the world, has by his cross forever disposed of the condemnation of sin.

Do you agree with that? He has by the cross created an entirely new relationship between God and man. Is that true of the lost? Is there now an entirely new relationship between God and man? Have you thought about that? Yes, there is. What's the relationship? What is the new relationship between God and man?

It's that 25 cent Christian word. Propitiation. God is now satisfied about the sins of the whole world. I'm sorry, I don't mean the penalty, the offense against him. He's now satisfied. So you think about it. If God is satisfied about the sins of the whole world, and here's lost mankind out there, what would God do to sort of inform men that, gee, the game has changed?

What would he do? He'd tell them. Wouldn't he tell them? He'd say, I'm satisfied about your sins. You offended me, but my son died on the cross and now I'm satisfied about your sins. Wow, what tremendous news that is. That's what he would do. That's what I would do. If I'm satisfied, I want everybody to know who offended me that I'm taken care of. I've been relieved.

You see that? So, consequently, men are now either accepting or rejecting Christ, who has borne their sins. You see why he gets down to that issue really quickly? If you don't have a law system in place, and so I can't condemn you for your trespass, I can condemn you for your sins, but oh wait a minute, I took care of the sins issue, What am I going to do now?

What's the criteria? The criteria simply boils down to whether I believe in whether God has done the job or not, whether God is satisfied or not, whether Christ did the complete job. If I believe that, I'm saved. If I don't, I stay right where I am. So you're going to say back to me, now listen, I know 13 people that have never heard the gospel.

Right? Oh, maybe 14. Is that true? And if there are 14, how come we're not out there finding them? Well, I was talking to Bruce about that and he said everybody has been exposed to God. Everybody what? Has been exposed to God. Here's the interesting thing. Whose responsibility is it to get the message out? God. Do you think he's doing a good job? I don't think he's doing very well. I know there's 14 people. He missed them. It says in the Word that he likes every man. That's right. That's exactly right. John 14, 14 and 15 said he convicts the whole world of sin because they don't believe in Christ.

Trust me, I don't have a clue how he does it outside of the realm of my influence in America in 2009. I know what our obligation is to preach the gospel and my obligation is to believe or not. I don't know about the guy 15 villages out in Uganda. I don't know about him who was raised a Muslim. I don't know about him. But I do know that the Holy Spirit is doing his job. I do know that, and I can trust him with that.

Romans 1 clearly states that man knows that there is a God, and God requires that man be thankful and that he honor him as God. That doesn't save him, but he requires that of every man, so you have to say, well, boy, the guy living in the village in Central America, you know, the headhunter down there, does he get that? Yeah, he does. He does get that. But if you've never been exposed to Christ, you're out of line. Isn't that interesting?

Miles Stanford used to say, and I like this, this got me off the hook. If a man, no matter where he is on the planet, will recognize God as God, and is thankful, God will get the gospel to him. Somehow. And there's lots and lots of stories like that where Some guy in a village says, hey, you know, the tree isn't God and I know it's not. And God, whoever you are, I honor you as God and I'm thankful.

Before that man dies, the gospel will get to him somehow. I don't know how he does it, but he will. Well, I just, you know, this goes to the fairness doctrine. You know, everybody's got to be fair. Well, and then you said it too. It's God. God's not able to get the gospel to him. Yeah. Wait, he's he's. Yeah, they don't have satellites over there. They don't have satellites. They didn't have them.

And you just, I mean, it's ludicrous when you think about it. You know, if there's a response and, you know, knows the heart and the conviction, like I said, he'll get it there somehow. And you can't put God in a box and say, you know, he can't make the fifth village out. He only goes to the third village. Because we ran out of money at the second village. Yeah, you know, he just doesn't have the power to do that.

It's insane. But it's our, fairness doctrine that we try to apply and put it on an infinite God. So, we've chased that, go ahead. I think that sometimes as Christians and human beings in particular, that we have the idea that if we can't prove God saved somebody way back there in that little village or that he got the word to him or he did whatever it took, then it didn't happen. If we haven't been told about it, if we don't have some kind of proof, well then it just plain didn't happen. Well, that's the postmodern mentality. There's no absolute truth and if you can't prove it to my satisfaction, then it isn't true.

Okay, question number one. Grace is not withheld because of my deficiency or my misconduct or my sin. It's not. Because my sin has nothing to do with whether grace is dispensed or not. Then the second question is, why can't grace be lessened because of my deficiency or sin?

Do you understand what he's going after here? In other words, if God is only going to save two people this week, and it's me and Chris, and I'm a much bigger sinner than Chris is, So God's only going to dispense... He's shaking his head, yes. God is only going to dispense enough grace to save me, and it would take less grace to save him. Is that okay? In other words, is grace a relative thing? If you're really a good guy like Chris, it doesn't take a lot of grace, but if you're an old veteran sinner like me, it takes lots of grace. What do you think? No, it's unmerited, whatever you say. Unlimited. And unmerited, and what's the other word? Unlimited.

You know, the other is that if that's the case, sin still is in play. God has totally dealt with sin. So it doesn't matter. Grace is not dispensed on something that's already been taken care of. Yeah. sinning a little more than I am, and you know, he's going to meter up grace based on something. Yeah, he's only going to expend enough for us to equalize us. Yeah.

Which means that you and I have some redeemable qualities. You don't have any. You don't have any. You know, and we all have known people in our lives that are Mr. Goody Two Shoes. You wonder if these people ever sin. They're just so nice. They only seem to be non-Christians too. Yeah, that's right. And you look at them and you think, oh, it wouldn't take much for God to save them. Yeah, it would.

So, Chafer says, Grace is never exercised by God in making up what may be lacking in the life or character of a sinner. Okay with that? In such a case, much sinfulness would call for much grace and less sinfulness would call for less grace. You know who the poster children for more and less grace are?

Catholicism. I grew up learning that what they did is they took grace and they put labels on it. There's sanctifying grace, which you've got to have some of that, or no, there's saving grace and sanctifying grace. Saving grace is what saves you and sanctifying grace is what causes you to grow. But in both cases, I have to do something.

It's like pulling into total petroleum. You've got three choices here. You've got saving grace, sanctifying grace, and I don't know what the third one is. But you never qualify for it anyway. It was defined as four different things that you need in your life. Well, you can't do that with grace. not a commodity. It isn't saleable in the commodities market.

There remains no demerit, no degrees of demerit to be considered or recognized. Demerit is a term, if you went to, anybody here go to military academy? I don't know anybody who did. They have a demerit system. So you start out the year with 50 merits. And they used to do it with matchbooks. And every time you did something wrong, you got a demerit and you had to take a matchstick out of the book. If you got to zero, you could be expelled from the academy. And you had to suffer a punishment for every demerit you got.

So, it's a term that's much better understood 50 years ago than it is today. By grace there is now offered alike to all men, all the infinite resources of the saving power of God. Everybody gets the same. You get the full on shot all the time. Because it takes the full on, the complete package of grace to save the least sinner. The grace of God is therefore exercised in perfect independence of human sin.

You okay with that? We need to get that straight in our mind, to separate sin from God's grace. Because God operates completely independent of sin. Your sin didn't cause God to be gracious. You okay with that statement? Or did it? Did your sin cause God to be gracious? Answer, no. Grace is solely resonant within the giver of the grace. When Christ died on the cross and God was propitiated about sin, was he under an obligation to extend salvation to men? No, he wasn't.

Oh, really? Well, why did he do it then? If he didn't do it to save me, then why did he do it? More than that. Why did he do it? If the work of the cross wasn't for saving me, then why go through the exercise? Why did he do it? That's right. He did it to satisfy himself about sin. You see that? He didn't do it primarily to offer you and me salvation. Because sin offended him.

Okay, so why can't grace incur a debt? Understand what the question means? Another one? I think if it were said it would bring God's grace down to the level of barter and trade, it would no longer be gracious. Now, this is a very subtle point because I'm gracious to you, and when I am, do you not think that you have just incurred a debt to me?

Yeah, but this is given freely. That's right. Well, I'm inviting you over for lunch. It isn't going to cost you a penny. Yeah, but tomorrow you may want to charge me. That's the mindset. See that? You see that? Here comes God's grace and you think tomorrow He may want to charge me for this or He's going to require something of me after I receive the grace that He isn't requiring of me today.

God is not a car salesman. See? So there can't be any sense of indebtedness merit, service, anything attached to a gift is free, a free gift of God. If it's free and a gift, there is no debt associated with it. That's right, you can't stick a debt to a gift. I like how Chafer said this, and I'll try to translate some of the words and make it simpler. An act is in no sense gracious if under any condition a debt is incurred. Grace being unrewarded favor is necessarily not compensated for as to obligations which are past, no compensation as to obligations which are present, and no make-up for any obligation which is in the future.

Yes sir? There is a common teaching that says that if you You've done something, you've sinned, and there's like this cloud of fellowship between yourself and God. Do you mind that? Yes, I do. And it seems like it sort of falls in the category of a miracle. Yes, it does. It really does.

And it has to do with 1 John 1.9, if I confess my sins, God is faithful and just to forgive me them. If you start with the gracious premise, that God has been satisfied about the sins of the whole world, right? Number two, that because you have believed in the person and work of Christ, you have now been placed into Christ, and all of the, like Courtney says, all the identification truths are true of you now, you are seated in Christ in the heavenlies. But then you sin.

Did it change your position? Not a single iota. But it did do what? it did harm your fellowship. And why would it do that? Why would it harm your intimacy with Christ at the time? Because of your conscience. Okay, and what else? Your conscience is obviously... When a person sins, when a believer sins, he's acting under the control of the sin nature and outside of the control of the Spirit of God. So his vision His comprehension of reality is from the sin nature. How does the sin nature view intimacy with Christ? Say that again. From standing inside the sin nature, how does that nature view intimacy with the Holy God? Hates it. Hates it. Has no relationship. Doesn't want it. Has no value. Has no value. That's a good way to put it. There is no value in Adam having a relationship with God, right?

So, here I am, as a believer, with all my position in place, functioning as a non-believer, abiding in the flesh, sinning. And oh, by the way, it isn't one big sin. Once you start in the flesh, it's 24-7 constantly sinning because you're not living by faith. The Word of God says that anything is not a faith is sin. What do I have as I'm cruising down the flesh here? What advantage do I have in terms of God's grace towards me even though I'm here? I have several. The most important one is the Holy Spirit.

What does He do? He convicts me, right? and he persuades me and informs me and enlightens me as to what I'm doing, right? Oh my Lord, do you see that? And he also, his job is to restore me to Christ after I do 15 minutes of penance, right? No, we just agree with him. Yeah. What's the word confess me? It means to agree with. What am I going to agree about here? I'm convicted now, I see it, I'm convicted by the Spirit of God and He says, I want you to confess your sins. What am I supposed to do right there? I'm supposed to agree with God. About what? That I'm a dirty rotten sinner? Or? That you weren't listening under.

I wasn't listening under, but I am who you say I am. I agree with you, I have been living and functioning as though this were not true. But I agree with you, this is true. I am your son, I am free from sin, the power of sin, and I confess that you're right.

Now if you're like me, and the Spirit convicts you of, when he starts to convict you, boy the list gets real long real fast. By the time I circle around the first one, he restores me to fellowship, I forgot the rest. He doesn't wait for me to get the list done. He restores me immediately.

Because that's what his desire is. Does that answer your question? Yeah. There's just this subtle thing about it. It seems like there's a merit associated with it. There's this cloud all of a sudden. But I agree with your theology. That explanation, I don't know how clear it was, doesn't make a lot of sense to a lot of believers because they don't understand the grace of God. They think that, boy, if I have sinned, I'm right back where I was before and God is going to require push-ups from me in order to restore me to fellowship. I've got to find out what God wants me to do and get busy doing it, otherwise I'm not going to be under His grace.

Q. So saying sorry doesn't have anything to do with the equation?

A. No, saying sorry is not a thing to do. Because sorry for what? What are you sorry for?

Q. For what you did.

A. Okay, but I haven't confessed anything.

Q. Well, I haven't confessed a lot of times because of the connotation that it means identifying the sin. I'm sorry God that I offended you. I promise I won't do it anymore. Until tomorrow. I'm sorry I did XYZ. I won't do XYZ anymore. And that is true. We have confessed. But that's not fitting in with what you're saying. I would say this. My confession is, is there sorrow connected with it? Yeah. But the sorrow is not so much that, oh, I messed up.

The sorrow is, I've offended you again. You're the one that gave your life for me. You're the one that is my very life. Confession is a much more expansive word than we give it. Although the Spirit of God makes it so easy that we get restored so quickly and thankfully. And He cleanses us from all unrighteousness when we confess. Amen. All about righteousness. Yeah, that's right.

All the ones we forgot to think about, we didn't think about the list. Like you said, you get down the list. Number one, there might be 20 more below that that we haven't thought about. Sure. We didn't even realize. How about the sins you didn't even realize? And as you grow spiritually, you know, He starts showing you those kinds of things. Yeah, but you did think about that. Down the road, all of a sudden you say, oh my gosh, what have I done?

But at the same time, it's thankfulness for the wonderfulness of His grace that I don't have to think about those things. Isn't that subtle? I mean, think about it. You're abiding in Christ and if I can put into your mind to be remorseful about some sin you committed last week, I got you. Because I just took your focus off of Christ and put it back on you. You see how subtle that is?

That's the thing too. It's really taking off the sin and all the merit and all that. I think it goes back to the Confession. I'm not acting as who I am in Christ. And understanding that you have a new life in Christ. And I'm acting the old man. And it takes off all the other... I have a new object. Yeah, but it takes off, you know, the sin issue, oh, I cursed at the guy driving next to me, or I did, you know, and you're thinking all about all that, where it's really coming down to, I just, I'm not acting as who I am in Christ.

And it takes away all the other peripheral issues, and the merit, and how bad it is, and how, it's just, I'm not acting as who I am in Christ. My life is in Christ. And that's the agreement, I'm just not acting as who I am. It doesn't matter how brave or, you know, you really did or, you know, it's not. It's just I'm not acting as who I am in Christ. I'm following the old man.

And it's the agreement of that not acting as who I am. That's why the discussion about spiritual growth is really, it's the not I but Christ life. The Christ life means that he's the object of my attention and focus and I'm free and have liberty to not have to think about me. How wonderful is that? Let's close.

Dear Father, how we thank you for your grace and how we thank you for this opportunity and the work of your spirit to teach us the grace, your grace, that we live in and are growing in, Father. We thank you mostly for the Lord Jesus Christ and we pray in his name.