Ephesians - All those terms: In Adam, In Christ, Old Man, New Man, part 1

All right. So let me close in the doors. Oh, that's right. That's great. Who's a mom? I know. So. ask a question that we will probably all answer very quickly. He walked us down from his house here down the road so no driving so that's great. Welcome and yeah we'll all get to shake your hand afterwards. There's coffee did you not get some?

This is a You are very spiritually powerful. It's nice to meet you. I'm still too carnal to... It's not hard to do if you feel bad after you drink it, or if you think it tastes bad. No problem. Big qualifiers, but definitely. Do you want to call my name? We should stay focused on the text. We should. As given my ability to ramble anyway. Alright, so, are words important? Precisely, yeah. Clearly, right?

Has anybody ever taken some good time out to talk to a Mormon or a Jehovah's Witness? Do you find that you wind up not being able to communicate for the sole reason that you're using a lot of similar words like grace, like, yeah. All these words that we use, we define in a different way. Someone said they use our same dictionary but a different lexicon, or our same words but they use a different dictionary. They define all the words differently. What does that do to our ability to communicate with each other? It's just like being six months old. And having just experienced two six-month-olds in the last couple years, it's a challenge. It's a real challenge.

So these situations, people in the discussion, this is what's oftentimes frustrating, is that people in the discussion don't realize the importance of the definitions that they're dealing with. Today, we get to look at our definitions of old man, new man, in Adam, in Christ, sin nature, new nature, and I think that's the bulk of what we're going to discuss today. And what I want us to do is, we'll oftentimes use a lot of these words as synonyms when biblically speaking they're not. And there's a good reason, and we might say that it shouldn't matter, or that it basically stands for the same thing, or we know what we mean.

As someone who wasn't actually born at Holly Hills, when I came and started to experience this style of teaching, The confusion between some of these terms was really difficult for me to get. I mean, one great distinction is the difference between sin or your sin nature and sins, the things you do. That was a challenge for me. Until someone really laid that out for me, it was hard. Another one is this whole difference between your old man, your new man, your sin nature, your new nature.

All these things are different things, scripturally, and they are very important to a clear understanding of what the Lord's doing in us and what He's done. So we will be referencing Ephesians, since that's kind of our point of perspective. If you want to open up to that, so we're ready. So the chart is going to be kind of the guide for our study.

As you see in this chart, something that's probably not shocking to any of us here, something that we probably are pretty familiar with, and that's the fact that before your salvation, right, you're in Adam, which we'll put over here if you can see up here.

If you can't, it's all in your deal. Now, in Adam, that's your old man, right? That's all of who you were, were, before you put your faith in Christ. Now, when you are moved to be put in Christ, that's your new man. And that's all of who you are. Right? Okay.

So, just so we understand kind of what's going on, on the in-Atom side, what are you separated from? Yeah, you're separated from God. You're separated from life. What we call true spiritual life. On this side, you're separated from what? Sin nature, law, and the world. Awesome. And I only have two. Oh, it's front and back. It's front and back. If you didn't know, it's front and back. So, nature is kind of a tough word as we kind of start talking about the sin nature. What is exactly a nature? Because this is something that's been kind of challenging to me as I have worked with my understanding of this. What is a nature? I always find crocodiles helpful to understand this.

Don't you? A dog acts like a dog, a cat acts like a cat. Exactly, a crocodile acts according to a crocodile's nature. What do crocodiles do? They, you know, spring out of the water and kill people, and they eat things, and if you all of a sudden saw a crocodile, I don't know, climbing up a tree, laying eggs, and trying to fly, you'd say, hmm, that crocodile's not acting according to its nature. Right? Does that make sense?

Similarly, we have a sin nature. Now, the crocodile's nature dictates some of the things that... This is my confusion in the past with the nature, but as I was praying and thinking and studying over this issue, I discovered something pretty interesting. The crocodile's nature The crocodile's nature dictates what sorts of things he will do. Right? He will swim. He will hang around moist areas. He will, he will, he will. Think of these things.

Sin nature does not dictate the things that he will do. See, I got this idea, and of course, when we come in Christ, we are moved over to be here in the new man, but the sin nature follows. We'll talk about why. But I've gotten this weird idea, and I didn't get it from anyone's teaching or anything, but if you are walking in your sin nature, then it becomes determinist. Then all of a sudden I will be controlled robotically by the sin nature. But the reality is, I'm walking in the sin nature, I can only choose between sins.

But I can choose between those sins, right? So then when I'm walking in the new nature, there's a whole new set of things, right? What do the sin nature and the new nature have in common, as opposed to, as about the types of things that they will have you doing? Well, you're going to do Christ-like things in the new nature, in the Holy Spirit. Right, exactly. So, here's the wild thing. So here's our new nature. We're walking in the Spirit.

And I've kind of gotten this idea, and like I say, I won't say I know where I've gotten this idea, but I've gotten this idea that the only question that I have to answer as I walk through a day is, am I walking in the sin nature, or am I walking in the new nature? That's the only question. Everything else will just flow out of that if I'm just walking in the new nature and sin nature. True enough, we do need to answer that question.

That does need to be the first question we're asking, but once we're walking, in the new nature, all that dictates is the types of things we will be doing. We still have choices to make. We still have things to be doing. We still have blah, blah, blah.

Which is why there's all these wonderful imperatives in scripture. Which is why they make so much sense. So, forgive me if I'm just explaining something that became clear to me very recently, because I just always thought, basically I'm always tending towards immaturity in my thinking. That's just the reality of me.

Welcome to my world. I love the idea of only having to make one decision every morning. Like, when they get your 401k explanation packet, I just want to find the fix it and forget it option. I don't want to be one of those guys who has to look at it every day. Similarly, spiritually, I just want to think about, oh, just one simple decision, and then God will, like, lock me into the mothership and take control of everything. I won't have to think again all day.

Except that it is a moment by moment block. And that's the problem, right? And that's the reality. So the reality is that, once again, it's not like our will only moves us between these two. And it's my immaturity. It's just like when we talk about financial giving, right? The spiritually immature person, what I've always wanted with financial giving was, give me a figure. Give me 10%, I can do it, I know I've done it, blah, blah, blah.

But don't give me this whole, you want me to be mature. And don't give me this whole, you want me to react to every situation in a Christ-like manner. That's too complicated. That's too difficult. That's not fair. I want step one, step two, step three, step four, and God's happy. That's what I want. And God doesn't offer us that, right? And you want to be Jewish, right? Yeah, exactly. Tell me about it. The hats, the hair. I want the whole thing. But, nevertheless.

Yeah, so this is kind of one of those core confusions in my thinking. I've just been imagining that the sense of a nature was a fully controlling principle that will, you know, as long as we're plugged into this one, then God will, like my daughter has toys that you plug a controller into the back of the doll and it it will move based on what you do with it. So as long as you're plugged into the right controller, you'll do the right thing.

Because God's pulling buttons. Not the reality. God has, for some weird reason, decided that we should be mature. Well, it's not a weird reason. I think it goes back to Genesis 126. We're made in his image. Yeah. We're made as a complex being with an intellect and a will. But also, that's because we have his Holy Spirit. have a will that's influenced towards righteousness. Isn't that cool? So, I mean...

Sorry if that was ahead of my time. No, no, that is exactly... So, does anyone have any questions about this whole nature business? I probably was the only one who had any confusion at all, but I just didn't even think about it. I think that's important to point out, the distinction of having, whichever nature is in control, It doesn't make it easy, it just means that the Holy Spirit is controlling your will only to the point of you have self-control. Oh no! And this clears up our curiosity about Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 10. If you look at chapter 2 and verse 10 it says, I'm reading this apart from 8 and 9, so know that it's out of context.

We are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God has prepared beforehand that we would work in Him. What would the determinist say about that verse? He'd say that God prepared those works for you to do beforehand, meaning God set up the situation so that you would walk into it and be super good works doer guy. You know, he prepared the specific good works for you to do.

Couple problems with that. One, determinism is nearly always bad, or fatalism is nearly always bad in my range of view. But, two, the reality is, what if you were walking in the Spirit at that time and you didn't do the good work that he had you to do? Well then you've goofed up God's sovereign will, and if we're in a fatalistic environment, that's going to cause a chain reaction of badness that we can't see the end of.

Does that stand to reason? Does that make sense? So, once again... This is omnipotent, so you would know that you would... Wouldn't do them and then... It's like this infinite loop. Exactly. Which is why, and this is kind of a side light, but G.K. Chesterton in his book, Orthodoxy, at least I think that's where I got this, said that this is the perfect picture of insanity. This is it. If you can close the ends of your system, if you can figure it all out, you are insane. And I would say foolish. I mean, the reality is that the crazy person is not the person who doesn't know what's going on, it's the person who circles closed and too tight. Take the person who thinks that everyone's out to get him, to use Chesterton's example.

He can explain every single person in this room. Well, she's pretending not to look at me, but she's actually watching me whenever I turn my head. And he is watching me every third time, and I can see it every 35 seconds. We say, well, that guy's a lunatic, right? He can explain everything by his circle. The trouble? His circle's too small. His circle just revolves around him, right?

I can walk around and realize that nobody cares about me. Nobody has looked my way in 36 years and if they do, it's usually because my fly is down or because I've got a button off or something weird and it's like, oh, fix that and we're back to normal, right? So, I discourage us always from deterministic thought because we haven't been given.

God has the circle completed. God has it all figured out and all put together. He didn't, huh? By our definition, yes. His circle's just not too small. Exactly. He's got an infinite movement, it's okay. And that is all right. We don't have that ability, so whenever we try to, and really, you think about it, thus, if God's the only one who's allowed to have a complete circle, for us to complete our circle is to put ourselves in the place of God, which is insanity. It's the insanity that Satan fell into, right? Okay, so, I'm sorry I'm getting overly philosophical and getting away from Scripture.

Yes, some ways have... You know, back in your verse here, you know, the end of that verse, it doesn't say we will walk in them, it says you should walk in them. So, it's allowing us, maybe we will and maybe we won't. If we're walking with the Lord, we will walk in them. If we're not... So, that choice, or that putting your faith in Christ and walking by faith is there. And that's very common in many verses like this. Isn't that exciting? I mean, to me that changes everything.

Versus, I don't want to miss the good works that God set out for me today. I don't want to miss them. Versus, I know exactly what these good works that God prepared and advanced for me to do. There's all these imperatives in the New Testament. There's the life of Christ in the Gospels. There's, you know, all these places that we know. We know the fruit of the Spirit, the good works that God prepared in advance for us to do. He prepared in advance that we would do them. He prepared in advance that we'd have the ability to do them as we rest in Christ, as we walk in our new nature. I mean, all these things are provided for us. All that's left is for us to walk in, which is pretty cool. Okay, any more comments on this whole kind of nature thing? One last distinction is I think Scripture doesn't use the word nature.

It talks about flesh. The flesh comes with its own nature. And I think sometimes when I've had discussions or basically arguments with folks about the sin nature, they always say, well it doesn't say nature, it says flesh. And the thing is that that's correct. On a clinical level, that's correct. That flesh comes with the nature.

It's not something that you can you know, separate one from the other. That's the problem. Until you die. And we'll get into the continuity and that's where we'll discuss that a little bit more, but thank you. I want to add one more thing, and maybe you're going to get there too, and you mentioned it right at the beginning, the other part is you don't see sin nature in scripture, but what you do see is sin in the singular versus sin in the plural.

And if you're a careful reader, you look in Romans and you'll see sin in the singular is there many, many times. And that's where you can take that and you can say, well he's talking about sin singular, and what does sin singular mean? And we believe that sin singular means a sin nature.

Other folks, I'm not sure how they get around that, but they don't make a distinction between sin singular and sin plural, and I think that leads them astray. And we have the definite article there. Exactly. It's not sins, plural, it's the sin. And what does the sin mean? The sin nature. When it becomes clear.

No, that's fantastic. That's exactly, it's exactly the kind of distinction we're after today. Hopefully. At our best. So, cool, now, the change. When a person by their own will puts their faith in Christ, they are identified with Christ in his death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and seating, and they're seated at the right hand of the Father. No real questions about that, right? So when we put our faith in Christ, we're moved, if you want to think of it kind of in a brutal, physical way, we're moved from this container to this container.

Scripturally speaking, what chance do we have of going back? Zero percent chance of rain. No chance that we're going to move back from being in Christ to being in Adam, right? Also, a biblical distinction, and we get in Christ 15 times in this book at least. This is a hand count, so I didn't look it up by someone smarter than me, I just used my little computer concordance thing. In Christ at least 15 times, in Him 9 times, in the Beloved 1 time.

What's Paul trying to communicate? In. I think the word in. Yeah, I think that's probably exactly right. Now, going back to our definition of insanity, let's pretend it wasn't the definition of insanity, and say that it is the illustration for the word in. In. That's Greek. That's Greek.

N. N. You know, just forget that. You don't need that.

N. OK. The definition of N in Greek, graphically, is this. This is the definition for N. Sounds really plain, really simple. But here's the point. This is not the definition for N. As is. Not. In fact, you know what? This is not the definition for N. if you're in this is not in this is not in this one's in bullseye in you're in Christ, right? No going out, no halfway in, no halfway out. Now, we're going to talk about why this is so important, because when we get confused in our terms, we will oftentimes draw into question, even though we would never say, you can't be out of Christ, you can't be taken out of Christ, we can very easily draw into question the reality of the security by our words, by our impreciseness with the language that follows.

Our old man is all that we were in Adam. What happened to this old man and all that we were in Adam? Crucified. Done. Is there any going back once again? I really want to be specific. So your old man, Adam, is gone. There's no more old man to deal with. He's crucified with Christ. He's gone. You're eternally separated from him. He's not an influence in your life. It's over. Okay? The old man, who we were in Adam, everything that you were is gone and is replaced by your new history, right?

And if you notice on your page one handout, you've got in your old man, you had a mind, right? Your mind was the carnal mind. You had a history, which was your personal history that was filled up with You know, your own shortcomings, sins, shortfalls, blah blah blah blah blah.

And you had an ownership. Right? Were you owned by God? Did God take ownership of you at this point? No. When you move to being in Christ, you have a new mind. Whose mind do you have? The mind of Christ. Whose history do you have? Christ's history. Whose ownership do you have? You are in His care. You're in His ownership.

Make sure you get that right. So, there's these, you know, just three examples of things that change. Greg, can I interrupt one more thing? Just to make it super clear. And we need to bring in position and condition in here. Because otherwise, somebody might say, well, let's see, I'm in Christ, that means, hey, I got this made.

I never sinned again. And you brought this in nature along in your picture, which is great. But I think the position and condition really helps in kind of turn out. Yes, you're right. We need to be, we will yet be hopefully living. So, now actually we're going directly into that, so that's brilliant. Sorry, sorry I got ahead of you.

No, no, no, no, no. So let's look at... When you talk about it like that, though, it sounds like you're not going to have... I mean, you have your human memories and they don't go away when you become a Christian. Oh, we'll talk about what doesn't change. We'll get there.

Is that specifically your question, the continuity of person? Well, kind of. I mean, just the way you describe it, it sounds like it's just cut and dry. Exactly. We're going to start from the simple and move to the complex, if that makes sense. So we're going to start from, actually, in a sense, we're starting from the positional and moving to the conditional.

Right now, who's got Ephesians 4.22?

That in reference to their former manner of life, you lay aside the old So, lay aside your old man. Now, translators of all time will be always tempted to translate this as an imperative. Every day, wake up and lay aside your old man. Not what's going on in the Greek grammar. Without getting overly technical or complex, the Greek grammar more clearly portrays the idea that you have already laid aside your old man. So you're not crucifying yourself every day. You're not laying aside your old man. You're not putting off the old man every day. That's not the pattern we see in scripture. That's not what this verse means. What this verse is saying is that you've already laid aside your old man. Now, we've hit the nail on the head. You say, but I, so here I am in Christ, like Roger was saying, why aren't I perfect? Why do I still sin? Why do I still goof? Why do I still screw up?

Well, and this all kind of comes together, I'm hoping I can kind of, unfortunately you can't say 12 things at once and say, and now you get it. But the idea is that the sin nature, and we'll talk about why that has to be, the sin nature comes with you.

Because the sin nature is attached... We'll get there. Okay, I'll be fine. The sin nature... You're a rough class. The sin nature, though, does come with you, and that's the trouble that we're seeing here. So, this is one thing I really wanted to get clear. Your sin nature is not your old man. Your sin nature is not Adam.

So, this is a Hawley-Hillite distinction that I told you there were things that confused me when I first began to come here. This is one of them. If Adam can creep up in me, that suggests that I can be put back in Adam. Which suggests, I mean, how many, this little piece of chalk, how many cups can I put this one piece of chalk in? At a time. Only one. So if I'm in Christ, and all of a sudden I'm in Adam, or I suggest that I'm in Adam, then we've got a problem, right?

We've got a lack of distinction in language that suggests that somehow I'm back here again. If Adam's creeping up on me, if the old man is bothering me, if the old blah blah blah blah blah. which is why it's so important to make this distinction. You can call it the sin, you can call it the flesh, and we'll talk about, once again, as we get to Nancy's point, why we do call it the flesh. But this sin nature thing is totally different, and our walking in sin, or walking in the sin nature, is not being affected by the Old Man. When we do this, I know we, when we talk about it amongst us, we know what we mean.

But I do think for people who are less initiated, or less a part of the group, it's going to start to sound confusing. Because if I can get back into Adam, and the Lord comes back when I'm in Adam, what's my chances? That you're Catholic? That you're Catholic. Exactly. It sounds like you can lose your salvation. If you use those terms. Exactly. When you say the old man, are you using those at the same as being in Adam? Right. Old man, in Adam. The old man is in Adam. The new man is in Christ.

So what I'm saying is that we're using, and this is where we get to the important positional-conditional distinction. When we say that our sin nature, we're talking about our condition. Because positionally, sin nature has no effect. It cannot affect our position, correct? So we're making a positional statement. When I say I'm in Christ, it's purely a positional statement. When I say I'm in Adam, Or we say our old man in scripture, that's a positional statement.

We see it in connection with positional truth, not in connection with conditional truth. So to use Adam or the sin nature or Adam or Eve and the sin nature as synonyms is to confuse positional truth and conditional truth. And it shouldn't be done. One, just because it's confusing. And two, because it, well, it minimizes what Christ has done on our behalf.

And three, it can confuse other people into thinking, oh, well, if I can be put back in Adam with an obvious amount of salvation, because my salvation's in Christ. As we saw in Ephesians, your predestination's in Christ. It's all in Christ. All the riches of grace, they're only ours in Christ. So if I can get out of Christ, those aren't mine anymore. Right? There's no salvation outside of Christ.

And of all these in Christ, there's not one out of Christ in all the scripture that we found, that I found. So, I guess the appeal is, with this whole sin nature, old man, in Adam thing, is to realize when you use a term, it's a technical term for a positional truth or a conditional truth. So now we get to get down to the nitty gritty and talk about all these issues on the conditional side. So, there's a continuity of person, and this is what Marilyn, I think, was, continuity of person, between the old man and the new man. So, in other words, you put your faith in Christ one morning, right?

And then all of a sudden, you didn't like waffles anymore, whereas before you did. And you used to be somewhat intelligent, and now you wake up and you're dumb. Or verse vice, you were dumb and now you wake up and you're intelligent. Everything about you is instantly different, right?

No, of course not. In fact, I mean, we talked about how you have a new history, but you don't remember growing up as a Jewish schoolboy, right? You don't remember being trained as a first century Jewish carpenter. So that history, that new history that you've been given is oppositional.

It's from God's point of view, right? We still have our continuity of person. If you liked ice cream on this side, once you're saved, you'll like ice cream again. You'll still like ice cream in all likelihood. And we could go through all the wonderful things that the reality I would say is that your issues of personality, there's parts of those that are tainted and affected by sin that will be sanctified, but your personality is part of the unique individual creation of God in you to glorify himself.

Yeah, Brad, if anything, when you become a believer, you're more aware of sin. Because you now, you see both. You see the difference between godliness and ungodliness. And so, if anything, the sin issue explodes. And you think, wow, I'm really that bad. Yeah. This is a surprise. So, what else stays the same? Your body. Your body! Wouldn't it be great? There would be so many more Christians if we could offer like a fit-for-life Christianity class. Believe in Jesus and you'll look like Fabio. I would re-convert. And I'd have to do it every week the way that I eat.

But the point is, your body stays the same, right? Why does your body stay the same? We're going to get new bodies, right? Why not now? God has a purpose. I'm thinking. He has a purpose in our condition. Exactly! He has a purpose in keeping us here. A purpose, one, in our own spiritual life, but two, in a purpose in this world. I mean, does God have a reason for keeping us around here? Any ideas as to what that reason might be as we're walking around in the world? To be a light. To share the gospel.

To be a witness of what God has done and what God is doing. is a big piece of this. So, in order to keep us here, unlike He who ascended in His perfect spiritual body, but is here with us in the spiritual sense, we are kept here in our imperfect physical bodies. Our imperfect physical bodies are corrupted by what?

Since when? Since the Fall. Okay, yeah, since conception, and conception, and conception, all the way back to the Fall, right? These bodies are filled with decay, death, imperfection, sin, whatever you want to call them. They are falling apart as we speak. Always makes me think of when you roll a toilet paper. You ever throw a toilet paper at someone's house? I know you haven't, but I have. And as you go, the roll gets smaller. As you throw it, the roll gets smaller and smaller and smaller until it's finally gone.

It's entropy, right? I mean, this is the idea. And the idea is that Because we're kept in this body, this is what Nancy was saying, because we're in this body, because we maintain this body for God's purpose, for God's glory, the sin nature, or the sin, or the flesh, is connected to that.

In other words, your spiritual perfection is connected still to physical imperfection. Does that make sense? So our sin nature still remains a part of our condition, our walk, our life. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Because of the physical imperfection and because it's connected inexorably to the physical fallen creation. And we say, well couldn't God just keep this same body and remove the sin nature from this body? not without giving us a new body.

We're back to our original problem, right? So, God has a purpose in leaving this sin nature in us. Does that all make sense? Are we kind of coasting on the same way length? Okay. So, now we're down to our condition. You are in Christ. No going back. No, no, no, no. Cannot go back. You are in Christ. When you act according to the nature of this old creature, this old creation, this is exactly akin to the crocodile in the tree.

Did anybody ever watch Saturday Night Live in like the 70s and see Tootsis, the cat who could drive a car? Here's a cat who could drive a car and then everyone was always at the beginning of the skit or like 30 second or 20 second skits. The beginning was like, wow, your cat can drive a car.

This is so great. And then the cat would drive off a cliff every single time. And it was funny every single time. Let me tell you. But it's that same kind of insanity. You're letting your cat drive your car every time. we walk, we abide in our sin nature. From God's point of view, it's just insanity. It's just silliness, right? Okay. Cool.

I think we're going to actually Win early. Or finish early. Win means finish on time and early means before. Define my terms. What does that mean if you don't ever start? You've already won. Clearly you would have already won because you would have exposed my massive confusion of thinking. But in any event.

But it seems so natural to me. I mean, because that's what we're used to. Well, the other thing is that the sin nature can be appealing. It's appealing. It's appealing. Somebody cuts you off on I-25 and your sin nature says, well, I'm going to cut him off. I mean, that's, you know.

But as we learn about Christ, we know that the Lord We're not to yield to that type of thing. We're to say, no, that's not what I'm about. Getting back, getting even is not what Christ's life is about. As I said, there's a myriad of thousands, hundreds of thousands of things.

Well, and as we operate right, as we talk about our threefold enemy, the world, the flesh, and the devil, the world is geared towards making us work that way as well, right? I mean, I was talking to someone who politically I just agree with, and he made an interesting statement. He said, he said, I'm going to get mine. He's talking about the government doing things to hurt private business. And I'm not taking a side on that, but this was his argument. He said, I'm not going to assume this hurt myself. I'm going to pass it on to the people who work for me. I'm still going to get mine. I'm always going to get mine. And then I'm going to hurt whoever's below me, because that's what I have to do to get mine.

And I thought, that's exactly what the world... That's worldly thinking, right? And whether or not he's making his right choice in the political opinion, I want to set that all aside, so please forgive me for even bringing it up if it's a stumbling block to you. But the reality is that the world will program us to constantly come back to this sin nature.

I mean, I've worked in really aggressive sales environments and find that the guys who don't abide in this, boy, they are weird. They are strange. Some of them succeed, some of them don't succeed, some of them blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's really not the point. The point is, people who are walking in their new nature as salesmen in a really aggressive sales environment, and I'm talking about lie, cheat, steal, do whatever you have to do to get the unit out the door. Guys, you don't operate by that. It's a full disconnect of thinking, of conduct, of life.

But Brad, isn't it cool? I mean, when you do come across that one believer out there and you think, wow, he's going to tell me the truth. Maybe I can afford that car. I'll walk out the door and it'll lose the sale, but I can't afford it, so don't buy it. I mean, that's just astounding, and that's really wonderful. And there's a brother who did exactly that.

Council people would say, so what are you paying on car payments? Oh, we don't have a car payment. Say go home. Set aside however much this car payment is going to be for the next three months. If you can do it, come back. You'll have a down payment. You'll have a bigger down payment. You don't, but anyway, the point is, and like I say, some people, it's really successful. I don't think, it doesn't matter.

The point is, it's wildly different. It's wacky. Well isn't that how, at least how the Lord showed it. I'm a fan so We kind of got off the handout and I just want to make sure we didn't miss anything in there no, no, it's good because Like I say, this is obviously quite a lot to swallow. And in fact, if this is confusing, that's okay. I mean, we've got a whole biblical anthropology class that you can listen to online that may clear this up quite a bit for you.

This is all pretty much lifted out of there. And did you have a copy of the Old Man, New Man? We've got handouts. There's a handout. There's actually a handout. Do you want me to go make copies of that? If you don't mind, that would be great. I'd appreciate that. Thank you very much Nancy. But yeah, if you need to get in touch with that material, it's fantastic. It did wonders for me.

And then I still, like I say, as I was going over this lesson, I went, wow, that's bigger. the sin nature in Adam distinction that threw me off, or the Adam old man versus the sin or the sin nature of the flesh. And it just occurred to me, I'd heard people say around Holly Hills, like, ah, you know, you shouldn't confuse the two, particularly the elders. And I didn't understand exactly why.

I thought, well, isn't this the nature that belongs to Adam? So can't I just say that Adam's nature is the one that's influencing me? Or isn't this the nature that's associated with the old man? It's the one that came from the old man and therefore it's the old man influencing me?

And logically there's nothing wrong with that. That actually works. And that's why I say when I hear Adam, or Eve, or blah blah blah. The surface logically. Right. The other prophecy has the other logic that breaks. Well, exactly. So, I mean, I know what's meant when it's said, and I know what I meant when I said it, and I never meant what happens when you follow through to its logical conclusion. So, that was the thing that absolutely hit me.

I realized, man, every time I say, Adam is bothering me, or my old man is bothering me, I'm giving kind of a tacit wink to anyone who isn't in the know that they might be pulled into being an atom, being taken out of one cup and put in the other. So yeah, it's kind of cool stuff. We talked about the flesh. We all feel pretty comfortable with the flesh, the flesh's relation to the sin or the sin nature.

Does that make sense? I'm not comfortable with it at all. Well put. In fact, I'm uncomfortable with it. And then our personal identity not changing. Yeah? Easy? Okay, cool. In that case, I think we can disband a little early unless there's questions.

I was just thinking that, I mean, one of the things that I struggle with, I guess, is there are certain things that just push my buttons. And your flesh knows what those things are, doesn't it? I mean, mine do, I know. Well, yeah, and it's just so, I mean, I mean, you just find yourself getting so angry and stuff and so on, yeah. Mine is, one of mine is that, you know, people accuse me of doing something that I mean, my motives being wrong or whatever, you know, I'm going, you know. I'll show you wrong motives. Let's give you a very more physical understanding of what I'm doing.

Manage them. Yeah, I think we all have our things, I know. I know that when I'm, I can always tell when I'm walking, walking in the flesh, or walking after the flesh, because I'll be doing whatever I'm doing and having conversations that I had last week over again in my head that didn't go the way I wanted them to go and blah blah blah and then I would have said this and then I should have said this and this and that and then boy I would have really zinged him with this like going I'm not even having this this is we're back to this this circle of psychotic insanity right I mean and that's ultimately I think what the sin nature is after is to get us to a point of absolute and complete insanity that's when they've when the sin nature or when our flesh or when the devil the The forces of evil, the anti-god forces in our world, are at their finest when they can reduce us to utter insanity. Even in how we vote.

Yep, and there it is. And we know that, and this is where we get into the individuality thing, the thing that is dangerous about this, and Marilyn, maybe this is kind of what you were alluding to. Oh, and there's the... This actually is not what I was looking for, but I'm missing a page of what I was looking for, so this will be helpful too. Cool! This looks all really uniform, right? I mean, it all looks like, and in a sense it is true of each of us as believers for certain. But it doesn't mean that we'll all have, thank you so much, uniform experiences, right?

I mean, the things that tempt Marilyn and actually You mentioned people accusing you of having wrong motives. That kind of irks me too. So it's not a great example. But there are things that would irk me that wouldn't irk Randy. And also has to do with our spiritual maturity. How much faster better do you think? So there is a complete level of organic individuality. We can't take these diagrams and say, oh, that's easy. Life should be simple and systematic and blah, blah, blah. Once again, we're avoiding the circle.

But I hope this is a tool to help you understand your individual walk with Christ, your individual experience. Oh, this is what's going on. I hope it's a tool, when you share the gospel, to help people understand what happened. Because how many people have met the Lord at a Billy Graham crusade, and then got 15 steps away, stubbed their toe, said a curse word, and went, I lost it, I better go back in. It's over. I'm not saved anymore. Because they didn't understand. This isn't a song about Billy Graham. At all.

But the reality is that when we share the gospel with someone, the Lord brings a new spiritual life into the world, and you're the one who is there to witness it. You've got more to tell them. There's more good news. There's more discipleship that needs to happen.

Because they don't innately know this. Going back to the grace elective, people who haven't been taught grace won't understand grace. And if they don't understand grace, they can't live under grace. They'll continue to live as if they had these bonds on. They'll continue to live as if it had all fallen apart.

Any other questions? Comments? I was thinking of starting a techno hip-hop type tune. My cell phone? I'll turn it off as soon as we're done. It has to do with how you move. Yeah, exactly. So if you start dancing, it might even... It goes more... Dancing causes the music, which causes the dancing. It's a vicious cycle. Does anyone have... It's okay, we're not bad dancers.

I will say, I believe that the Old Man, New Man document is on the Holly Hills website, which the elders put together to clarify this issue. This handout is from the Biblical Anthropology class, and it's diagrammatic, so that's helpful. But for just words, and maybe a little bit of diagram, I'm not sure, it's on the website. I'm more of a words person, but these diagrams are always boring. The diagram should be up on the website, if not I can get it up there. It probably is, under the Biblical Anthropology. The other would be under, not under a class. It was not a class, it was just a white paper that the elders put together.

Oh, cool. Excellent. Good. A white paper. A white paper. Boring. I love it. I love it. Does anyone have any questions or comments? We're pretty much through. We're almost out of time. So you get a few minutes extra to fill your coffee cup. But I'm going to beat you to it. I promise. Why are you praying? That's probably a good idea. Well, your eyes are closed. All right. That wasn't the flesh. No, no, no. It was not walking in the flesh. All right, Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for the clarity of your word, Lord. What a miracle, what a testament to your almighty power.

You can take different people from all over the place and use them as your tools, your instruments to write scripture and see uniformity throughout all 66 books, Lord. It's a miracle that the unbelieving world can hardly stand to even hear about. Lord, so we praise you for the consistency of your revelation to us about who you made us to be and what the fall has done to us and what you've done to repair it and what you will yet do to bring us into glory. Lord, and we pray that each step of the way as we understand this more and more that really what's going on is that we're able to behold your son more clearly. Lord, as we go to your word, as we understand systematically what's going on, that we would fall deeper and deeper in love with you, that we would be more amazed and more impressed with what you've done. We give you this warning. Please let everyone drive safely and get here safely in the snow and all the inclement weather, Lord, and home the same way. In Jesus' name, amen.