Unfathomable Riches of Christ - The Identification Truths: The Front Door - Part 1

My dad put this handout together. I have made almost no modifications other than to get rid of some extra spaces. So, I think it is true to what he had expected. When I originally talked to him several weeks ago about this lesson, I said, all right, dad, which one of the unfathomable riches do I need to teach on? He said, oh, we haven't gotten there yet.

And so if this feels like this has been an extra amount of introductory material compared to what you might have thought you were going to get in this class, it is actually very intentional. As we were discussing why he was having so much introductory material, not only did I think, yeah, that's a good idea, I think it's actually really valuable to explore the relationship between the different doctrines. So we're setting up in this morning's class, and what will probably be next week or several more weeks, we're going to dig into the identification truths, which you thought, well, I thought this was the unfathomable riches. Well, it turns out that the relationship between the identification truths and the unfathomable riches is really, really important.

You have to have one to have the other. We need the identification truths. So we're going to dig into that. We're going to take a look at what does this mean as kind of our starting point. And we'll start there with the intention that next week when my dad is back from California, he'll dig into the identification truths even further and try to connect some of those dots for us.

When I was a teenager, I remember saying something that I'm embarrassed of now, but I'll share it with you, because maybe you've thought these thoughts before with me, and you'll say, ah, there's some value here. I remember saying to somebody at church, I don't want doctrine. I just want application. Anybody ever thought those thoughts or said those things out loud before?

It turns out that's pretty terrible. It turns out that without the doctrine, you can't have application. And application is, in the New Testament context, part of our spiritual growth, but it's also something that, if you don't have a doctrine, you don't even know what you're applying. It's kind of like saying, don't look at the blueprints, build me a house.

Who wants to move into that house? Phil's going, I'll just get a fire started. We'll fix it. Burn it down, start over. So the idea is we want to take a look at these doctrines and start establishing the relationships between those things so that it's not just highfalutin, it's practical and you understand the relationships.

Let's turn, as we start here, let's turn to 1 Corinthians 1 verse 30. And if you get there, somebody go ahead and read it out loud. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians 1.30? By His doing you are in Christ Jesus who became to us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Last week, Roy asked the question about, or there was some exploration of the idea of Christ and His wisdom being part of our lives. And here's Paul talking about it directly. But what does this start with? Whose doing is it? He says, by His doing. Who's the His? Who's the pronoun? The antecedent is God. So by God's doing, by God the Father's doing, you are in Christ Jesus.

So when we talk about identification truths, what do we mean? What are the identification truths? If you haven't had any serious injuries with saws or knives or a birth defect, you've got five fingers, We are identified with Christ and His crucifixion, His death, His burial, His resurrection, and His ascension.

We'll take a look at those next week, but I just want to make sure we have those in our head. You've seen the PowerPoint chart, right, where the arrow goes down and up? That's one of our visualizations for the identification truths. But what's really important there is we see that word in.

You are in Christ. And if someone doesn't explain to you what identification truths are and you see the word in, have any of you experienced confusion as a consequence of that? When I used to read the New Testament and run into the identification truths, I didn't understand what it meant by in. I thought Paul, when he was writing Romans 6, must be talking about some really awesome believers that weren't me.

Right? Because he says, oh, you have this righteousness. What? I keep sinning. How does this work? And so no one explained the identification truths to me until I was in my mid-twenties. That's a long time. I was saved as a little kid. It was a long time to be in the church and not be exposed to these truths.

But in is important there. So, my dad's got there in the second half of this introductory paragraph, Ephesians 1, 3, 4a. So let's flip right there. I know I have to have my bookmark there because I'm co-teaching Ephesians downstairs, so that's where I want to have my bookmark.

But Paul writes, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him.

And then the next verse starts in love. So the word in is very important. It carries with it the idea that we have a connection with Christ. So, the next thing that we have here on this list is the identification synonyms. Synonyms are awesome, because if we know what to look for, if we look at this list here, we can actually find throughout the New Testament that there are many, many places that these phrases or words are written, predominantly by Paul, but not entirely by Paul, to describe our relationship with Christ. So we just read in Ephesians the in Christ or in Him synonym. As it turns out, there's dozens of those throughout the New Testament. The next one that's on this list here is with or joined. intimately joined together in action and consequence.

So if you have not switched away from 1 Corinthians, let's take a look at 1 Corinthians 6.17.

But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with him. We're going to take a look further on in this series, how we're joined. Are we joined? He says, the one who joins himself to the Lord. Did we do the joining of our own accord? Later on, we're going to see that God did the joining, but by faith we believed, and so we joined ourselves with Him. Together with?

Ephesians 2.5 says that we're together with Him. So if somebody wants to flip over there, whoever gets there first, go ahead and read that outline. Ephesians 2, 5. Even when we were dead and trespasses made us alive together with Christ by grace you have been saved.

Okay. So together with. Now as it turns out Ephesians is replete or loaded with all of these in or joined together with. The next one on this list here is united with. United implies a oneness, so a spiritual oneness is communicated. Romans 6, 5. I'm sorry,

6. Let's turn there, Romans 6. Romans 6, 5, yep. For if we have been united together in the likeness of his death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of his resurrection. Okay, so we're united with him, we're spiritually tied together.

And then, let's go ahead and read Romans 6.3, only two verses earlier. Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death? And baptism is another one of those synonyms. The thing I find most fascinating about baptism is that the examples that we give of baptism from the Greek are all permanent change kind of baptisms.

When they do the cloth and you put that in the dye, it's a permanent change. Of course today with modern technology we can do some pretty gnarly things that will redo things, but once you dye a fabric, It's generally permanently that color. And when you baptize the sword, how many of you have done metalwork or forging? The thing is that when you get that heat or electricity or those things and they mix together, you change the structure of the metal. And so the baptism, when you cool it off, locks that in. So in, with, or joined, together with, united with, baptized into.

When you're reading your Bibles and you're going through the text of scripture, when you find those kinds of phrases, some people don't like to write in their Bibles, but I would encourage it. When you find those things, underline it. Or if you use the Kindle on your phone, you can highlight and bookmark those kinds of pages. So there's still ways to mark, even if you're digital. So we have these synonyms that you should just kind of earmark those for future use.

Now we're going to step into this next section here. What's God's warning in Genesis, or what God's warning in Genesis tells us? Now, why are we shifting from identification truths to Genesis? Any guesses as to why we would shift? What's in Genesis? All right, so what we're going to take a look at is a doctrine called Federal Headship. And that's one of those really great ones.

And you've heard the word federal because you've heard of the federal government. What does the federal government do? Well, let's not, I don't mean this in a political way. What does the federal government do? It regulates. It's a small body that represents the larger body. We send our representatives to the federal government and they are supposed to represent us in that organization. Now it turns out in the United States we figured out how to make federal government monolithically large. So the illustration kind of dies in that context. But Adam is a federal head. He is the one that represents all of those who had come after him. So Adam is a federal head. He's the other federal head that we find in the New Testament.

Christ. So it's important that we understand when we say we're identified with Christ, we need to understand why we needed to be identified with Christ. So we're going to step back in Genesis, and we're going to take a look at what's there, what took place in sequence, so that when we look at the identification truths, for the riches of God's grace and the unfathomable riches that are part of our new life in Christ identified with Him. So the first passage that's there is Genesis 2, 15-17. Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. The Lord God commanded the man, saying, from any tree of the garden you may eat freely. But from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat. For in the day that you eat from it, you will surely die."

And what did Satan, or what did the serpent say to Eve? You won't die. Yeah, you won't die, are you sure? Really? So Satan comes and basically says, God's a liar. He lies about God. He says God's a liar. Or the serpent does. But he denies what God has put in place.

So that deception, that misrepresentation of what is there, has haunted, and I say haunted not to be supernatural, has haunted our thinking about death for a long time in Christendom. So we want to, as we take a look at the scriptures as we continue on through this section, we want to actually understand what does God mean when he says die. Jim? I'm wondering how Adam and Eve understood death at this point. Did they understand what death really means?

They've never seen it? They didn't understand it functionally, it was theoretical. And so that's part of what happens is that once they realize they're naked, they clothe themselves and they hide from God. God comes to them and says, He told you you were naked? I do think it's funny that they went with leaves first. They were like, wow, we can weave together these leaves. God does something completely different. We'll get into that in a second.

So what did it mean, or what did God mean by die? And their understanding of it practically or functionally was lacking. There was no death. No animals died. That's one of the biggest problems with evolution being the day-age theory, is that death was foreign. If evolution was happening, when you hear people say the day-age theory, oh it was billions of years for each day, or millions of years for each day, that would require death.

Instead, we find Adam and Eve don't understand death. So that's an important thing to highlight there. So you'll see the next heading here, death is separation. And inside of Christendom, we've defined death many different ways throughout the years, but the biblical, expositable definition is that death is separation. Did Adam die a physical death the day he partook of the fruit? No. How did he die? Spiritually. He was separated from God spiritually.

The separation because of sin was expressed later on to Israel and Isaiah, so Isaiah 59-2 there. But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God. And your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear. So the sin had caused separation. Adam and Eve were separated from God.

Why would they hide? Let's make sure we understand this. What were they doing with God when God came to walk with them before? They were spending time with Him. God came for His walk in the cool of the day with Adam and Eve, but He had to look for them. That wasn't normal. What would cause them to run away from God prior to that?

They were innocent, and they didn't understand sin, and they didn't understand death. So there is an important series of events that take place that expose to us the corruption that came as a consequence, the separation. So let's take a quick look at Ephesians 2, 11 through 13, because Paul reiterates these principles of death in his letter to the Ephesians. Ephesians 2, 11-13, Therefore, remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh, were called uncircumcision by the so-called circumcision which is performed in the flesh by human hands. Remember that you were at that time separate from Christ. excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ." Okay, so Paul's focusing on the Gentiles there.

Is everybody in the Old Testament a Jew? No. Was Adam a Jew? Who was the first Jew? Abraham. Abraham was a Hebrew. Who was the first Jew? Jacob. Jacob was Israel. So even though they're the patriarchs, it wasn't until the 12 descendants of Israel began populating that we have the Jews, the nation of Israel, started. So Noah, not a Jew.

And it's important to recognize that when Paul's talking about the Gentiles, he's also reminding the Jews of some Old Testament doctrine. It's not highlighted too strong here, but the rabbis would focus on that. I guarantee you the rabbis would be like, oh, we have to, what do we do with the people between Adam and Moses with the law? How do we handle those things? And so here, Paul talks about the commonwealth of Israel. Were you saved because you were a Jew? How were you saved? By faith. Just like Abraham was, right? But the law didn't save him.

So all these things are building on, but Paul uses this idea of separation, this idea of separation to help explain to the Jews that the Gentiles are being brought in. That's the main thrust of what he's writing here. But it's also one of those things that if you grew up in Judaism, you would be very familiar with the story of the fall. That's going to be one of the first stories that you learn about the chronology of the Old Testament, although they didn't call it that.

So we have separation is a key detail. You were formally separated. You were spiritually separated. Also, there's a separation from innocence. Yeah, and the separation of innocence was they suddenly had a knowledge of good and evil. And it's all part of God's plan, which is really, in retrospect, you can see it, but Not there. And probably the serpent didn't even know it. So there's a lot going on at this one moment in time. The rest of world history rolls out as a consequence of some fruit. Some lies and some fruit. But this idea of separation here was important. Paul used that word separation. The Jews would have understood the Greeks maybe less so, and so there was some education that Paul was doing on account of that.

If we skip forward a few more chapters, we see Ephesians 4.18. Well, Randy, the Greeks would have understood a lot of that because of their God system that they created. Because separation and death and relationship and all those things were incorporated into that very complex deity system that they created. Yeah, their philosophical understanding of death in the afterlife was significantly different from, because they didn't understand the idea of life, which we'll get into in a second, which I think really is one of the high contrast parts of the doctrine of what does it mean to be dead, and the answer is separated, rather than being just out cold, no pulse.

Ephesians 4.18, he says, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them because of the hardness of their heart. Excluded there is that same word as the separation or alienation. That's there. When we take a look at these things, in Paul's writing, he's using this sense of separation, and he's articulating it.

The Jewish believers would have had maybe a greater understanding of this, but they certainly did not have, prior to this, any understanding of the identification truths. They would not have anticipated this. In the Old Testament, where do we find people joined to God? permanently in a new, different relationship. I see some looks of confusion and that's good because the answer is nowhere.

You're not missing anything. This is a really different relationship and that's why we want to highlight it and draw attention to it. So what is the opposite of death? Life. And if death is separation, what is life? Union. Being joined together. And so we have a very important distinction that comes as a consequence of this idea of death being separation and life being joined together.

We don't find the idea of being joined to Christ, meaning that we're perfect, right? Were Adam and Eve perfect before the fall? What were they? Innocent. Okay, that's an important word and an important thing to have distinction. Once we're believers, like last week in the lesson, what if every time you got saved, the Lord... Last week we weren't here. Or to last lesson. Remember the kind of the joke about, oh, if you found a tract and you responded, then the Lord took you off the earth right away? Oh, that's not what happens. Instead, we're still here on the earth, we're still living, and the Lord grows us and matures us and sanctifies us while our condition, our earthly state, is being conformed to the image of Christ.

So Romans 6.1, as we mentioned earlier, Romans 6.1 is a key place where we find the identification truth. So let's turn there. Also in Ephesians 4-18, I just looked it up on my phone, where it says the life of God, that's Zoe, which is really cool because that's eternal life. So that again shows another separation, because they went from eternal life to bios, which shows that the separation from the life of God, which is eternal life, Yeah, well that's why the identification, and we're going to see as a consequence as we're going into the unfathomable riches, part of that is this eternal life concept, and is that life rooted in the same life that we think of today in the life that we have in Adam? And of course I think since I'm asking that, you know the answer is no. So, what we find here in Romans 6, the passage that's there is 1 through 11, that's a lot to read given our time constraints, but let's read some highlights from there.

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be. How shall we who died to sin still live in it? have this idea of being dead to sin, if death was out cold on the slab, would we be able to sin anymore? But if death is separation from relationship with, we could still sin, but we know that that separation, due to our identification with Christ, will be permanent and the no longer sinning is not only plausible, it's not only possible, but it's promised. So that's an important distinction there. If we say we've died to sin, we shouldn't have lived in it. That's Paul's conclusion.

Or, do you not know that you've been baptized into Christ Jesus? Being made alive is very different. You've been buried with him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. We've been joined together with Christ in newness of life.

And that's why I got really confused before somebody explained identification. I thought, oh no. I'm not healing people like Jesus did. I didn't understand what life meant. I didn't understand what was being said. I had bad definitions of these words. That's why I wanted to define life and death.

Knowing this, that our old self was crucified with him in order that our body of sin might be done away with so that we should no longer be slaves to sin. Our body of sin would be done away with. Does that feel like it's a today thing? Conditionally? It's a position thing. And it's important that we articulate the difference between position and condition.

I was so confused because I didn't understand that Paul was talking about my position in Christ. I thought the Holy Testament was conditional, except for Revelation, or parts of it, right? I didn't understand my relationship with Christ and I was just confused.

Hopefully, since I've seen most of your faces at Holly Hills for quite some time, this is not news for you. But it's important to have the distinction and understand that separation. So let's take a look at this list. We're not going to read each one of these passages so that the clock doesn't get away from us. This class isn't because we're in the main sanctuary. We're notoriously impactful if we run late. So we have to watch the time, right?

So Romans 6, 1 through 11, dead to sin, alive to Christ. Romans 7, 1 through 6, death releases from marriage. We died to the law and we're joined to Christ. 2 Corinthians 5.14.15, dead to ourselves, alive to Christ.

Galatians 19.3.20, died to the law and were to live to God.

Colossians 2.20, dead with Christ to the elementary principles of the world. What are the elementary principles of the world?

This is important because it has nothing to do with elementary school. Elementary things in this world, the carnal desires, the lusts, the flesh, the eyes, and the pride of life. It's the things that we think of carnally. Those are the elementary principles of the world.

It's the haughtiness, the arrogance that we have that makes humanism so attractive. When you talk to an atheist, they're really excited about the arrogance they have and the knowledge that they presume to have in regarding cosmology. We know where we came from. We came from the Big Bang, or some kind of explosion, or some kind of no matter to real matter event.

But it's that same arrogance, this idea of elementary principles of the world. We don't use that phrase a lot, so I just want to make sure that we have a working definition of that. Colossians 3, 5, and 20, that we're dead to sin, We died with Christ to the world. And I'm just going to personally tell you that if you have time in your week, this week, read Colossians 3 and take a look at the way Colossians 3 sets up the impact of our being identified with Christ in verses 1-3. to our looking forward to the future in verse 4. We're going to be glorified. I know in these earthly bodies being glorified sounds a little weird, but we're going to have new bodies and we're going to manifest the glory of God. That's really cool. Jim, you were first. Go ahead.

Colossians 3.20 says children obey their parents in the Lord and everything. Okay. So that has nothing to do with it. Well, let me see what's going on here. Let me see if my dad got a verse off, because that's from his notes here. Let's take a look. Then we can make a corrective note. I think I put the wrong... No, I didn't. Well, it was 3.20.

It says, children, be obedient to your parents in all things. This is well pleasing to the Lord. Fully pleasing. I think that's close. Yeah, it's talking about the obedience and being dead to the sin nature. It's carrying the same principle of obedience. But you're right, that is a different. Maybe I'll suggest we take that specific verse reference out of the handout. But the nature of obedience and the way that those things build in Colossians 3 is very powerful, and it ends up impacting our walk and our relationship with the body as well. So Colossians 3 is a personal favorite passage, I'll just say that.

Okay, you didn't touch on this, but Isaiah 59.2, I think that's really interesting because it says, since it hid his face from you, which is a primary topic in Scripture, the fact that you can't see God, that he's a hidden God, that you can't, it's even part of the Beatitudes when Jesus has gone through that. And then it says, he does not hear, in our Tuesday Bible study in 1 John, John says there, he does hear you.

So when we look at the Old Testament and we take the Isaiah passage there, what did God promise in Deuteronomy 28 and 29 for Israel if they obeyed? They got the land, the seed, and the blessing. That carried on from Abraham. But blessing, I think Phil, your answer on blessing is probably the most concise for that passage.

But if they disobeyed, God would turn away from them. And so Isaiah 59, when Isaiah brings out this, I am not hearing you, it's not because God doesn't want to listen, it's a sign, it's part of the prophecy to the nation of Israel saying, you have disobeyed, in the Old Testament. This is not a New Testament truth. You have disobeyed and because of the covenant that your parents made with us, with me, us being the Trinity, there's consequences. It's judgment and consequences.

Because God wants a relationship with them. God showed up in the pillar, right? God showed up in the Shekinah glory in the temple when they established it. Well, that's exactly right, what we have Tuesday, because 1 John starts off with fellowship, because you are a believer, and because of this fellowship, He does hear you.

Yes. And not only does He hear us, but He wants us, what's the principle of abiding? He wants to be in that relationship with us. So his life can be manifest in us. It's why he created Adam in the first place, right? Yeah, fellowship and to show his glory.

So, dead in relationship to and alive in relationship to is taught in 1 Peter 2.24, so let's turn there real quick. So this week, if you're not reading Colossians, 1 Peter is a great book. It turns out, if we go to any book in the Bible, it's a good one, so I'll probably just recommend the whole thing. I'm not very discriminatory when it comes to that, so forgive me.

1 Peter 2.24, he writes, And he himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. For by his wounds you were healed.

So death is separation, and life is being reunified, or reunioned, we'll say. When God came to talk with Adam and Eve, they attempted to cover themselves and to hide themselves from God. And that's evidence of separation. There was no separation prior to that, right? That God would come for a walk, and He knew where to find them. Of course, God wasn't surprised when they hid, right?

He was like, oh, where are you, Adam and Eve? It's like playing hide-and-go-seek with a two-year-old. And everybody laughed, because I know you've all done it, right? And you play hide-and-go-seek with a two-year-old, and they always go into the same place, or their feet are sticking out, or their diaper or something, right? So God wasn't surprised by their hiding.

But looking at the flow in Genesis 3, God speaks to Adam, Adam, of course, tries to pull out the blame thrower, right? This is this woman you gave me, Lord. Then God asks Eve a question, and then Eve points to the serpent. So God addresses the serpent. And we get the first promise of the Messiah.

Genesis 3.16. Someone is going to be born to Eve, who is going to crush the serpent's head. Later on we find out that's going to be Christ. Then God responds to Eve, and then God responds to Adam, and they have consequences. Eve has consequences that it's going to impact childbirth, and it's going to impact her relationship with her husband. Your desire will be for your husband.

Childbirthing will be painful. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, we don't have any written record in Genesis account of Eve having children before the fall. Because that would have been really stinky if there was no pain in childbearing and she had, let's say she had one kid, I don't know, it doesn't matter, and there was no pain in it. And then the fall came, she'd have known the difference. It's like epidural, no epidural, right?

It's a big deal. So there's a consequence for Eve and Adam gets a consequence. He'd have to toil and have to work to get sustenance. He's going to be fighting the weeds. He's going to be having to do agriculture. He was working before. What was Adam working before in the garden? Tending the garden. He wasn't fighting it. Now he's going to have to fight it. The garden was put together perfectly, set up for Adam and Eve. He didn't have to hire any contractors to come help optimize the growing season or anything.

No, it was locked in place. So the consequences came and they were serious. Top of the second paragraph after the list says, Notice that while the passage lays out consequences for Eve and for Adam, they are consequences of the separation from God that has already taken place because of Adam's sin. The consequences were articulated, but the separation had already taken place. Surely he will die, and he did. Spiritually he was separated.

The separation from God because of Adam's sin has resulted not only in a change in mankind's relationship with God, but also a change in mankind's relationship with everything that God had made. A change within human beings and their bodies, and ultimately a change in every human being's future from that time forward, except for the mercy and grace of God. Now what did God cover Adam and Eve with?

Oh, skin. I love meat. So I don't mean this in some sort of PETA environmental, say, the animal sort of way. But Adam had a daily reminder on with that cloth that he brought death into the world. Animals hadn't died prior to that. And so every time a human put clothes on after that, during this early days of the earth, they were reminders of death and separation. They didn't have Calvin Klein's or Levi's or White House black market. That was actually the first physical death, right? The first physical death was the animal that was a consequence because of the fall. Alright, so first the bad news. Isn't that an exciting section here, the first the bad news?

God's Word says that when Adam sinned, we were in Adam and in that sin. So we're identified with fallen Adam, including the consequences that God said would result from that sin. 1 Corinthians 15, 22, for as in Adam, all die. I'm asking this because I want this to be buried in your sense of theological words. What do we call this representation that Adam had? Federal headship. So all were in Adam and his descendants.

It is critical to understand that death in scripture means spiritual separation. Every physical death is a separation from earthly relationships, and a separation of body from soul and spirit. So, Doris passed away this last Wednesday, and this earthly tent, this earthly coil, is no longer something she's bound to. What is she separated from? The old body, the sin nature, and who is she joined to?

Christ. Her position and her condition are now one. That's what I look forward to the most. The wrestlings we have are the position and condition being separated, right? And so when the death or the rapture happens, those things are joined. The position and condition are unified.

But we're still going to learn, we're still going to grow in the heavenlies, right? We're still going to be celebrating the Lord and worshiping Him and walking in that. But that life, that joined together nature, will be completed. So Randy? Yeah. So the Innocents, Sensei Renasant and the Garden, their position and condition were one also, right? Their position and condition were one.

And I think that's important to articulate. Innocence did not mean perfect purity and righteousness of character, like we'll find later as a consequence of the unfathomable riches, is we're going to say we're justified. Well, what does that mean? That's so much more than being made innocent. So that'll be significant in the future, but that's a little tidbit of what's coming, right?

So innocence is not the same thing. Have you ever heard people say, we're going to go back to the garden? That's a theological idea that we don't want to associate with at Holly Hills. We're back to Eden, I've heard people say. We're not going to be back to innocent. That's not a new creation in Christ. It's not just innocence. It's significantly more than that.

So John 8.24, John records, Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins. Who's talking? Let's turn there and let's make sure everybody understands who's talking, but let's let the text give us context.

John 8.24. So who's saying that? Is that what you're saying? Yeah. Well, God said that, right? Yeah.

Jesus is speaking. And He's speaking, you know, in verse 16, But even if I do judge, my judgment is true, for I am not alone in it, and I am the Father who sent me. So He's judging. Jesus is speaking. that you will die in your sins. How many of you are listening to the other Sunday School classes? Since you can't be in all three at once.

The cool thing about Romans is that the progression of Romans is that Paul, in the very beginning of Romans, starting in chapter 1 and moving through chapter 3, he goes before the court. He goes before the court and he says, if you want to be declared righteous of your own free will, look at chapter 1. These people of their own free will are just pursuing sin. If you want to be righteous under the law, you can't. If you want to be righteous by heritage, you can't. So in chapter 4 he can present the glorious truth that Abraham was saved by faith. Right? You're righteous by faith. And so Jesus is saying you've died in your sins because they haven't believed. That principle of salvation by faith was true even in the Old Testament. And the death, the separation was at play still. Even though they had grown up in Judaism.

Whoops, wrong handout page. I could teach the beginning of the lesson again. We won't start over. Ephesians 2, 1 and 2, and then 5a. And you were dead in your trespasses and sin, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience, even when we were dead in our transgressions.

So there's this idea of death and separation that carries true because Adam was our heritage. We were in him. He was our federal head. So let's review what we've got so far because this is the end of the lesson. We've ended with the bad news. which is terrible, but that means that next week we get some good news.

So, the unfathomable riches are rooted in an understanding of our identification with Christ. Our identification with Christ is paired with our previous identification with Adam. If you look at Romans chapter 5, which we, because that was the topic at hand, I didn't go into too much, but if you read Romans 5, you see Paul does an A-B comparison. That's a little marketing, sorry about that. That's an A-B comparison between what it's like in Adam versus what it's like in Christ.

Through one man, everybody was bound to sin. Through one man, life came. So this is a changing of a federal head. Changing of federal head. As we understand a biblical view of life and death, we have a context for being eternal beings with a body, soul, and spirit. We have a body and we have a soul. In eternity, will we have a body and a soul? We're spiritually dead in Adam, right? Adam doesn't have a relationship with God, he's separated. That type of being was there.

But when we become believers, we're no longer spiritually dead. We have life and we're rejoined with God in Christ. So as we gain an understanding of our identification with Christ, we also see the beautiful interweaving of the riches of God's blessing through Christ's work on the cross. God has sealed us into a relationship about which Paul could write, For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creative thing will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So the identification truths are really important. Next week my dad will go over those and you'll have the most fertile soil to plant the seeds of the unfathomable riches in. Any other thoughts or questions? The bell is going to ring any second. I can see Brian staring at his clock. This is a good vantage point. I can see he's not doing it yet but he's staring at it. Here he goes.

All right, let's close in prayer. Heavenly Father, we ask that you would just direct our thoughts this week as we consider the truth of our identification and its impact on our lives. I just pray that these things would be at the forefront of our minds as we walk and abide in you. so that when we study these unfathomable riches we understand our connection day-to-day, the practical application of the doctrine and the relationship we have and how that impacts our walk with one another as well. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.