Unfathomable Riches of Christ - The Identification Truths: The Front Door - Part 3

We have the Identification Truths Part 3, so one of the things we're doing and going through this series is to look at the things that are in the unfathomable riches, all the things that we have in Christ, and to look at the Identification Truths as kind of the front door, the entryway into everything else.

That's not necessarily the approach that others have taken when they've listed, and I think they've done well, but listed the various things that we have in Christ, things that are true of our position, as we would say, things that are ours in Christ only because we believe. So having done that, so what are the five ways that we've been identified with Christ. What are the five things in which, the five events in which we've been identified with Christ? Right, so death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and seeding.

I'm not personally inclined to get tats, but if I were ever to do that, that's what I would get tatted on my fingers. What I have instead is an unintentional tat when I got poked by a pin. So anyway, but if I were to ever have that, that's what I would get tatted on my fingers. It's like, boy, that's what I need to remember, right? and to ponder that.

And so what we presented last week is we're identified with Christ and his death, burial, and resurrection. And actually think about that. Those going through the Romans elective, that's what Romans 6 presents. Christ's death, burial, and resurrection. As Mike has sometimes put it, Romans never gets off the ground.

And so later on in the book of Acts it will become apparent, I think, when Christ met with Paul to reveal him some additional things that we find in Ephesians, in Philippians and Colossians, that we don't find in the earlier letters. So that would become apparent. So, what this lesson lets forth are those things that are revealed in Ephesians and Philippians and Colossians, but not in Paul's other letters.

And I guess the question I would have is, why? Why would we not have the full accounting from the start? Because it's a progressive revelation. So this is an important thing. There is, throughout scripture, the principle of progressive revelation. That is, things were progressively revealed, one after the next, progressively revealed in both Old Testament and into New Testament and apostolic times, progressively revealed, and sequentially, things that were not revealed before.

Yes? So what's missing in Romans? Ah, excellent question. I mean, it almost seems like heresy. What? Something's missing in Romans? Right? So in Romans chapter 6, in verses 1 through 10, This is the passage that starts off, so we sin that grace may abound? May it never be, right? May it never be. Sinning so that grace may abound is not going to be the answer.

And so then he says in verse 3, he starts off with, do you not know? And so the question is, does that mean that they don't? that they do. And we get the answer to that in the beginning of chapter 7. And do you not know, he says again, and I write to those who know the law. So yes you do know. And then chapter 6 verse 6, chapter 6 verse 9, it says knowing this and that particular construction means because you know or since you know. And so because you know, since you know, so these are things that they know. So verse 3, verse 6, verse 9, these are things that they know. And so here's Paul, he's writing to the church at Rome. Had he ever been to Rome when he wrote to them? No. But what it says is he knew that they knew these truths. Isn't that amazing? He knew that they knew these truths.

This last week Nancy and I were watching the There's a video on the life of William Tyndale, who made the first translation from the Greek New Testament into English. So Tyndale, when he translated, we have it in our English translation, something like knowing this or knowing that. He translated remember. Remember. So it's kind of a reminder mindset, and that's correct.

He did a good job in translating that, even though he didn't have verses to work with. No verse numbers at the time Tyndale translated. But he did a good job in that he brought that across. So we know, and if we read through Romans 6, 1-10, we have in there that we've been baptized into his death.

As Paul put it in Galatians 2.20, we've been crucified with Christ. His burial, essentially proving and certifying that he was in fact dead, and then his resurrection. And so we are raised to new life with him. So those three identification truths are presented there in Romans 6. In Romans 7, 1-6, also the identification truths, but presented with a different backdrop, and so intended to say that we are joined to Christ to die to the law.

Same message as Galatians 2.19-20. We were joined to Christ in order to die to the law. So when you ask the question, it's an excellent question. Here is Romans 6 verses 1 through 10. It says we've been identified with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection, and that's where it stops. Does Paul ever in Romans say, and you've been seated with Christ in the heavens?

He does not. Here, we're going to see it here shortly, here the book of Acts. The eleven apostles, who's missing? Judas Iscariot is missing, right? But you've got the other eleven are there on the Mount of Olives. We know from Gospel of Luke they're just slightly on the backside of the Mount of Olives. when Jesus ascended right before their eyes.

What they had no recognition of at that time was that they were being ascended with Him. Spiritually speaking, they were ascended with Him. So this is an amazing thing. As far as they could tell, there's Jesus going up into the sky. And wow, they may have been kind of shocked and surprised and all that. But what they had no idea at the time is that, oh, spiritually speaking, we are ascended with him.

So Paul must have written Romans before he wrote probably another of Ephesians questions. Well, he was in Rome when he wrote it. Yes. As a matter of fact, we have pretty good sequence as to which books were written, you know, when, and specifically about Paul's letters. I'll just say this because I could get real rabbit-trailed here.

There is nowhere in the Book of Acts has been going through. There's nowhere where Luke sits down and says, and Paul wrote this letter to the Corinthians. Paul wrote this letter to the Galatians. There's just nowhere where it says that. But we have the ability to put each one in some kind of a historical context. Even to the point, let's say we're, here's writing to the church at Rome. from any revelation we have, and including the book itself, he had never been there. He did, however, who was on chapter 16 able to say, you know, greet this one and greet that one, and this one greets you and that one greets you, so there's all kinds of personal connections, he just had never been there. So Romans is sequentially the sixth of his letters.

Galatians In the middle of Acts 15 here, Galatians was written right before the Jerusalem Council. Written right before the Jerusalem Council, that would have been in fall of 49 AD. Then the Jerusalem Council held shortly thereafter, and then Paul and Barnabas and Silas and Judas, not Judas Iscariot, right? Those four took the letter, and we're going to be referring to it in the message today, those four took the letter up to the church at Antioch.

And so for a lot of these things, we actually have good timing and sequence. We're going to find out towards the end of Paul's third missionary journey as he's written 1 Corinthians. And written 2 Corinthians, he's written the book of Romans on the way back to Jerusalem at the end of his third missionary journey. He's headed back there then. So Romans is his number six letter and we have within probably a couple of months some good assessment as to when that was written and where he was when it was written and all that. So even though Acts never says, you know, Paul sat down and wrote this letter to this church, we have very good, especially in the book of Acts, very good historical context for placing the books.

So to get back to your earlier question, Romans lays out that we've been identified with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection, but it doesn't go any further. It's not that Paul didn't believed that Christ had ascended, even though he wasn't there. It's not that Paul didn't believe that Christ was seated there in the heavenlies, but his understanding and certainly his revelation of it was not there when he wrote Romans. I think most, a large percentage of Christians understand death, burden, and resurrection.

I know I did. I just didn't quite understand that I was seated with him in the heavenly places. And that position is not, it can't be revoked. Yes, yes. So we have his bullets on the top of page one and I hope you can Join along with us, we have a one-page, two-sided handout here. Having been seated with Christ, so as to die with Christ, and having been buried with Him there in the tomb, having been raised with Him to new life, we were unfathomably blessed by being ascended and seated with Him, among many other things.

So is that the only blessing that we have? No, but our blessings are in Christ there in the heavenlies. So that's not the only blessing, but it tells us the place of the blessing. Every spiritual blessing, where? In the heavenly places. In whom? Christ.

So Acts 1 records historically that Christ ascended right from the presence of the eleven disciples from there on the top of the Mount of Olives. And because of our time factor, I'm not going to read through the detail on that, but just to realize that here were the disciples, it records that they saw Christ ascended, the eleven of them, saw Christ ascended from what Dr. Luke reveals as the backside of the Mount of Olives, right?

And so then, We have here in Ephesians 1, 3, and 4. So, you know, Jim asked a very good question about, you know, sequence and timing and all that kind of thing. So here is Romans, which is Paul's sixth letter. And then we have a reference here to Ephesians, which he did not write until he was in Rome. So all his planning on going to Rome, revealed in Romans 1 and 15, all that anticipating going to Rome had now been fulfilled.

And it's there that he writes this, Ephesians 1, 3 and 4, 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.

So, where are we blessed? In the heavenly places. In whom are we blessed? In Christ Jesus. Every spiritual blessing is there in the heavenly places. By the way, have you ever heard the expression, God bless you? Yeah, I mean it's funny we will say that and we'll say it and certainly well intended when you think about it If if we have every spiritual blessing in the in the heavenly places in Christ, and it's a done deal My my being you know God bless you was in the past tense And also even our wishes God bless you and It is a wish that God would bless you, and in fact, do we need to wish? No, the blessing is already there, isn't it?

So here's Ephesians, I'm now at the top of page 2. Ephesians 2, 4-7, But God, being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ, for by grace you have been saved, and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus." So let's think about this. What does this passage that we just read, Ephesians 2, 4-7, what does this passage tell us about God's character?

It's eternal? Yeah, one is certainly eternal, right? You're correct about that. And what else does it tell us? It's rich in mercy. Ah, and when we say rich in mercy, we could easily, you know, substitute the word wealth. He is wealthy in mercy. You know, is it possible? Are we okay? unfathomable riches, but he is immensely wealthy in this thing called mercy. Immensely wealthy.

So then, because of his great love with which he loved us, did he just kind of love us a little bit? Was there something lovable about us? There was nothing lovable about us. The great love with which he loved us did not originate in our deserving it. God didn't say, oh, they're awfully cute. So God didn't say that. Or God didn't say, well, I know this person has worked really, really hard and they're certainly deserving of these things. Nope.

His great love with which He loved us, and it's all originating out of Him. Not in our deserving, not in our worth. Even when we were dead in our transgressions. Imagine loving us then. By the way, what does it mean by dead? Do we say deserving of it? Deserving of death, yes. And one of the points we often make here at Holly Hills is death is separation. Even when we were separated from Him because of those transgressions, He loved us then. And not only that, He had great love and His character of mercy was already there and evident. And just a quick summary, what's the difference between mercy and grace? Because both of these are mentioned in this passage. But what's the difference between mercy and grace? Grace is unmerited favor. Grace is excellent. Grace is unmerited favor.

As a matter of fact, can we give it a further definition or a fuller definition? So this is looking at a good, succinct, but full definition of God's grace. So now, how is that different from mercy? Mercy would mean no condemnation. Yeah, so mercy is withholding deserved condemnation, judgment, consequences. God is in here said to be rich in mercy. Withholding judgment that is deserved.

And by the way, does God do that just because He says, These guys are awful nice, or boys will be boys. Is that why God is merciful? No. He can extend that mercy because Christ took the penalty that we deserve. So we will often sing about God's amazing grace on the cross. But His mercy is amazing as well. But it is entirely at Christ's expense.

Not because God just kind of shrugged His shoulders or threw up His hands. But so mercy is judgment and condemnation withheld. So God was merciful not just because He decided to be merciful and shrug His shoulders or throw up His hands. You know, what can I do? Vern blew it again. So it wasn't God just kind of saying, oh, okay.

But rather entirely at Christ's expense, God could be merciful to us. And then, what we see here, it goes on from there. He made us alive together with Christ. So this is, what's the made alive together with? That's referring to what? Pardon? Raised? Yeah, resurrection, right? Being raised, resurrection, He made us alive together with Christ.

And by the way, how many of you remember that? You remember that? Boy, that tomb was just kind of, woo, dank and uncomfortable, a little cold, you know? Remember that? And boy, you know, it said there was a hundred pounds of burial wrappings on Jesus' body, and that was a little, you know, that was beyond stuffy. So you remember that?

So how do we know this is true? It's written, and it's by faith in what has been revealed that we know it, not because we had an experience of it. made us alive together with Christ by grace who have been saved, and by the way that gets repeated again in the passage just beyond what we have here. And that word saved is in the perfect tense, which as we say in jest is not designed to make you perfectly tense, but perfect tense means a completed past action, ongoing results, implying permanence, unless the context says otherwise. By grace you've been saved and it's a done deal. It's locked in.

And he raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. He raised us up, so he already talked here about made us alive together. This raised us up is the ascension. In this case we are ascended with Christ and then seated there in the heavenlies. seated there in the heavenly places. This is the same heavenly places where we're blessed with every spiritual blessing. It's the same heavenly places where Christ is, and we are in Christ. And so it's not just where are our blessings, but in whom are our blessings? In Christ entirely. so that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus." Ever wonder what we're going to be doing in heaven?

At one o'clock we've got harp lessons. At one o'clock we've got harp lessons, and so you've got to get working on that. I can't even claim to be rusty on the harp. So at one o'clock we have harp lessons and you get coffee break about 10am and that's pretty good because otherwise sitting there in heaven gets a little tiring, right? No, none of that.

So what we have, our tendency is to ask the question, what will we be doing? What does scripture reveal? What he will be doing. What has he done now? Isn't that what matters? What has he already done here? When we go to be with the Lord, guess what? It's still going to be about what he's doing. And not will I get a coffee break and will I enjoy my harp lessons. Yeah?

I read that in the ages to come would indicate time, so that's got to be here also. Well, think about it. In the ages to come, let's think about this for a minute. The description of ages that both Jesus and the Apostle Paul use are, there's this age, or in Galatians, this present evil age. This age, this present evil age, this present age, that expression, both Jesus and Paul use that. That's from the time of Adam's fall until the time when the Messiah returns. That's this present evil age.

And then the age to come is the Millennial Kingdom, starting at Christ's return and continuing on for how long? A thousand years, right? So that's one age. So now we have rolling ages to come, and the idea is just innumerable ages unfolding after that. Age after age after age. One of the ways the song Amazing Grace puts it, when we've been there 10,000 years, you just barely scratch the surface.

So in the ages to come, God's going to be showing what? Pictures of Moses with the law? You know, is he going to be showing, you know, here's Isaiah and he's doing this and doing that. In the rolling ages to come, he's going to be showing, that is, to show us, to visibly demonstrate. What's he going to demonstrate for the rolling ages to come?

Grace. Grace. And how is grace described? Certainly unfathomable, here in this passage, what is it? It is the riches. Surpassing riches. Now one is surpassing, and that means overthrown, just way over the top. And then riches, so multiple magnitudes of wealth. Way over the top, multiple magnitudes of wealth of this grace. So here on planet Earth, we can learn about grace. How? We can learn about grace as scripture reveals it, right? Does scripture reveal everything we're ever going to know and learn about grace?

No. In fact, it's just scratching the surface. We look at it and we sing songs like Amazing Grace. We went through the Law and Grace series and I repeatedly said, are in the Niagara Falls of Grace. Massive, huge, overwhelming grace. We are barely scratching the surface. We can say amazing grace and we may well be amazed, but we are barely scratching the surface.

It isn't a question of what am I going to be doing for eternity? It's a matter of what's God doing and he says here, he's going to be demonstrating, showing us His grace. I imagine instead of looking down at our heavenly watches, and maybe it won't be sundials, let's see how does that work? But anyway, we won't be looking down saying it's about time for coffee break. And it won't be that. We will be gasping in amazement, if you will, at the riches of His grace. shown and demonstrated to us. We will be learning things about His grace that will be just astounding. And after a few hundred years, if that means anything, after a few hundred years, we won't get bored. So, let's take a look here. Here's the next one.

Philippians 3.20 and 21.

And by the way, this is only It's the one typically people will look at for our citizenship is in heaven. It's actually only one of three passages in Philippians that talks about our citizenship. So first one here, Philippians 3, 20 and 21, for our citizenship is in heaven. from which we eagerly wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power which He has even to subject all things to Himself." So our citizenship is in heaven. That's the first explicit statement.

But we also make reference to Philippians 1.27 and 4.1 and 2, and so these are the best-kept secrets about our citizenship.

So Philippians 1.27, only conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. so that whether I come and see you or remain absent, I will hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel, in no way alarmed by your opponents, which is a sign of destruction for them, but of salvation for you, and that too from God.

Now, the secret here is only conduct yourselves, that word for conduct yourselves is citizenship behavior. Citizenship behavior, citizen behavior, right? And so it's related to that word for citizenship there in chapter 3. But you can't tell that from most of the English translations where it sounds like, you know, behave yourself. But it's conduct yourselves as citizens. So actually that's the first reference to our citizenship. And then it becomes very clear in Chapter 3 then, what citizenship are we talking about? Certainly not Roman citizenship. So standing firm in one spirit is a citizen behavior also? Yes. So conduct yourself standing firm in one spirit is a citizen behavior. Striving together. Striving together.

So you look at the whole passage, the whole passage, the tendency is to kind of behave yourself and here's what that looks like, but in fact at the very outset, is only conduct yourselves with citizen behavior, that's what he's talking about, and then all the details of what that looks like is based on the exhortation towards citizen behavior. By the way, how would they stand firm in one spirit in those days? That stand firm is what they're going to be reading about in the book of Ephesians, chapter 6, more than once.

The Roman soldiers would do their formations, and they would do what's called a tortoise or a testudo formation, where they would have their shields around in the group, particularly on the sides and even over the top. And standing firm, they would do, did they have, you know, Nikes with good grips on the bottom? No. They had cleated sandals. Calique. And they would get this order from the centurion, stand firm. And so they'd go and plant their feet so that when the enemy came, you'd have your feet well planted and you're not slipping. So they'd have these calligate dug in, they would stand firm based on the centurion's order.

Stand firm. This isn't time to start picking up your feet and running and shuffling about. Stand firm and don't slip. And so that's the citizen behavior. Let's look at the next one. Philippians 4, 1 and 2, Therefore, my beloved, whom I long to see, my joy and crown, in this way stand firm in the Lord. Here's the stand firm again, right? Oh, one more thing.

Philippi was a Roman colony. So that's where all this would make lots of sense. Those who are Roman soldiers not always but often look to getting their citizenship upon retirement. Some by other means would get it earlier, but typically that was what they looked for. Here it says you've already got your citizenship. So here's a Roman colony, and he says, Therefore, my beloved brethren, whom I long to see, my joy in my crown, in this way stand firm in the Lord, my beloved.

And he says in verse 2, I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to live in harmony in the Lord. Indeed, true companion, I ask you also to help these women who have shared my struggle in the cause of the gospel. together with Clement also and the rest of my fellow workers whose names are in the Book of Life. In New Testament times, the Book of Life was the list of living citizens. So what does that infer about the Book of Life with regards to Christian believers? It means you have your heavenly citizenship. So the Book of Life, where you are there in heaven, you have your citizenship, and then in Revelation it says, and I will absolutely not erase your name from the Book of Life. Which they would do if someone died. or committed a serious crime, their names would be erased. He says, I will not. Not a chance.

So here's Philippians 4, 1 and 2 that also put the focus on citizenship. Next here in Colossians 3, 1 through 4, Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, and this is assumed to be true to follow the logic By the way, that's one of the things to remember in the New Testament when you see if. We often times are inclined to jump to a conclusion about what it means, and it doesn't always mean the same thing. In this case, The Greek there, used for if, and the rest of the sentence says, it's assumed to be true to follow logic. So do what?

Keep seeking the things above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died with Him, and your life is hidden with Christ and God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also be revealed with Him in glory. So think about this, where are we blessed with every spiritual blessing? In the heavenlies, in whom? In Christ. We're blessed with every spiritual blessing, and by the way, who gets the credit for that?

Certainly, in Christ is stated roughly three dozen times in some form or equivalent, sometimes in the Beloved, in Him, in whom, in the book of Ephesians. But this spiritual blessing is, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us. So the Father gets the credit, and what we see is the Father then gets referred to by pronoun there in the rest of the first chapter of Ephesians as they're studying downstairs. And as we're also studying on our home study Thursday nights. So the Father gets the credit for a Our position is in Christ there in the heavenly places. So we have the heavenly places where we're blessed, and what else is true of us there in the heavenly places? What does chapter 2 verses 4 through 7 say?

We're seated with Him. In the Greek there is together seated. We're together seated with Christ. Isn't that amazing? Did I do anything to deserve that? No. Is that something that as I work at it, it gets more and more true? No. We are seated with Christ there in the heavenly places, spiritually speaking.

Then we have a citizenship in heaven. So think about your citizenship. That's a place, you know, you think of citizenship, especially in the time there. The Roman soldiers upon retirement were looking forward to that Roman citizenship. Why? Because of the privileges of Roman citizenship. That Roman citizenship said you had certain privileges, it had certain protections to it.

It also said, that's who I am. That's who I am. And it does here. Our heavenly citizenship is privilege, it is protection, and it also is identification in the sense of, it says who I am. We have that heavenly citizenship. One of the ways that I look at it, I think that tells me that's home. That's home. Citizenship during biblical times was most often thought of as in a city.

Here's Paul the Roman citizen that had never been to Rome. As a matter of fact, he got his Roman citizenship probably from birth. So here's Paul, he had a Roman citizenship, we find out from the book of Romans and elsewhere, he'd never been there before. He'd never been there, but that was home. That was home. How did they get Roman citizenship? Was it because his parents were?

Yeah, okay, you ask an excellent question. As a matter of fact, it's one that keeps, that's going to show up several times in the Book of Acts moving forward. And the first place it's going to show up is in Acts chapter 16. So here is, you asked a very good question, one of the ways, and we've mentioned it, here's Roman soldiers at the end of their career, typically age 35, among the different things that they would get, they would be granted Roman citizenship.

Some of them got it otherwise by different means. A person, as the centurion did, who was in charge of Paul in Jerusalem, could pay a large sum of money and get citizenship early. So you could buy it early, but you could also get it granted to you at birth, which appears to be the case with the Apostle Paul. We're not given the specifics, but why would he get it granted at birth? It may have been, for example, a deal with the Roman soldiers who were coming through.

What was Paul's trade? A tent maker, right? So here's his trade, and he got that trade from whom? You typically would get that trade from your father, right? Learn it from his father. His father, we don't know the specifics. His father may have made a deal with a Roman soldier passing through. Hey, I'll make you some tents. Here's the deal. I want to get paid this much money and I want my son to have Roman citizenship. And they could make that deal even before he was born. So it could have been from birth, could have been shortly thereafter, but that's the kind of It's another possibility as to how someone would get Roman citizenship. It wasn't common, especially not common for Jews. They would not assume that a Jew had Roman citizenship.

Paul said he was born of a Roman citizen. So if he was born, it's not like being born in the United States, you're an automatic citizen. Yeah, so that's the thing. In the United States, you're born in the United States and you get citizenship automatically, right?

That wasn't the case in Rome. Your citizenship was not something just because you're born. It didn't matter if you're born in Rome. It doesn't matter if you're born somewhere else in the Roman Empire. Just being born there doesn't get it, right? And you get that Roman citizenship with its privileges, with its protections, with its identification, this is who I am.

All those things, that was something that he had from birth, early on. It's not unlike us. When we're born into a Christian family, that doesn't mean We're identified with Christ. Yeah, that's a very good comparison, right? So just because you're born into a Christian family, are you automatically saved? Are you automatically seated with Christ?

No. It doesn't happen, right? So, yeah, it's not automatic. It's not to be assumed. Good point. Good point. So, what you have here is you look through this citizenship, which like I say is continuing on through the Book of Acts. Chapter 16 is one of the places it shows up. Chapter 21-22 shows up again.

So this Roman citizenship was not something that should be assumed. And a person could not simply be born in Rome or be born in the Roman Empire and get that citizenship. Even Roman soldiers, many of whom were born in the Roman Empire and some of whom were born in Rome, did not automatically get it.

But here was a position of great privilege Paul would use it slightly in Acts 16 and then later on about Acts 21-22. He would use it again and then later on he uses it again. He uses it to keep from being whipped. He uses it to keep from having the Jews pursue him to death, which they're about to do, and instead to go to Rome. under the protection of a Roman centurion. So that Roman citizenship from chapter 16 forward ends up being an increasing value and interest going through the book of Acts. Anyway, so looking at this, we've been seated with Christ in the heavenly places. We got there by being ascended with Him.

And at the point we've made before, we've been crucified, buried, raised, ascended and seated with Christ in those five things, and not in other things that we were not generally identified with Christ. It was in Him in specific events, in those five specific events. One of the points we make, when Christ was born of Mary there in Bethlehem, about six miles south of Jerusalem, we weren't identified with Christ in that birth. When Christ fed the 4,000, crossed the Sea of Galilee going from east to the west, landed at the region of Dalmanutha, which is, by the way, Magdala, we weren't identified with him in that. It was true. It actually happened. There were people who were witnesses to that event. We weren't identified in that. We were identified in his death. burial, resurrection, ascension, and seeding.

And, as we go through, especially in Paul's letters, he explains what's the outcome. This is getting to a word that Wayne talked to me about last week. Last week I talked about consequences, which oftentimes has a negative implication. But I think the word outcome is a good one. that what's the outcome from that? The outcome from our being crucified with Christ is a different outcome than being raised with him. It is a different outcome from being seated with him.

All five are true. All five are necessary. The sequence is essential. We weren't identified with Christ by some crazy, you know, okay, I was identified with Christ as seeding, and then I was crucified, and then I was resurrected, and then they buried me. No. So that sequence doesn't work, does it? Right? So it's only those five things in that sequence ending with us being seeded with Christ in the Heavens. Ending with that. Further thoughts? Questions?

We're certainly not leaving these, but looking at this as the front door to the rest of the ways in which we've been blessed with every spiritual blessing. So anyway, this is just scratching the surface. We've got a lot more to go. Because this is the front door, not just the place to start. It's the front door and we have all these other things to explore heading in different directions that our identification with Christ leads to.

Lord, we thank you for your word. Thank you for these just amazing blessings, all by grace, all credited to the accomplishment of the Father through Christ, and we thank you for The revelation of these things, because you love us and you care for us, as you had Paul write, great love with which you loved us, and your mercy in which you are wealthy, and the riches of your grace. We thank you for these things. We thank you that as we look at these identification truths, they're not the end, but they are in fact the front door to all the different ways in which we've been blessed, ways in which you've shown both your mercy and your grace. And we just give you endless thanks for those things. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.