Great Doctrines of Salvation

Okay, we are on lesson seven. Right? Everybody got a seven? Okay. We had started into seven. We've gotten first question was from a worldly viewpoint. What does burial prove has taken place? Easy answer. A death took place. What is God's object or aim in our being identified with Christ's burial?

Well, it's more along the lines that he states in Romans 6 and other places, our burial with Christ to show us that we died too. You see that? It's important for us to get firmly settled down on the issue that we and all believers have died every much as Christ died. That we did die. And we died and were baptized into Christ's death. We were buried. And we need to identify ourselves as having been buried with Christ, having died with Him and been buried with Him.

Let me give you a practical... I'm in a conversation with somebody, a believer. You're talking about identification truths with them. Here's how you can tell whether they really got it or not. If they're standing over here and viewing themselves on this side of the cross, then they view themselves as always trying to get to the other side. I'm going to die. I'm trying to die. Oh, if the Lord would only implement the death of the cross in my life. If I would just settle down. If I would get better.

The person over here that really understands that their conversation is, I'm thankful that I am dead and I am alive and I see myself resurrected. That's only how I see myself. I am separated from the sin nature and I don't have to deal with it anymore. See that? Now, this little journey from here over to here from a conditional standpoint takes more than a week. Or a month. Maybe a few years.

But this is where the Lord is taking us. So that we will view ourselves as being resurrected in Christ only. See yourself that way. And then you'll stop all of this superfluous effort to be better. Because you're not better. You're perfect in Christ. OK.

Also, somebody read Romans 6, 3 and 4. Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized in Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Jesus Christ Question 4 is, what does newness of life mean? What is it and what does it mean? Reborn.

Okay, that's good. So, this newness is a Greek word that's kynotos from the word kynos. We can see if I can describe this in English. We can buff our car up and say, boy, it looks just like new. Same old car, right? I'm going to buy a brand new one and it's a brand new car, but it's still a car.

When Lazarus, and I ask this question in the next question, and probably we can cover them both. Question five says, is there a difference between the resurrection of Christ to newness of life and the coming forth of Lazarus from the grave? Is there a difference in those two? Wasn't Lazarus raised from the dead? Wasn't separated from his old nature? The widow of Nain's son was raised and Jairus's daughter were all brought back to life. So what's the difference between those two?

That's exactly right. You know, we sort of joke about Lazarus coming out of the grave with all that white stuff and taking it off, and in his mind he's got to be thinking, this is not cool, because I'm going to have to die again. I've got to go through this process twice. See that?

So he comes back to life, or is raised back to life, he comes right back to what he was before. What was he before? as we would talk to him about the course that we're studying. He comes back to the Adamic life, doesn't he? How about the Lord Jesus Christ now? What is he raised from? First of all, he goes where when he dies? Where does he go? Who's he identified with? What's he identified with? What's that? He goes into the thing death itself.

He goes into, look at it another way, he goes into the domain of Satan, which is death, because he was made sin. And so when he's in there, he's raised out of there, or separated from that dominion of death, and when so done, he comes into a whole new state of being.

A question that always comes up in my mind right about here is that when the Lord Jesus was on the earth, I don't think we have any trouble recognizing that he's a unique kind of a being here because Adam was not his father, right? The Holy Spirit was, so he doesn't have a sin nature, so he's different than every other man that's ever been on the earth. But now we get to Romans 6 and it talks about him being raised from the dead. to newness of life, did he just come back to what he was before?

No, he didn't. And the reason that you can say that is that when Christ, as he existed before the cross, that life was the life that was made sin. Do you see that? He was sinless, but on the cross, he was made sin. Right, but he's not on the cross yet. No, I mean when he gets to the cross, the Jesus Christ that is made sin is the man and his human life that came to the earth, not from Adam, but from the Spirit of God.

And so he's made sin, the soul that sins, it dies. So he dies. But now, he's being raised from the dead. Raised out of the dead ones is a better way to look at it. And when he's resurrected, he is totally a different kind of creature than has ever been before.

Totally new. And so, this kainos word means to come into a new state of being. Both newness and life are nouns. Newness is the subject of the sentence. So the kainos is the subject, it isn't life on that verse. You see that? It doesn't appear that way in English, but it's that way in Greek. Yeah, and this walk that we have is not just a manner of living. It's a whole new kind of existence. Do you understand that? It's difficult here. It's a new kind of life. It's, well, we call it resurrection life. Oh boy, I don't know.

At this point, is this the point at which he becomes true humanity and undiminished deity? I think he was deity before. I understand what you're saying. I know that the resurrection of Christ started a whole new creation. Now it's not physically visible yet, but he created the first creation. When you read Genesis 1, he was there creating the first creation. He created the heavens and the earth, he created the stars, he created the angels, he created trees and birds and everything, and he also created man. So he is the creator of the first creation.

He is the new creation. There is a brand new creation in existence because of his resurrection that has no similarity to what he did in the garden. You with me? Let me tell you one of the big differences. The big difference is that the new creation is heavenly, the old one is earthly.

Now we live, we still live in the old creation and we look around and we still have our old creation bodies and it all looks the same to us, doesn't it? And the same principles apply that have always applied to the old creation, but the Word of God is going to tell us that if any man be in Christ, he's a new creation. And that word new is kainos, that word means come into a new state of being. Now it makes it really difficult as a believer to live the Christian life because what we're trying to do is take all of our experience from the old creation which is based on good and evil and we're trying to be good. Right? But this new creation, good and evil are not part of it. Holiness is. That's different. See that? It should because here's basically what happens, you begin to discover these principles studying the Word of God.

You get to Romans 6.4 and you think, what is newness? And so you investigate. The Spirit of God begins to open up your understanding of, wow, when he talks about newness, this is really something not ever existing before. What do you do with information like that? You believe it. That's all you do.

The new man of Christ lives by faith, not by experience or feelings or emotion. If God said it, then that's good enough. So here we have this incredible pronouncement that as Christ was raised from the dead into brand new kind of existence, we were raised with him to live and function in newness. Don't even have to use the word life.

Just say newness. You okay with that? Yeah, that's a good way to look at it. It's a huge difference. The Word of God, and especially in Paul's epistles, is a discussion of newness, and what it is, and what it looks like, and how it functions. Nowhere else, even in the Word of God, is it discussed. Nowhere else, not very much outside of the epistles of Paul, is this newness discussed. But Paul knew it. He was the one vehicle that God used to explain to believers what really took place at the cross. All of us being raised with Christ and entering in, we always think that, gee, what really happened is that I put something on me and now I'm better than I used to be. Well, it sounds to me like based on these verses, somebody got rid of me. You know?

I somehow am not what I was. I'm gone. I'm new. Well, if I'm that new, All that I've learned principle-wise from the old creation don't apply anymore. That's a little scary thought, isn't it? I'm not experienced in newness of life. How am I supposed to function? Well, I go to school and I learn. What do I learn in school? Do I learn anything about newness of life? Isn't school designed to teach me about the old creation? You have newness of life because you're a believer, but still, you go to school. You're going to learn something.

So you don't want to get rid of that. Well, why would you educate your mind? Why would you do that? So you know. It's interesting. I mean... Students who have not tried. Okay, that's a good example. I go to school to learn how to read wise so I can read the Word of God and find out what it says. And it says something different than what they've taught me in school. I'll give you a good personal example.

I'm dealing with some people right now that have been through just a terrible divorce. Even after the divorce, the guy isn't coming forth with what he should do. There's a lot of angst and anger. In talking to her, she's a believer, but she doesn't understand. the fact that she's a believer that something was added to her which enables her to make it through this difficult circumstance rather than realizing that she's a brand new creature in Christ and that nothing was added to her and that the whole dynamic of newness of life, the principles are different there's no getting even You know, there's no making it right.

You know, there's no really hating the person who's doing these nasty things to you. And she looks at me like, are you nuts? Well, living in the new creation, those are not part of what's there. There's no sin there. In the resurrected life of Christ there's no sin, there's no evil. You're to pray and love for those who despitefully use you. Well, that's easy if you're not the one getting used. Sure you do. So then you've got to think, who harbors the anger? You, this side of the cross, or you, new man, on this side? It's this guy over here that harbors the anger. Not the new person in Christ. That's why the life is so new.

Is that her responsibility to say, like, I'm not going to be angry, I'm not going to be angry? No. No. That's standing over here and saying, I'm not going to be angry, I'm not going to be angry. What does she do? We're not there yet. How about this? We're not to the verse yet, but it's a couple of weeks away.

It's Romans 6, 11 and 12. Reckon yourself, count yourself dead unto sin and alive unto God. If I'm really alive under God, that isn't who my new life is. Thank you, Lord, for this circumstance because you're using it for my growth and my understanding. I'm praying for him, them, whomever.

I know that at any given second I'm back over here. Huh? Oh, sure it is. Everybody see that little gesture? It's hard not to go like this. Steve, you're saying not to jump ahead. That's exactly right. To reckon is more than just to believe. It's to count what you know to be true.

I'm standing over here, I positionally am in Christ, but I'm still living out of this. By reckoning, I can live over here, because I know what God has told me in his word is true. I believe him, and I trust him. And the Spirit of God has persuaded me that I'm dead. Totally. Right. Yeah. And you know what you reckon on? You always reckon on something that's already true. Your reckoning doesn't make it true. Have you been crucified with Christ? I reckon it's so. Am I resurrected in newness of life? I reckon it's so.

Oh, there's no question. There's no question. But you know what the cool thing is? Every one of us has the Spirit of God in us, who's God himself. And so when you start sliding back over here, or you get, you know, how Maloy used to do this whole class on James about, you know, how the temptation to sin and he dangled the bait and he's an hour into doing all this steps into sin. I raised my hand, I said, I go from here to here that fast. There's none of this step down for me. I mean, I'm in the sin and the Spirit of God is going, hey, you know, Yeah, that's right.

And so when you teach identification truths, really, I've said this before, people don't, I don't think, pick up on what I'm saying. It's fairly easy to believe that Jesus died for your sins and he paid your penalty, right? And that if you believe him, then you're safe. How tough is it?

I went to college, I got a PhD, and somebody tells me I died on the cross? I didn't find that in any book I ever studied. And I'm standing here, I'm the same idiot I was when I was in college. What do you mean I died? Pretty tough, right? I mean, there's no logic there. I can't get my arms around the fact that The Word of God tells me 2,000 years ago I was crucified, I was baptized into Christ's death, and I was buried and raised in newness of life. I mean, I have to either look at God and say, you're crazy, or maybe you're right.

Well, that's great for you. That's all I can say. Well, that isn't so much the emphasis on this man performing. It's information and education about what this man does, the new man. When Paul says in 12, when we get to it, reckon yourself, or let's say 12.1, Romans 12.1, I beseech you, brother, by the mercy of God, that you present your body as living sacrifice, holy and acceptable, which is your reasonable service. What the heck does that mean? Well, if you haven't been educated in Romans 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8, when you get to 12, you don't know what he's talking about.

If I start preaching to you in Romans 12.1, what guy am I appealing to? This guy to present. But if we have spent all this time learning about this process, And especially studying Romans 8, which is the beginning of the Christian life, when he says, it's a command.

It's an imperative. Present your body. You think, oh yeah, that's the right thing to do. That's the next spiritually logical thing I should do. I'm going to give you my body. I belong to you. How do I know that? Well, I've learned all that. See that? Well, I don't get this with the education. I mean, if we didn't learn, we wouldn't have life. Well, okay. See, I believe in education from the viewpoint of disciplining your mind, learning skills like reading or math or whatever to function within the world. But some of these tremendous saints were not educated. The Apostle Paul was, but a lot of the others weren't. A lot of the saints through the centuries were not educated people. They were just godly men and women.

You know? One person who I kind of watch on the TV is Dwight Myers. OK. That's exactly right. You know, Miles Stanford barely graduated from high school. He told me one time that when he got his diploma, he went behind a football stadium. Oh, they signed it. Really. And I've had people tell me that Miles Stanford is the greatest theologian of the 20th century. I've had people tell me that and these are educated guys with PhDs tell me that. No education on that guy's part.

It had to be of God within. Yet there are other tremendous men that are well educated tremendously disciplined minds, but when the Spirit of God begins to open up their understanding about things, what's the Apostle Paul say about his education? What does he say about it? He counts it all what? Done. That's the word he used. Krapola! For the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ my Lord. Sure, that's the only reality. You see that?

You can't live in both worlds. You're either living in Christ or you're living in the old creation. And God will use whatever He's called you to do in terms of education and training, but it's His life through you, not you imitating or getting really good at what you do.

It has to be Him. That's the way the new creation works. God gets the glory. All of it. It's pretty cool. Boy, did we tangent off there. So let's go down to question six. If we were baptized into Christ's death, what involvement do we have with him when he's raised to newness of life? That's right. So how much involvement do we have with him? were joined to Him. We're one spirit with Him.

1 Corinthians 6.17 says, but he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit. You know when we studied John chapter 17 and the Lord Jesus is praying to the Father and He's praying about us and He makes this incredible statement.

He said, Father that they may be one as we are one that they may be one in us. What a statement. that they may be one as we are one. The Father and the Son are one. And the Lord Jesus is asking the Father to make everybody in this room one with them. Father that they may be one as we are one. John 17. So you read John 17 and you have to think, well what in the heck is he talking about?

Well, you go to Romans chapter 6 and you start to find out. you know, or first Corinthians or Philippians 3.20 and 21 says our citizenship is in heaven whence also we wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus.

Wow! Not only, not only, I'm sorry to tell you this but you're no longer citizens of the good old US of A. You are now citizens of heaven. And in order to be a citizen of heaven, you have to be a new kind of creature. You understand that? You've got to be different. Different in kind and quality.

Okay. Yes. Can I backtrack? Oh, sure. Somehow I think I didn't get with your question. What does it say that it took to raise money? That's great. It's a good place to put it. Yeah, what did it take? Glory is what did it. I feel like I need Courtney's computer here because I can't find it. That means glory was a lot of power. But there's other things that we glorify and he glorifies and his glory does this and it's used in different ways. I'm trying to figure out, I'm trying to get something to really find what Okay. What does the term glory mean?

Anybody want to try that one out? I've never heard that one, but that's cool. Anybody else? The nature of God is good. The way I've heard it, which I like, it's the sum total of God's intrinsic attributes. So you take all that he is, and you sum it up into a total, and it becomes glory. It's all that he is. Okay? Now, think about this.

This departure by the Lord Jesus Christ into death, in order to get him out of there, it took the glory of God to do it. It took the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, all three of them, the maximization of their glory and power to raise him from the dead. It took more power to raise Christ from the dead than it did to make the first creation. Because he was dead. He was in the realm of death. He was identified with and in the dominion of death.

And so to take him out of there, not only take him out, but have him rise in a new creation, took the sum total of God's intrinsic attributes, all of it. That's something. How's that for an answer? You know, when you think about the comparison of that in verse 4 to the creation where God said things in the past. Yeah, he spoke them out of his mouth. He spoke them into existence. And you know what's cool about the resurrection?

Is that it was a non-newsworthy event. The women go down and gee, the grave is empty. Channel 9 wasn't there. And the Lord Jesus, which proves to me that it's a non-first creation event. You see that? It's not noteworthy in the old creation. Because nobody in the old creation really understood what happened. That this was the beginning of a brand new creation. The Lord Jesus is called the first born among the dead.

We are entitled the first fruits of the new creation. You see that? We are representative of what the whole crop is going to be like. All of us are like him. I think part of Steve's question is what does it mean when we glorify God? Does that mean that we are extolling Him for all of His attributes?

Do you understand that? Glory is a place. is something that we do, and God does, but there's tons of stuff going on. But in this application... Well, and there's... I'm trying to think of where it is. There's this discussion about that each one of God's creatures has a glory unto itself. You know, there's a glory in birds, there's a glory in all of the different things of creation. But then there's the glory of God himself. All of the creatures manifest some aspect of his glory because he's the creator.

They wouldn't have any glory if it wasn't given to them by the creator. But when you start moving over into this new creation and the life that believers live, it is this new life of Christ, resurrected life that does what? It manifests the intrinsic attributes of the resurrected Jesus Christ through you. It's not ever to be my glory. It's always Him. Yet, back to John 17, what else does Jesus pray for? He says, Father, glorify them with the same glory that you and I had before the world began.

There's going to come a time that the sum total of God's intrinsic attributes are going to radiate out of you. Out of you. And you. And when we come to rule and reign, I am so stoked about this, when we come to rule and reign with Christ in the Millennial Kingdom, every creature that's on the earth, human beings, are going to know, all of us as the sons of God, you know how they're going to know? Because if you maneuver around this creation, ruling and reigning with Christ, the glory of Christ is going to come out of you. They're going to be awed by just you passing by.

What's the Shekinah Glory? Shekinah Glory? It was the glory manifested in the Holy of Holies in the Old Testament time inside that space and it was demonstrated in the wilderness by the fire at night and the cloud during the day. I often wondered on the Day of Atonement when the high priest went in with the blood, it's pretty dark in there, how did he see?

It's the glory of God. That's how he saw. And here's the Lord Jesus Christ, dead, buried, resurrected, taken to heaven, glorified, and Paul is on his way to the road to Damascus to kill Christians and the glorified Christ appears to him. What happens to his eyesight? He's blinded. He didn't have his Ray-Bans on. He's blinded. So when we see God, he'll just be light? And so will you. You know, you're not going to need clothes. You know why? Because of the light. You won't need them.

That's awesome. That's this new creation that we are. This resurrected side all starts with our being baptized by the Holy Spirit into Christ's death. Because we did die. But that's not the end of it. This newness, this resurrection side, you never stop learning about what it is and what He is.

So, you know, when people die and come back, they all say they've seen this light. I don't know if you remember that. Oh, you mean, oh yeah. You know, they're almost dead, but somehow come back. They all say the same thing and they don't know each other. You know what's interesting about all of that?

Have you ever had one of them say that the light was Jesus Christ? No. You see, the word of God tells us that to be absent from the body is to be home with the Lord. Satan can appear as an angel of light. Everybody who has a spirit of death, it's the same. You know, it's interesting. He came back, and I'm like you. It wasn't that he was forbidden to speak. I don't think there are words to describe what he saw. Yet, 35 years later, John goes to heaven, and he's supposed to write down what he sees.

Isn't that interesting? Women will be glad to know that in 1 Corinthians it says, Yeah. Man's glory of God. Yeah. Isn't it interesting how it flows? But women give men the glory. Sure they do. And vice versa. See the great thing about this newness of life is that there's nothing self-centered in it at all. It's all other focused. How cool is that?

So what is our identity with the sin nature in the whole sphere of the first atom life now? Separated. Now, we died to sin. We died to our sin nature. We have no identity with sin. But here's a couple of other issues. And I should have looked these verses up, maybe somebody else will know them on the top of their head. This separation, not only separated us from sin, but it separated you from the world. It separated you from law principle altogether. And it separated you from Satan. Boy, I'm really, I'm lost now. I have no world, no law, no Satan, no sin.

How does this function? How cool is that? It would seem. Say that again? Right now. We have been separated from his whole dominion. His whole realm. Now we live We live in this world, but we're not of it. The guy across my body, across the street, lives in the White House, he's of it. When you turn on your TV tonight, what you're watching is death functioning. That's the world and what it did today, and what it's going to do.

When it says that I'm separated from laws of principle, that means that I can do whatever I want. It says here that I'm separated from it. I have it, but I'm not connected to it. That's a hard concept, isn't it? Well, it's constantly picking on you. It's always talking. You died to it, it didn't die. But you died to it. Sure.

And like I said before, one of the ways you discover where you are spiritually is which man do you perceive yourself to be? This man in Adam who is fighting all these issues or this new man in Christ who is separated from that man and doesn't even think about it? table, you can do that and you're out of dumpster. It's really ridiculous because when you start to see yourself in Christ only, then all these things don't fit, is maybe a good way to say it. Like hymns that are always asking God to do something that he's already done, Christians that are whining and complaining because God isn't powerful enough, strong enough, they didn't pray hard enough, something, that He hasn't done a complete job on the cross, that they're not, well, I hear what he says, but I'm talking to a woman this week and she's telling me about this counselor she's going to.

She said, I don't know how you can say the counselors are not relevant, she just really helped me. I said, who did she help? This person? Or this person? She said, well that person. I said, that's a great benefit. She's not in Christ? What's that? She's not in Christ? She's a believer. Positionally she's in Christ, but she's She's spending all kinds of money to make this guy tolerable.

That's what's bad about referring to ourselves instead of in Christ as sinners saved by grace. It focuses on the old man. Even though that's true, we are saved by grace. I drive by that once in a while because I was always going out to pick my friend Rico up. I'm driving by that big church out there off of Dayton. Leonard was the pastor, Dennis Leonard. And there's a big sign on the side of it that says, sinners welcome here.

And I'm thinking to myself, wait a minute, if I'm a believer, I guess I don't get to go there. Okay, well we didn't get too far, but I'll give you some questions here in a minute for next week. Father, how we thank you for your son and his work and the position that we enjoy in him. We ask that we would continue to grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is our nurse of life, Father. We thank you and pray in his precious name. Amen.