Life is Grace not Law: Part 2
Galatians 3:25-29 · Roger Henderson · Jun 27, 2010
Galatians (2010), No. 26
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492627575217

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

We'll actually come down to the last several verses in Galatians today. So let's go ahead and I'll get someone to read to you. You can read it from the overhead if you want. Just read the 25 through 29. Or you can read it from the bottom, whatever you like. 25 to 29, Roger? Yes, in Chapter 3.

But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. For ye are all the children of God by faith in Jesus Christ. Or I should have said that reverse, Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither bond nor free. There is neither male nor female. for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be in Christ, then are ye Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise.

Thanks. Okay, actually last week we, I'm going to repeat a part of what we did last week, but if you look at this, verse 25 is kind of a transition. It says now, but now faith has come We're no longer under a tutor. In the last book, we spent some time looking at that word tutor. And it could be translated guardian. In fact, I think some translations have it that way. It's basically the law. So this is saying that we're no longer under the law. Faith has come. And now we are under faith, the operating principle of faith.

And that's how we're going to conduct our lives. And then following that, from 26 to 29, we're going to see a series of statements about the life of faith and what a person of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ has as a permanent possession. What is characteristic of them. So 25 transitions and then we kind of go through and we're going to see what interesting enough that some of the things, some of the possessions we have come out of the Abrahamic covenant that was made with Abraham. And we're beneficiaries of that because of the Lord Jesus Christ. Okay, so let's go ahead. So basically, There appear to be about seven things that you can document in these verses, 26 through 29. And I have them listed here.

The first one, you are all sons of God. Secondly, for all of you were baptized into Christ Jesus. And then the second part of the verse, and all of you have clothed yourself with Christ. And that's the idea to put on Christ, be immersed in Christ, for all of you, and I've got the bottom, the asterisk, whether Jew, Greek, slave, free, male or female.

If you look at that, there's no national distinctions, nationalities, there's no social distinctions, and there's no gender distinctions. So we're all one. It doesn't mean we have the same functions. God has functions in the body, but there's no difference. the church age there's no difference between all those who are in Christ Jesus. We all have equal standing. And then since you belong to Christ, there's a little phrase there, so belonging to Christ. And then you are Abraham's descendants or actually somehow his offspring or seed. And then lastly we're heirs according to a promise.

So we're going to go through and look at these seven truths about the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, I was kind of thinking there's also another list that we looked at, had a whole class on, for, I think, Lewis Ferry Chafer, documented those 31 or 32 things that we have. And this is kind of another way to kind of look at it. This is only seven things, but there's just, each one is significant about the believer. OK, so let's go over to the first one.

You are all sons of God. And the word all here is the word pas in the Greek. It means none excluded. It's the entirety. So every believer is a son of God. And basically the verb here is eni. It's a state in which something continuously exists. We don't fall in and out of being sons of God. That's who we are. Now we may not act like a son of God, but we are a son of God.

It's like your children, right? And we tell our children, you know, act like you're, you know, we tell them to act like what they should be acting like. So act like you're a member of this family. Don't be, you know, and maybe our brother here, I don't know if he was here, I wouldn't surely get a word in his eyes, but anyway. Anyway, we're to act like we're, you know, who we are. And basically in this structure, Sons of God identify, it's a subject complement structure, it identifies all, us. We're all Sons of God.

No exceptions. And how does that happen? Does it happen by keeping the law? No, it's by means of faith or through faith in Christ Jesus. That's how we became Sons of God. And we looked at some of these last week. These are other verses that use this phraseology, by means of faith. And it talks about by means of faith we have the righteousness of God. By means of faith we have the promise of the Spirit. By means of faith we have been saved.

So I won't go back and repeat those. So this is something for you guys, some of you are here, some of you are not. We kind of had a sparse class last week, but we went through this last week. So that's the first one, we're all sons of God. The second one, for all of you, we're baptized into Christ Jesus. And as Hal would say, this is a power pack one. This one has, a lot can be said about this. So basically the question is, what does it mean to be baptized into Christ. Do we see any water here? We'll be adrift. What's that? We'll be adrift. Not even adrift, right? We're talking about that only as a symbol of what's already happened. Exactly. Good. You guys, this is familiar territory.

So it's baptizo, to dip, to immerse, It was used among the Greeks to signify a dyeing of a garment. I just love Hal's thing. I mentioned last week where he did, I'm sure he did it in this room. He would take this little thing of dye, this little thing of dye, and he'd take the white handkerchief and he'd put the handkerchief in there and he would baptize the handkerchief, right? And the funny thing was the dye was the same color as the water.

Yeah, it was good. Well actually I used that, just to kind of digress a little bit, I used that one time in a baptismal ceremony. Because I wanted to illustrate that this is a picture, baptism, water baptism is a picture of real baptism. So actually it was really good, I was up in front of the, and I hid what I was doing, so I had this thing, so they couldn't see, I put it down and brought it back up.

Wow, how did that happen? Didn't you have it already died or something? I was trying to avoid the problem that Hal had. The problem that Hal had, you guys probably saw, he got dialed. He made a mess, right? I remember that. It was hard. and you're trying to put it in there and take it out. And of course, it's dripping, right, when it comes out? That's a mess. I think you're right.

Actually, I did do that, Ronnie, thank you. So I was trying to avoid that. So I had one all pre-dyed. So I put the one in there and pulled the other one out. Ooh, okay, okay, well. Magic. Anchor tube is an anchor tube. Yeah, okay, that's good, Ronnie. You have a good memory. Okay. Okay and then another observation is that we're baptized.

It says all of you who were baptized is in the passive voice and if you kind of look through the New Testament you'll see it's when it talks about the passive voice it's talking about real baptism. Baptism by the Holy Spirit. Okay so And this is a reality and fact about every believer. Every believer was baptized into the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.

I don't know if this is the place to ask. Sure, go ahead. When you baptize someone, and they come out of the water, like you said, they have the color of the dye, but they have the color of Christ. Hal used to say something that I've been intrigued by. He says, when you're baptized in reality, we're taken into Christ, never to be taken out of Christ.

Yes, yes. I've always liked that. I mean, I was kidding last week about that. And I think that's true. I think that the idea is it's a permanent change. But we're permanently in him too. We never go, we never come out of him looking like him. We stay in him looking like him. Right. Well, of course, that's a spiritual fact about us, right? That's now, we may, and we don't, our condition may be different, right? But spiritually, we're, as Hal would do, right? We're in union. We're in union with him.

Never, you can't, you can't, he's out, he's super blue. One of his sons, it blows my mind, he superglued his fingers together. Go ahead. Well, Roger, when they raised again with him, it doesn't leave you down there. No, he doesn't, absolutely. So maybe we should look at the water as being, you know, we're baptized into his death. identified with that, and then we're identified with his resurrection, when we come up out of that death into new life, into his life, never to be separated from his life, is really the idea. Right, we're in union with him, never to be separated, never to be and his life is our life.

Anyway, I think about that when you guys talk about it. No, I've always loved that. I've always said, well, the way we ought to do baptism was to be a short supply of believers. We never take them out. If we're going to show this, let's show it right. They don't have to come out. Tom, go ahead.

As Hal illustrated by a fact of his past life and living in the Bronx or whatever borough of New York he was in, Yeah, we're united, right? Yeah, right. Yeah, we're brethren in peace, baby, right? You knew that. That's actually a pretty good talk, right? I have to remember that. Well, actually, you covered a bunch of, you know, basic, I was just going to go through that we were baptized into his death. You know, it's a co-crucifixion, right? Co-burial, co-resurrection. Ascension, and seeding, the five things.

And Vern has this picture that he, you know, very faithfully, every week we have this, almost every week, it's incredible we have it, you know, coming up by every week it seems like, which is great. So this is just a tremendous truth about the believer. And basically, water baptism, as was mentioned, follows spirit baptism, and it's a picture of what has occurred in spirit baptism. All right, that's good. So let's go on.

The third truth is all of you have clothed yourselves with Christ. And the idea here is this word enduo, I think that's how it's pronounced, signifies to enter into, to get into, as in to close, to put on, And actually it was used, I think it was used with John the Baptist. He wore a camel skin. He clothed himself with the camel skin that was folding on. And actually there's kind of a, so this is a truth about the believer that you've been baptized into Christ, you've clothed yourself with Christ.

And we are endowed or endued with certain inalienable rights. Okay. Why not include this? Well, actually, Tom, we're going over, if you will, some of our, I would say, blessing, rites might be. Those are forcing it a bit. But our blessings that we have as a believer. Kind of a parallel passage, let's look at Luke 24. Just talking about how the believer has been clothed with lucre. And if I get someone to read, and this is basically what's called the Great Commission sometimes, and this is the Lord speaking. And this, let's see, chapter 24 verse 49.

And behold, I am sending forth the promise of my Father upon you, that you are to stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high. Right, same word. And it's a similar idea that God is going to put you into or clothe you with, in this case it's the Holy Spirit. So like many times we'll see a truth about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit will be repeated in Scripture. So this is the same word, but used about the Holy Spirit. So we're in Christ, clothed with the very person of Christ. And actually, Another meaning is actually to sink into or go into.

And if you look at a conditional aspect, this is based upon our positional aspect, right? We can by faith sink into Christ, or this is kind of a how phraseology, to reckon or count upon our being united with Christ. So based upon our position, and that's the way the Christian life is to operate. We know who we are, and then we operate based upon that. And that's kind of back to the family idea, right? you know who your family is you act in accordance with that now you can it's always possible that not in accordance with that but why would you want to do that why would you want to act contrary to a loving father who saved you and died for you want to act in accordance with that and that's and you want to count upon what he's done you know so so we reckon account upon being united with Christ and then in this Union we have We have Christ's care, His love, His care, His compassion, His concern, His long-suffering, and the list just goes on. All those many blessings, not rights, but blessings, that we have in the Lord Jesus.

And we're just seeking to make them ours, to own them, some people might call that, right? You believe it, you trust it, you say, that's true of me, that's who I am. Roger, there's another verse in Ephesians, which Paul wrote many years later, we discerned about Christ, we had put on the new man.

Right, exactly, exactly. And that's the same phraseology. Same idea. Exactly. The new man being Christ. Right, exactly. And this kind of goes together with, behold I make all things new. The Lord Jesus exists and has always existed in a certain way outside of time. Because He was there in the beginning.

He will always be the same characteristically. I'm just thinking, thought kind of got away from me. It's a constant. It's not going to change. It's going to be true. Because we are in Him and He's in us. So let's go on. The fourth truth is, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

And basically, again, it's neither Jew nor Greek, slave, free man, male or female. What's really interesting here is, that there is, neither is really, it's much stronger than what you would see in English. There cannot exist, this is kind of mine, but there cannot exist is kind of what comes across. So one of the questions is why is it impossible, taking that maybe literal translation, why is it impossible for there to be, I don't know if I can say this right, why is it improper, maybe even better, why is it improper to say, well there's these Greek believers, there's these slave believers, there's these free believers, why is that a problem? by benefit of the blood of Jesus Christ cleansing us from all sin. We are all under one blood. So there's no division. Zero. Right.

And that can be a problem because we see in our world today there are many who want to have, well, I'm this kind of Christian. You know, our brother there. I'm a Jewish Christian. Like the Messianic Jews maybe? Yeah, I'm kind of thinking of that. And some of those could be good.

I mean, there was a guy that Remember the guy at the airport, Monty? We had him over to our house, actually. He had a little stand with his wife at Stapleton. This goes back, you have to be in Denver for a while. Eliezer. Eliezer. Erbach. Eliezer Erbach.

A neat guy, he had a son. At our previous church, they came, actually spoke one time, but he kind of spoke from a Jewish perspective and very focused on that. So, but he was a neat believer, but you know, you kind of get wrapped up in, well, I want to, you know, and he certainly had ministry to them. That's wonderful. That's wonderful. But the thing is, we're all one in Christ Jesus. But it kind of confuses you sometimes when they say they're Christian Jews. You go, well, are they Christians or are they Jews?

Exactly. It's kind of, you know, I mean, I know it's just, it's confusing, I think. Right. Right. But Roger doesn't miss going to He's unchangeable. He saves you. He saves you. He didn't change his mind. It's all secure. Exactly. And so when it comes right down to it, that's where your security lies. Right, it does. It does.

And you know, he doesn't want us to have, not to be in distinctions, everyone's a brother. I was just going to say that the Jew, the Greek, the slave, the free, all those are like human barriers. We say, well, you're a slave, or you're a free man, or whatever. Whereas God doesn't look at people that way. God looks at all of us with his love, and he did his work on the cross for all of us, regardless. And we as humans create those barriers.

So I think that's why that's important. Don't we all have one life, and it's His? Right, exactly. And actually, that's where I'm kind of heading. You know, it's a one new man. I mean, we're one. There's to be a unity among the body. We're one. Whatever we had from where we came from, whatever ethnic background we had, is different. I mean, it changes. We're now one in Christ. Let's just see if I have something here.

Yeah, basically, because of our union baptism with Christ, baptism in Christ, and our baptism into one body, there's this unity, one, one, one, you'll just see over and over again. Let's just look, that's actually 1 Corinthians 12. This just expresses that unity. I get someone to read 1 Corinthians 12, 12 and 13. It's not hard to say. Yes, thanks.

For even as the body is one, and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one spirit. Right. So I think this is kind of a very similar passage. He knows it has the same pairing. You know, Jews or Greeks, slave or free. So we're one. We are all one in Christ. There's two things there, isn't there? Sure.

We're baptized, we're identified into his body, but we also have been made to drink into one spirit. So there's a relationship in Christ, there's a relationship in the Holy Spirit. Isn't it interesting how those truths kind of come across? Many times, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, we see the same relationships.

If you take the time to look through there, the same phraseology is used. And you would think that they're one, right? And they're three persons, but one. But the phraseology is, yeah, that's good. So once again, most times all is just past, past in the Greek, unaccepted. And it's literally one man. And again, in that Ephesians passage, it talks about, let's just turn to Ephesians 4. Can I get someone to read 4 through 6? We're going to see more of this unity. Ephesians 4, 4 through 6?

Yeah, thanks Randy. There is one body and one spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. Thank you. So, once again, the oneness. And basically, one man describes who the this all, all of us in Christ, we're one, one in Christ and there's no distinction. And there's that phraseology, one new man, that's also in Ephesians earlier on. Okay, so this is the fourth truth about this new life under grace and not law. And the fifth one is, if or since you belong to Christ. So, you belong to Christ, or literally, you are Christ.

And I kind of found, if you look through, you'll find a couple of the places in 1 Corinthians 23. We'll just kind of quickly go to 1 Corinthians 23. I'm sorry. 1 Corinthians 3.23. If you can find the chapter, that would be a tough call there. And you are Christ. Christ is God. Right, right. So that's good. Thanks, Tom. So basically, it says, you are Christ.

So we belong to Christ. We are Christ. And also in Galatians, later on, it's going to say, and they are Christ. So that phraseology is used, actually, I had it in here and I was paying attention. So here's the one in Galatians. you belong to Christ. I noticed that in the American Standard, it translates, you belong to Christ rather than you are Christ. Actually, I think you are Christ is even stronger. And then the Galatians, those who belong to Christ are Christ. And then this is really great. This is really important here. Let's look at John 17, which is the real Lord's Prayer. John 17, and let's look at verses 7, I'm sorry, verses 9 and 10. Does he thank that servant because he did the things? No, no, no. John 17, 9 and 10.

A lot of looking at Luke's, duh. I pray for them. I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me. For they are thine, and all mine are thine, and thine are mine. It's hard. Actually, what I've done, Tom, I've taken the New American Standard. Actually, in the updated version, they've gone with the lines, and it's so hard to read that. If you look in the updated version, then you have, I'll read that, which I think is a little easier to understand. I ask on their behalf, I did not ask on behalf of the world, but of those whom you have given me, for they are yours. All things that are mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I have been glorified in them.

So, what's interesting is, he's praying for us, right? As believers, he's praying for us. He said, I do not ask on behalf of the world, but of those whom you have given me. So, you go through here and if you go back up to verse 3, actually verse 2, it says, even as you have given him authority over all flesh, that to all whom you have given him." So we see that the believer is a gift. We're a gift from God the Father to God the Son.

And so the Son says, I want to pray for them. I want to pray that they walk worthy of who they are. So what's interesting is, the prayer here is for the believers, not unbelievers. Thoughts on that? I'm no longer in the world, yet they themselves are in the world.

I come to you Holy Father, keep them in your name, the name which you have given me, that they may be one even as we are one. and he's a gift. He is God as our Father. And for the fact that you're talking about the personal relationship we are in him, that duality, that's our union, right? That's our union with Christ. So, well I'll tell you my thought here, and actually it's not mine only.

But, you know, the Lord has, hasn't the Lord, you know, if you look in the first part of Romans, what does it say? It says that they, even though they knew God, they did not glorify him or give him honor. And he says, basically, he says that basically they have sufficient information, right? I've given them information.

And also in the Gospel of John he talks about the ministry of the Holy Spirit, right? It's to unbelievers. He's going to convince them or convict them of sin, righteousness, and judgment. So it seems like God is saying, my prayer life, the Lord Jesus' prayer life, is focused on my body. there to be a witness to the world.

So he has his plan in place for the world. It's not like, well, I gotta go off and pray especially for the world. No, it's already in place. It's already, it's in motion. He's already, he knows who they are. He knows that they, that they, they know who he is, but they don't want him. They want to do their thing.

So it seems like that's why the prayer, and that's not, you know, the Lord Jesus is not unique. If you go to Ephesians, right? The first part of Ephesians, that long prayer. What's he praying for there? He's praying for believers. Let's just look at that quickly. Ephesians chapter 1. Ephesians chapter 1 starting in verse 15.

It says, For this reason I too, having heard of the faith and the Lord Jesus, which exist among you, and your love for all the saints, do not cease giving thanks for you while making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom, of revelation, and knowledge of him. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, and you may know what is the hope of his calling, what are the riches of his glory, of the inheritance of the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of his power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of his might." And so on. So once again, he's praying for believers. And then we're to be epistles. We're the ones that he has set in motion. His body is going to speak to the unbeliever.

Other thoughts on that? Some of that's what Hal said, and some of that's what I thought. Other thoughts? And if you don't, that's fine too. I'm not forcing anything here. I've been listening to Mike Doyle in the evening in the basement room. Because going to and from in a car, I guess.

And he's been going over our having been known by our Lord, intimately known before the foundations of the world. He knew us. It just blows me away to in depth think of that, that He knows each of us intimately, before He even created the world. I also like Psalm 139, right? You know, we're our unformed, I mean, it just, you read that, it just, we're unformed. I mean, you think, well, wait a minute, he knew us before we even were, you know, were born, before our birth, you know, we're unformed substance, and you know, it's wonderful. verse 4, according as chosen, really that's a, that's that personal intimacy that he's talking about, not that he made a choice, he already knew it. Right, that's great, it's wonderful.

Roger, I was thinking too about the hostile environment that we're in too as a believer. Right, absolutely. Sometimes I think about the fact that here we are in this world that is hostile and mankind doesn't want anything to do with God, the nature of man. I don't think we really realize how bad the sin nature is and yet God desires fellowship with the individuals. and he seeks them out and draws them to Christ. And that just blows my mind away to think that the two are so separate and yet he seeks to have this with us. It's unreal.

And he took the action unilaterally for people that hated him. And how do you put that together with the verses that say that he gives them up to themselves. He doesn't care, and yet he does. Yeah, I know. You think, well, wait a minute, which is it here? Or is it something that comes to a point where he just gives up? I kind of have a hard time with that.

It doesn't seem like he ever gives up. I don't know, he didn't give up with Paul. Nope, absolutely. Paul was killing his fellow members of the body of Christ. So, I don't know. That's good. That's very, very good. OK. So let's go on here. All right. OK. Number six. You are Abraham's descendants.

Actually, I wish Stan was here. I wish Stan was here. Everybody said, Roger, you realize he may not be there. And I said, you're probably right. Your wife knows. So anyway, this is wonderful truth about Abraham. And we are his descendants. But we need to see it in the right context. You are, Amy again, the state in which something continuously exists. We are continually his seed. And literally, it's sperma in the Greek. So how are we Abraham's seed? Or his heavenly seed. The stories of the heaven. What allows us to be his? Here's a question I want to ask you actually. Physical or spiritual? Spiritual. I think when God told Abraham he was being very He said there's an earthly seed and there's a heavenly seed.

So actually, we spent some time on this already. If you look back in Galatians, earlier in Galatians, 16 actually covered this several weeks ago, about the seed singular and seed plural. In verse 16 it says, now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed, singular. He does not say to seeds, as referring to many, but rather to one, and to your seed, that is Christ. So, you know, if you look at that, you see back, and then if you go to Genesis, you'll see that, let's do that too. Look in Genesis here, Genesis 22. Genesis 22 and 17 and 18.

And this is part of the, right after Abraham offered Isaac, he says, indeed, I will greatly bless you. Indeed, I will greatly bless you. I will greatly multiply your seed. If you look, I have a little footnote. That's, you could say that's, you see, as the stars of the heavens, and as the sands which are on the seashore, and your siege shall possess the gates of their enemies. And in your seed all the nations of the earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice."

So it looks here, and I found it a little bit hard, but it seems like that 18 is speaking about the singular seed, right? Yeah. Whereas back there in 17, it talks about his descendants, right? Right. So there's a plural and singular. I think you're right, Roger.

I don't know Hebrew enough to know. Well, what's interesting is, I'll tell you, I'll tell you what the frustrating part is, my knowledge of language is, you know, I go to my Zodiates. Zodiates has a book in the Old Testament and he has all the Hebrew words in there and they have numbers and the whole work.

So I go and I start looking at all the seeds in here. It's like I'm buying flowers or whatever. So I look at each one. I look at the number and say, well, they're all the same word. So I said, well, how do they do this? How do the translators do this?

Even if we look at the Jewish nation, on earth, who is really a Jew, a true Jew, is one who believes God. He is the son of Israel. He is the son of Abraham, truly, as Christ describes him. Many Jews were physically descended, but only a few believe on God. And we're, in the same sense that we are, born of the Spirit of Israel.

So, anyway, so what I found, I went ahead and, let me show you, this is a how picture. So this is basically shows the Abrahamic covenant, God's promise to Abraham, and it was by grace, right? This is, you know, if you think about, this was what's called an unconditional covenant. He didn't ask Abraham to do anything. He said, I'm gonna, so I'm gonna do, here's the plan, Abraham. I chose you out, Ur-Qaldi, this is, I'm gonna give you a land, I'm going to give you a blessing, and Hal has that as, I believe, that's Israel's new covenant.

And then the seed, this is why I like this picture. The seed he has split. We're talking about, we've got seed singular and seeds plural. Well, there's a kingdom, there's a Davidic kingdom, right? Isaac and Jacob and David. And Christ is going to sit on that throne, that David's throne, when he comes again. So that's all going to be fulfilled at his second coming. But, oh, by the way, all nations are blessed via Christ.

That's what I just read, 316. So that's the other part of that C. That's us, right? So that's what's really important. And Hal has a little down arrow here, if you like, linking it back to our verse here. The believer is Abraham's seed spiritually, and we're heirs of righteousness and life. So that's our connectivity into the promise, the Abrahamic covenant.

Some people try to, they try to spiritualize. We go to land, I put my foot in this place. I mean, I've heard people, churches going around, I put my foot in this place and this is God's place here. I put my foot here, that's what they did in the Old Testament, I put my foot here too. I don't know. I put all kinds of things, people trying to take, Abraham would come and make it, I'm going to get all this other part, and they'd just go do all kinds of back flips, all kinds of stuff.

And we have two verses in the chapter we've been studying that show the connectivity. Here's the connectivity. There's seeds, plural, and seeds, singular. And seeds, singular, is Christ. And that's how we're tied into this. And that's how we can be a spiritual offspring of Abraham. So this picture really helped me in the context of all this. And I thought, boy, this is why I copied the cross. I mean, I redrew it, I should say. So, other thoughts about this? This picture?

Go ahead. Well, the interesting thing is when you look at the seed and the seed's principle, even Christ as a singular seed is not a direct biological seed. Paul is using his authority and inspiration of the Holy Spirit to reveal something that was previously rather mysterious. I don't think that the Jews had a full grasp of the seed seeds Well, yeah. Contrast. But I think what happened in the Genesis passage, they work backwards. They say, well, wait a minute.

God revealed in the New Testament something like truth. Now we can look back in the Old Testament and we can see this is what he was talking about. I think that's a good point. But I would say, you know, if you think about Christ is in David's line. So, I mean, in that sense, he is a true he comes down the whole chain, he's in that chain of David. So he's, humanly speaking, he's in that line.

Oh yeah, I'm not arguing the descendancy, I'm just referring to a Jew who has not had further revelation beyond the revelation of the Old Testament. Understand. May not, well it's highly improbable that he would have concluded the doctrine of Paul. Exactly. That's all I'm saying. That's exactly what I see here.

Galatians is so informative to us about the connectivity with Abraham. Also Romans too. Romans gives us insight in that too, about how we're connected to Abraham. And this shows us the connectivity. That's great. Okay. And then lastly, the last point was that heirs, according to the promise, literally we are heirs. Heirs is someone who receives an inheritance. So what is the inheritance? So I use Hal's notes again here. I thought it was great. I thought here, the sky's the limit. I mean, you could just, there's so much you could say about this topic. But we have, this is back to what we've come to in the context of what we saw. We have his life, his righteousness.

We can now walk in newness of life, his life. We are blessed with every spiritual blessing. We share His glory. We can have the same abiding intimacy with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as they have and have had for all eternity. That's that duality of relationships. I'm in Christ and Christ is in me. We have this intimacy with Christ through His Word, through the Spirit illumining our minds to who He is and what He's done. We can have that intimacy. and come to know it, come to understand what he's... And it's just incredible. So that's just part of this... The inheritance is as broad as you want, in my mind, as broad as you want to make it. There's so much you can say about that. These Asians have said inheritance in detail.

You know, verse 11, in whom also we have obtained an inheritance. Right, and actually, I put it on that path too, that's a good point. Ephesians 1, 11, it begins, but the conclusion of that is that we should be to the praise of His glory. Right. And I think that means because we are His inheritance, that He inherits us, that we share His glory, that we reveal His glory. It's not that we get something, it's that He makes us glorify Himself. Right. In our actions as we walk with Him, we glorify Him. We make Him great. We show off His inheritance.

Exactly. Just like to a world that cannot... I don't want that. I can't stand that. The believer is to glorify God Intimacy. I know. Isn't that... I know. It's incredible. It's incredible. Let's see. Okay. Well, I don't know if we need to be done. I'm sorry. The second bell hasn't rung.

The thing about that intimacy is that you need to understand one through four for you to comfortably You know, through the wonder of Facebook, I have lots of former Sunday school students that I used to teach that I have some distant relationship with on Facebook. And I notice some of them are really wrestling with legalism. And I'm trying to figure out how I can make time to send them these personal messages so that I can say, listen, let's talk about grace.

But if you don't understand that His life and His righteousness are there, then you don't feel comfortable saying that I have this abiding intimacy. If you don't understand that you have a newness of life, then you just think, by the definition of the flesh, that you're a failure. Oh, I'm still sinning and walking in sin, therefore I am a failure, and God doesn't want to have a relationship with me. And certainly I've not been blessed with every spiritual blessing.

That's the most insane thing Paul has ever suggested. And then, sharing in his glory is... What? No, no, you share in his glory. That's why you are able to have this intimacy with him. And it's a tremendous truth. Just, I mean, to sit and meditate on 1 through 5, you start to understand the intimacy that's there, and it is a great liberty. I agree. That's great. But you're right.

I mean, many people look at this and they'll say, But they see their conditional aspect and they say, well, I'm, boy, you know, I'm not walking in there as a wife. I'm struggling with whatever it is. But the Lord wants us to look at who we are. And we focus on that. And that's the way we can learn to walk and to carry us forward. All right. Well, let's close it.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you so much, Lord, for this day. Father, we thank you for the blessings we have, Lord. We thank you for just this life that we have. We have your life, and we thank you that we can focus on who you are and what you've done and trust you by faith to carry out your plans in our life. We ask this in Christ's name. Amen.