Identification Truths Plus 2012

Okay, two questions. First one, how does grace superabound where sin abounds? So look at verse 21. Somebody read verse 21. Somebody who can read English. in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Okay, so sin reigned in death, even so that grace might reign. So, my question is, how does grace superabound where sin abounded? That's a really tough question to start off the class with. As I'm looking around, nobody's making eye contact with me. Could you repeat the question? Sure.

How does grace superabound Where sin abounded. Question 12. When law comes in next to the sin nature, what happens to the sin nature? It abounds in sin. You see that? Hopefully that was clear last week. It's like trying to put a campfire out with a bottle of gasoline. It doesn't put it out, it causes it to be inflamed.

So, here we are with the law now, causing sin to abound, but the verse says that grace superabounded, or maybe a better word is overflowed. How does that work? Let me give you a couple of hints. The word for abound when it comes to sin is, I can't pronounce it, it's P-O-E-H-O-N-A-D-Z-O. it means to increase augmentedly. The word for grace, it means to abound beyond measure, to overflow.

So the question is, and I know lots of believers think this way, that they can out-sin God's grace. Do you think that's true? I think you can just change your mind and I'm going to sin and God isn't going to, you know, I'm going to really make Him mad. Or, I did sin and I really did make God mad.

Can you do that? I'm sure you can. No, you can't. Okay. You can't do it. You can tell yourself. Huh? You can talk to yourself and say it. Do you know how arrogant it is? Now think of this. How arrogant is it of me to think that I can do something that would somehow diminish God's grace? Do you see how arrogant that is? That I am so powerful and so I can sin and I can diminish God's grace by doing it.

Not according to this. Yeah, I shouldn't have said it, sorry. No, it's okay that you said it because I think we all think that way. Don't you think that's what Satan thought he could do? What's that? Don't you think Satan thought he could do that? Yes, and so do we. We really think that, and you know what?

But Satan is not going to accept the grace of the Lord. No, he's not. But the grace is there. And he's talking about humans here. The work of the cross. I know that. Now, what's interesting is that if sin abounded, and then grace super abounded over the sin, it really means that you cannot out-sin God and His grace. You can't do it. And I invite you to try. What if you deliberately do it just to provoke him? Isn't that something? There goes that grass sale money. And that's a really good question.

What if you decide, and we all have known people in our life who profess to be believers, hung around, and then they went back in the world big time. Did they provoke God's wrath against sin and say well I'm not going to be, I can't, I just can't be gracious to that bum. No. No. No. But I think it all depends if they ask forgiveness or not. What if they don't? Does that mean you can do anything you want and nothing really matters?

We're going to get into that in my lesson. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, And that's a great question. If you just stop with where sin abounded, grace superabounded, and that's the principle, there's all kinds of... Wow, I was going to say, unfortunately by jumping to Randy's, we're no different than in Paul's time. Paul, in 6, what shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may increase? It's the exact same question.

See, the grace superabounding is a principle that can't be violated. Didn't Paul realize that left to his own devices and in self he could sin, but once he took his eyes off of himself and realized and was convicted by the Holy Spirit that if he moved over to that position it would be a little bit harder to live in that sin. Well, the premise here in the doctrine of the two men is that you have the Adamic man with the sin nature, right? And you bring law next to that guy and it doesn't cause him to sin less, it causes him to sin a lot more. And so what we're going to find out as we go into Romans 6 is that And I asked this question before did God forgive the sinner the sin nature did he forgive the sin nature Answer no he didn't he forgave the sins and paid the penalty for them, but he didn't forgive The one who is committing the sins Okay, so the sin nature is going to abound in sin and the one thing that inflames it is law the point that he's making here is that because of the grace brought to the table by the second man Christ and It super abounds over all sinfulness.

Okay? Now... So that means you can never anger God? I mean, God doesn't get... No, you said it right the first time. You can never anger God. You can't do it. It's impossible to do. So, so he wouldn't be angry if I screwed up left and right? That's right. You know why? Because he's already taken care of it.

Which sin did you commit in your life that God did not know about? And didn't pay for at the cross? Okay, but then you can be a peace bag and say, I'm going to do this because my sins are forgiven and God isn't going to be upset with me. Every time you sin, that's what you do.

So who suffers in that case? God or you? God's grace is abounding towards you as you're being sleazy. Because you lose out on the fellowship. That's what you are. God can't look at it, but God isn't going to be like, oh, yippee, skippy, you did that. And he's like, oh, here we go again.

See, it's a great principle because once you begin to understand, and we're going to spend a lot of time on the issue of grace, Once you begin to understand the power of grace, and that's the next question, sin reigned, how is grace to reign now? Grace is a reigning principle. What is a reigning principle? We know what a principle is. Everybody know what a principle is? Quick, quick. Operating system. It's an operating system. It's how a thing operates or functions.

Principle of gravity works that way every time, right? Every time. A reigning principle means that the principle of gravity reigns over objects. They always fall. Right? Sin was a reigning principle that we all were subject to. Now grace is to be the reigning principle. So if you live under an environment where grace is the reigning principle, do you think grace can overcome your propensity to sin?

It doesn't matter what I think. Yes, it does. Because you're engaged. You're part of the process. You're not in this bleachers watching the game. You're in the game. We're all in it. That's why we must live by faith. See? Now, grace being the reigning... Here's the thing that I think believers really don't understand about grace. It is the most powerful motivator in the world.

We think that if God offers his grace to us that we would get sort of slip shot about it. You know, I mean you get really gracious with your kids and people say, oh you're too permissive. Oh God's too permissive. God's grace is of such a character that it overwhelms you and you can't help but respond. Over and above the sin nature. How about them apples?

That's a really powerful motivator when you think about it. But you've got to know what grace is. You've got to know how it functions, and you've got to know that it's a reigning principle in an environment in which you live. And that's his purpose. Where sin abounded, grace would abound. Where sin was the reigning principle, now grace is going to be, and is, the reigning principle.

I think an interesting part of that that we talked about before is like, it's almost like looking back at it. It's like grace. It's like you might have done something differently under grace that you don't notice until you look back and say like, that like isn't what I would normally do. I would normally do something else. But this time I did the right thing, you know.

Why? Because somebody sent you a list of laws and you put them up on your refrigerator? No, it just must be the Holy Spirit and the growth and why. Yes, that's what it is. It's like you've got to look back at it, though. You can't like go, oh, this is what I'm going to do next time. It's like, wow, that's what I did this past time. That's right. That's exactly right.

And it isn't because you followed some dictate. You were changed internally. Your heart was changed, and that's grace. So when I talk, I just wanted to let you know, I'm talking about people in general. You think I'm buying that? But the question is, you know, even though you, you know, you can sin and do whatever you want, there's still consequences. If you go out and shoot somebody, it's not that God just says it's OK or, you know, you can get away with anything. You're going to suffer the consequences. But I go back to Romans 8, who can separate us from the love of Christ? You can't be separated. So you can be angry, but can you separate yourself from God's love?

No. And like I said, Paul addresses it. You see this same principle today. Paul was addressing that now. You know the same question, can I sin? Can I go crazy? May it never be. You know he addresses the same thing which maybe we'll be addressing right now. Why is it when you do something that you know you shouldn't do and you deliberately do it?

And you feel bad and yet you ask forgiveness. Do we ask forgiveness then? I'm sorry Lord I stepped on your toes. Even though I understand where you're coming from. But I always want to ask forgiveness. Here's the question. Why was grace introduced? We're about six weeks away from that answer and I'll give it to you now.

Romans 6.14 says we're Sin shall not have dominion over you because you're not under law, you're under grace. The whole idea and the whole principle of grace is to prevent sin. That's the whole idea. And it does do its job.

So, Mike, how about like in the Old Testament where it says the anger of God was like And where does it say that? Yeah, because his cross hadn't happened yet. While I'm getting my computer to bay, I thought it was set up already. Somebody open up to Hebrews chapter 12. This isn't part of my lesson.

You guys are worried that if you sin, God's not going to care at all, right? Is that the concern I'm getting from some folks? That God doesn't care? I think what happens is we're scared to death that if we let our guard down, that the old man's going to take over and we're just going to be some sort of skid row bum who sins all the time and we're really going to get God mad at us.

Hebrews chapter 12, and if you start in verse 4 and move your way down, and this morning we just don't have time to go over that. Unless we decide we have time to go over it, I guess. But Paul, I'm sorry, the author of Hebrews, we don't know who the author is, addresses the issue of people continuing to walk in sin and saying that the Father is going to discipline them for their growth to draw them back to focusing on Him.

That isn't a discipline that is the same as consequences for sin that Christ paid for. It's not like there's something Christ didn't pay for. But because He loves us, He disciplines us. This has happened in my own life on multiple occasions where I've decided, you know what? This secret sin is just way better. I kind of like it. And God says, that's too bad. I love you more. And so He'll discipline us. He'll bring scenarios in our lives where it's painful. And He says, do I have your attention yet? Okay, you have my attention. He goes, all right, let's not do that again.

Let's go walk in fellowship. So Hebrews, the author says that there is discipline, but it is not the same thing as wrath. It is not the same thing as Christ not having paid for all the price or cost of sin. It is not that God doesn't care and is blinded to it. He cared and that Christ paid for it, right? Would you agree with that statement, Mike?

Yeah, it's the same thing in 1 Corinthians 11.32, but when we are judged we are chastened by the Lord that we may not be condemned of the world. And he asks us to judge ourselves and if we don't, the gracious thing is, is he's going to do it if we don't.

That's grace operating. The word for chastening is child training. It's where you're training a child. When you chasten your child, you don't hate them, you love them and you bring Same word. It's not at all joy. What's that? First readings. Eleven. Oh, it starts in about twenty.

I just referenced it to say that God doesn't, you know, sometimes we have the question, well, since grace has covered all the sins, that God is not hands off. And that's not the case. He's a loving father is what Hebrews tells us. He wants to draw us back to fellowship. So, but we're going to step in with the question because Paul actually had the very question that y'all had. So let's go ahead and read in chapter 6, verses 1 through 3. right now and then we'll see how far we get. What shall we say then?

Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be. How shall we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death? So Paul asked the question, well should we keep sinning? Is that the question that we were really concerned with?

I think so. So the first question that's in the handout is, what does continuing sin mean? I'm going to skip past that slide because it doesn't really matter. So that's a good question. Paul asks, are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? What does he mean by that?

No, but we sin not normally. We have a sinful nature. So even though we are aware of Christ and He's in our heart, we still sin. Okay. We still have the potential to sin. Yeah. Russell. I just wrote down, it means that we need to know that we don't have to obey the sin nature. So we don't continue to sin because grace covers it. We have God's power in the Holy Spirit. to overcome sin. Okay, and that's the key point there is that there's an option. Paul, so my opening screen there said this is the heavenly department of transformation. The H dot. Okay, I couldn't help myself.

But the thing is that Paul went from a doctrinal truth, which Mike has wonderfully gone over and now he's going to talk about some rabbit trail application for a few verses and then he's going to then for and continuing on he's going to get into some more doctrine and he's going to talk about application. So Paul figured out that we needed the hand holding. I skipped ahead of something that I want to share and that is the first time I read through this chapter six and actually understood it really applied to me was at the men's study after we moved here in 2004. Mike was teaching and we went through this and it was like drinking from a fire hose. So we'll try not to go too fast this morning and if you have questions just ask them and we'll work our way through this because if you don't understand this then the rest of what we're going through in six isn't going to help. So listen carefully.

Okay, let me just ask you one thing about sin. Sure. Isn't it, you may not do it, but if you think about it, isn't that also a sin? If you think about, all of a sudden something comes creeping in your thinking. Okay, well. It's not a sin. This is why Paul says we need to take our thoughts captive. Just because a thought comes into your mind doesn't mean that you are going to continue to meditate on. If you take the thoughts captive and you hold it up to the truth of God's word and you say, hey, probably shouldn't be thinking about that, then that's not the same as sin.

When David saw Bathsheba on the rooftop, this is an Old Testament example, but I think it's useful, when he saw Bathsheba on the rooftop and she's bathing and he's checking her out, it was the checking her out that was the problem. When he first looked down off of where he was and he saw her bathing, he could have said, whoop, that was not cool and gone down back into his chamber and not continue to stare at Bathsheba, but instead he said, you know, that's kind of interesting. And he meditated on it. And then he did meditative murder.

So the thing is that just because the thought popped into your mind doesn't mean that you are willfully sinning. You can be abiding and in fact when you are abiding, when the sin thought or opportunity shows up, you take it captive and the Holy Spirit says, no, that's not what we're called to. Now Christ says if you sin in your mind then it's just as good as doing it, but in that case he's talking about meditating on those thoughts and cultivating those and fantasizing or whatever else that might be involved with that kind of sin.

Does that answer your question? Yes, thank you. So anyone else have any other thoughts on what does it mean with the first question, what does it mean to continue, or what does continuing sin mean? I have the idea that if I get this concept of grace, and that I can't out-sin God's grace, then what does it matter? You know, as a matter of fact, it's humanly logical to think, well, if I sin more, then there's going to be more grace around. Yeah. So what's to prevent me? I might as well keep going. But isn't that thinking an old man versus the new man? No question it is. That's absolutely right. But Monique is saying, gee, I get these thoughts in my mind. Well, here comes this thought. Oh, I got this figured out.

All I have to do, I can just keep sinning. The grace will keep abounding. And I think, that gives license to my old man to function. Let's go for it. I mean, you've created a safe zone. I give you I was talking to a guy the other day and he was telling me that he was struggling trying to discuss things with his wife and his wife says to him, look, I'm safe. I may be, I'm going to live in a trailer park in heaven, but I'm still going to be in heaven so I can do what I want. It's the same idea. Yeah, it is. He said, what do you think? I said, well, tell her there aren't any trailer parks in heaven. Yeah. Which is important. Well, isn't the only reason that this even becomes an issue is because somebody doesn't understand who they are in Christ. If they understand who they are in Christ, This is the point. That's true. And that's the thrust of what Paul's going to go into in the rest of 6.

He's going to surround us so that we have no options but to accept how awesome grace is, but recognize that there's an opportunity to not sin, and here's how we're empowered to do that. So that's definitely the case. So here's a restatement. This is, I thought, a good quote. It means, are we to keep on living in identification and control of our old sin nature? That's what I mean.

That's a good way to restate it. He's not just saying, are we going to keep sinning? But we need to recognize that that sin, because he's had, what was the context of the last chapter? Where we just left off the last few verses? It was the two men. Are you going to keep sinning and walking in the way of the old men? So that's an important thing. Now Paul has an answer for that. How does Paul answer it?

What does the verse say? Verse 2. Four words in my translation. It says, may it never be. So does he think you should keep sinning? No. So is he laying down the law? No. We're going to go into that more deeply. Alright, so now Mike asked a variation of this question. few minutes ago, so let's see if we all remember it now that we have it here.

By what logic would grace increase if we continue in sin? The sin nature's logic. The sin nature's logic? No, no, this is actually, this is actually, this is Christ, the answer is in what Christ did. If you feel guilty about something, Grace would increase.

No, it increases constantly. So if you continue in sin, if sin abounds... I mean if you feel really bad, if you feel really bad about something... How bad do you have to feel? No, the reason I ask is because I'm going to make an Android app and I'm going to make a killing because Christians are going to walk around with a feeling bad-o-meter and I'm going to charge 99 cents.

And then I'll put it on the iPhone. Suppose I took the newspaper from my neighbor. Okay, steal a neighbor's newspaper. You're still doing that. Alright. I'm sure Monique watched Bruce do it. That was the one sin Mike mentioned last week. Okay, but grace would abound, right? Because God loves me more than I think.

See, the problem is that you're thinking in newspapers and not Christ's work on the cross. Okay, let's think marbles. I know, but you're thinking in marbles and not Christ's work on the cross. That's the issue is that what Christ did on the cross had nothing to do with the marbles or the newspaper or the adultery or the murdering.

I really offended some non-believers one time because I was talking about grace and they were saying, this sounds really cool. And I said, if Adolf Hitler had become a Christian before he died, he would be in heaven. And they could not believe. For one second that someone who's involved with a mass murdering of 6 million Jews and how many ever, you know, 11 million people is the total estimate that were involved with his murder, that Christ could have paid for such a big sin.

They outspent the check. But that isn't stealing newspapers. That's not stealing newspapers, but the problem is that grace, the issue is what is grace. It doesn't matter. When you say super abound, when grace abounds beyond whatever the sin is, how much sin does that mean?

Let me ask it this way. Is Paul speaking volumetrically or is he speaking on or off? Covered or not covered? True or false? Is he speaking about how many liters of grace there are? Because it's never ending. Well that and he probably uses the standard system, so it's probably gallons. But the quality of grace is that it is not volumetric.

So when Paul, it sounds like we're still hashing through some of the details that came up in the last section that was there. Let's turn back over to Ephesians chapter 4. and then verse 7. We have to ask an important question about grace because I think we're still rehashing this even though this is from Mike's lesson. Alright, if you got there, read 7, 8, and 9.

But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore he saith, when he ascended up on high, he made captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. Now that he ascended, what is it, but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? I shouldn't have had you read 9, I'm sorry. It's not irrelevant, but it's not relevant to our discussion here. He says, but to each one of us, grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift.

What is the measure of Christ's gift? It's measureless. So it leads us, we keep coming back to the topic of grace. What's our definition of grace? Unmerited favor. Okay, it's the unlimited, unmerited blessings of God due to the totally adequate work of Christ on the cross. And the issue we're dealing with is the adequacy. Grace is adequate, it superabounds. I think sometimes we, like stewing in the neighbor's newspaper, We feel like we've sinned against the neighbor. And we don't realize that every single sin is against the Holy God, not the neighbor. And every single sin deserves only one punishment, which is death. You steal the neighbor's newspaper, you're guilty of death. You should die for it. And that's what Holly hears, that stealing newspapers is not the same as Hitler. A sin is a sin.

But we do that. We rate a sin. She's in Monique. But people do that. You feel so bad about your sin. And you're tearing yourself up for it. I did a really bad one. Not just to steal the newspaper. I shot the neighbor's dog. I've got a story about it. That's worse than convincing. It's not. And everything's been paid. Can I take this a little bit further then? In a different way. This is a rabbit trail then. That's fine.

So where does it come in to, alright, the Holy Spirit convicts you that stealing the newspaper was a sin against God, and you feel bad for it. When, or not, Or not. Where does it come in to go over to your neighbor's house and say, you know what? I've been stealing your newspaper and I'm sorry.

Well, I think that's something the Holy Spirit's going to convict you to do. I think that's right. And lead you to do. I mean, it's not like extra points or anything, extra grace on that. But somehow, that's important. Well, and that is probably something that the Holy Spirit will convict you to do.

If you've been caught in a lie, it's way better to come out and confess your sins. I keep trying to tell my kids, don't lie, but if you do get caught, own up to it right away. Let's say you don't get caught. But the Holy Spirit is still going to lead us to honesty. That's what I told John growing up. I said, you can do whatever you want, but the Spirit will never let you get by with it.

He'll bust you every time. And then you start dealing with issues of regret and things. And the thing is, in my life, I've got sins that I did in the past, and I covered them up, and I don't have relationships with these people anymore. And I'm not going to go hunt them down. Like the AA says, you've got to go find everybody you've possibly ever met, and if you don't harm them, go jump through the...

Interesting. It's like with God then. It's like you lose fellowship by sin, you lose fellowship with your neighbor. That's often the case. I'm stealing their paper. That's often the case. I think that's going to be Holy Spirit directed, and there's probably not a law or rule that I would put in there, but the principle is you've got to be abiding, and if the Holy Spirit draws you... Well, and you talk about cataloging sins in terms of severity. The first sin wasn't so bad. I just took something off a tree and ate it. God said I shouldn't, not a big deal. Look what it cost. It cost the fall of the entire creation. Are people born, I know this is out of context of what we're talking about, but are people born with a sense of right and wrong when they're a child? Yes. I would think so, I hope so. Yes. That comes with being created in God's image. Okay.

And then, first of all, because even though Adam did not know sin until he ate the fruit, he still knew obedience. There's a sense of this is right because the Lord told me to do it. And he crossed that. Then when he ate of the fruit, then he had a deeper understanding of what sin was and it became personal.

But being created and being descendants of Adam, then we have a heightened awareness of those things. Remember, we have the knowledge of good and evil, which is our conscience. That doesn't solve the problem. We just have the knowledge that I should probably not do this, and it's okay to do that.

When we first moved here, Abby was about 18 months old, and we went camping for our first... Actually, that put her about two when this happened. For our first camping trip when we moved here, and Mike was there. Mike said, oh look at her, you can just see the sin nature just whirling around in her mind. She's just thinking of something to do. And I was like, hey, that's my daughter, my precious snowflake. And then I realized, man, how arrogant it is for me to think that somehow I produced from my loins a non-sinful being. It's really unfortunate.

When we come to the issue of sin and we don't look at it from God's perspective, that's the problem. That's the problem. We didn't look at it from God's perspective. And so Paul says, we have to look at this from God's perspective. So he asks these questions. If you did sin, it's covered in grace. The thing that the old man does, if we're in the tree of good and evil, we do evil.

We do good. So we climb to this side of the tree. Nothing has changed. So even doing good, you know, walk the little lady across the street or help the girl scout, you've not changed your position at all. And that's the thing. We think if we do good. The only person who thinks they can do good to help is the old man. When we want to climb to the other side of the tree, we haven't done anything.

Our position has not changed. Maybe this illustration is a little silly, but if you're in a dumpster or in the back of a garbage truck and it's full of Prada and Gucci and all kinds of fine things and you're still headed to the dump, you're still headed to the dump. It doesn't matter what you've surrounded yourself with. I don't even know what those brands mean. I don't even know if we get that chance.

Anyways, so let's keep going because it is important to continue moving in the right direction here. So by what logic would grace increase if we continue on sin? I think we have a rough idea that if you sin, the grace was poured out by the work of Christ on the cross to cover that sin. Everybody agrees with that statement? No one can think of any exceptions to that? Alright, cool.

I do have a few things here as notes. We've already addressed the first one, but the second one, just mark down Ephesians 4-7. And we just went there, but mark that down and spend some time studying there this week where he talks about the measure of what Christ did on the cross. And meditate on what that means, Ephesians 4-7.

So, do not sin or there will be grace. There's our warning sign, that's the road sign for our Heavenly Department of Transformation. If you sin, what will there be? Grace. But what if you don't sin? What will there be? Grace. There's still grace. That's the point. If you only define grace as something that pays for sin, you are not defining it biblically.

And then you have the uninterrupted fellowship. You do have uninterrupted fellowship, if you sin. If you don't sin. If you don't sin, you have uninterrupted fellowship. Yes, I'm sorry, I misunderstood what you said. If you don't sin, you have uninterrupted fellowship. If you do sin, you have interrupted fellowship, but it's easily restored.

The prodigal son, or the brother, was like, when he's like, hey, the prodigal son came back and he sinned and how come I don't get all this big party and everything and the father's like, you had me all along. So, you know, don't be envious of someone coming back into the fold. Be happy that you were there all the time. We had the fellowship the whole time.

You know, the funny thing is that the parallel scenario I've seen is that I've heard people say, I don't have a testimony. My testimony is not exciting. I never did drugs or I was never out, you know, sleeping with prostitutes or whatever their thing is. That guy's testimony was awesome. He should have, you know, he should totally have been in hell. As though I didn't. As though I, even though my sins were smaller and, you know, that didn't matter. So yeah, it's important that we have that context. And we had fellowship. And that's the key thing. There will always be grace anyways.

So the next question that we have on the handout there is what is the expanded answer to the question in verse 1? So the question in verse 1 was what does it mean to continue in sin? So after taking a look at this next verse, what is the expanded answer to that?

We died to sin. That's pretty much the fundamental issue. The next slide here is just some other points that are good. I'll read parts of this here. So, such ones as we who died to sin, how should we any longer be living in it? If the first one is like, should we keep living in sin? No, because we died. We shouldn't keep walking in it.

Point number one there is that he characterizes all Christians as those who died. That's a really important issue. We died. What did we say was the consequence? What does everybody deserve for sin? Mike said this. Death. So what did God bring about in our lives to resolve the issue? Death.

God was just. His righteousness was met. The demands of his righteousness were met. He was just. We died. So that's kind of cool. Kind of weird, but cool. He brought death, but then he brought life. Yeah, he brought life. He didn't stop there, did he? And that's one of the key issues with Chapter 6. He's just going to go into that point by point, and I'm excited that we get to do that.

The next thing, it was in regard to their relationship to sin that believers died. Now what does the law do to sin, to the sin nature? I think we need to distinguish that our relationship to the sin And we're talking sin nature here, we're not talking about my acts. We're not talking about stealing the neighbor's newspaper, we're talking about the nature within me that would invite me to steal the neighbor's newspaper. And that's what we died to.

Yeah, it's important to understand sin and sins and the principle that reigned once and has now been dethroned and what we have now in place. Let's see here. What was your question? I forgot. I was going to ask a question. It's gone now. It doesn't matter. Spur of the moment. The second part of that censure which is important.

We didn't die for sin, but unto sin. The sin nature. Who died for sin? Christ. So we were with him because he died for it. And our sin nature, or we ourselves died unto sin or sin nature. I don't think we were with him when he died for it. Because when he died for sin, he was substituting to pay the penalty for the sins of the world. I think that was something he did along. When he died unto sin, that's when we were included.

Okay, yeah. What do you mean by the word unto? I can't quite get around that. That's the sin, the principle of sin, the sin nature. I'm going to jump back in my slides just because I do better with pictures. you'll have to forgive me that I'm very visual in my learning style. So I'm going to jump back here to this chart here.

Can everybody see this? If you can't, I've got a printout for one person. Because I thought everyone can see the PowerPoint. But who can't? Do I have several people that can't see it? That's a serious question. Do several people can't see it? That might be slightly better. And I'll make more copies. These are online, too. But the principle, let's see here.

The question was, re-asked your question? What does unto mean? What does unto mean? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So down here, I've got several bands. These are chronological. But we have the old man, the old nature, the human will or volition, and then we have the new nature and the new man.

At the time of the cross, and here's the cross on the diagram, we have the old man was crucified with Christ. The sin nature was crucified with Christ. So we died unto the power of sin because it is no longer the only nature that controls us. At that point in time, we were given a new nature in Christ. and we put on our new selves, we have our new man, and we walk by the Holy Spirit. Now the old nature is dethroned, it's deposed, it's pushed down here, and at the point of the rapture or physical death on this earth, it ceases to exist. So it no longer has has any influence whatsoever. But dying unto sin means that before, you see here's the cross, before there's the old man and the old nature, they were basically effectively operating in parallel and we had no new nature option.

There's another diagram of circles that makes this a little easier to show that particular piece, but this is a little, sometimes the visual is a little better. Does that clear as mud? I can tell by the look on your face. Unto is actually the key word of the whole chapter because unto means separation.

And so as an example, this is me and the cap is my sin nature. From a positional standpoint, now remember we talked about position and condition. When we died on the cross with Christ, we were separated from that sin nature. Unto it. It's still there but it's not controlling me anymore. Unto means away from me, separated from me. If you left the room, I would say you left unto the room, you're out of here.

And the reason it's really important is because there's a whole group of persons in theology today that we call one nature people who say that the sin nature died, and death means separation. The sin nature didn't die, I died. I died to it, unto it. It's still alive and well and living inside a good old mic, but I'm separated from it now and I don't have to respond to it. Where sin reigned, those who are not saved, sin reigns. It controls them. They think they have choice, but they don't. They're enslaved to sin.

So what Romans 6 is teaching us is that we were positionally separated from it, unto it, and we do not have to respond to it anymore, where it non-delivered us from themselves. Is that what you're trying to say? It no longer has dominion. Hey, real quick, Mike, something you just said seemed to kind of resonate with me, a little now and earlier, in that it isn't that we are dead, it's that we're dead to the sin We're just not, you know, we're separated.

It's like I keep thinking, I'm dead, but I'm not really dead, I'm dead to this. Right, sure. Well, I think it goes, the real important concept again is, and probably on this work, you struggle, is position and condition. Yeah. We're positionally or unconditionally. Yeah. Conditionally, I have two natures. And when I'm stealing a newspaper, I'm listening to the old nature and following it. When I am walking in the Spirit, I'm in my new nature, my new creation. So I have today, conditionally, I have two.

Positionally, Christ has dealt with. It's done. And so you really have to kind of look in position and condition. Positionally, crucified, dead, separated, gone. But conditionally, we still have two natures. And that's really where I think you struggle with. good and evil and getting over into the tree of life and going back and forth? Well, in the tree of life you're in the new man, the new creature in Christ. But we're just skipping back and forth here.

But really it's the position and condition I think that you struggle with. Because when you look at these verses and you say, what do you mean I'm crucified? What do you mean? I'm alive and breathing, kicking. But positionally, Christ dealt with this. He crucified. Separated us from that. Now we have two natures. And now we have the ability to choose. Walking in the flesh or walking in the spirit. And that's really the struggle.

And as you grow, those things like how you're saying, I just don't do it anymore. Because that's not who I am. It's like breathing. I'm breathing in kind of the new man. I just don't do it. Because that's not who I am. When I'm in the old man, I want the law, I want everything, I'm fat, dumb and happy over here trying to do something, which is the normal thing. I think when you accept Christ, you become very aware of those two natures. As you grow, you become much more aware of who you are in Christ. And that's a life. It's not a law. It's a life. The intimacy and all the things I talk about, it's a life.

When you study Christ, that's who you are. I would say though that you have to be taught from the Word of God that you've been separated from that old nature. Otherwise, you'd go crazy. And then you think, oh, what I need is to get myself under a really strict legal system.

The problem we just discovered, the problem with that is it just makes sin inflame more. former principal of the school that Abby and Evie go to. When we first started going to that school, it had so many rules and was so hard-nosed and was so aggressive all the time. He thought, I'll just kill all of the problems in the school by having more rules. And what he found out is that he just made a lot of parents and kids really angry. And it didn't cause the sin to happen less, it just made it really irritating. And so when you have the law, the law becomes an irritant. It doesn't actually resolve the issue and that's why we have to have a life that is beyond that.

The second bell is about to ring any second now. That's a great way to put it. We have a life that's beyond that. That's really good. It's a key thing. We'll keep going next week. Well, we have a few more minutes, but we'll keep going next week with what we've got going on. And question number six is probably one of the most key issues for me on a practical, put your tennis shoes on, kind of a question. So spend some time this week thinking about it, because we're going to really dig into that next week. It's really important.

How about number five? What was the answer to number five? I don't know if I should tell you, because then you might not come back for next week. I'm just kidding. Looking at number four, actually. Oh, OK. You jumped to six, and I thought, wow. No, no, no. I'm just saying I can't wait to get to six, because it's an exciting question and answer. Number four, and the bell's going to ring any second here, but we'll try.

Why is living any longer in sin just not the norm of the believer? And this is really, really key. This is super important. Why should it be abnormal for believers to continue walking in sin? because our position is in Christ. Okay, so logically it doesn't fit in to who we are in Christ. That's a key, that's part A of a multi-part answer, but that's a key part of it.

I think you believe we derive no pleasure but guilt in not living according to what... So you feel pressure and guilt to not sin? Absolutely. Alright. But is that a motivating factor that keeps you from sinning? in a positive way. I think it's more subtle than that. I would say it's more subtle than that.

The thing is that what does guilt bring about in the flesh? What does guilt make the flesh do? Guilt keeps it active. Guilt says I'm going to try harder tomorrow. That's what guilt wants you to come along and say, you know what, today I stumbled but not tomorrow.

Tomorrow I'm going to do it. Now there's hope because there's a positive side. That's the negative side of the coin. The positive side of the coin is that the Holy Spirit convicts us and draws us to fellowship. Guilt draws us to the flesh. Guilt says, I can do better. I'll do better. And the Holy Spirit says, no, no, no, no. I'm going to convict you so I can hold you close and draw us close to him. So that's part of that. That was the second bell. We should close and make sure everybody has time to gather and have fellowship in the foyer so they can be called in. Let's go before the Lord.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for the truth of your word. Thank you that it challenges us. Thank you that it causes us to think through our own lives and look for places where we can apply it, and we just ask that your Holy Spirit would deeply ingrain these things into our hearts and minds, so that as we're setting our minds on things above, we are recognizing these things to not only be positionally true, but that you're working them out in our lives over time to be conditionally true. We thank you and praise you in Jesus' name. Amen.