Identification Truths Plus 2012

So last week we left off with question 4. Does everybody feel comfortable with questions 1, 2, 3, and 4? Did we answer them appropriately? Everybody feels good about all those? I ask only because we left off with still quite a bit of discussion going on.

Alright, so if you've got your Bibles, we're in Romans chapter 6, so it's always good to be fresh in those things. Let's go ahead and we'll re-read starting in Romans 5.20, well 5.19, and then all the way to For as through one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one the many will be made righteous.

The law came in so that the transgression would increase, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. So that as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. 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? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in the newness of life. For if we have become we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection. Alright, so everybody feels comfortable with the concept of being identified with Christ in his death and now we don't have to sin anymore?

Everybody just has that down? Yeah, no problem. Awesome. That will make this an easy class. So we left off with question four. We finished question four, and then Russ said, well, are you going to tell us the answer to question five? So did you get an answer to question five? What's question five? It says, who controls the sin nature in the believer?

The old man. OK. This is actually kind of a trick question, because that is one possible answer, sort of. It's not what we're looking for, but that's why it's a trick question. The sin nature? The sin nature. Probably the world and the devil. Let me re-ask the question slightly differently worded to get to what we're really looking for in the root of things. What can control the sin nature in the believer so that it doesn't dominate us? We control the sin nature.

Okay. Is that what... Because if we have an evil thought we could say no. OK. I'm going to propose that's not the right answer, but I'm going to say that's very close, because that ties in with the right answer. OK. Who ultimately is the only one that can defeat or control the sin nature? The Holy Spirit. OK, the Holy Spirit. So that's the short answer to the question.

So now we have to actually get into why. How does what Monique said makes sense and really when we ask that question and the answer we come up with is the flesh or the sin nature is tied to the flesh. So let's take a look at that. When we say controls the sin nature, immediately we think, we're not thinking about who has authority over it and who has dealt with the issue. we start thinking about some kind of leverage.

Right? Do you think about leverage? That's what I thought when I first read the question. I thought, oh, who controls the sin nature in the believer? All right. Well, I thought Satan. That's where my first answer went. Oh, Satan controls the sin nature.

Well, no, that's not actually the case either. But God ultimately has to be the one that deals with that because in Adam, What power do we have over sin? None. And I think that's the important thing then when we ask this question. We need to realize that the sin nature is kind of like this wild critter that you're strapped to and you really can't fix it yourself. You can't control it yourself. No matter how hard you try, right? Because God gave it to us. Did God give it to us? Well, I mean, honestly, He has control of it. Well, he has dealt with it, he has control over it, yes, but it was a consequence of what? Adam. Okay.

We're going to come back to this principle of life begets like and over and over again as we deal with these verses here because we need to recognize that the same nature is from being in the likeness of Adam previously, which is why we had to deal with being crucified.

So on what scriptural truth does God control the sin nature? He gave us the Holy Spirit. Okay, he gave us the Holy Spirit, that's good. And so the Holy Spirit can tell us now, don't do whatever. Okay. So how did God deal with it so that the control of it is not a big deal? Christ died for us. Christ died for us? Does that deal with the sin?

You're getting there. Monique is thinking. I can see the wheels are turning and she's going to say it in a second. He put us into Christ and we died to it. He placed us into Christ and we died to the sin nature so that it no longer controls us. That's good. Roman six truths are fundamentally the answer.

Yeah. Do you think everybody in this room believes that the sin nature is a reigning principle? That if you're not in Christ, the sin nature totally controls every aspect of your existence? That's a good question. I'll re-ask that just in case it didn't get recorded. Does everyone in this room believe that the sin nature is a reigning principle? That outside of someone becoming a believer, that sin controls every aspect of a non-believer's life?

Yeah, Mike just said it. But Mike, he's my elder and I respect him. He is not the Word of God. Just because Mike said it, does that make it true? Yeah. Well, in this case we can look at the Word of God and like if we go to the first three chapters of the Book of Romans, Paul does a, well it's Holy Spirit inspired, masterful job of walking us through so that no one gets an out. No one gets an out. Paul steps through in Romans chapters 1, 2, and 3 and says you are all sinners without Christ. Everyone needs a Savior. There is no exception to that and he does a fantastic job of that.

We actually went over that at the Dulles Bible Study last year sometime and it was really good. Holly? So who would you say controls the sin nature in the non-believer? Is it still God? There is no control over it. It's kind of like being strapped to a wild grizzly bear. And we don't really control it. We may have some sense of direction Not by we, I mean human beings. I should be careful. The non-believer thinks they have control over it.

If you look at things like some of these monks from various parts of the world that have dedicated their lives. I'm thinking more of Buddhist monks, not Catholic monks. Some of these guys have done amazing things that are physical feats. They have great control over their bodies. These yogis that do interesting things with their bodies. It's great control and great discipline over something, but it's not the same nature. They don't have spiritual life.

One of the things that we talked about last week where I could tell there was some confusion is we said, what is death? Let's start with that question. What is death? Separation from God, from the source of life. So you can have the sin nature separated from the source of life doing some really neat things. I mean, if you look at Google, was Google developed by Christians to help do amazing things on the internet or was it developed by secular people who were trying to catalog data? It was secular people. It's a useful tool, isn't it? But the sin nature is still the reigning principle that dominates their lives. Did they do it? Unto God? No. They did it for their master. Who's their master? The devil. Money.

So, ultimately it is selfishness and listening to the lies of Satan and following money. I want to be careful there because we don't want to get into the bad theology that money is evil by itself. I would propose that the sin nature doesn't have to listen to the lies of Satan. It's its own evil. Yes. The principle of evil is the source of existence in the old man. He operates based on the principle that he is. He doesn't have to take orders.

Satan doesn't show up on Thursday so Thursday I don't get to sin. You sin all the time, because that's the nature of the being. Yeah, and that's an important part of when you look at the account of the fall in Genesis. Here you have Satan comes through the serpent and woos them in there, but Satan didn't make them sin. The quality and the character and the nature of the sin nature exist in a selfish, evil way, separate from Satan.

And that is a good point. Bruce, you had a question? Yeah, you were saying that sin is a reigning principle for the non-believer. I would dare say that there are many so-called Christians that believe that they have control over sin by their good behavior and their works and the programs that they join. Everything but the Word of God.

Yeah. Well, and that's definitely a fleshly, carnal way that a lot of believers... And that's why we... Question number 13 on our handout is why does it matter that this applies to the believer? What we're going over. And that's fundamentally it. Because if you're doing it of your own accord, how much strength does the flesh have to not sin? None.

And how much glory does it bring to God? Indirectly, due to grace being poured out and grace brings God glory, yeah, you could say that God is glorified even when we sin, because that's how grace works. But that doesn't mean that the sin directly brings glory, it means that grace brings glory.

That's a rabbit trail and I apologize. But we have this fundamental issue with life and death that has to be dealt with. I think, just adding to Bruce's, I think a lot of why that happens is the misunderstanding or the lack of knowledge of this identification, the crucifixion of the old man.

Everybody tries to fix up the old man. The good works is to polish up the old man or somehow that now that we're believers, the old man is now capable of whatever, doing good works. And I think it's because of that lack of knowledge of the Roman six truths, how that transaction takes us out of the flesh, out of Adam, and placing us into Christ. That's not known. So it's, how can we fix up the old man? Well, now I have the Holy Spirit, so now the old man can do whatever. Do the law, do good works. And I think it's a fundamental misunderstanding of this very principle. that problem.

So what's the lipstick on a pig? It's still a pig. I know that for the first 20 years of my walk as a believer, I didn't understand that I was identified with Christ and that it was his life that was to be lived out within me, or from within me. me trying really hard to be good, or at least hide the bad from most of the people.

That was always a good, you know, I will sin in the privacy of my own world, and then you won't know about it, and then at least we'll all be okay. You'll at least think I'm righteous. Because that works, right? Everybody, you've tried that before, and it's an effective way to deal with sin is to just keep it in private. No. No. Well, you know, if you think about Cain and Abel. Cain killed Abel in the privacy of a field.

No one else was around. And so what did God say was the witness? His blood. The blood cried out. So even if you think you're alone, God is there watching you. And I remember that tormenting me a lot. Oh no, God still knows about my private sins. That bothered me a lot. But I was looking at it the wrong way. God knew about the sins. Because why? He paid for it. That's a big deal. But you know, if it bothered you a lot, I lost my train of thought. If it bothered me a lot, you shouldn't have bothered God more?

Even if you were quietly doing it within you, you would still know about it. Oh, I wasn't quietly doing it within me. This was not just in my head. You would still know though that you did it, right? And so you're trying to straighten it out, even if nobody knows that you're living with yourself, you know that you've done whatever. Yes.

So the question that comes up in your heart is that hopefully God did more than just die for my sins. What did he do about this thing in me that just sins all the time? How did there be something there? Because if this is all Christianity is, I'm in big trouble. And I think question six leads into that incredibly well. So let's jump to question six, which is going to be a one question with multiple sub-questions. This is possibly one of the most important things that I have learned in the more recent years of my walk with the Lord.

So the question is, do we have the freedom to plead with God, the power of a tendency to sin, over which there is no control? We don't have any sense of control. How do we plead with God? Or do we have the freedom? We should ask that question first. You can have the freedom, but you will not have any assistance or reply.

If you talk to God about something that has bothered you and you ask him to help get it away from you or could you help me, he would help you I think. Wouldn't he? To take something away from you? This is one of the toughest issues that we deal with within what I'm going to say American Christianity and maybe even not that.

How many of you have heard of somebody who became a believer and stopped drinking and they never had alcohol after that? They were alcoholics, then they became believers, and then they never had any craving for alcohol whatsoever. Okay, I've heard stories like that any number of times. I've had relatives share stories from their own personal walks. What about the believer who becomes a believer, but that doesn't happen for them? That's fundamentally the question we're asking. What do we do with that believer?

Well, give him more time. I think we need to make him do more spiritual push-ups. That's always effective every time. No, read the Bible. And join a church and learn. Okay, so what we're going to do is we're going to walk through the logical steps of what scripture reveals about this, okay?

Because this is really, really important. Because I wrestled with these things myself. Because I thought, okay, now I understand sin doesn't have power over me, and yet I'm still really feeling compelled to do whatever it was. Whether it was spend money without self-control, or any number of other things that was just me not being directed by the Lord.

So let's take a look at this. It does not become the child of God to continue sinning. Okay? We established that. It doesn't make sense to keep sinning. Right? Okay. Why is it not necessary to live any longer in or to go on bearing fruit unto sin? Why do we not have to keep sinning? Because we don't have to. But what enables us to not continue sinning?

Our identification of Christ on the cross. Okay, our identification. Because we are now dead to sin. Right? Do you believe that? Because really that's the question that I wrestled with most was did I actually believe that I was dead to sin? It's easy to mentally say, okay, God says I'm dead to sin. That mental ascent takes not much effort. Okay, it says it's true, so I believe it.

But what does that look like worked out in your life? What does that look like with teneschism? And that's the tough part. Because when Jessica and I got into a big bunch of consumer debt, Because I was not saying no to my spending habits. I want it. I make a good salary. I'll just get it. I'll pay for it next month. Or the month after that. Or the month after that. Or the month after that.

And I don't have to say no. Because I can get it now. But then I realize, hey, that's a sin issue. I'm just walking in greed and I'm not walking in the Spirit. but I still really want that new computer or that new gadget or that new thing. So how do we deal with this? He says because we're now dead to sin. So let's look at the next question.

Can we plead the power of a tendency to sin over which there is no control, over which we have no control? If we ask God to take care of this desire to sin, will that Is that what he's called us to do? Mike, would you say that, would you say, would everybody in the room agree that as believers, at some point in their Christian experience there was at least one sin they couldn't control? Oh, that's a good question. Did you have a sin you couldn't control? You don't have to raise your hand. You could. I will. So I think there's a progression of understanding here that, well, my sins are forgiven.

I'm beginning to learn this identification, but there is this thing in my life, or maybe more than one, I can't control it. I'm either angry, or I'm lusting, or I'm fearful, or I'm resentful, or something in me that just fries me every time it happens, and it's uncontrollable. Every time I'm presented with these circumstances, I go down. Every time. There's never been a time that I didn't go down.

Yeah. And I'm confessing it and being restored, but the next time the circumstance shows up, I'm off the cliff. Yeah. You know? Helen? Remember when Christ's disciples were not able to heal someone and he said that this comes out, they can only do it only through fasting and prayer? Is that what we need to do? Fast and pray?

No. Monique doesn't think so. This isn't dealing with that. This is different. In this case we're asking about a sin in the life of the believer and not demonic possession. I would say that that's not the case here. The question is that we are dealing with walking in the flesh Because sin is walking in the flesh. And we're saying, God help me not walk in the flesh every time the situation comes up. Right? That's one of the underlying assumptions.

So it is asking the Lord to do something with something that he's already dealt with. In a way that he didn't deal with it. And that's the thing I had a hard time wrestling with. I deal with fear. Say that again. We ask for God to deal with an issue in a way that he did not already deal with it. We're walking in the realm of sin in the flesh and saying, we deal with the sin in the flesh, even though he's already dealt with it, but in a different way. We want to just ignore that.

Like prayer and fasting? Yeah. If I deal with it with prayer and fasting, that's not the way God dealt with it. Yeah. So prayer and fasting isn't the way to do it. The way to do it is the way that the Lord did it. So, how did God deal with the sin issue? Christ, being crucified. Okay. Well, in the identification, He took us out of Adam and placed us into Christ.

And our life now, you know, it immediately came up in Galatians 2.20. I have been crucified with Christ, and there is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. The life which I now live in the flesh, I live by what? Faith. Just believe what he, faith in the Son of God. But we don't believe that. What if we do believe it?

What if we read it in Galatians 2.20 and say, you know, I don't know what this means, but God, you said it and I buy it. I believe you.

In my own, from my own, this is my own story, I deal with fear. My imagination can imagine the worst case scenario every time, and so I fixate on these things. Jessica's smiling. But the problem with that is that I know I should relax because God's going to take care of things, but my emotions are just surging, and I'm just worked up. But the fundamental issue is that I am walking in the flesh, asking God to deal with the flesh, even though I need to rest in the fact that he already dealt with the flesh. He already dealt with this image. Is it not oftentimes that we think that we know how to deal with the issue much better than God does?

Yeah, my experience has been when I look back at those humps that have occurred in my life, I can see God's sense of humor because he allowed me to go through all of the physical and mental stress of trying to work it out when in fact he had a better plan on how it was going to work out. And I can see how he was growing me along spiritual lines, which the word of God says, we have been transformed, or in the process of being transformed.

Yeah. Well, go ahead. Oh, I was just saying, you know, when Mike was saying about it, it always brings us back, and brings it back, and brings it back, and brings it back. You know, that to me, it's almost like the law. What was the law meant to do? Separate. The law was meant so sin would abound.

And I keep thinking, the Lord brings these things. I think I've dealt, you've dealt with that fear factor. I'm done. Guess what happens? He's going to bring it up to you again. But this is growth. And I think Holly said that a few times ago. It's where you, after a while, it just doesn't have that luster. It doesn't have that factor. And that is the growth.

And I think in scripture, I go back to James, it's considered all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials. He's bringing things to you, that test. So what? That you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. He does it so you can grow in the grace and knowledge of him. And I think it's a process. You know, I think I've got something licked. I got her down.

Well, that's why we, part of this class, we talk position and condition, because what we're studying now is positional truth. And then the questions always come up, well, if it's positionally true, how come it isn't automatically true in my experience? Because it is true, and not only that, I believe it. But conditionally, It's not happening. I'm not telling anybody, but it's not happening. Yeah. Holly?

I was thinking, wasn't it Paul that said that he still had a thorn in his side or whatever that makes us keep depending on God. Like each and every time that comes up, we're brought to the point again where we have to, you know, rely on God because you look back and you say, tried and tried and tried on my own, and nothing happens, and I know how I'm going to feel about it, and so you've got to say, you know, God...

The trials that we experience are for our growth, and the funny thing is that that growth shows God's faithfulness. The trials show God's faithfulness. 1 Peter 7, verse 176, so that the proof of your faith be more precious than gold, which is perishable, even though tested by fire may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

The proof of your faith, the concept behind that in the Greek is the idea of someone refining gold and fire. Hey, let's talk about trials. Let's talk about trials that are like fire. Oh, that's less fun. But the thing is that God's faithful to prove the truth of his word out in our lives as we abide and as we rest and are beholding him, those things happen. And so the trials become valuable.

And then I'd say, okay, let's say the person who become saved and then stops drinking. Let's say they're an alcoholic and it was like that person knows that they didn't do anything about it. That person knows like it wasn't because, you know, I decided to do it and now I did it. That person knows that God did it and then that person can say to other people, you know, God did it. I didn't do it.

And that's the glory Glory to God. Because otherwise the person would say, here's the program, follow this. And how do they tell, what do they tell the other person that's wrestling with this issue? Believe in the gospel and then what did God do with it? How did God bring about that victory over that sin? He didn't have that desire. That's not what God did. How did God do it? All I know is if a person asks, they'll know that God will help.

Okay. So, okay, you place your eyes on Christ instead of the bottle? Okay, well that's definitely, that's the first thing is that we're abiding and we're setting our minds on things. But God, God teaches us over time, sometimes, and sometimes it becomes a little bit more easily known with some sins more quickly but he teaches us that he has dealt with it but he dealt with it in a way that we don't get to be involved in. He dealt with it with his son.

My mother was an alcoholic and really bad and she was a Catholic. She told me one time that she was thankful that she was an alcoholic because without it She would have never learned what it meant to yield her life to God. Wow. Because she knew she couldn't stop drinking on her own and she was thankful that God allowed her to become an alcoholic because she learned about yielding her life through the process of getting well. Yeah. meant to be. Why was that there? It was to know his dependency on God. I go back to the intimacy. What does God want? He wants us to be intimate with Him. And all the trials come, what? To draw us back to Him.

And, you know, I always put in the Romans 8, 35, who can separate us from the love? That thorn was never meant as a ballast or a club or anything. It is solely out of love to bring us back. I spend a lot of time in John 17. He wants that intimacy and he does everything in purpose to bring us back to him. And that's how you can consider it all joy. What he's doing is bring us back to that union where we can sit and have intimacy with him. And it's never done out of malice. It's not that he's got a big club just to hurt us. It's to bring us back. He can't separate us from his love.

I would say too, the bringing back and the intimacy with Christ is only from my position in Christ. I can't bring my Adamic sentimentalities and all of that. I've got to know what we're studying now in order to recognize that God really wants that fellowship with his son.

But it has to be on his level and on his perspective, not my just thinking, wow, that would be cool to do that. Well, this is position and condition. Understanding your position allows you to move your condition more into your position. You know, what's true about this? He wants that intercession. positionally, seated with Him in the heavenlies. Positionally. You know? I mean, but... We pinch ourselves and we're still here. I'm still here. And that's the condition part of it. Yeah.

I think you have to read the Bible. I mean, if I say to Joe Blow in the corner, you know, Christ wants to have a personal relationship with you, he's going to say, okay, and continue walking and getting whatever. But the thing of it is, you have to get into the Bible, then you understand it, and you have to go to classes or whatever, so you have more of an awareness. Otherwise, you're never going to understand, I want to have a close relationship. So you talk to him, this is what I want. You have to have truth to grow on, and that comes from the Word of God. Yeah.

One of the problems when I hear you have to read the Bible is that I read the Bible all the time but I didn't understand what I was reading and no one could explain it to me. Well you can read Romans chapter 6 a hundred times in a row and if the Spirit of God doesn't show you what's there you get tired. Yeah, well, and that's the thing. I read it and I thought, man, this is really baffling. Because every time I would read Romans 6, it was just like, this is talking about somebody else. This isn't me. Because I'm still sinning. I don't understand this. I know I'm not supposed to. He said, may it never be. I got that part, that one sentence I got, that fragment means something to me. But the rest of it was mysterious.

So the answer to question six is, well, continuing on, is that we believers are dependent upon God alone for deliverance by a spirit and thus the necessity to sin is broken. If we are dependent on the Holy Spirit, the necessity to sin is broken and believers are free to move on another plane or to focus on heavenly things. That was really hard for me to grasp on a practical level. I could explain this to you, it sounded like, oh sure, I understood this. But on a practical level, this is why the Lord brings us back to it over and over again. It may not be the same sin every time, but he brings us back to this principle of, are you depending on me?

Are you abiding? Are you walking in the Spirit as you go day by day? Question six for me was personally really, really important for me to just understand the principle so that when I came to that trial again, oh it's this again, I could say, okay Lord, walk me through. Show me where I'm walking in the flesh here and asking you to change the flesh which you've already dealt with. And show me where my mind needs to be renewed and changed to heavenly thoughts.

Yeah, it's the kind of question I think that it's like saying to the Lord, well I know you say I'm crucified. But if I'm so crucified, how come all of this other stuff is happening and I'm reacting to it? Which really, if I think about that, I don't have the right to go to him and say, all that work you did on the cross doesn't work for me, because it does work for me. So I can't plead with him outside of what he's already done and expect him to respond. One of the first things I was told after I became a Christian is that now it would be strongly suggested that I get involved with memorization of scripture, because that would really bring me right along. How did that work out for you? Got me here.

But you know, it makes you realize how very much we depend on God. If we don't depend on Him, then it's all for naught. And isn't it wonderful that we can do that? I mean, it will just bring tears to your eyes because He's always there for you. That dependency is really critical. That dependency is what we're... That is part of our being in the life of Christ.

This is the close... sentence for question six, and that is, the argument in this passage is based upon the believer's vital union in Christ by which we are organically united to Christ through baptism into his body. Let's make sure we understand organically, because that doesn't have anything to do with your produce section. Can I just add one last thing? Sure. Because what you're saying, it's dependency on God, whereas When we're in sin, it's almost like we're dependent on the other thing that we want in the flesh to somehow give us satisfaction or excitement or whatever it might be. We're dependent on something here. Right. We're asking God fundamentally to help us walk in the flesh more effectively.

He's telling us don't do that because I've already taken you away from being dependent on the flesh and that's the thing for me with the fear issues and in my mind I'm afraid I must deal with this. I'll work out what the problem is and I'll work out the solution and then everything will be okay. Which is not dependent in any way on what Christ has done. It says God I don't want the trials they scare me And he says, but I gave you the trial so you could grow. And I'm asking him to change something that is conditionally going on, which he has a useful purpose for. And we're saying, no, I don't want that. And that's a tough thing. At least that's in the application of fear, that's what I would say.

I think the base of all this still comes down to, in the Galatians, all this faith. Do you believe what's true about you? And I think that's what the Holy Spirit is doing, is convincing and convicting you of what's true and what's already true. And it comes down to, do you believe it? And I think that's, you know, the fear. I mean, whatever it is, do you believe what's true about you? That you're in Christ? You need to be fearful.

And that's where it's important for us to know what is true of us. So with the question, or with the statement, you should be reading the Bible, yes, so that you can know what is true of you. But it's also important to be taught good biblical doctrines so that that truth has context and meaning. And I go back to, you know, Mike actually did have one good thing to say a long time ago to me.

When I first met him, he basically said about reading the Bible, to know him, not to read it to memorize. I use that example a lot of times. I got so frustrated as a believer for so many years about memorizing scripture, and that other guys could memorize, and I got so frustrated by that. But I was doing it for what? And then Mike actually said, read it to know him. changed everything.

It's not to be a sea lotion, it's not to be able to have the faster answer or have more things memorized. It's the relationship aspect of things. So the word organic or organically united to Christ through baptism is here. What do we mean by organically? I have no idea. What is it? No pesticides. Organically has to do with the idea, because we have the word united, that's kind of a giveaway word there.

It has to do with our new man. Our new man in Christ. Who we are in Christ. Looking back to Romans chapter 5, where Mike taught a couple weeks ago. It's this principle that we have the new man in Christ that we are to be walking in. And we have to be reminded that we are vitally our life vitally, having to do with life, unified with Christ and united with Christ.

Are there any exceptions to that? For a believer? For the believer? No. No. That's fundamentally the answer with six, is that there are no exceptions. You're asking God to help you with something that you think is an exception, but it's not an exception, it's just the way you're looking at the problem. Alright, any other thoughts or we can move on to seven? What does the word baptism mean? Paul says we're baptized. Placed into. Okay, to placed into. That's good. Immersed. Immersed. So both of those are right.

The Greeks would use that to describe dyeing a garment. Okay, you baptize the garment into the dye. and you might have a little bleeding later on, but otherwise the dye is permanently changed. The dye is not permanently changed, the cloth is permanently changed. The colors are in there. Are you permanently changed when you're baptized with Christ? That's really important. That permanence of that change.

So when someone comes to you and says, I think you'd lose your salvation. Does that fit in with what Paul's saying here? No. And do you want to talk to this person then? Sit down and spend a day? Well, yes. Sometimes I'd want to do that. The issue with losing your salvation, which is not the full focus of this, is that it says that this baptism can be undone. But that's a pretty key thing there. So when we talk about baptism there, it needs to be placed into the consequences permanent, cannot be undone.

And we're placed into Christ at the point in which we believe the gospel. And last week I fumbled with my words and I said that we were identified with Christ while he was paying for the sin and Mike quickly corrected me on that one. It's not when we're placing, when he was paying for the sin, it was when we were associated with him on the cross in his crucifixion, his death, burial, resurrection, ascension and seating. But it happened when we believed the gospel. That baptism and the whole chronology of our lives, if you can imagine my arm span as being somewhat of a reference of time, we got to jump all the way back in time and identify with Christ and his death, burial, resurrection, ascension and seething positionally.

So there's the position and condition concept again. Oh, I just answered the next question. See what I did there? So at what point, you better have an answer to this. At what point in the history of Christ does a believer become identified with Christ? Actually, I didn't answer this question. Let's look at this.

At what point in time in the history of Christ does a believer become identified with Christ? Once we believe in Him. and under his death we were baptized. We were baptized into his death. Paul doesn't stop there. We're going to see that there's more that we were identified with. How about death and resurrection? Does resurrection kind of just... I mean if it was just death... Verse 5 answers that question. So we're going to get to that. But we're not there yet.

So The events, the next question talks about the events, but the initial entry into Christ and in his timeline, when did you go in? Did you go in when they nailed him up there? Did you go in at the time they were scourging him? Did you go in at the Garden of Gethsemane? Did you go in when he was handing John off to his mother? When did you go in? At what point? And that's the critical point.

We're baptized into his death. But since he knew us from the foundations of the earth, wouldn't it be... That's not identification, no. That statement is true after you're baptized, not before. Because your history is his history. Because your history changes. The quality of who you become after Christ, that's... there's a lot of richness in there, but it's not part of this passage, so it's not directly in there.

So this baptism, is this a spiritual or is this a water baptism? Spiritual. Spiritual, okay. It has to be. Okay, so what use is water baptism? I'll use symbolic. I'm sorry, what? Symbolic. It's symbolic, okay. And what's it symbolic of? The death. It's symbolic of our identification and it's an outward proclamation of something that is already true of us in Christ position.

So if baptism is a picture of identification truths, how many Christians just go along with doing baptism and have no clue? I shudder to think of how high that number is. So does that mean that before a person is baptized they should have at least a cursory understanding of identification? nothing to do with your salvation, your position, anything. Whether they know it or not, their position hasn't changed. What about all the little babies they're baptized in? Well, that is a very important question. Is infant baptism a biblically ordained activity?

No. It isn't. And that's one of the things where He's a Reformed theologian. He gave a presentation on infant baptism. And one of his pillars of support for infant baptism is it was the tradition of the Presbyterian denomination. Really solid. Oh, well, I'm sold now.

But that's the problem with things like infant baptism. Here you have this child who is way too young to believe. So we know that you're baptizing the sin nature. What are you baptizing it into? Not this. A lot of churches have, in more recent years, I've found some of the denominations have gone to what I would call a modified infant baptism, which is a dedication baptism. Dedicating the parents to be good parents in the life of this child.

Which still makes no sense. Why are you getting wet? It makes as much sense as it does for the Mormon faith to baptize you after you're dead. Yeah, it's irrelevant. But you know, it's a scary thought though, because when I went to church with Bruce in the Catholic Church, I was telling everybody, oh my God, we've got to be baptized, every one of us, everybody, whoever I knew, because otherwise you're in limbo, sitting there somewhere in the midst of the sky. And I was so panicky that I was telling everybody. Yeah, sure, it'll freak you out real good. What is weird, though, is that as you look at the truth of what is revealed in the scripture, these things become unnecessary. You start to discover, oh, this is a problem. So we've covered three questions, and the second bell rang, so we should probably wind down. Oh, the second bell didn't ring? I've got four minutes on my clock here.

Next week we'll continue on with verse 9 and we'll actually talk about what things we were baptized into and we'll finish up this question, this handout probably next week. Alright, let's close in prayer. Heavenly Father, thank you for the truth of your word and thank you that it challenges us and it reminds us of who we are in you and when we come to you with a wrong mind about various situations that it challenges us to look at them rightly. And we just thank you for your provision and your work in our lives, in Jesus' name. Amen.