Principles of Position Lesson 12

Now, lesson 12 would have started with the question, how would you describe your essential identity from God's perspective? And the second question was, how many men was and is a believer identified with? Because we're going to talk about identification. But before we do that, I thought, how many of you understand what we're studying? Explain to me what identification truth is. What is it? You know, it's how we relate to the world. No. What is positional truth? What is it? We're identified with Christ. No. What is positional truth just itself? What is it? Reality of Christ.

Location. No. Source. Source. Source. Source of what? source of truth. The Word of God, especially in Paul's epistles and from Romans forward, makes these incredible pronouncements about truth. Not things that are going to be true, things that are already true. And we call them a position, because we have them from a positional standpoint.

They may or may not be what your experience is. They may or may not be understood by you even though you read them. And you may not understand the whole concept of position or condition. You may not understand that. The idea about positional truth is to get you to think about position and to recognize that when you read, especially in Paul's epistles, facts, that you accept them as facts that are already true of you whether you Believe them or not, whether you ever saw them before or not, no matter how outrageous they sound. It's a really important concept for spiritual growth and just for living the Christian life because all of your experiences will contradict your position every time to start with. There will always be something in your mind or in your experience that says well that can't really be true because my experience tells me or I feel like and that can't be true. And so the idea of positional truth is to communicate and to change the way we think about even studying the word of God. We look for those truths and we recognize them for positions that we have already in place.

I had a thought the other day that God created Adam and he put him in the garden and he gave him a test and they screwed up the test. Then he did it, he thought, well, you know, we'll go along for a while, and Cain didn't do so well. Then we had Noah, and he didn't do so well. And then he had Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the nation of Israel, they didn't do so well.

And then he brings Christ on the scene. You know what he did? He took care of everything ahead of time. Everything is already done. All those Old Testament guys had to work into what God wanted them to do and to obey and to make in reality what he's asked them to do. We're different. Everything is already in place and God only asks us to believe him. That's it. And so positional truth is what God has already finished, already done.

When he says you're seated in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus today, somebody want to tell me what that's like? How is it in heaven? What's going on up there? You don't know. But if you believe him and trust him, the Spirit of God will begin to acquaint you with your location and the person who is that location. He will do that. So that's why I think positional truth is so critical for believers to understand the concept or the principle because it does change the way you think about things. It gets you off of you being the filter and determining what's true and what isn't true.

From God's perspective, it's already done. So, first question today is, think about this, how would you describe your essential identity from God's perspective? How would you describe your essential identity. How would you describe who you are from God's perspective? Does he see us as everything that Christ is?

Okay, when did he see you that way? When were you created in God's mind? On the foundation of the world, right? So he created you in his mind, which meant that the certainty of your existence was already in place. He didn't say, oh gee, I'm coming down the road here and I don't have room for you, so we're going to cut you out of the herd. No, he created you how? In his mind and where? Where does he create you and see you?

In Christ, back then. you're a person. God said let's make man our own image after our own likeness, right? So what's God's image and man's image that are similar? You have a mind, you have emotions, you have a will. Originally you could receive from God information, his love, and you would willingly respond, him being sovereign, you being subject, and you'd have a relationship with him. That's why he created us the way he did, so that we could have a relationship. He could love us, and we would love him back. It's not like you're hamster.

So, that's the essential identity that every believer has. But then God brings us into existence physical existence at some point in time, right? Who are you united to? Who is your identity at that point? Has your identity changed? Let's do one question at a time. When you come on the earth, who are you identified with? Adam. Did it change your identity as a person? What do you think? From God's perspective. No, it didn't. And so here you are, coming into the planet as a little baby, conceived by your parents. You're totally united to Adam.

You have a sin nature. You're not willing to do God's will. As a matter of fact, you dislike him a lot because you want to do your own thing. But your essential identity hasn't changed. So you grow up, or start to grow up, being a God-hater. Like it or not, that's what you are. At some point, the Spirit of God convicts you and woos you to Christ, and you exercise faith in the person and work of Christ, and we get saved.

Your identity changed then? No, it's the same. So a personal identity, a sensual identity is different than what your position or your position and condition may be. Do you understand the difference here of what I'm talking about? God has known me in Christ since the foundations of eternity. He created me in Christ. I don't know about the guy in the White House across the street, I don't know what he did with him, but I know what he did with me and you guys. So, being united to Adam does not change my identity. I didn't know it.

My whole frame of reference was the sin nature and Adam and doing my own thing. Now I've become a Christian, my identity is still the same, but now I've got to relearn everything. And this is how God has always seen me in Christ. essential identity of who we are is really important. Because a lot of times we misconstrue how we feel about circumstances or our response to circumstances to be our essential identity. It's not. Your essential identity is who God says you are.

And he said that about you when he created you way back then. Okay? Is it too complicated? And is that the same as position then? It's exactly right. We have a position in Christ. My father in eternity past formed us positionally as an individual in his mind. That's what he did. He formed me actually, conditionally at a later date in my mother's womb. The fall did not unmake me as a man, did it? a particular person, my new birth does not unmake me as that man. I'm still that man or woman. What is intrinsic to my personhood I never lose. My identity never changes.

But here's the problem I got. God conditionally identified me with Adam, or all men are identified with Adam when they come on the planet. There's a real problem with that. If you're identified with Adam, and you happen to leave the planet identified with Adam, what happens to you? You're a goner. You're a goner. You get to go to Armada, right? Where do you go? Where do you end up? What?

Well, if you look at Romans 8.3, it says that what the law couldn't do, and that it was weak through the flesh, God sent his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin he condemned sin in the flesh. So if you're attached to that condemned sin nature and you leave the planet, what happens? You're going to go where that condemned sin nature goes. You're condemned. Even as a child? Even as a child. And here's why as a child.

Romans 5.12 says that by one man, sin entered the world. Who was that guy? Osama Bin Laden? No, it was Adam. By one man, sin entered the world, and death came along with sin. And death passed on all men. Why? Because everybody sinned in Adam, positionally.

You know, your little one-year-old was in Adam just like you were when he sinned, you sinned. So we're a sinner by position, we're a sinner by practice, and we're a sinner by will. We desire to be a sinner. So just because, I mean, you take a one-year-old and put him in the nursery, and how long is it going to take before you begin to identify the sin of nature operating in that? By the time you get the door shut, you'll say, oh my goodness, that kid's got a sin of nature.

And so, nobody deserves salvation because of their deeds. Nobody does. Because salvation is a gracious thing. It's not an earned thing. So, the great question is, well, God isn't fair. Okay, we'll make God fair. And what happens to you if God is fair?

Everybody goes to hell. Everybody. Because he's fair. Because we deserve it. So, salvation is by grace. But it's kind of cool, from a positional standpoint, to realize that he saw or created us in his Son before he ever created the first A-T-O-M. He saw us in Christ. Kind of complicated, right? Want to know how he did it? Here's how I think he did it. This is where Courtney and I have had this discussion.

So when you're identified with Adam, conditionally, you have a history that starts with Adam. How far back does Adam go? To the garden where God created him. He didn't exist before then. But we're all united to him, so his history begins when my history and Adam's history begins when his history began. And when he sinned, that's why I sinned, because I was in him.

Ratchet forward nine, ten thousand years and here comes the spirit of God to you and he woos you to Christ and you believe and you get recreated in Christ. So now you're not positioned in Adam anymore, you're now positioned in Christ. How far back does this history go? How far back? A couple of weeks before Adam?

John 1.1 says that in the beginning was the Word. That means that in the beginning the Word was already there. And the Word was with God and the Word was God. So now you are an eternal being, positionally and conditionally. So it's really important to be taken out of Adam and identified with Christ because As an atom, all die. I'm trying to visualize a timeline, visualize a line. Can you do that on the board? Sure. Yeah, I think so. See if I can do it. How am I doing so far? That's got to be longer. How's that?

I got Christ up there twice. God in eternity passed. I was formed in his mind. Brought forth in Adam. Christ comes on the planet. Takes care of the sin issue. We, I put you, we. Turn it upside down now. We believe in the person and work of Christ. We are now in Christ, which means we're in God. We're back where God originally planned us to be.

Kind of cool how he did it. He started here, went through this long process, and probably I should do this. This is better. How's that? That's better, right? I start in God, identified with Adam, Christ comes, I believe now I'm in God. Conditionally, where he already saw me positionally. Does that work?

You don't want dates, do you? So, in answering the question of essential identity, I think you have to realize that the Bible tells us that we are the same person that God created in his mind back then. Same person. But our identity has never changed. What changes is Well, let's go to question two. How many men was and is a believer identified with and named them? How many are there? Who are they? Adam and Eve. Right. So, I as a human being, with my own particular personhood, I'm either identified with this man or this man.

These are the two most important men in history because both of them are the heads of races. of human beings. There's the race of Adam and there's the race of Christ. If any man be in Christ he's a new creation. So these are the two most important men in history and it depends on who you are identified with as to what your future is going to be.

Adam can dance around and do a lot of cool things but I love this because I'm a realtor and location is everything to me. Who I'm in, who I'm located in, who I'm identified with matters. So there's only two men and the thing that's true about this guy is most everybody in the world. The thing that's true about this man is true positionally of all of us who are in Christ, whether you know it or not. Everything that's true about Christ is also true about you positionally. Everything. No fair reading something really cool and saying, oh, they must be talking about Wayne or somebody else. No, it's me. It's me he's talking about.

I had a guy tell me one time, read Romans chapter 6, first 10 verses, and put your name in there. Oh, and that made a lot of sense. I put my name in there. And what's true of Christ is true of me. I was crucified with him. I'm the one that went through this process with him, in him.

Yeah? So, are you saying that who we are, God knew who we were in this first position that we met here on your left. He knew us as a person. He knew us as a person. And when we're brought into this world, we're all brought in as under Adam. You know, identified with Adam, right? Okay. He does not know, he does not know who we are in Christ until we make the decision over here to be identified with God.

I would say he does, and here's why I say that. But only from this point, from the back. This is a timeline. There's no timeline with God. He has all knowledge in play right now. So there isn't, oh, I used to be thinking that, or I'm going to think that in the future. He's thinking every thought right now, because it's eternity. He doesn't live in time-space. So that's how it fits. We get introduced into time-space and all we understand is, well, we've got so much time between one and two, and two and three, but God is always done. What do you think? What do you think? What do you think? You think he does? Yeah, I think he does. He tells us he does. The Lord Jesus Christ said, I've chosen you, you have not chosen me.

Oh, See, you've got to get over this idea of fairness. Because we think that all of these guys deserve to be saved. No, they deserve nothing but condemnation. They all deserve to go to hell, including all of you. They just deserve it. Why? Because we sin. And we think, well, sin isn't that big a deal, really. So one guy takes one bite out of one piece of fruit, and what happens? The entire creation falls. Death passes upon not only every human being, but everything. Everything is dying because one guy couldn't keep his mouth shut.

Right? And we think, well that's no big deal, because I've sinned worse than that. But God has forgiven me. Why did he forgive me? So is the concept that people make their decision for Christ or not, is anything that they determine on their own, that they have any control over themselves?

Yes they do. Here's an interesting thing. John 3 says, God so loved the world that he gave his only son. has only begun some. That whosoever believe in him should not perish but have eternal life. Does that whosoever go to everybody in Adam? Yes, it does. Everybody. The work of Christ on the cross paid the penalty for all of the sins of all time.

Why? It had nothing to do with us, the sinner. It had to do with the one who was offended by the sins. It was God who was offended and he needed to be satisfied. Well, Jesus satisfied him. So I can say that my buddy over here across the street, his sins are paid for. The penalty. But the problem is that he's attached to that sin nature, and as long as he's attached to that, he's going to end up where it ends up, and that's in condemnation.

Now, God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whosoever believe in him. So here comes, and in John 15 it says that the spirit of God's job is to convict the world of sin. That means everybody. And the reason he's going to convict them of sin is because they don't believe who Christ is.

How's he doing with his job? We get to judge him, right? How's that working out for you? Are you up to the task? He says he is, so you trust him. You have to believe him. So here comes the Spirit of God to Russ. So how does he work on Russ? Does he intimidate him? Does he twist his arm? Does he get him down on the ground and say believe or I'm going to punch you in the nose? How does he do it? He convinces him and he woos him. He woos him with his love and he makes it clear to him that living here is fatal but I have a remedy and it's the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now at that point From his perspective, from his conditional perspective, and he exercises his will to believe in the personal work of Christ, does he have any sense of ever being coerced or wooed or anything? No. He's making his decision to believe in Christ totally unencumbered. He only finds out later that the Spirit of God drew him.

So at the Great White Throne Judgment, no man is going to go up to God and say, listen, you didn't try hard enough with me, or you must have skipped me over that day, or whatever. Because we don't appreciate how much this guy is against God. And I mean really against him. Because I would be king. I've got Satan's personality. Move over God, I'm taking over. And if you can help me, that's fine, but I'm not stepping aside for you.

Joe? That would say that there's no man that was chosen to be in Christ that failed to be in Christ. Not a single one. So therefore, every man that stays in Adam, God intends them to stay in Adam. It's an intent. See, the guy's got a will. Every man's got a will. And he chooses to stay there. Who's the guy? acts that Paul was the king or whatever that guy was.

Help me out here because it says that we're not saved by the will of man, we're saved by the work of Christ. Yeah, the work of Christ. The work is already done. But my responsibility from God's side, or from my side, is to believe. You believe with your will. But it's through faith, it's not faith itself. Yeah, it's through faith.

So what do you do? You believe that God gives you the remedy, which is the person to work across. Do you get shoved over the line? No, you make a choice to believe him It's out of your own understanding and all you can see at the time. You don't know any of this. All you know is that you're reaching out for the Savior. That's all you know. And He's calling you. And He's become more attractive to you for that one moment than anything else.

So what happens when the guy in Adam believes in the person and work of Christ, positionally what happens to him in an instant? What happens to him? Right before that. He dies. So the last act of Adam is to believe on Christ. That's his very last act. Why? Because the instant he does, he's crucified with Christ, buried and resurrected. Now conditionally you may be operating out of Adam, but positionally the last act that this guy ever makes is to believe in Christ. So you're saying that while we're still in Adam we believe. That's right. That's exactly right. We're not a bunch of Baptists here. Thank goodness.

What this lesson is all about, and again I apologize for not getting it to you, this is the chapter on identification. Who we're identified with really matters. So your behavior pattern is not nearly as important as who you are identified with, either this man or this man. If you're identified with this man, you're in mega trouble. If you're identified with this man, you're a son of God.

And all the blessings that accrue to Christ accrue to you positionally. They're all yours. So, again, it adds to understanding identification. Third question. Even without questions, I'm moving faster than Courtney does. That's right, I take my time. What does the term identified mean when it applies to the believer and to the work of the cross of Christ? Identified. So let's talk about the word identified. Give me a synonym for identified. Union. Union is a good word.

Now we all are identified, when we come on the planet, with which man? Adam. It's such a close identity that whatever is true of Adam is true of you, right? Adam is a sinner, I'm a sinner. Adam is a God-hater, so am I. Adam is whoever he is, that's exactly who I am.

I say this all the time and you guys should go down and spend time with the young kids. We haven't had to teach him or send him to sinning academies so we could rescue him. They all know how to do that. How do they know that? Because they all come out of here. They're all identified with Adam. So sinning comes with the position in Adam. They're just sinners. You don't have to teach them. They know. They don't even know whether it's right or wrong. They don't care. The two-year-olds don't care. They don't care. And you know what? They love sinning. Put this in front of them and say, now look, don't touch that.

What's going to happen? is not fixable by any work of Christ. So when the man in Adam believes in the person and work of Christ, what happens to him? What kind of a process does he go through? He's going to change union. He's going to change identification. At what point in Christ's cross, death, burial, resurrection, when this guy believes in the person and work of Christ, he enters into Christ. Where does he go in?

At what point? Louder. When he believes in Christ, he's identified with Christ at the point in which Christ died. Why is that so important? Because the old man has to die. No, the old man's not dead. Who's going to die here? We're going to die. You and me, we're going to die. What's the word death mean? Separation. We're going to get separated from Adam and all that Adam is, including his sin nature.

So, when we've got identified with Christ, when you were baptized into Christ, placed into, you were baptized into his death. Oh, that's a good place to start, don't you think? Why didn't he say, well you were baptized into the Sermon on the Mount? Or you were baptized into the Garden of Gethsemane? Or you were baptized into Christ when he was getting beat up by the Roman soldiers? Why not then?

He's still a member of the old race. He's still identified with the likeness of sinful flesh. Now, when Christ is on the cross, There comes a time on the cross when all that Adam is, is put on him. And you know when that time was? How do you tell that time? When he cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? What happened then? Not only were all the sins of all creation put on him, but so was our sin nature. And when our sin nature was put on him, what did the Father do?

He looked away. And we don't think that's such a big deal. People look away from you all the time. But think about, and for all eternity, back to time, but for all eternity the Father and the Son have been face to face, loving each other, receiving life and love and understanding from each other in the Spirit. And for the first time, Father turns away from the Son. What happens? He's separated. This is where you want to be when that separation happens.

Because what happens to you if you're identified with Him when you're separated, you get separated too. Once you're baptized into Christ's death, you're now united to Him and now everything that's going to happen to Him is going to happen to you. Just like sinning in the garden. So, when Christ dies, he separates from the penalties of sin, because he pays them, and the guilt, and he also separates from the nature that we got from Adam, that sin nature, that thing in us that makes us want to sin. I know some of you guys are much better than me and you would say that you have committed sins that you were kind of forced into them.

That's never happened to me. I wanted to do every one I ever did. So we're separated positionally or conditionally? How many think conditionally? Positionally. So I'm separated positionally because I died with him. Then he gets buried, oh gee, and Romans 6 says I was buried with him. Why buried? Because you don't bury live people, you bury the dead ones. So you go in a grave with him, and then he's resurrected. And what does Romans say this resurrection is all about? How does Romans describe it?

Newness of life. And the noun there is newness, not life. You come into an entirely new state of being. An entirely new state of being for Christ. He wasn't like this before he was crucified. This is new to him too. You know how you know? He's standing there and Mary Magdalene is looking him in the face and he says, Don't identify or don't touch me until I go to the Father. Why would he say that? Don't identify yourself with me that all that you knew me to be when we were walking around Palestine, that's over. So don't identify yourself with me until I go to the Father.

And then you can. Because then you're going to be in this new position. See that? It must have been a hard thing for the Lord Jesus at the time He was on the earth before He left. to teach and to get people not to think of him as what he was before he died. Because now he's different. He's got a different body. And with all of the sin issues being done with, he's now a new kind of a man, a resurrected man. And you know what? So are we. We are identified with the resurrected Christ, and everything that's true of Him is now true of us. Positioning.

Everything. Okay, so right there where you have the arrow on the cross, was when the sins of every person who ever did live were replaced. But the sin nature of only the people that would ever believe, only those people that was raised there. Otherwise, the people whose sins were forgiven, they still are in Adam. That's exactly right. So, positions, everything, right?

I can be a walking around Adam with my sins forgiven, do I still have, with being a forgiven sinner, do I have the right to be in the presence of a holy God? If I'm a forgiven sinner, answer no. Why? I'm still a sinner, forgiven or otherwise, I don't get to be in the presence of God. I have to be separated from the whole idea of being a sinner. I have to be in Christ in order to be in God's presence. You see that? I cannot function in Christ as a forgiven sinner. Scratch out the word sinner. You're not a sinner anymore positionally. Doesn't mean you don't commit them, but positionally God does not see you as a sinner. He sees you in Christ. And if you say, well gee, I sinned and Christ must sin too. Nope. David and Bathsheba had a baby and the baby died. Yeah. And he said, he got all cleaned up and he said, I'll see this baby again.

I was wondering, when you were saying little babies don't make it. Well, think about it. Probably the best way for me to answer that question is, I used to be really staunch on the fact that if you don't you know, at some point in your life come to understand who Christ is and you believe in him that you're going to hell, I don't care how young you are. But then Donna got pregnant with John and I had to rethink that. Here's what I think, my opinion. This work of Christ on the cross, right here, was so complete and so satisfied the Father that he can save anybody any way he wants. For me, I had to believe.

I don't know about all of those aborted fetuses. Again, if God is only fair, aborted fetuses are no different than 90-year-old sinners. There is no difference because they have sin natures. You don't get a sin nature at 6. You don't get it at 2. You're born or you're conceived with the sin nature because Adam conceived a son after his own image and own likeness. What did Adam have? What did he pass down? Sin nature. How did you get your sin nature? How did you get your sin nature?

It came from my parents, which came from their parents, which came from their parents, back, back, back, back, right to this guy. So if my mother had seven children, the eighth one was born dead. What about that eighth one? Did they get a break for the eighth one because they didn't have a chance? No, they're from Adam. Now what God does with them is his business. I have no idea what he does. I do know this, there's no such thing as an innocent human being. I don't care how little they are. The only two innocent human beings were Adam and Eve.

Yeah, I'm thinking that when people say, or even if I say it, that I'm a forgiven sinner, It seems like there's a recognition of the fact of the existence of the sin nature. And that's because I know I'm saved, but I still sin. So it sounds like an attempt to try to deal with that sin nature that's still there without understanding the positional truth. What's the word we use at the beginning of the class for position? Right? What's the source of sin? What's the source of sin? The sin nature. So what's God after?

The source? Or the actions? He's gone after that source. Because he knows if he can put the source out of business, there won't be any actions. You see that? It's like, watch when he used the metaphor of a whiskey factory and a whiskey bottle. that people run around breaking all the whiskey bottles when God was putting the factory out of business. So it wouldn't produce any more whiskey. That's exactly what identification with Christ is all about. I'm crucified with Christ so that sin won't have dominion or that the whole body of sin, all of it, will be put out of business, taken offline, stop functioning. Doesn't mean it isn't there, but stops functioning. You see that? That's confusing, isn't it? Well, it doesn't stop functioning, it stops being the slave master. Yeah, and that's the incredible thing that most, like you're talking about.

How long does it take the Spirit of God through the Word to teach a believer that we were a slave to sin? A slave. In Adam, you don't think you're a slave. You're cruising. You've got free will. I want to meet the next guy who's got free will. You're a slave to sin. So what do you get to choose from? The list of sins. You don't get to choose life. You don't get to choose good. You get to choose... Well, see, today I have a choice between this sin and that sin. Or maybe I'm really a high-powered guy. I get four choices. Mike Corton gets five, six.

Is that the second bell? I promise I'll get all of the questions out to you this week. But setting up for identification and why identification is so important to us as believers, and it all goes back to source. It all goes back to source. Where did I come from? There are copies of twelve back here now. How did we do that? Magic! Let's close.

Father, we thank you for your grace and we thank you that when you took care of the sin issue and you took care of us, you did a complete job. And we no longer, from a positional standpoint, need to recognize or even allow ourselves to be quote-unquote sinners. We do sin. But we trust you with what you've done, with what you've told us, and we ask that you would lead us into a resting position of faith in all that you have accomplished on our behalf. And we thank you, Father, we pray in your Son's precious name. Amen.