Which Side of the Cross - Lesson 3

OK, we're in Lesson 3. Anybody have a Lesson 3? I think there's also back there are the questions on Lesson 4, which I don't know if we'll get going on it next week or not. And then hopefully this week I can also get out Lesson 5 to try to stay ahead of you. So we have worked our way. down to question four and lesson three, right?

And I had made the statement that we can spend a lot of time trying to distinguish and define all of these terms, old man, new man, sin nature, self, sin, sin nature, And there's an old saying in my profession of selling is that you get paralysis from analysis.

To simplify it as best I can, what we're doing is we're taking a look at how Adam, his construct was after he sinned. And why that's important to us is because Every one of us came from Adam. We have exactly the same characteristics, exactly the same identity and the same principles that he had. He's a sinner with a sin nature. He's fallen in a fallen world. He has a propensity to sin. He's not in any sense acceptable to God in this position that he's in.

So we need to identify that if we can, to some degree, without getting over-analytical about it. We could spend the rest of this class debating what's a sin and what isn't a sin. We're supposed to walk away from sins. We can define to the gnat's eyebrow what we think self is. or what we think sin nature is, or that kind of thing. I don't want to get too much in the weeds there, but I have asked us to define, the first one is our nature of sin. So let's talk about, what's a nature?

By the way, one other thing. So far, this is moving up to the death side of the cross. This is the resurrected side of the cross. We're not over here yet. We're still working here. We'll get there eventually. But we're getting closer and closer to the cross. And what we're doing now is we're discovering why the cross is necessary.

So what's the nature? Anybody? It's something that's common with who we are. Something that's common with the creature that you are. It's something that in a fallen human being, it's just natural. It's who we are in heaven. It's just propensity. So we talked last week about does a dog have a nature? Does a cat have a nature? How can you tell? Because they look like a dog and they act like a dog. So the definition of a nature can be almost the same definition as what a principle is. It's a way a thing acts or functions all the time. Every time.

So when we say that, when we're talking about the nature of sin, it has certain characteristics about it. The first characteristic is that it's totally unequivocally self-centered. Now it may put on the nice garment of, oh I'm very helpful to you, but the motivation underneath that garment is about me. It's about recognizing me. It's about whatever. It's about keeping this sin nature alive.

It is self-centered. And it doesn't have to be taught. We were talking about the Kirby family in Alaska. Mr. Quinn, the escape artist, they didn't teach him how to be an escape artist. It just came with the territory. You don't have to send your kids to sinning academy. They don't have to graduate from sinning academy.

That comes with it. That's the sin nature. So we like to do things relatively. Well, I've got this really bad kid and this really good kid. No. They're both sinners. Some are just more open about it. Others are more hidden about it. But they're self-centered. And self-centeredness is the sin of sins. Agree with that? Self-centeredness is the sin of sins. Why is it the sin of sins? It's against God. It's for yourself.

What's the first commandment? Have no gods before me. I am the Lord thy God and I shall not have false gods before me. Who are the false gods? Sin nature. I'm the false God. He says, you creatures that I created who have sin natures, you can't be what you are before me. Oh man, that's bad news. Because we're self-centered and it's not that we try, we just are. We're totally against God. And here's the other interesting thing about the sin nature. It can't be repaired. You can't fix it. you can't make it acceptable to God.

Now, in Romans 8 it says, for they that are after the flesh, in other words, they that come from the flesh, are born from the flesh, born from Adam, they mind the things or they pay attention to the things of the flesh. Because the carnal mind or the mind of the flesh is at enmity against God, it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.

Paul says in Romans 7.14, I'm carnal, I'm fleshly, I'm an atom, I'm sold under sin.

So I think it's really important for us to understand going into this that how strong a nature is and how all-encompassing it is and how you're stuck. You can't get free. in and of yourself. You can't teach your sin nature not to sin. You can't modify it, discipline it, get it to function so that it would be pleasing to God in any stretch. And so therefore, you have to recognize that boy, in that position, I'm in trouble. Any questions about sin nature? Sin nature control all non-believers?

All the time? Yeah, it does. Okay, so how would you describe the flesh then? What is the flesh? Is it the same thing as the sin nature? Is it what carries out the sin? I'll say that again. Is it what carries out the sin? The flesh? The flesh carries out the sin? That's pretty good.

What else? Who else? You guys never think about this stuff, right? You just move on. We're free. No. It's a struggle. So when Adam sinned, before Adam sinned, was he fleshly? Was he? In the sense that it controlled him? I don't think so either. Remember my example of the bell jar? Did I do that last week or the week before?

When Adam's spirit died to God and shrunk down like the air out of a balloon, the soul filled the space and the soul was totally infected for the sin nature. So you got a soul, mind, emotion and will, that's totally controlled by the sin nature that responds to the appetites of the body. I think that's what the flesh is. Well, did he have a soul to begin with? Who? Adam. Sure he did. Sure he did.

Let's define those terms. I think man is a spirit who has a soul that lives in a body. The way God designed us when we were created is that the spirit was the dominating factor in the human being because that was the part of man that received from God and controlled the soul, which controlled the body in this environment that he lived in. Well, if the controlling factor goes away, What happens? Something has to replace it. Enter the expansion of the soul, mind, emotion, and will, but now infected with the sin nature. And living in a fallen body and all it has is desires to sin. And there's no controlling factor now from God. Do you see that? So that's what I think the question is. Did that answer your question? Yes, thank you. So, a couple of quotes.

By nature, Adam and all of us, Ephesians 2, 3 says, we're children of wrath. If you're of the flesh, you deserve God's wrath. In this condition, we are natural, fleshly, carnal, separated from God. 1 Corinthians 2, 14. The natural man is this fleshly guy that's carnal, separated from God, cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God. For their foolishness to him, neither can he know them." Oh my goodness, that means that nobody can get saved, right? Nobody said, wait a minute.

If really, if 1 Corinthians 2.14, before I'm saved, I'm a natural man, I don't receive the things of the Spirit of God and their foolishness unto me, And I can't know them whether I wanted to or not. I can't. Because spiritual things are understood by spiritual people. So how does anyone get saved? Because salvation is a spiritual event, isn't it? How does anyone get saved?

Through grace. Okay. And since you believe you can become a new creature? Well, let's get it really simple. At the time that I'm a natural man walking around on the street and I'm fleshly, and I can't receive the things of the Spirit of God, I can't receive them, and I think they're foolishness, you know, and I can't know them. And yet you come to me and you say, let me tell you about something here, and you start telling me the Gospel. So you're not going to... I mean if you're... If you understand what you're doing, you're not giving me a lot of rhetoric that you learned in Sunday school.

There's only one issue. What's the issue? Christ. Yeah. Am I saved or not? And what does salvation mean? And so you present the gospel to me, that if I believe, exercise my will to believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and He died on a cross for me personally, was buried and resurrected, that God will save me for all eternity. And I'm looking at this verse and I'm thinking, well it says that I can't receive the things of God. Can I at that point? Yes, because then they're spiritually discerned, it says. Yeah.

So what do I know? What do I find out right there, right at that moment of salvation? What do I know? I have information that says to me, if I were to believe in this person, the Lord Jesus, and that he died for me, that God would save me for all eternity. How do I know? That's what Paul realized when he said, who shall deliver me from this body of death?

Well, this is way before that. When Paul is on the road to Damascus, of course we all get this blinding light, don't we? What is it that right there at the point of salvation, I've got the basic information about the gospel, what happens there? What's the basic information about?

I mean, anybody can understand that somebody died for me, that there is a God, and Romans 1 says, you know, man, you know I exist, you have no excuses. But here's this gospel thing with a promise attached to it, and has a requirement on my part. And what's my requirement? You have to believe it. I have to believe it. Right there. I've gotten some information. Is it spiritual information? I think it is. Who communicated that to me? He convicted me of sins. Now, what causes me to believe? Spiritual intelligence?

There's a lot of motivating factors there, but there's no coercion there. God never coerces. forces anybody or twists their arm, but they may be in very difficult circumstances. I remember right before I was saved, all I could see is that if I believed what these guys were selling, I was going to die.

I didn't think that was too cool. It was probably better than where I'd been. Is there usually a need? I think need is really a big part of that. I have a need. It still comes down to your will. your will making that choice to believe. And it's the facts on the tracks and knowledge first and then you believe. But it's your will at that point that makes that choice. So right up until that time I believed. This is still a definition of who I am.

I can't receive the things of God but here it is, here's this information and I believe it. Now I become spiritually alive. And as we're going to find out, about 35 transactions happen to me instantly. All this stuff goes on spiritually that I'm not even aware of. But now I'm spiritually alive. I'm now, you know, connected with God. As a matter of fact, the Spirit of God is now indwelling my spirit.

Wow, that's pretty exciting. But before that, the natural man, I think we have to understand the natural man can't receive the things of God and hasn't got any capacity within him to do anything other than to believe. That's it. And that's why God gave us a will, so that we would believe him or not. We would turn away from him and say, well, I hear what you're saying, but I don't buy it. Mike, can we go back on flesh? So you don't think flesh is also this?

Yeah, well that's what I meant with the body has appetites that influence the soul and now with the sin nature I act fleshly all the time. Okay, but flesh is... That's part of it. Yeah, that's who we are, fleshly flesh because as we die it's attached to the law, it's attached to the flesh. Fleshy is fallen flesh. Yeah, right. But it's still, I mean, the bodies that we're in is flesh. John 3, 6, we're flesh and born in flesh and spirit in spirit. I just want to make clear that it's also physical. Sure is.

Any other input? So with those two in place, who's the old man? Both my kids pointed to me for some reason. And rightfully so. What did he say? He said all of his kids pointed to him. What is it about kids that call their dad the old man? Always the oldest man in the house, I guess. That's all of who we were in Attaway. Very good. Did you hear what J.D. said? be described as the old man.

All that Adam is, this fleshly part, it's in nature, all of it is considered the old man. Let me show you where I think the New American Standard makes a mistake. It's in Romans 6, when it says, I think the New American Standard says, myself was crucified with him. That word is anthropos, which means man. My entire old man, all that I was in Adam, was crucified with him. So self isn't the right word there. That would mean that it's past tense, a complete and final act, no more... Well, yeah, not only a complete and final act, but having... Is that aorist tense? Yeah, I think it is aorist tense. Yeah. It's a fact. It can't be changed.

So now with all three of those, with an understanding of all three of those, just because we got saved doesn't mean that these go and move across to Europe or that you instantly are free from their influence. going forward because you're not. So part of spiritual growth is to understand, boy, God took care of the fact that I sinned and He took care of the fact that I was guilty through Christ paying the penalty of my substitutionary death on the cross. But did He do anything about my identity with this sin, old man, flesh, self business?

Answered, yeah, I did. And that's why we're working towards identification. He took care of my relationship to it. How many of you read The Hungry Heart? Did you read the one this morning? No, I didn't read it today. It was a very interesting one this morning.

It talked about, there's an understanding of salvation There's coming up identification, but right between those two is the realization that I'm accepted. I'm accepted in the Beloved before God. The two is salvation and the other one is identification, being crucified. And what the author was saying was that this identification won't mean a whole lot to you unless you really understand that you've been accepted in Christ. And if you're like me, I run into Christians all the time that don't think they're accepted. They're working all the time trying to be more acceptable to God today than they were yesterday. When in fact Romans 4 and especially Romans 5, the first 11 verses talk all about acceptance, access to God.

Okay. Yeah. Well, aren't there days when you don't feel, not you personally? Well, you can pick on me, that's okay. I mean, aren't there days that we feel overcome with the world? Sure. And then we think, you know, I don't know. The world is really bothering me.

And the sin nature that you have is right in line with the world. It likes it. There's a propensity within us to sin. There's a propensity to not believe God. I'm talking about politics. The great thing about our position in Christ is that we've left all of this behind.

Yes. That's not a feeling, that's a truth. Good point, Joe. Oh, that is good. I think too that the Lord's plan is not thwarted regardless of what we see going on here. That's right. He's already told us how it ends. Well, not only how it ends, but when you realize that you have a sovereign God, and God is what God means, He's a creator, a sustainer. We're studying Hebrews on Wednesday night, and we're finding out this really cool stuff about Christ, that He sustains everything. And it's His plan, and He's going to carry it out His way. It's all in control. There's nothing out of control, and no matter what it kind of appears like, It's not out of control.

You know, every little nuance, especially for us as believers. Every little thing that comes in your life, God has ordained because we're sons. And he's ordained it so that he can approve us. Every single thing. And our reaction. Well, I was thinking too, you know, I'm that hungry heart this morning, that we're accepted. But the thing that continues to grow is the God that we're accepted in. He's got it all. He's done it all. He has the power. He has the love. He has the sovereignty. Yeah, and the life. And the life. Yeah, he does. And Courtney was saying, what's our job? Disbelieving. Disbelieving.

So we go to Sunday school and you learn stuff and you read the Bible and you hang out with people and you find out this information. What do you do with the information you find out? You only have one thing to do with it, you trust him, you believe him. Where do your personal sins come from? Did someone say Satan? Why would you say Satan? I don't know. Just so you don't have to take responsibility?

He made me do it. Yeah, the devil made me do it, sure he did. I had a buddy who used to come to the Tuesday bowel study and He came in one day and I said, how are you doing, Charm? He said, I'm having a tough day. He said, Satan is beating me up today. I said, Satan doesn't know your name and he doesn't know where you live. He said, why? I said, well, one, he's not omnipresent. And two, he's in Washington, D.C. He said, well, who's picking on me? I said, you're picking on you.

You've got to sin nature. So where do your personal sins come from? They're just the natural product of the old sinful nature. Perfect answer. The natural product of the sinful nature is sins. Like I said before, you don't have to send your kids to sinning academy. They produce these natural things that are products of who they are. They are sinners, right? Well, I know some of you young moms are sure that your kids were born without sin natures, but they proved you wrong.

The practical result of our inherited condition is stated in scripture, all have sinned, All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Notice what the standard is. What's the standard for a human being? The glory of God. The sum total of God's intrinsic attributes. If you don't make it up to there, then you're not acceptable to God. So, all have sinned and come short. We grew up to be sinners in practice and we did that because we chose to be doing that. Hence, we are desperately in need of a Savior.

So, if you study sins and personal sins, let me say it this way. I think one of the things that the Holy Spirit does to a growing believer is that he educates him about the awfulness of his sins. He shows you. And not only that the sins himself, but he shows you, you know, the fact that you do some overt thing and you really think that's terrible, those aren't the deadly ones. The deadly ones are the covert ones. You know, pride, envy, jealousy, you know, those are the real deadly suckers. And you always sort of shove those over here so you don't have to think about them.

Well, the Spirit of God's got news for you. you're going to learn about those. And the reason he does that is he wants to show you your history in Adam. Why God had to go through what he did in order to save you. At the same time though he's showing us Christ as we grow so that we don't go nuts about what we see in ourselves.

Let's say that again. At the same time the Holy Spirit shows us more and more of who Christ is teaches us about our position in him so that as he reveals my old man to me, I recognize that wait a minute, that's not me, I'm in Christ. But I'm able to see more and more of this old sin about me and my capacity and ability and my practice of sin that I never could even tolerate before then, but I can now because I know that I'm free. But I get to see it, because God doesn't want us to be ignorant about that.

And the reason He doesn't is because if we're going to be of any use to Him, we can't be dancing around about sin. We've got to know what it is and the evilness of it. And we all at one point or another in our spiritual growth come to, in me that is in my flesh draws no good thing. No good thing.

This is a quote from the Apostle Paul. After he's saved, and after he understands that he was identified, crucified, buried, and resurrected with Christ, he's had a fight with the lost system, he understands grace, and he's still fighting, in me there dwells no good thing in my flesh. Whose flesh did he say it was? His. His own. It was his.

All of this is done by God so we can appreciate the remedy that God has provided for us. We hear the term around this church, identification. If you don't understand the necessity of identification, you never appreciate what it is and how freeing it is. I think the Spirit of God is pretty thorough in spiritual growth to show people their sinfulness.

Now, they don't like it. I don't like it. And He does it in a million ways. But then at the same time, we're beginning to learn and growing and understanding, well, okay, I see who I am. I see that my flesh is not good. There's nothing about me that's redeemable. But look what God has done. I am free. I can walk away from this because he tells me I can't.

So I want you to appreciate the fact that part of spiritual growth has to do with discovering what a dirty dog you really are in the flesh. Now what did you say? The dirty dog part? I am going to get hearing aids, but maybe next month. I need them too. Now what did you say, that last part? I don't know, I can't remember. Help him.

When we really realize how ugly our sin in nature can be and just how evil it really is and God allows us to see that, that we realize what dirty dogs in a sense we can be if we fall to that flesh because it's an evil, ugly, horrible thing. And if we are... Okay, that's enough.

In other words, he wants us, the Holy Spirit wants us to see the things that are sinful. That's a good way to describe it. So he wants us to see it, but he doesn't want to drag us. No, he wants us to see the source of the sinful thing and all of that so that we can appreciate what he's done. Okay, that's good. I'm not going to call AAA if I don't have a flat tire and I'm not out of gas. I don't need them. I'm not going to submit to the work of the Spirit of God in my life to submit me to the cross if I don't think I need it.

Well, I was thinking too, when the Spirit shows you that, the propensity is to feel bad that you're that way or that you did that or whatever. And yeah, it may have been really crummy But the answer is not to try and fix that up or... Yeah, whenever he showed me that, I always blamed it on you. You're the fault. You're my problem. In a way, as you grow, to a tiny extent, we start to see sin through the same eyes of God as it is so you'll be honest. understand how he sees it and how hurtful it is. And at the same time that you really are separated from it. He does not see you in that mess anymore because he knew the depths of the evilness of the old man long before we did.

But he doesn't want us ignorant. He wants us to know what's going on. No believer gets to walk around in the nosebleed section without being down on the floor learning. We're all down on the floor, we're all in the game, we're all learning. And I can't walk beside somebody else who the Lord is bringing along through this revelation of sin in Christ unless I know. Because I don't know what to say unless I haven't been down there. What we see in Romans almost is a pattern in every believer's life. The crucifixion and the thing, you may not know all that, but it's going to take you through Romans 7. Almost everybody goes through the Romans 7. I agree. If it's not the, you know, whatever program of the day where you keep trying to fix up, you keep trying and you fail. And that's what Paul experienced, I'm trying to fix, I'm trying to make, I'm trying to do. And it's the growth pattern.

And the hardest part, and I think a lot of times in The Hungry Heart it explains that, I think, as you said, it's not for the new believer. The new believer is kind of, as you're established, then he starts exposing you to who you are in your Adamic side. And that's the hardest thing to identify and say.

Well, it takes you to Romans 7 where you go back to, it was the best thing in Romans 6. is to be crucified. That's the only answer. But he takes you through, I think, Romans 7 to get you back to Romans 6, where that was the right thing. And there's no good thing in my flesh.

And it's just, it's a spiritual growth part, but it's really, you know, everybody goes through this process, I think. I think they do too. And I don't think, I think if they're not instructed that they are going to go through it, Then what happens? If they don't understand grace or identification, they're given a bunch of rules to try to combat it. It's an endless loop. What's the big problem with the rules? You can't beat them. Well, even worse than that. They make it worse. It makes it worse. That's the problem. Okay, now we're going to have to look at some scriptures. Let's go to Romans chapter 5. 12-19.

Now, what this is going to tell us, if you are studying the book of Romans, we have come down now through, God has explained to us in the first two and a half chapters why no man, whether moral or not, religious or not, is not acceptable to him. All men have fallen short of the glory of God.

Then he lays on us salvation. And then he shows us in chapter 4 an appreciation to some degree of the salvation we have. And then 5.1 through 5.11 talks about the grace of acceptance. And he introduces a couple of interesting things there. One is he introduces the Holy Spirit who sheds abroad in our hearts a love for God. And two is we learn that suffering is going to be part of the deal. Right? That's what we learn.

But up until Romans 5.12, there's one really interesting thing.

Every time you see the word sins, it's S-I-N-S. Sins. Sins. Sins. And it's all the product of the sin nature. Up until 5.12, he's dealing with the product of the sin nature. When we get to 5.12, He's going to take on the source of those sins. And the word will change from plural to singular. And if you could see the Greek, you would see that S-I-N in Greek will have a definite article in front of it. So if you were reading Greek, it would say the sin, the sin, the sin. So it changes.

When you get to 5.12, the conversation totally changes from sins, the acts, the behavior of the sin nature, and now we're going to talk about the source. And over the next two chapters in Romans, God is going to say, here's the source and here's what I did about it. Romans chapter 5, verse 12. My favorite word in all the scripture, therefore. What's the therefore, therefore?

Everything before. Okay, we're coming to a new set of understanding. Through justice, through one man, sin, singular. All your Bibles have singular? Sin entered the world. What is he talking about? The sin. The sin. One man, through one man, and who was that? Barack Obama? No. Donald Trump? Now you're getting close. Through one man, the sin nature came into the world. Who's the man? Adam. Our boy Adam. The sin nature entered into the world. The sin nature was not in the world before then. Really? You mean the evolutionists are wrong? I think so.

And death through sin. So two things came into the world in those two phrases. The first one was sin and what came with it? Death. So, one of the biggest problems that evolution has is that they want to say that there's evolve, evolve, evolve, death, death, death, death, not till Adam. Not till Adam sinned, there wasn't any death anywhere. Because death was really simple. God said the soul that sins, it will surely die. So if there's no sinning, why do you have to die? Why do the dinosaurs die? They didn't sin.

Adam's the head of the race. that he's ahead of is going to die. Sin comes into the world through this one man and along with the sin comes this terrible consequence called death. What's death mean? Separation from who to who? From God and the creature. So here we go, and death spread to all men. Why? Why does it spread to all men? Next phrase. Oh my goodness.

So not only do we have a position of sin, but now we've got the practice. So in one verse, God has said, look, this thing of sin nature has come into the world through one man, Adam, and death came with it. Because the only consequence of sin is death. And it spread to all men. Not only because they were sons of Adam, but because they were practicers of sin. They have sin natures.

Are you alright with that so far? We could spend a lot of time on this verse, but this is a really good verse to understand two things. One, that we've changed the conversation now from bad behavior, sins, to the cause of those sins, the sin nature. And once we've changed this conversation, the remedy in everything gets different in terms of understanding. Now, listen to this. For until the law Sin was in the world, but sin was not imputed when there is no law. coming into the creation really did accomplish rather than what you were hoping it would accomplish. Let's close.

Dear Father, how we thank you for your word, how careful you are to teach us the true nature of sin, sins, and your remedy for both, and how you have recreated this in your Son, the Lord Jesus. perfectly acceptable to you now, and we pray in His precious name, Amen.