Which Side of the Cross - Finish Lesson 2, Start Lesson 3
Courtney Hemenway · Jan 29, 2017
Which Side of the Cross, No. 04
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492654743033

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

Alright, we'll continue with lesson 2. I think we got through question 7. We're on question 8, I believe. So, lesson 2, question 8, of which side of the cross do you live on, class? So, question 8. Do all believers share a common salvation? That's a yes or no question. And they all spoke up and said, yes. So, are there levels of salvation?

No. Does it matter how good you are before you are saved? No. What about how bad you were? I tried to put a phrase on the good side of it, but yes, that is the flip side of that. So does it matter how long you had been saved? for your salvation. Does it matter? You get points for years. That was it. He has been saved 50 minutes. Does it have the same salvation as somebody who has been 50 years?

Yes. Yes. Okay. And then the verse 40. before by grace you've been saved through faith and that not of yourself it is the gift of God there isn't any level that you get a bigger gift if you're a little better or you get a little smaller gift if you're bad so common salvation so question nine what are the three phases of salvation this one may put you for a little bit of a looper phases, not differences of quality, but phases.

There are three different phases of salvation. Would you say the penalty, the power, and the presence? That's getting to it. Yeah, and that gets to the root of what I'm looking at on the phases of salvation, because the three Ps, penalty, power, Presence. Right. So you have all three of those, but what are those phases? When you're freed from the penalty, when is that? So that is past. Freed from the power, present. And the presence, future. So the three phases of salvation are past, present and future.

So, and that really goes to the three P's of sin, which is in the past you've been saved from the penalty, in the presence we are being saved from the power of sin, and in the future when we shirk these skeletons, we'll be freed from the very presence of sin. So again, you're saved from sin's penalty, saved from the power, we are being saved from the power, and we will be saved from the very presence of sin. So, looking at the past aspect of our salvation, let us notice that we are said to be already saved, in possession of eternal salvation.

And if you look at 2 Timothy 1.9, who has saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity."

So again, the past, we have been saved. and Titus 3.5-7 also, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace, we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

Again, past. Salvation. The minute you believe, penalties have all been taken care of. Right? Done. Okay? We have been saved to have a present salvation from the snares of Satan and the allurements of the world and the lusts of the flesh. So now, that was the past, which was the penalty. Now, are we freed from the power of sin right now as believers?

No. That can be relative, I think. Well, don't you? Conditionally, yes. Yeah, conditionally. Do you still send? Oh, yeah. Well, once in a while. We'll have a separate class on that later. Yeah, I mean, The key is, do you have to sin now? Do I have to? Do you have to? No. In the past, what were you? I had to sin. You had to sin. So, in the past you had no choice. Right. And now, now you have a choice. Right. The power of sin is broken. Now, whose choice is it to sin? Yours. Mine. So, you're not under the...

Before you're a believer, you have no choice. That's all you can do is sin. When you're a believer, you have the choice to sin or not sin. But the power, you've been broken from that. Now, it's your choice to do that. Before, you didn't have a choice.

So now we're free from that power, but we still sin. But that's, again, the point being is that's our choice. We did not have to do it. like in the past. So that's now in the presence. And if you look at Romans 6, 18, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. So we were freed from sin. We now don't have to do it. We're not under the power. We don't have to do it because that's the only option we have. We've been freed from it. Now we become slaves of righteousness.

Questions? A lot of puzzling looks. So would you say that in a situation where I'm tempted to sin, that I just have to decide not to? I think you make the choice whether you do or not. Because it was the James, you know, I look away from God and I look to something else. I took my eyes off Christ and I'm looking at whatever is the lust, the temptation. So what is my choice there then? To turn back, get your focus on Christ, or I go down the path of lust, conceit, sin. I think Romans 7 is pretty clear about a man struggling against sinning. And he's trying all these methods and he discovers at the end that it's really not a what or a how, it's a who. Right, but that's what I'm saying. The focus is back on Christ. It's who. But it's do I...

It all becomes taking my focus off Christ and going on something else. And then it's the James pathway down to sin. But the whole focus is I've taken my focus off Christ and now, well, go back to the garden. What did he do? God told him to take his eyes off, look, ooh, it's a pretty fruit, I'm going to take that and I'm going to eat it. He took his eyes off God at that point and the sin was conceived. So, yes, ultimately it's our decision to take our eyes off Christ or onto whatever will distract us. But isn't it more than just a rule that you do? I mean, it's a life, right? So there's a process that goes on there.

And that's the spiritual growth, I think, and maturity. A young believer and a more mature believer, I think, is not as tempted as much. It's what we've talked about, the 700th time. On the 704th, I might get it. So it is a process of spiritual growth and understanding that You know, I think in time as you become, as he takes you through all these, and remember, he's allowed it. You know, he's allowed those temptations.

And, you know, after a while, it's like, you know, why am I doing this? But it's taken several times to do that. And so, yeah, it is a process. It's not cut and dry and done. You know, how many times have you think you've licked something only to find out you haven't? You know, when the music starts again, you go right down the same path. But I think he's taking you down that to develop maturity in you. So yeah, it is a process. All right, also Romans 6, 20 through 22.

For when you were slaves, past tense, you were free. When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. Couldn't do it. Therefore, what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the outcome of those things is death. But now, having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit resulting in sanctification, the outcome eternal life." So again, we are freed. And we have been freed from the power of sin.

Present. Present tense. We don't have to do that. As in, again, past tense. That's the only option you have. And then future salvation is when we step into eternity, we're freed from the very presence of sin. Amen. Want to be there. Okay? Any questions? Yeah? He has a little red book about the eye. An eye for an eye or whatever it is.

I'm just wondering, who is it that's really sinning? I've got an old man who's just like... I'm not quite sure, like Paul sometimes will act like, it's not really me that's sinning, it's my sin nature. Well, there are two natures in you. Yeah. Which are you yielding to? And I think that's the Roman 7.

You know, Paul said, you know, he knows inside of me, I want to do good. That's the good side of me. But within my flesh, there's nothing good. And as much as he tries and everything, what it comes down to, again, is the who. Thanks be to Christ, what the 724, when he says, you know, at the end, after all this, it comes back to Christ. That's thanks. So, there's always going to be that struggle.

And, you know, I think Hal had that switch, you know, brain, and you're switching. Who are you following? And who are you yielding to? Are you yielding to the Spirit or are you yielding to the flesh? And so, that's really what goes on in there. Am I yielding to the Spirit and who I am in Christ, or am I yielding to the flesh and who I am in Adam, who was in Adam? So, again, until we shirk this skeleton, we're going to have that battle. And that's where the future is, will be freed from the very presence of it. There won't be that struggle. So, right now it's a struggle of two natures.

Very evident in Romans 7. And you know, look at who Paul is, and what he, you know, time with the Lord, all the time he spent personally with the Lord, and yet he struggled with that, until he realized what he was doing. And then you see in Romans 8, what happens in Romans 8.

Good? All right. Question 10. If there is salvation, there must be a savior. Who is he? This is the Luke Jenkins answer. Luke Jenkins would always, any answer to any, what's the answer? Jesus! Jesus! So, the salvation of the Savior is Jesus Christ, and if you look at a couple of verses, 1 John 4 14, we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.

So who is the Savior? Christ. Then 1 Timothy 4 10, For it is for this salvation we labor and strive, because we have fixed our hope on the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of believers." So again, the Savior is Christ. So, salvation has a Savior, and it's Christ. Any questions? Any other answers besides the Luke Jenkins answer? All right. And then question 11.

Why is he the only one who could be our savior? Well, he was without sin. That's good too as far as remember like replaces like and those things and why it had to be a man and the exchange and all that. The funny part is, Mike gives some of the answers and we expand and do a bunch of different things. Mike's answer to this one, see Lesson 1. We can paraphrase all things, but if you go back to Lesson 1, that basically explains why Christ was the only, or He's the only one who could be our Savior. And really, because he had no sin, he was a perfect payment for our sins. And then you have the whole exchange there and the substitutionary life. So, any questions? Mike, it's all yours.

You know, I just had to do Lesson 3 because I got a cold. I don't get colds very often. So everybody got a copy of Lesson 3? The first question in Lesson 3 is, why is it important to know something personal about our history in Adam? Why is it important for us to know something about our history, our personal history in Adam?

You have to be able to delineate between the two. It's a great answer. You've got to know the difference. I used to have this discussion with Malloy all the time. He said, which man do you get to know first, Adam or Christ? And I said, well, we get to know Adam first because he's the one we were born with and hang out with. But when it comes to spiritual growth, We get to know Christ and then the contrast is there between what we know ourselves to be or what we thought we knew ourselves to be and who the Lord Jesus is. So there has to be, for us to grow spiritually and to begin to walk by faith in the principles that allow us to walk spiritually, we have to know something of Adam and we have to know something of Christ too. To know who we are in Adam, We must discover what Adam was, and he was the head of the human race into which we were born. Everybody in this room and every human being I've ever met in my life all came in the human race as sons of Adam, except for Courtney.

You know, I've always been a real fan of Star Trek. Remember the original one with the... What I found interesting about that place is Gene Roddenberry was the author of all of those episodes. And whatever planet they went to, you know what all of the people on all of these different planets had? They all had sin natures. I thought, well gee, if you go to Klingon, why would the Klingon have a sin nature? You didn't come from Adam. But they all did.

Thus we can understand the nature and condition of the life we inherited from Him, the life that continues to indwell us as believers. So we've got to know something about that life. And it's not exhaustive, but we need to know how it's deceptive. There's nothing good in it. It desires to fulfill its own We use the word desires all the time.

To know the facts concerning the position and condition of our old life and Adam is to possess a vital key to spiritual growth. So how many are up to speed, pretty up to speed on the whole idea of position and condition? How many are not? Raise your hand. I should have said the other way around because nobody is afraid to raise their hand and sound stupid.

So a lot of discussion we're going to have now as we talk about identification will be either positional or conditional truth. And it's important, I think, for us as we spend time in the Word of God, when you read something and you're not quite sure you understand it, that's the very first question that should come to your mind. Am I reading something that's positional, that's true of me in my position, or am I reading something that's conditional, the way things are working out? If I said, in Adam I'll die, what would you say? Is that a positional truth or conditional truth?

It's position. It's actually both. It's actually both. So, in Christ Jesus dwells the fullness of the Godhead bodily. Position or condition? It's both. I've been crucified with Christ. Position or condition? It's position. Yeah, totally position. As we begin to find out about Adam and our history in Adam, one of the things that we're going to discover is that that is not our position anymore. Our position is now in Christ Jesus. As important it is to find out something about our history in Adam, at the same time I think we have to realize that that's not what our position is, not who I am anymore. When he was talking about the power of sin, one of the understandings about the power of sin is that if I'm positioned in Adam, I'm a slave to sin.

I don't have a choice. If I'm in Christ, I have a choice, but I have a choice to do what? My will, the will that I have that God gave us all, is designed to believe. That's what you do with your will, you believe. She exercised faith in what she saw rather than in God. That's what made it such a terrible sin. I mean, taking a bite out of a piece of fruit, big deal. But exercising your will not to believe God, that is a huge deal. So we have three aspects in our relationship to Adam. Give me a shot at those. What do you think they are? What are the three aspects of our relationship to Adam?

Oh, by the way, it's a good thing I'm not an artist because nothing is plumb. I'd have Phil do these for me. He's much better. We're working on this side of the cross. It'll be a while before we get over here. Most of what we're talking about is on the pre-crucified side. Adam over here. There are three aspects to our relationship to Adam. I'll give you one and see if you can work on the other.

The first one is our position of sin. We have a position of sin. Adam is the source of sin. We got our sin nature from him. He's the source. Now let me ask you something. A really good guy who isn't a believer, does he abide in a position of sin? I don't know, pick a guy who's a really good guy. How about Mother Teresa? There's a good one. Mother Teresa, does she have a position of sin? Did she? Sure. Sure she did. Sure she did.

You know, how about, I wish I could think of somebody. You know, I can't pick anybody contemporarily, but we look at, like, you come out of Catholicism like I do, they got all these people they call saints. Who's the latest one there, canonized, you remember? St. Paul. Well, how about the Pope? Has the Pope got a position of sin? Big time. Big time. He's a little prejudiced there. Every human being has a position of sin. Every single one of us. Because we're born into Adam. And that's a position before you're saved that everybody has. The second one is that we have the nature of sin. We've got Adam's nature. What is a nature? What is a nature? Chocolate Lab's got a nature. What is that? What? My Chocolate Lab has a nature.

What is his nature? He's a dog. He's a dog. And what does that tell me about who he is and what he does? Dogs operate a certain way, don't they? They bark. They lick. They dig. They're very friendly usually. They have a nature. All creatures have natures that allows them to act in certain ways that they do. My dog doesn't meow. He doesn't fly. He wishes sometimes he could get those squirrels he's having around. So a nature, it's like a principle, it's the way something operates. A human being has a nature of Adam and that nature operates a certain way. And that nature is sin. What's the definition of sin?

Missing the mark. So if you say it's missing the mark, What's the mark? The two girls in the back row know the answer to this. What's the mark? Okay, who's the mark? Christ. Christ is the mark. So if you miss him, you sin. Okay? So no matter how hard you try, from an Adamic standpoint, you can never hit the mark. No matter how hard you try, you can't do it. So sin being missing the mark rather than...

I think it's important for us to get over the idea that sin... there's somehow some sins worse than others and they're relative and if you're... you know, there's some really bad sinners and some really not so bad sinners, nonsense. The soul that sins, it will surely die. That's it, you know. If you sin, you're going to die.

Well, I'm born a sinner. and sin did my mother conceive me, I don't have a chance myself. The third part of the equation is my personal sins. I practice and function exactly like Adam did. You see that? So I've got a position of sin, I've got a nature of sin, and I have personal sins. That's who we are in Adam. There may be a better way to say it. So our relationship is to Adam. Okay? So, you remember that some of you older people remember who Flip Wilson was? He used to have this skit where he would say, well the devil made me do it. It would have been better said if Adam made me do it. You know? Okay?

So our position of sin, question three, is what is our position of sin? Because of the fallen nature of our, and I use the word progenitor, who was Adam the first, each of us was born into a doomed humanity. We were sure hoping that there was something good about it or something better. And here's the problem. We live in an environment, in a world, that is dead, dead to God.

Yet you turn on the news at six o'clock and you're watching it. You know what you're really watching? What do you think you're watching? You're watching death operate. Death isn't still. It moves around. Boy, you can say that. That's right. You go to the movies. What are you watching? You're watching death operate. Every TV program, every book that you've ever read is about death.

It's about sin functioning. It's never about Christ. It can be about Christ, but it may not be true about him. When's the last time you saw a movie that said, now here's the deal. God sent his son to be a savior, and if I believe in him, not only will I be saved, but he will free me from the power of sin. Seen a movie like that? I never have. The point is that when you're stuck in sin, you see everything through sinful glasses. You see death, and you try to make it look like life, and it can't. You can't. Death is separation. Separated from who? The source of life is God himself.

I heard one time that every movie you see, the subtext or whatever is Christ. Say that again. Well, I can't think of that movie. Well, anyway. where he was fighting for the truth. The Lord Jesus was? No, just a human. Oh. And they said that in a movie, if you look, if a person is striving toward the good, that actually, oh, you know. Okay, I get your point. Let's talk about that for a minute.

We're going to go all the way back to the Garden of Eden. Remember that? In the Garden of Eden, there were two trees. What are the names of the two trees? The tree of the knowledge of good and evil. What's the name? And the tree of life. Did Adam understand what evil was before he sinned? No. Did he understand what good was? There was no contrast, right? And the tree that he wasn't supposed to eat of was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

But there's this other tree in the garden called the tree of life. We believers, what's happened is we have gotten down, we've been taken out of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Somebody hauled us down the path to the tree of life and we've been placed in the tree of life. There's no contrast in the tree of life. There's no contrast between good and evil in the tree of life. It's just life. So even a movie, a book that has a focus on good versus evil, he's in the wrong tree. You can make a movie about life in Christ, no one would understand. Nobody would go to it. But see, that's the subtlety of what the world is selling.

This good versus evil thing is not really who we are positionally. Conditionally it is, but not positionally. Understand that? Make sense? So good and evil are not the issue. Life is the issue. And the Lord Jesus is life. The Lord Jesus doesn't struggle with good and evil. Does he? No. And he even said there isn't anybody good but the Father. Nobody.

So good and evil is one of those things that that we inherited from Adam when he ate the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So now we think that the ultimate of our whole existence is to do good and avoid evil. That's nonsense. The issue is whether we're going to sin or not. And sin is missing the mark. See? Totally missing the mark. Is that okay? Did I leave you somewhere?

David wrote in Psalm 51.5, in sin did my mother conceive me. And that doesn't mean his mother was committing a sin by conceiving him. The point is that all children are conceived with sin. Why? Where did he get it? Well, let's talk about David. Where did he get his sin nature? From his dad. And where did you get yours? Your mom was really nice, but your dad is a dog, right? So if we could eliminate all the men in the world, there wouldn't be any Sin Nature because there wouldn't be any people. That's the big reason why the Lord Jesus' father was not Joseph.

Life begets life. So in Adam we were declared to be dead in trespass and sins because in Adam all die. Every single human being in Adam. In the key word means united to, identified with, in Adam. The result of our position in Adam who is our source is that we are dead to God and we're alive to sin. That's what we show up with. Somebody told me when I was a young believer that they thought that so-and-so would make a great believer because he really had a lot of good qualities.

And I said, God doesn't care about your qualities, come on. If I believe what the Word of God says that all in Adam die, then nobody qualifies, including myself. Now, does this fallen nature that we get from Adam, does it ever change? No. Does it get better? No. Does it get modified? No. Does it get tired? No. It never changes and it never improves. Never. Never.

John 3.6 is such a great verse.

That which is born of the flesh, guess what? It is flesh. So you see the principle, the like begets like principle. It's true in the spiritual realm just like it is in the physical realm. I can't teach my dog through tremendous discipline to act like a Meinberg. He won't do it. He hasn't got the stuff.

Mike, that seems like something, as you grow and you're a new believer, it's kind of lots of things going on. But I think as you grow, you have to go through that process of figuring out that what God did by crucifying us was the best thing. That's, I think, a hard thing as you I think a lot of the Hungry Heart have addressed this, where really understanding that there is no good in your flesh. And when you look at most of the Christendom and the bookstores, it's how to fix up Adam, or you're now empowered to do. And it's always dealing with Adam and making it better, or shining him up. And really, the hard part in spiritual growth is understanding that There is nothing good in Adam. And that the best thing it was to crucify us. But most of Christendom doesn't realize that. And that's the problem with growth. You're never going to get growth by trying to polish up Adam. Here's the issue.

If I'm involved in a Christian environment where there's any form of legalism, And by legalism I mean, you must do this in order to be blessed by God. Who's the you must? It's Adam. You Adam, now that you're saved, must do X, Y, and Z in order to be blessed by God. When in fact the truth is, Adam, you've been crucified and you don't have to do anything but believe because I've already blessed you with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus. All of them. Oh, that's different.

Adam is so subtle that he will do anything but not do anything. Do you understand what I just said? He will do anything but not do anything. His whole desire that he has is to be relevant, to manifest himself through you and me. And he'll do it through goodness, he'll do it through charity, he'll do it through all kinds of stuff. As long as he's active, he's trucking. The problem with that is that there isn't anything from Adam that's acceptable to God. Nothing. So if you go back to the source, you see that the source is the problem, not my activity.

Now, Courtney is talking about understanding our identification. I have been of the mind that the book of Romans is basic Christianity. The first eight chapters are basic Christianity, and it's kind of the survey course. And in the sixth chapter, which is not very far in, you get the first introduction to identification. So I think it's just basic, ordinary Christian understanding to know what the identification truths are, because you can't get free in any sense from the power of sin without understanding that. And they really are pretty simple. I mean, when you think about it, they don't make any sense, but they are simple.

My old man was crucified with Christ. Are you kidding? What the heck does that mean? What's your job when you hear that verse? That's it. You just trust God. You just say, look, I don't really understand all of what you're talking about, but I trust you. And he'll show you what he means. You know, he'll show you and you'll start to get it.

So as a young believer, When you begin to understand the identification truths, along with that comes the understanding, wow, God has really put in place a system where I don't have to sin as much. I'm not really a slave to sin. I don't have to follow these rules to try to be better. I'm dealing from a position of perfection to start with. By the way, this next question, I put in there three things to define.

The sin nature, the nature of sin, the flesh and the old man. Before we get into that, I want to say this. This is probably an area which lots and lots of writers and commentators and pastors and teachers have exhaustively tried to understand. And a lot of times you read and you think, well that guy didn't get it, or I think I get it. How do you define flesh, soul, man, sin, nature, and go through all those terms and get them placed right? The most important part here is to understand what the source of our situation is.

We came from Adam. We have all the tendencies and temptations and the power of sin in Adam, but we've been placed into Christ now. And we don't have to mess with this. So we'll define some of them and we'll be adding to the definitions as we go along.

I've been a salesman all my life. There's a little bromide in selling that says you get paralysis from analysis. Sometimes you can get too smart rather than just simply trusting God about sin and trusting Him about what He did on the cross. The first question was, is it important that I know something about my history and Adam? Yeah, but I don't have to figure Adam all out in order to put him out of business. All I have to do is operate by faith in what God has already done. See the difference? With that said, let's define some terms.

What's the nature of sin? What does the nature of sin look like? I already told you what the nature of my dog is, right? So tell me what the nature of sin is. The first thing is that it's self-centered. The nature of sin is always self-centered. which is, by the way, the sin of sins. It's totally against God, and it's irreparable. This nature of sin cannot in any sense be for God, because part of its nature is to be self-centered. Now some people have really nice, warmed-over fuzzy selves, Some people have really nasty selves.

It's still self-centeredness. There are these people that are really generous, but in the middle of all of that, they want you to give them a little kudo. It really is about me. I showed you that cartoon where here's the guy at the end of the firing squad, and there are six guys with guns that are about to shoot him, and his comment is, in the end, it is about me. It's all about me.

So, for they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh. If you come from the flesh, sin, Adam, you pay attention to the things of Adam, flesh, self-centeredness, because the carnal mind is enmity against God, irreconcilable enemies, the mind of the flesh.

It's not subject to the law of God. And then he says, and it can't be. Now those who operate in legalism would try to convince you that it can be with the help of the Holy Spirit. Nonsense. It can't be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. You can't do it. But then he says, I'm carnal in Adam, so lunder sin.

And I'll stop there, Romans 8.5. We'll pick up there next week and expand and talk a little more about that. Okay, let's close. Dear Father, how we thank you for your word, how careful you are to teach us what you did and how you did to free us from not only the guilt and the penalty, but also freeing us constantly from the power of sin. And we pray in your Son's precious name. Amen.