Which Side of the Cross - Lesson 5

OK, so we're in lesson five and we actually what we're doing is we're working our way through Romans five, 18 through 21. Just a quick recap. What's interesting about Romans five, six, seven and eight. is that it's the first discussion in the Word of God about what God intended to do, not about sins, S-I-N-S, the acts that the sin nature produces, but about the source. And he has taught us that sin came into the world by one man, sin nature, and that was Adam. passed upon all men, all men died because all men sinned in error. And he's contrasting in these verses, he's contrasting what both men bring to the table.

The interesting thing about Romans 5.12 to the end of actually chapter 8 is that it's a clear understanding of why God did the thing he did and the way in which he did it, and why he made Adam the head of the human race, and why he allowed the accrual of sin to all men, and why the Lord Jesus Christ has come and he is now the last Adam and the head of the new race. And God isn't fixing anything up in the old man. Nothing. He's not making anything over. He's not doing a renovation project on the same old house. He's not doing that.

He's starting brand new. And He's starting brand new through this new man, the Lord Jesus Christ. And we're studying We began a study on Wednesday night in the book of Hebrews. I've taught Hebrews before, but I'm struck with the fact that Jesus had to die.

He came to do that. Death meaning separation. He wasn't a martyr. They didn't take his life from him. He freely gave it and that's what he came here to do. Why? Because there had to be the beginning of a new race of men with all new principles, holiness, righteousness, no sin. And that's what the Lord Jesus represents. And what these verses and these chapters do, they spell out the mechanics of how God did it. See that? This is how he did it. And he did it, he starts out in 5.12-21 talking about the two men and what they bring.

And when we get to 6, We're going to see how we pull that off to take us out of a total association with Adam and unite us with a total association with the new man, the resurrected Christ. So we're down to question number three in lesson five. We contrasted obedience from disobedience and we talked about the law. Was the law given to me as the first Adam or the last Adam? Now the question is, what did Christ say his work in this world was? And the verse that I quoted, and I forgot to put the reference down, this is the Lord Jesus talking. He said, the Son of Man, what does the term Son of Man mean? What does that term mean? Talking about himself, he is the son of man. What is that?

He's got a human mother. Say that? He's got a human mother. Okay, keep adding to that. And a godly father. And he was the father of man. 100% man. What it meant was, what it is, it's a synonym for him being a representative man. He represents all men in the fact that he's the son of man and he came to give his life a ransom. That's what he came to do. Through the eternal spirit he offered himself without blemish to God. He came to be a sacrifice, and he came to be a spotless sacrifice.

That's what he came to do, and I think we really need to understand that that is really why he's here. Yeah, 33 years he lived an impeccable life, three plus years of ministry, and all he came to do was to die, to give himself a ransom. Why did he have to do that? Why did he have to die? He's not fixing broken mankind. He's not fixing it. See, we really do have that mentality that he came to fix something. He didn't come to fix anything. He came to die.

To be a ransom. What's a ransom do? If I said, well, I've got to ransom you, I gotta come up with whatever they want to get you back. But this ransom requires no money, no property, it requires death. Why that? Blood? Does it have something? Yeah, why blood? But why the death? Why do we have to have a dying? Why is that important? So that we can have life. We'd have life.

It's not the shedding of blood, there's no forgiveness of sin. Forgiveness of sin? Okay. How about satisfying the offense against the Father? Satisfying the offense against the Father? We had to be separated from the sinful nature of the Resurrection. Do you get that?

That dying means that, you know, we have this mentality that I'm still the same old jerk I've always been and Christ did all this wonderful stuff for me. No. You died with Him. We got, you know, all of that's left behind. He died so that we would have life, newness of life. What's newness of life? It's a new kind. Did you see that?

I mean... I was just thinking, I think we as Christians think quite a bit about what we died from, but I think what you're pointing to is what we died to. To. So there's really a forward looking and there's also But most of Christianity is concerned with what we've been saved or died from. Yeah, that's true. Not who we are as a result of it. Yeah, there's very few believers that look at themselves as being somebody other than what they thought they were before they were saved. Yeah, I'm just, I'm that guy, but I'm saying no. Yeah, my sins are gone. Courtney. I was thinking, reading the Hungry Heart this morning. Yeah.

As our substitute, he went to the cross alone without us. pay the penalty of our sins as a representative. He took us with him to the cross and there Inside of God, we all die together with the Lord Jesus. We may be forgiven because He died in our stead. We may be delivered because we died with Him. God's way of deliverance for us, a race of hopeless incurables, is to put us away in the cross of His Son and then make a new beginning by recreating us in union with Him, the Risen Living One.

It is the Holy Spirit who will make these great facts real and true in our experiences. We depend upon Him. I'm probably jumping a little bit too far ahead, but the reason the cross is so critical to us is that it ends everything in association we have with Adam and we start brand new in Christ. There's no sense in which I as a believer can say, I used to be. I didn't used to be nothing, I'm dead. You see that? It'd be like somebody laying in a coffin and he's got a list of stuff he used to be. Yeah, he used to be alive.

You made me say something like the sin nature is these things, which is evident that that's where my trust was in this instance, and so that is what sin nature is and will always be. It's not who I was, it's who sin nature is. See, I have an identity before I'm saved with Adam and his sin nature. And I've got the same nature. And I'm exactly like Adam. Anybody who entertains this thought that if I'd have been in the Garden of Eden I wouldn't have done what Adam did, nonsense. You'd have done exactly what he did because you're just like him. We're all in that mold.

And so we come along and someone presents the gospel to us and we believe it and we are quote-unquote saved. But our mentality is that the same old rat got saved. What identification shows us is that the same old rat died. But here's the problem we've got. It's a positional truth. It's something that God says is true of us. And as we walk around in the earth, we don't get the new body yet, right? Because this body is going to die. It's going to cease to function.

And the sin nature doesn't go anywhere. It is still roaming around in there. It's like the Republicans won the election, but the Democrats didn't go anywhere. They're still there. and they're still trying to do what they do. Your sin nature isn't going anywhere, but from a positional standpoint, you have been separated from it. You do not have to respond to it. Do you see that? So, moving on now, watch what God does.

The law came in alongside what? Verse 13. Somebody read verse 13, 513. 13 For until the law, sin was in the world, but sin was not imputed when there is no sin. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam unto Moses, even those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam. It was a type of him to come. The law entered that the offense might abound, but where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.

So the point I'm asking here is, the law came in alongside what? Now notice, alongside. Alongside. What did it come in alongside? The law came in alongside the sin nature. The law came to your sin nature and said, you know that stuff you do? You can't do it anymore. And if you do, you're going to die. You're going to be separated from God. The hammer is going to come down on you. It came alongside your sin nature for what purpose? Why did it come God gave the law to the Jews to do what? What was it designed to really do? Was it designed to give them an avenue whereby they could become righteous? Was it designed to give them a set of rules so that they could say, well, I got one through nine and I'm doing pretty good. I hope you grade on the curve.

He said, well, you forgot. I gave you 600 and whatever, and you've got to do them all, every single one. And if you break one, you break them all. Imagine if you're sitting there, a self-righteous Jewish guy or a self-righteous Christian guy, and you decide that the law is for you. So you get out the book with the 600 plus in them and you say, I'm going to do all of this. How's that going to work out for you? It won't. Why won't it work out for you? Because the law causes sin to amend. So question five goes with four.

It says, what did the law's arrival accomplish regards sin? Notice the question S-I-N. I'm not talking about your sins. What did it accomplish? What did it do? I just wrote, so sin with increase. I got that, but I don't understand what that means. Okay. That's a really good point. If you were two years old and I said, put that in front of you and didn't say anything about it, you may or may not notice, but if I said to you, don't touch it, What are you going to do? Touch it. Touch it. Why?

Because I've just put a law next to your sin nature that said don't do this. And the sin nature's character is such, I'm going to do what I want and you can't tell me. That's the nature of the sin nature. So imagine getting a stack of 600 plus things that you can't do or you're supposed to do and they slide in alongside you. What's your sin nature going to do? What's it going to do? It's going to go nuts. Really? Yeah.

I mean, those of us who were raised in a quote-unquote Christian environment and where we were under a law system, how long did it take you? It's various years, but you begin to understand, I can't do what they want me to do. There's something about these rules that they give me, I just can't do them.

And so I'm sneaky about it. I don't tell them. I hide what I'm doing. I don't want to be exposed. But they keep pounding on me that I've got to do this, and I've got to do this, and I've got to do this, and I better be doing this, and I better be doing this. And then once you kind of get away from the parental pressure or whatever, you decide nobody's watching.

I can do what I want. What is that? I can do what I want. That's the sin nature. You know? The sin nature says, I can do what I want. What are you laughing about? Your sin nature? Sounds a lot like Nick Mitchell. Happy birthday, Nick. Nick might have just discovered he had one of those sin natures. So the law comes alongside my sin nature to do what the word says. Through the law is the knowledge of sin. Now here's what's interesting.

Back in verse 14, it says that men were dying even though they weren't under a law from Adam to Moses. Why were they dying? Death reigned. Death reigned. But the word says, you didn't commit any offense against the law. How come you're dying? Because you have a sin nature. Sin nature is not redeemable. You might be redeemable, but that nature is not.

So God says, okay, that group of guys that I call Jews, that I put in place, they want the law, so let's give it to them. So he gives it to them, and what does it do? It defines the sin. It gives them the knowledge that, oh, you know, doing that specific thing that you didn't think was really, it is bad, it's evil, and if you do it again, you know, you're going to get hammered.

It began to catalog sins, and we as human beings began to be knowledgeable about what our sins were that we weren't before. We weren't before. But if, you know, if I tell you you can't drive over 30 miles an hour, if you've never had that law, but now you know that I'm not supposed to drive over 30 miles an hour, although I've been driving 40 my whole life, I've got to slow down. Because now there's a definitive proclamation that says 30's it, you can't go faster than that.

Well, now I have the knowledge. Does that make me culpable? Sure does. Sure does. So it reveals sin to me. So the law comes in alongside, not as in any sense a means of salvation, but that Israel, and through Israel all of us, might discover guiltiness by breaking the law, for the law gives no power to keep it.

That's the other interesting thing. The Reformed covenant theology says this, that we have been saved from the penalty of our sins by faith in the person and work of Christ. We have been indwelt by the Holy Spirit in order that we might keep the law. That's their theology.

That isn't what Romans 5, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 20 says. It says the law came in alongside that sin might go nuts So don't ever think, I think, in your mind that you've been indwelt by the Holy Spirit to obey the law. What are you indwelt by the Holy Spirit to do? What's he there to do? Guide you, comfort you, give you wisdom. Comfort me, give me wisdom, all wrong answers. Well, he's been doing that for me, so I appreciate it. We need to go back and read John chapter 14, 15, 16. John 14, 15, 16. And talk to our kids downstairs, they know. What's the Holy Spirit here to do?

Convince and convict. Convince and convict. That's his job. Convince the world of what? Sin? Right? Is that all? And what's he here to do for the believer? What's his job vis-a-vis the believer? Well, he lives in our heart. Think about it. What did the Lord Jesus say that he was going to send him to do? I thought he said to comfort. He's going to remind you of everything that I said.

So his job is to reveal Christ to the believer. His job is to reveal Christ to the believer. Without him, there's no intimacy with Christ. None. His job is to link us, walking around on the earth, to an intimate personal fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ and the heavenlies. That's his job.

He's also, which is the job he doesn't like to do, but he does it, he restores us, he convicts us, convinces us of our sinfulness and he restores us to fellowship. But the main purpose of his existence within the body of Christ is to reveal personally the person of Christ to every believer. So that all of us, every one of us, would have an intimate, personal, fellowship, relationship, knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ now. Now, when you die, now. And wouldn't that comfort you? Oh, yes, it would. Alright. It would. So he comforts me, and I'm sticking to that. Okay. I would too, if I were you. I'm going to.

It's interesting as you study the Word of God, you find out the roles that the Godhead has in this, I want to call it a package of salvation that we've got, that all three members of the Godhead are involved in that, and they are involved in the ongoing process of the believer's life, every second of every day.

How does grace superabound where sin abounded? Where sin abounded, grace overflowed. How does that happen? The first Greek word for where sin abounded is the word for, sin means to increase, to be augmented, while the second Greek word, I can't say it, It means to abound beyond measure, to overflow.

So here's the scenario. You've got sin. You've got a sin nature. And the law comes in next to the sin nature and causes it to do what? Abound. So that's the setup. But now here is grace that super abounds over sin. Does that make sense? Did I say that right? And the law. I look at grace this way. Grace is like the environment that we live in. It's not a commodity. It's not a six pack. It's the whole environment that the believer lives in. I hate to use this example, but I think it's a good one.

A couple of years ago there was a program on TV called The Dome. Anybody watch that program? This invisible dome comes down and it isolates this city or this town where the people that are in it can't get out and nobody from the outside can get in. And they can walk up to it and wave it to people on the other side, but they're stuck inside this thing and they can't get out. We're stuck inside this dome of grace and we can't get out. and we breathe it.

We live it. It's part of the environment we're in. The problem is that within that dome, within that environment, I've got this dying body with a sin nature, and here comes the law and sin is abounding. But the environment I live in is grace. And grace super abounds over law and sin. Ever think about it that way? Maybe I should ask it this way. Have you ever experienced that? Where your sin nature is going nuts but grace so super abounds over it?

No? Then you guys don't mess with the law? You don't mess with grace? You don't mess with either one? So the word tells us that where sin abounded, grace super abounded. Now is he talking about Jews or Christians? So, would you say that the Jewish nation, the Jews that were under the law, were they also under grace? Answer, no, they weren't. They were totally, explicitly under a law system. Now, if that's true, how does a Jew ever get saved?

Because if he really is inherent to the law, Sin is superabounding in his life. What does he do? What does he do? And you think about this is God's program. God gives the Jewish nation the law, the Mosaic law, and he specifically states it causes sin to abound. What does a godly Jew do? What does he do at that point?

I think I don't want to be a Jew anymore. I'm going to become one of those Gentiles, because they don't have... I'm stuck. I'm born a Jew. What does a godly Jew do when he realizes that the law is causing him to sin? Would he even realize such a thing? What do you think? Now understand, this is after Paul's converted, I'm talking about before then. Before Christ shows on the planet, the Jews are under a law system and this says the law was given alongside, came alongside the sin nature so the sin would abound. Right?

What does a Jew do? He says, well, I'm just cooked, I guess I'll go to hell with the rest of these guys. What does he do? A godly Jew. He turns to the sacrificial system which provided temporary covering over. Tears his clothes. What's that? Tears his clothes.

Along with the law, God gave Abraham promises. He said, I'm going to do these things. So a Jew was forced to live by faith. You don't have to live by faith and be under the law. It just says, do it. If a Jew said, this sacrifice that I'm doing will cover my sins, what am I doing? I'm trusting that God said this would cover my sins, so I'm going to do it to cover my sins. The problem a Jew had with all these laws, he better be a rancher with lots of animals. The blood never stopped flowing out of that temple. Never. It was like a river. Night and day, 24-7, they're stiffing the goats. All the time.

Because you can't stop sinning, especially with the law in place. A godly Jew would have to turn to the Lord and His promises and His proclamations about the system and say, I'm trusting in that. You had to force a Jew to live by faith. Force them. Because otherwise they wouldn't. Go back and study John's gospel. You can tell. They are not living by faith.

You talk about the ultimate political correctness. It's a mosaic law. So here comes this new thing now called grace. And now it's... I'm sorry. I was looking at Galatians 3, 23 and 24 and I thought it might be the perfect time to tie that all together because it talks about, but before faith came we were kept in custody under the law being shut up to the faith which was later to be revealed. Therefore the law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ so that we may be justified by faith. Right.

How did a Jew get justified in 200 BC? How did Abraham get justified? By faith. How does any Jew get justified? By faith. The system hasn't changed, that part of it. Even if he was under law, he got justified by believing God. That's how he did it. Now he doesn't have the gospel as we know it, but he had what God had revealed to him. And if you believed him, guess what? It's just interesting that they believed that they were in custody of the law. The law had them shackled down. Even though they were believing by faith, they were still shackled. There was no freedom.

Verse 25 says, but now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. We don't need this tutor. Freedom. You don't need the environment, because you've got a new environment called grace. And no longer is it temporary, but a permanent sacrifice. That's exactly right.

So the guy that I love, I think his name was Ananias, he was the guy that was in the temple day and night. And he was John the Baptist's father. And he served the Lord. He never left the temple. He knew, I'm not getting out of here. I'm staying. This is where my salvation is. But God had promised him, because he was a faithful man, that he would show him the Messiah before he died. Is that the right guy? I think I do.

Sin reigned, how does grace reign now? Now think about this. You have to understand that sin is a reigning principle. If you live in an environment where something or somebody reigns over you, you don't have a choice. They dictate what your deal is. Right? Sin is a reigning principle. It's tough for us as Americans because we all think we can do whatever we want. Not true.

But now grace has come in and it is now a reigning principle. What's a principle? It's the way a thing works or operates and it does it the same way every time. Sin, the operating principle of sin, is sin and death and operates that same way every time. And when the law comes along that principle, it explodes.

So, the question is, sin reigned, how is grace to reign now? Notice the verse says that grace should have its own kingdom where death had its kingdom. What was the kingdom of sin? Death. Everybody who lived in that kingdom lived under the umbrella of death. Now grace should have its own kingdom and that of course through righteousness.

That is that all divine claims should be first righteously met at the cross and thus that all of us should live through Jesus Christ our Lord. So if you and I were condemned in Adam's sin, it's plain that to be justified, we've got to be cleared of all of that, don't we? Not only from our own sins, but from our condemnation in Adam. Was Adam condemned? That Adamic race condemned? The whole race is condemned.

How do you get out of that? The idea is that I've got to somehow get out of that condemnation. If all of us were rounded up and we were, like a J. Vernon McGee says, if you were arrested for being a Christian could they prove their case? So we all get arrested for being Christians and they prove their case and we're all sentenced to death. And they're going to take us down to the L.A. Coliseum and they're going to put a little hole in the front of everybody's head.

And you think, I don't want to do that. How am I going to get out of this? How are you going to get out of that? If I'm living in an environment where sin reigns and death because of sin, how do I get out of that? I don't want to go to the Coliseum. I don't want them to put a hole in my head. I don't want to die. How do you get out of that in this context?

What Christ did has got to cover the whole issue of sin. He's got to cover the entire thing. He's going to go take the punishment for me. He's going to take the compensation. But the problem is I'm still attached to all of you guys who got condemned.

And I want to get out of there. And the only way out is by faith in Christ. And when you leave, you end up in this environment, this principle, reigning principle of grace. So define what grace is. And I'm going to want Macaulay's. Macaulay's is good. We'll go with theirs. What is grace as a reigning principle? What is it? You should know what it is, you're living in it. What is it? Life in Christ. Is there anything in grace where I must do this in order to be blessed? Is there anything about grace that says I have to comply in order to get the reward? I have to obey so that I can stay and live under grace? Does that sound like grace? The reformers have this theology that says there's a thing called the covenant of grace.

What's wrong with that statement? What's a covenant? What is a covenant? A promise. A promise? It's actually a transaction. It's a deal. If you and I have a covenant, I'm going to give you a buck and you're going to give me the pen. The pen, right? We have a covenant.

Is grace like that? Grace is free. It's free. It means I get the pen and I don't have to pay. And I can disagree with you and I'm still under grace. That's exactly right. That's a great example. Under grace God has done everything. There is not a single Once you're in grace, there's not a single requirement that we need to do in order to be pleasing to God. He already did it all in His Son. It's all done. So let's talk about total freedom. What is total freedom under the grace provision? That I am now free from all that we've been talking about this morning to do what?

To do what I want to do. which is abiding Christ. I'm not free on this system. It controls me. The reigning principle of sin and death keeps me from doing what I want to do. What do I want to do? What is the desire of my heart? To just rest and abide in Christ.

Free from sin. As soon as law comes in, as soon as the sin nature raises us, it's going to take you right out of this environment and put you right back here. You see that? So when it says that grace is designed for me to stay in it and receive, where law is designed to keep me in here performing so that I might receive, I already got it all. Is it proper for me to go to God and beg for anything?

No, it's not. It's more proper to go and say, Oh Lord, thank you. What haven't you done? Nothing. You've done it all. Everything. Every single thing. Grace is a very interesting concept, and that's why we're going to spend four months on grace. It's a reigning principle. It's not an add-on. It's not a pocketful. It's not a jarful. It's not a bagful. It's an environment, and it's a reigning principle. We as believers are uniquely suited out by the work of God to be in that environment. That's the only home we have is grace. We don't have another home. It's kind of cool.

So, I got all the way to Romans 6.1. Question 8.

In Romans 6.1, what does continue in sin mean? It's a question. It's a wonderful question. Somebody read 6.1. And this will set us up for next week. 6.1. Anybody?

What shall we say then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? Isn't that a great question? If we've gone through this whole exercise of law makes sin abound, but grace comes along and it super abounds over it. So the question is asked, well, what do we do? We keep on sinning so that grace may abound?

Isn't that a brilliant question? We laugh at it, but that's exactly what we're thinking. Paul's very astute that way. There's a name for it, I don't know what it is, but he asks these questions that he knows are going on in people's minds before they ask him.

So the question is, well, Should I keep on sinning so that grace may abound?" Which means, I can sin, rock and roll, let's go. The more I sin, the more grace. Isn't that a good question? I know some of you have asked that question and thought, yeah, that's right. That's what I should be doing.

So next week, because I can't go until next week when we get the answer to that question, and the answer is no, but he's going to start to explain why it's no. why it's no. So we're still on this side of the cross, but now we're bumping up against the wood.

We're getting close. Next week we'll be right in the middle of that thing. Which is cool, because we're going to get free then. Or put it this way, we're going to learn about the freedom that we already have. So we will pick up Question 8 and we'll finish out and then depending on how we go, we'll go to Lesson 6. Right here, the next week or two or three is the crux of the class. This is right where it happens. I'm going to close a little early, so let's close. Dear Father, how we thank you for your grace. We thank you that it's an overwhelming environment that we are so pleased to live in. We're so privileged by all that you've done through your son, the Lord Jesus. And we pray in his precious name. Amen.