God ordains trials & suffering to reveal His Glory - Part 1

Today we're going to look at verses 8 through 10 in chapter 4 of 2 Corinthians. We're actually going to go back a little bit and cover what we covered a little bit last week in 6 and 7. And this is going to be talking about, actually notice here that we've got a whole series of trials and sufferings, trials and sufferings, trials and sufferings. So this is the first of those.

It's pretty amazing, but the Lord has an amazing approach that he wants us to see. Could someone read 6 through 10? For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthly vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us. We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed. We are perplexed, but not in despair. persecuted but not forsaken, cast down but not destroyed, always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. with your black and white it almost looks identical. But I have some things highlighted in the overhead here. So if you look at, you know, observe carefully, 7 through 10, if you look carefully at all the punctuation, kind of track it through, the period doesn't occur until verse 10. So this is actually one long sentence. And that's going to be kind of helpful. That's going to be kind of helpful.

I'm relying upon our brother Hal, who's gone to be with the Lord, but his ministry and his insight into the scriptures are there and they're available. You can listen online if you like. In fact, I hear Jack and Winnie online talking in the class from 2004. So it's kind of cool. But I'm going to borrow some things that Hal observed. I think they're still true. Even though he's with the Lord, they're still true. So basically, we have, it's kind of the main subject verb in this, so we have, well last week we talked about tracers, so that's a good thing. Wow, I got a tracer, I like that.

But then he's going to say, we have these trials and sufferings, and that's the part we don't like to hear. But he's going to tell us as we track through this, we track all the way through that, and we also have this thing which is kind of, we have this thing called the dying of Jesus, or the dying of the Lord Jesus. What in the world does that mean? We're going to take a crack at what that means. But the bottom line is, track through the whole thing, we have treasures, we have these afflictions, being perplexed, persecuted, struck down, and we have the dying of the Lord Jesus. But the bottom line, remember when you see that or so that?

He's telling us that's the reason. That the life of Jesus may be manifest or made clear or shown in our bodies. So God has a purpose in all this. He gives us a positive with his treasure. He gives us what we would call negatives. But he wants us to have his view on those negatives. And we have this wonderful thing called the dying of the Lord Jesus. So we'll see if we can go through this. OK. So that's where we're headed. So let's just go back from last week. And Tom read it for us.

For God who said, light shines out of darkness, is the one who is shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. I highlighted that light of the knowledge of the glory of God because that's going to appear again, but it's going to be referred to as a treasure. It says, but we have this treasure, referring back to what we have in verse 6. So the treasure here is a knowledge. Treasure is information, information about our Savior, about His wonderful glory.

We'll talk about that in a second. In earthen vessels, we have it in these frail, weak vessels that are prone to illness and all kinds of things. Imagine we have the knowledge that the entire world doesn't realize it, but it's so valuable, we have it in these weak vessels. Only God would do that, put this valuable treasure in these weak vessels.

So that the surpassing greatness of His power will be of God and not from ourselves. So we won't say, well, I don't really have any part in this equation. Our part is totally by faith. That's our part in this equation. Just a couple of observations. As I mentioned, treasure here, you can put an equal sign, is equal to knowledge, the knowledge of the glory of God. And just to remember, You think, the glory of God. Well, first of all, what is the glory of God?

One part of that is, obviously he had a physical aurora, right? When he was transfigured. Peter, James, and John, they saw this blinding light. That's certainly one aspect. But boy, the thing you want to latch onto here, when you see the glory of God, think of all of who Christ is. His dying on the cross. He's our Savior. He loves all His attributes. He's holy, He's righteous, He's just. That's the sum total of the glory of God. His essence, who He really is in His character.

So this knowledge that we have, this treasure that we have, is of that essence of who Christ is. And the only place we can find that is in His Word. So that's that wonderful treasure that we have. And it says we continually have this treasure. It's continually available to us, 24-7.

And it's in the face of Christ, or actually, I like that it's in the presence of Christ. And that kind of comes from the fact that if you're face-to-face with a person, you obviously have to be probably in His presence. You know, I get in a person's face, kind of that negative aspect. If you're in His face, you're in His presence, right? So we can be, by faith, as we look at God's Word, we can be in His very presence, understanding what He has for us.

Okay, so that's kind of the beginning of this. So now we're going to kind of move from that into the part that we don't like to hear, which is tough. It's tough for me too. I mean, it's tough for all of us when you start looking at these things and you think, wow, how can this be a positive? But God says, well, you're going to have these things and I'm going to show you how it can be a positive. Okay, so I borrowed a picture from a brother, Hal. So we are having, that's that subject and verb we had before. So we have two parts to this. We have this treasure on the left hand side, the glory of God.

Actually he put the word by, it can be by or in, depending on your translation, in the presence of Christ. And we also have at the same time, we have trials and sufferings. And the King James and the New American Standard differ a little bit in the what they call each of those things. We have troubles, persecuted, perplexed, cast down.

But there's a purpose, and we're going to see the purpose as we go along. That's kind of a little diagram of how this breaks down. We're actually going to see, there's actually a third part to this, which is the dying of the Lord Jesus. You can build another box coming off that we have in that one long sentence. We have treasure, we have trials and sufferings, and we have the dying of the Lord Jesus. So we have three things that come out of that one long sentence from 7 through 10.

So what I did here, here are the four statements. Afflicted. Notice here that it has we are and it's in italics and your Bible was in italics. That's not in the original. So I think what they've done is they've tried to carry over that subject verb from farther up. They put it down here in eight just to kind of make it read smoother.

So basically we are having or we are afflicted in every way but not crushed. Perplexed but not despairing. persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed. I want to cover the left-hand part of these sentences. Afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, struck down. God says that we are having these things. He says that every believer will experience affliction, being perplexed, being persecuted, being struck down.

But then he has this but not statement. And that's what causes some real head scratching, if you will. And people have taken this different ways. Some people have said, well, but not crushed, a believer can't be crushed. These things can never happen to a believer. But the but nots can never happen to a believer. And you listen, you read, you listen, some people take that approach. But then you look at scripture, And you find that some of these things happen to believers. And some of these happen to our Savior, too. He was forsaken, right? By his Father. So you think, well, how come those but-nots, how does that fit in? Tom, you had a question?

Well, I might be jumping a gun at you. It has something to do with identification with Christ. So we won't go any further than that. We'll let you finish. Okay. Alright. We're going to move along here. But that's a challenge, if you will. And some have come down saying, hey, You know, we can't encounter those. Well, let's see what kind of track. I'm going to go through. We've got eight words to go through. It's a little bit laborious. We'll see what those eight words mean. Four of them say, God says, we're going to have those things. The other four, there seems to be a condition for that situation. OK. All right. OK. First one, afflicted. To suffer affliction, to be troubled, has reference to suffering due to the pressure of circumstances or antagonism of persons.

You might wonder, how in the world do we get all these definitions in scripture? How do you think a person gets these definitions? At least part of it. What do you think? You know, part of it, maybe they go to the Greek language and they look and they see historically what what it says. But how do you think they get a good part of this definition? Just, you know, it's not a quiz, but just what do you think?

You won't get penalized if you say something, you know. Maybe how it's used in connection in other parts of the Bible. Bingo. That's exactly right. I mean, they're no smarter than we are. I mean, they have the same scriptures that we have, and people have gone through Laboris and they've looked at the occurrence of this word afflicted.

And sometimes it's challenging because this word only occurs a few times. And that's, I think in this case, only occurs a few times. So they try to draw from the occurrences what the meaning, how it's used in the context. So some of it is the language, how the word originally, in the Greek language, but a lot of it is how is it used in a scripture verse.

So let's see here. OK. So let's look at this one here. OK. I'd like to actually read the rest of the story, so to speak. So could someone read? 1 Thessalonians 1-4. 1 Thessalonians 1-4. Chapter 3, 1-4? I'm sorry, thank you so much. 1 Thessalonians chapter 3, 1-4. Verses 1-4 and chapter 3.

Therefore, when we could endure it no longer, we thought it best to be left behind at Athens alone. And we sent Timothy, our brother and God's fellow worker, in the gospel of Christ, to strengthen and encourage you as to your faith, so that no one would be disturbed by these afflictions.

For you yourselves know that we have been destined for this. For indeed, when we were with you, we kept telling you in advance that we were going to suffer affliction. And so it came to pass, as you know." Okay, so you'll notice that the word affliction, the word that we're trying to define here, shows up, I've underlined it here, it shows up in verse 3. so that no one would be disturbed by these afflictions. And then down in verse 4 it says, for we kept telling you in advance we were going to suffer afflictions. Well what's interesting in the midst of defining this word afflictions, there's a wonderful truth that comes out. I don't want to miss the opportunity. This verse If you look in here, in verse 3, it says, it kind of is hidden there, right at the end, it says, For you yourselves know that we have been destined for this.

And that word destined, like in the King James, is approved. So God is saying that, or appointed, they were appointed to this. So God says that for the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, there's no oops. God didn't say, well wait a minute, I know, I didn't catch that one. You went down that street and I missed that and somehow you got into trouble and you're suffering this affliction and I missed it. God says no, it's not that way at all.

He says amazingly enough that the trials and sufferings that we have are ordained by Him. I mean, it sounds incredible, but that's a statement He makes about the believer. So that's to be helpful with us. When we encounter something that seems like it's an accident or maybe we messed up, Maybe we blew it, maybe we really did blow it. And something bad happened, and we're suffering for that. He's telling us here that God can use that for a purpose, and we'll use it for a purpose, and turn that into His plan and His purpose.

And just to kind of tie that one more step, in Philippians 1.16, he uses that same word, destined, and it says, it uses it in terms of the gospel, and it says, Paul's talking, I am appointed, or destined, for defense of the gospel. So, pretty amazing stuff here. So, in the midst of defining afflicted, he kind of gives us the comfort of the fact that God's in control.

Now, this is not reason to say, you know, let's see, what's the verse talking about? Where grace did abound, sin did abound much more. You don't go out and say, well, I'll just try this and see if this turns into a blessing for me. I'll go out and do something bad and see if God ordains this for me. That's not what he's thinking about, Tom. Yeah, I think you flipped the verse around. I probably did. Thanks. OK, good. All right. OK, so that's afflicted. So remember, these are the one that God says we're going to encounter. Every believer is going to encounter these.

Perplexed. Always used in the middle voice, it means to be without a way, to be without resources, in doubt, perplexed, at a loss. And so the verse is, oops. So this verse is in Galatians. My children with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you. But I could wish to be present with you now and to change my tone for I am perplexed about you. There's actually probably even a better verse. Let's read John 13 and let's read 21 and 22 about this word perplexed. So someone could read that. John 13, 21 and 22.

Now Jesus was in great anguish of spirit. Yes, yes, yes. Now Jesus was in great anguish of spirit and exclaimed, yes it is true, one of you looked at each other wondering whom he could mean. Since I was sitting next to Jesus at the table, being his closest friend, Simon Peter motioned to me to ask him who it was who would do this terrible deed. Okay, you can stop right there. Okay, read your verse 22 again, would you please? 1322. Simon Peter mentioned to me to ask him who it was who would do this terrible deed, and that's 22 in my mind.

Okay, that's interesting. It kind of misses, you know, 22 comes across as, let me just, does someone have a numeric standard? Will you read yours? I've got another one, but it says, Then the disciples looked at one another perplexed about whom he spoke. Exactly. So it has the word perplexed, our word here, or actually, At a loss, is what I have in the American Standard. So basically, it's the idea that they don't understand what's going on. What's happening here? Which one of us could betray Jesus? They didn't know who it was. They didn't know it was Judas. I guess the pet phrase today would be, this doesn't compute.

Right. And that happens, right? We're perplexed about a lot of things. Lord, why did this happen to me? You know, I was going along and something happened to me and I don't know, I can't make sense out of it. Perplexed. That's one of the afflictions that is talked about here. Okay, so now persecuted. It's the idea to put to flight, to pursue, and a couple of verses here. Pretty familiar. Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse. And then in 1 Corinthians 15, 9, For I am the least of the apostles, not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. So here's a case where you can be persecuted. And Paul actually did the thing that's being talked about. He actually was a persecutor.

And then the fourth one, struck down. And struck down only occurs A few times, it's the cast down. It's actually from this word. It's a kind of compound word, kata and balo. So that is expressed in Psalm 3724. Though he fail, he shall not be utterly cast down, for the Lord upholds him with his hand. OK, so there's the four words that the Lord talks about. OK, so now. Now let's look at the rest of the part here. But now the but not statements we're going to look at. So there's four of those.

But not crushed, but not despairing, but not forsaken, but not destroyed. So a couple questions. Can a believer be crushed, despairing, forsaken, or destroyed? And we're going to define destroyed. Destroyed is not what you think it is. So, hold on to that. Destroyed, some people think destroyed. In our time, if I say my car was destroyed, right? You'd say, probably not, it's probably in the junk pile, right? And it's not the idea of annihilation either. Anyway, so anyone want to take a, can a believer experience those four things? I've already kind of got you, baited you here already. And I think we can.

But there are some that would say, no, A key question here, will God ever be the source of the above sufferings? Will He ever crush us? Will He ever cause us to despair or forsake us? He won't. There are plenty of verses that talk about what God is going to do. So the question is, how do we get into that mess? How do we get crushed, despairing, forsaken, or destroyed? How do we get there? Think about how do I wind up?

And we're going to see pretty soon here that Paul was in one of these cases. And we read about it early in 2 Corinthians. He was in one of these four conditions. And he says he was. Which is pretty shattering. So I believe believers can be. Okay, so let's go on. So let's go through this. Crushed basically is to box in or restrain or press in.

Actually, I have the same verse twice here. One uses restrained, and the least uses compressed or narrowed. Basically, when he talks about the Corinthians, they are not restrained by us, but you are restrained in your affections. It's not exactly a very explanatory verse. This is one of the cases where there are only a few verses that talk about that.

So most of the definition comes from what the word comes from the Greek or something like that. So that's crushed. Despairing. Now this is the one that's really interesting. First of all, were the Corinthians believers? So here is at least one verse that says, yes, they could be crushed. Now it uses kind of different words, but the base word is crushed. So I'm just trying to make my case. You could tick off crushed. Corinthians were crushed.

Now despairing, to be utterly without a way, to be in a loss, to be in despair. So here's a verse that just really has been very helpful to me in understanding this. It says, and we studied this earlier in the class, for we do not want you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction, one of the other words, which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened excessively beyond our strength, so that we even despaired of our life. So Paul's saying, hey, you know, it got so bad that I didn't really want to live anymore. And so when we as believers, or maybe we're with another person, and they're believers, and they get to the place of despairing, which can happen, we should say, well, wait a minute, brother or sister, you're not alone in this.

God is with you. But look at this. Look at what Paul was just where you were at. He was despairing. Some people are so hard on themselves, they say, well, if I'm despairing, I'm a terrible Christian. I'm awful. God can't have anything to do with me. I'm despairing. I shouldn't be doing that. And I think one of the positive messages out of a negative subject is that yes, we can be there. But God has a plan and a purpose for that. And that's really a helpful verse. Go ahead.

I've noticed over the years that When we deal with trials and suffering, and we look at things like the Psalms, we go, that's in the Old Testament. So in the New Testament, we have the Holy Spirit. And we're a new creation in Christ. But when you look at the psalmist, there is a brokenness with a recognition of God's sovereignty. And as believers, we can be crushed or destroyed. But we still trust the same God of the universe. And that's an important place to be. It's not despairing, focusing on ourselves. It's despairing and focusing on the universe. How about Job? Job lost everything. If I wish he lost his wife, I'm sorry. That's terrible. But anyway, I mean, things are pretty bad.

He was down to rock bottom. Go ahead, Tom. The phrase in there was that even though he didn't have the tools like we have in the New Testament to be encouraged by the Lord, he did say, though he slayed me, yet I would trust him. Right. That's a hard thing. He was willing to accept that that was God's purpose to do that. He was willing to accept that.

Okay, so we got crushed, despairing, Forsaken. Forsaken is spoken of or by Christ and also of believers. And here's a case where the Lord himself talked about being forsaken. About the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani. That is my God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?

So there, I believe that's the case where what he's speaking of here is his separation from the father from that time period. He wouldn't have the fellowship with him. And then of men, basically, Paul talks about this particular person that deserted me or forsook him and has gone to Thessalonica. So here's forsaken.

This can be experienced by our Savior and by us. And then destroyed. I put it in red there. Destroyed is the idea is not extinction. Think about this. Every person born of a woman is an eternal being, right? They're going to eternally spend their time with the Lord Jesus, or they're going to tend to set apart from him.

So the point is, the idea of destroyed is not extinction, but loss of well-being, We don't have a lot of verses that talk what we have in John 3.16. We have that we will not perish, not be destroyed.

It's translated perish a lot of times, and actually the verse I have here in John 10.28, I give eternal life to them and they will never perish. So actually, the word perish is the same original word, and no one will snatch them out of my hands.

So basically, and then on the negative side, it talks about that the son of perdition will encounter this being destroyed or perish. He will perish. That's in John 17, 12. The last part says, and not one of them will perish but the son of perdition. So the son of perdition will have loss of well-being, will be separated from God. OK, so we've gone through the four, those four but not words. So I've put a couple of charts together on things to remember. Believers will be afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, and struck down. That's the left-hand side of those verses.

But what will be our response? I don't think you run out of options. If God is not the source of being crushed, despairing, forsaken, or destroyed, you don't have any place else to go. The only place you have to go is, it has to be our nature from Adam, our sin nature from Adam. So what will be my response to these things? Will I respond by faith? Will I respond as Job said, will I curse God and die? Will I respond that way? How will we respond?

And Paul's testimony was, and I just kind of repeat this again, is that he was despairing. But Paul didn't stay in that spot. He went on with his life. God's desire is that we respond in faith to these temptations. He tells us to abide in Me, in John 15, abide in Me and I in you. He tells us to reckon, in Romans 6-11, reckon yourself to be dead or separated from the sin nature, to realize that's true, put it down as true. He tells us to remember that He will never leave us or forsake us.

And can someone read there in their translation, Hebrews 13-5, It doesn't come across as strongly as it really is, but I want somebody to read it and I'll read it in a different version. Make sure that your character is free from the love of money. Is that the one? Yes, yes. Of being content with what you have, for he himself has said, I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you.

Okay, it comes across as kind of not a real special verse. It's just the last part. But if you look at the original language, and I don't know why the translators didn't translate it more forcefully, but that comes across in the original language. And then what I've done is I've looked at the Weiss translation, which is one of my favorites to look at in that case.

And it says, for he himself, and there's actually five negative statements here. For he himself has said, this is speaking of God speaking here, for he himself has said, I will not comma, I will not cease to sustain you and uphold you. I will not, I will not, I will not let you down. So there are five negatives. He repeats that five times.

So that's part of this whole equation, that we are to be abiding or in fellowship with the Lord. We're to be counting upon what he said on the cross. He separated us from our sin nature. And that we remember that he is always for us. And he's declared it. in the strongest way possible in 13.5, even though you can't see it in your normal translations, unfortunately.

So there's some things to remember about 7 and 8. So that's actually all I'm going to say about 7 and 8 for right now. We're going to go on to the easy part of dying to the Lord Jesus. Dying to the Lord Jesus. There it is. We'll get to it in a second. Any last thoughts on these trial, the things mentioned in these verses here? You can ask later if you want. Okay, so actually, I kind of took the bottom part of Hal's picture here and he kind of points out here are the things that come out of his treasures and all these trials and sufferings.

Abiding in him in our trials, God beaming the glory of Christ from our hearts, the glory of Christ illuminated in our hearts, amen. And then his eternal purpose to reveal the glory of Christ through us, and the Excellency, our power through us. As we walk by faith, God is glorified. As we endure the trials, trusting in Him, God is glorified. So the next verse is, always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifest in our body.

What's interesting is actually, Randy's trying to get the do some more on this. So this is not the last time we're going to talk. I kind of split it maybe at the dust spot, but there are some more verses that will talk about this topic here. So we're going to start the conversation here today. Always is at all times ever.

Caring about is the idea to carry about, to bear about, It's used literally in Mark 6.55. Actually, they carried a sick man. They carried him around to Jesus. They actually were physically carrying him about. So that word is kind of used in a metaphorical sense here. We're carrying about in our body the dying of Jesus. Body here is kind of a typical thing you would think of as a body, a typical word that's used. and a whole bunch of scriptures.

It's use of a living person in Matthew 6.22, of a dead person in 27.52, and also it's our resurrection body. So this body is our earthly body that we have here, and also it speaks of our resurrected body too.

Okay, and it's the dying, and what's interesting, looking across the word of the Lord Jesus is in some translations, but not in the New American Standard. And I actually couldn't figure out exactly why it was left out. But anyway, I put it in. I think the dying of the Lord Jesus probably is more appropriate. And dying here is the word, I think, necross is dead or death. It's actually the idea of putting to death is something that's kind of ongoing but it speaks of action or whatever it actually in some it could be the the act of killing putting to death you know our Savior was put to death putting to death so this is a putting to death of the Lord Jesus so now the question comes what does always carry about in their body the dying of Jesus mean And that's the question. Our bodies in their present form just ain't going to cut it in the heavenlies.

Okay, that's a good point. That's a good point. That's a good point. Our bodies, soul and spirit, and our soul and spirit go to be with the Lord. So our bodies are left here, right? And that's a good thing because we're going to find out where our bodies are where our sin nature resides. And that's going to be part of what we're going to see here shortly.

Actually, one of the questions is... I'm going to avoid answering the question immediately. I want to go to the purpose, the so that part, and show you the purpose for caring about in our bodies the dying of Jesus first. Let's look at that first, and then we'll come back. Let's look at the purpose for that, and then we'll come back to this question. So that the life of Jesus also may be manifest in our body.

So that with a purpose that So first of all, it's it's his life not our life, right? So it's his life that is to be manifested right in Galatians 2 20. It says Can someone quote that? Is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me that's in the middle part for that so it's his life that is to be shown out or to be manifest and manifests is the idea to to make visible, clear, and we aren't doing it. It's in the passive voice.

God is, you know, it's Christ's life and it's being manifested as the Holy Spirit empowers us. In fact, if I did uncover or reveal, and I think that we kind of see this, we kind of see as we interact with our fellow believers, we kind of see this truth, we see Christ's life being lived out, and it may be and usually the person doesn't even realize what they're doing. Their reaction, their life they live, will manifest who Christ is and what he's done. So here's a word used in 2.14, which is back a couple chapters, who always leads us in triumph in Christ. and manifest through us a sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place. So I was thinking about this. He's telling us here that this dying, Christ's life is going to be manifest through us by the dying of the Lord Jesus in us. It's also going to be manifest through us in this idea of the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place. That's another aspect. And then there's actually a third one.

Could someone read 2 Corinthians chapter 2 and 3? You are our epistle, written in our hearts, known and read of all men. For as much as you are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God, Not in tables of stone, but in fleshly tables of the heart. Right. So there it talks about that we're letters or epistles.

That's another aspect of being, that's being manifest. So we have basically that the life of Christ Jesus is manifested through this dying of his body. And then we have this one in 2.14. It's manifested as sweet aroma of the knowledge of him in every place. And then we have it also back earlier. and the fact that we are epistles. So God is showing forth or manifesting the Lord Jesus in several ways.

One thing before we try to answer the question of what is this dying of the Lord Jesus, is that this is a positive thing, not a negative thing. It took me a little while to think, what in the world? It sounds like I'm caring about my body, the dying of the Lord Jesus.

It sounds like that's an awful burden to carry. But he tells me that it has a wonderful purpose here. As I went through it, I said, wait a minute. Look at this wonderful purpose. It can't be that this dying Lord Jesus must be dying for the sins of the world. That's a good thing, right? Even though the sins are terrible, his actions were a good thing.

This is to have a wonderful result, so that it will be manifest in our bodies. So hopefully it's making some sense. So now we're going to try to answer the $64 question here. And actually, let me tell you. You'll see that there's various people, as with many times, people have different ideas. And we'll take a look at this. OK.

So in context, whatever trial or circumstances in life we are bearing or caring about in our body, the dying or putting to death of the Lord Jesus. So we have three. So what is the dying of the Lord Jesus speaking of? Is it, number one, Christ died for our sins in the world? It's speaking about that. Two, is it speaking about Christ dying unto sin or the sin nature, dying to the source of sin as a representative? Or is it referring to the physical suffering endured in fellowship with him?

And actually, the last one here seems to be a favorite. If I'm looking through and studying, this seems to be a favorite. Most people will say, well, You know, in the Christian life, because I'm identified with Christ, and people know I'm a Christian, I'm going to suffer. People will, you know, I'll be hated for that, and I will be discriminated against, and so on. Most people come down to number three. So one of the reasons I wanted to present this, and this came from my brother Hal, is that I think it kind of opens the picture up a little bit, and you think, well, wait a minute. Let me ask you a question. Do you think we could, number one, could we ever do number one? Could we ever carry about in our body dying for the sins of the world? Is that even possible? Not even close. Right, because only Christ could bear the sins of the world.

So we can X out one. Number three, I have a question mark about. Is that really what he means? Well, there's only one left. So somehow in this, it's back to identification or representation. Somehow in trying to come to an understanding of what's going on here, it seems like we're being identified in a wonderful way with Christ dying for our sins. And that's to be a positive thing. So I kind of come down number two is where I kind of camp on. Even though I'd be in good company if I went with number three.

Then our brother Hal actually kind of summarized this. He said, our sin nature, this is kind of interesting to think through. Our sin nature resides in our body, right? And you'll see that in Romans 6, 6. That's where it's in our body. And that's a good thing, because when we go to be with the Lord, this body of the earth stays here.

The Lord Jesus died unto our sin nature, to separate us from our sin nature. We were identified with him, baptized into his death. When he died, we died, to separate us from our sin nature. And this is kind of one I had not really totally had in my head. Positionally, our sin nature is on the cross.

And if you look at Galatians 2.20, it says, I have been crucified with Christ. So our sin nature was placed on the cross. In fact, other verses talk about that. So our sin nature, and that's actually a positional statement, right? Because obviously we have a sin nature now we carry around with all the time. So it's on the cross.

OK, so the summation of this is, since we are bearing and caring about our sin nature in our body, then we also must be bearing and caring about the dying to our sin nature in our bodies. So it's like we have this additional aspect that's revealed here. We realize we're very aware of the fact that we're caring about in our bodies our sin nature, because we sin, right? We're not so aware of this second thing here, that we're caring about his dying. And it says that to have a wonderful purpose so that he will be manifest in our lives. So some miraculous way that we don't quite grasp, we're caring about in our bodies the dying to sin on our behalf.

So anyway, that's it. Not easy. I would say this is not an easy explanation. But in some ways it kind of fits because We kind of run out of options. He can't be the sins of the world because we can't do that. It has to be something to do with our relationship with him, our identification with him. This is a special identification for a wonderful purpose for us. Go ahead. I would say, first of all, I agree.

That lines up with Galatians 5.16, the idea that we would be walking in the spirit to not fulfill the desires of the flesh. We have to be dying to our sin nature and our body, but that's done effectively through abiding. But this lines up right with that idea of positioning. Good. I think it fits well with our understanding of our being identified with Christ. Because we say, when He died, we died. We already have so many wonderful verses that talk about that relationship. This just adds another aspect to that, this dying. caring about in our bodies, the dying of the Lord Jesus. It sounds burdensome when you say that. Oh wow, I have another thing to bear.

Well, it's actually not that. It's actually a positive. And I have to keep reminding myself, and I say, Roger, this is a positive. Not because I think it's that. Because if we go back, let me go back here. It says right there, so that the life of Jesus also will be manifest in our body. So that's the purpose of what this is. So whatever you think of those words, whatever you conjure up in your mind, it has a wonderful positive result. Christ is going to be glorified. He's going to be manifest. It's going to be shown out through our body. So it has a wonderful purpose.

So I have to take it that even though I can't quite get my arms around it, this dying of the Lord Jesus that I'm caring about is a good thing. That's one thing that I didn't come into this thinking that way. It's interesting how I kept thinking, that's a negative. How am I going to explain we're caring about dying of the Lord Jesus? This is going to be hard. How am I going to do that? And eventually, I said, wait a minute. It tells me it's a positive. Why am I making it a negative? So hopefully, that's helpful.

I don't know. So next week, actually, Randy's going to keep going on this topic. Several other verses through 12, we're going to talk about this dying of the Lord Jesus. He's going to expand upon that some more. So it's pretty cool stuff. I hope this is helpful.

We thank you Father, we thank you so much Lord for this day. Father we thank you for the blessings we have. We thank you Lord that even though we can't really maybe exactly understand it, that caring about the dying of our Savior, the Lord Jesus, in our body is a thing that can help people to see you and know about you. And we praise you for that, Lord. We can't understand it, but you say that that's what's happening, and we trust you by faith. In Christ's name, amen.