All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything.

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Holly Hills Bible Church. Now, you realize, of course, the governor said we can only have 10 people, so everybody on this side has to leave. So the day has started off really well. Hopefully, my voice will make it through today. And my glasses broke, so so far things are running normal. Hot, straight and normal. OK, so today's lesson actually has to do with just one verse, chapter 6, verse 12. But to work up to that, we need a little background.

Paul's going to say to us that everything is lawful for him. And at first, when you see, gee, all things are lawful for me, you think, what is he talking about? But he had already shown that whatever the grace of God is and the calling of every person, especially the really evil ones like me, I was saved by him, him alone, and his grace.

So he's going to demonstrate now in a couple of incidences where some argued at Corinth that liberty was to deny keeping your body pure, that you could kind of do whatever you wanted. So he won't tolerate that for a second, obviously, as we'll see. But he won't diminish Christian liberty by not tolerating evil in any manner.

So I think we have to come to the conclusion that anything, any activity that's not a price to sin, let's say that again, any activity It's not a price to sin, sin meaning falling short of the mark. So it is with all that we enjoy and brag about. I mean, things like life and righteousness and peace and glory and liberty and all of those kinds of things, if they're not a price, they're sinful. So what Christian could wish any of the activities that we're going to see today If they came out of the flesh, we wouldn't want them. We wouldn't want to be doing them.

It would be to abandon the second man for the first man. And I'm going to spend some time on the two men today. So if I wish to have license to sin, it proves that I don't have any love or honor for my Savior, the Lord Jesus. And I don't have any understanding about my position in here.

So, we do have a new nature. We have been set apart by God. And we've been justified from the penalty and the guilt of all of our sins. All of them. So, as we see in the remaining verses now in this chapter, over the next three weeks we'll go from verse 12 to 20. On the one hand, we need to beware of using our freedom as gratification for the flesh, and on the other hand, to use them for the Lord Himself.

So, I think to make this clear, let's talk about the doctrine of the two men, and the first man, Adam. And hopefully this little study we'll do will answer a couple of questions. Does a believer have one nature or two? And has the old Adamic nature been eradicated or not? So there's two keys to understanding this doctrine. The first is the doctrine of the two men, that there are two men.

And the second is the doctrine of position. And we've talked at length, I think, at our church, but it does need to be repeated often. Exactly what does it mean that I have a position in Christ? And I'll give the answer in a couple of minutes. But notice that I'm saying here that man is a substantive entity. He's a person. He's a life.

In other words, every single element of a man was created in Adam, and that's what substantive means. All the elements of a man are in this man, Adam, and he's the head of the human race. Everything that comes, all the progeny from Adam will be just like him. There'll be no creatures that will be different than him from a spiritual standpoint.

Now, because he is a complete man, He has traits and characteristics and we call those nonsubstantive or that comprises nature. A nature is a compass, a composition of attributes and is not to be considered a substantive entity, according to Miles Stanford. OK, I know this sounds a little wordy, but hopefully it'll get clear. The first man, Adam.

God created him body, soul, and spirit, but he sinned. In other words, he disobeyed God. And positionally, the very second that he sinned, his position changed. His position changed from being totally acceptable to God to being totally dead to God in his spirit and in his soul and in his body. And as the head of the human race, he took all of humanity with him in that process. Every human being that comes from Adam, which includes everyone that's ever been here except for one, come here in a position of death.

1 Corinthians 15.22 says, in Adam, all die or all are dead. Dead meaning separation, separated from God. But it took Adam 900 years to physically die, even though he spiritually and soullessly died to God at the very instant that he sinned. And I think that's due to God's mercy more than anything else. So the Adamic life is a source of sin in every single one of us. It's that life that's the source of sin, whether you're saved or unsaved. We as believers, if we sin, if you want to trace the source of that sin, it goes back to the first man, that life.

So Romans 5.12 says very succinctly, Wherefore, as by one man sin entered the world, so death by sin and death passed upon all men for all men sinned in Adam. Every single one of us, you know, the Bible clearly says that when Adam sinned, so did you. And you're responsible for your own sin.

You can't say, well, Adam is responsible for my death. No, I am. Why? Because I'm just like him. If God would have said, OK, I'm going to pick you and you to be Adam and Eve, Would you have done something different than Adam did in the garden? No, you wouldn't have, because you're exactly like him. And Adam and his life, therefore, by nature, were the children of wrath.

And back in Genesis 6.3, the Lord said that Adam had become flesh, not only embodied, but in spirit and soul as well. And he said, my spirit shall not always strive with man.

Why? Because man is flesh. He doesn't portray flesh, that's what he is. In other words, he operates out of flesh. He became flesh not only in body, but in soul and spirit as well. So the race spawned by Adam is flesh, John 3, 6. One of everybody's favorite, John 3 is one of our favorite chapters. But in that chapter, he says, that which is born of the flesh, it is flesh.

It doesn't try to become like flesh. That's what it is. That's the essence of what it is. So it's not only the natural man has flesh, but he's in a condition of flesh. He's in a condition of of sinfulness and it's his. He belongs to it or he owns it.

Paul wrote in Romans 7.18, I know that in me, me, it's a believer writing now, that is in my flesh, he owned that he still had it, dwells no good thing. Note whose flesh it is. It's his. It's his own.

As a believer, though, Paul was indwelt by the Adamic life of flesh, the old man, and he assumed full responsibility for his sinful and Adamic words and thoughts and deeds. First Adam. Now, because the first Adam sinned and became mortal flesh, he had to be replaced by the spiritual last Adam, the new man. In his position as a believer, Paul was not in the flesh. He was in the Spirit, Romans 8, 9.

He still owned his condition of flesh. His Adamic life was present with him, and he owned full responsibility for his sinful activities. Because he said, look, whatever a man sows, that shall he also reap. For he that sows to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption. He's talking to a believer. A believer can sow flesh, he can sow sin, and he will reap what it is.

That's in Galatians 6, 7, and 8, which we talked about a few months ago. And the other thing is, is that we're going to all show up one day at the beam of judgment. And one of the things that, the thing we will not be rewarded for as believers is that we won't be rewarded for things that are done in the flesh. And we can do a lot of good things in the flesh, which we'll see in a second. Because the first Adam sinned and became mortal flesh, he had to be replaced, as we said. Now, his replacement is a subtantive man too. He's a complete entity. Now notice this.

If you study the Word of God and you do a search on the word flesh, here's what you find. You see, the old man, the unsaved, and the saved alike can operate out of the will of the flesh, the desires of the flesh, the workings of the flesh, the wisdom of the flesh, the purpose of the flesh, the warring of the flesh, and the glorying in the flesh. Non-believers can do that and so can we as believers. It refers to all those who walk according to the flesh or after the flesh and make a fair show in the flesh. It's a personification of the indwelling old man. It's identically manifested as such in both a believer and a non-believer.

So, from Adam I get this old nature. And this nature has attributes. And it's not considered, like I said, a stunted entity, but nature has attributes. A man is a life and he has a nature. And as a man, from Adam, with the characteristics of the old man, guess what? The old man can be loving, he can be joyful, he can be peaceful, he can be long-suffering, he can be gentle, He can be good, he can be faithful, he can be meek, and he can have self-control. He can do all of those things. But however wonderful and lovely those things are, and how commendable they are, they're unaccepted to God.

Why? Because they come out of the flesh. It's the flesh that's unacceptable. It's not the fruit of the Holy Spirit himself. It's the fruit of the flesh. We're more used to being talked to about the negative parts of the flesh, which are really cool things like adultery, fornication, uncleanness, and on and on it goes, and hate, and jealousy, and wrath, and factions, and seditions, and that also comes out of the flesh. Beautiful and beneficial as the positive characteristics of the flesh are, both positive and negative, it's really important to understand That it's the nature, it's the flesh that's not acceptable to God. The flesh cannot produce something that is going to be acceptable to God. Because their source is condemned in the Adamic life. For in me, that is, in my flesh dwells 80% bad, 20% good. No, Paul says nothing. Nothing good there. Nothing good.

Okay, as a person, hold on a minute. As a person, I think I missed a slide. I did. That's alright. Part of the second man. The second man. Christ is known as the last Adam. There won't be another one. Adam is significant of a person who is the head of a race. We understand that Adam is the first head of the human race, the fleshly race. And the Lord Jesus Christ resurrected is the head of an entirely new race of humans. Entirely new. And the makeup of those human beings is different than the makeup from Adam.

We can't deny that the Lord Jesus had two natures, right? He was totally God. and totally man. He was a son of God and he was a son of man. He's perfect God and he's perfect man, in what is known as a hypostatic union. How did God take humanity and meld it to, or unite it to, deity? He did it in Christ. He's both of those things. Oneness as the God-man. So I'm now in living union, we as believers, with the risen and ascended Jesus Christ. His divine human nature has become our new life.

Look at 2 Peter 1.4. I am now one spirit with him.

Look at 1 Corinthians 6.17, which we'll see next week. He is my head and I'm a member of his body. I'm united to him. You can say what I said about Adam, that when he produced his offspring, they were all exactly like him. When the Lord Jesus recreated, or when the Holy Spirit recreated us in Christ, we are exactly like Him as a God-man. Exactly like Him.

And it's important, I think, to understand I'm in living union with the risen and ascended Lord Jesus Christ. His divine human life has become my life. It's really important to understand that. People say, well, I have faith. Would you believe that particular issue? That I am in Christ? That's a big deal. It's a big deal for a believer to one, understand who he is, and two, to rest by faith in the facts that he knows about who he is.

As a person, my father conceived me in his heart when? Back in eternity, the councils of eternity in the past. The Word of God says that he chose each one of us in Christ before the foundation of the world. That's when he created you in his mind. He chose to introduce each one of us, though, into a world via fallen Adam, from whom I received a sinful life in nature. Now, as a believer, that same person, what did Verne used to call it?

Continuity of personhood. That very same person was recreated, reborn into the Lord Jesus, the second man, the last Adam. So I'm now, like you, in living union, my position, with the risen and ascended Lord Jesus Christ. His divine human life has become my new life.

What's interesting about this is that one of the really important things about spending any time in Scripture is to find out who we are. Who are we? We're not just Adam made over. We're not just human beings who are indwelt by the Spirit so that we can keep laws and push down the sin nature so that only the good parts of the sin nature come out. No. We are entirely new. Entirely new means that my position, like your position, has changed. It hasn't been modified or fixed up. God literally took us out of Adam, who was my position before, and through the cross, burial, and resurrection placed us in Adam. You'll notice in Romans 6 that Paul says, don't you realize that when you were baptized into Christ, you were baptized into his death. That's when we went in. Why death? Because death is a separator.

I got separated positionally from Adam the first and was resurrected and Adam the last. That's who my position is. Now problem is, I still have the old man functioning in me, and he's the source of sin. And someday, when we leave this planet, Adam gets to stay here. You don't. You and I get to go be with the Lord, and Adam stays. And that's why we can say, And I use the guy who now has rebuilt his house. It's beautiful across the street over here. That's why I can say, have his sins been paid for by Christ on the cross? Answer, yes, they have. Well, why when he dies is he not going to go be with the Lord? Because he's still attached, positioned in Adam, and Adam is condemned. So the real secret is to get disconnected from Adam and get united to Christ. And that position can never change.

Because I didn't have anything to do with it anyway. God did it all. So we finally get to the verse we're going to talk about today. All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by any." And as we've talked about in the past, we're talking about living under grace.

Grace is a principle. A principle is something that functions or operates the same way every time, and it never varies. God's grace functions on limited, unmerited blessing towards me every time, all the time, and it's based on what Christ did on the cross that's totally acceptable to God. The will of God is to do things. It is never the will of God, and this comes from Macaulay. It's really interesting what he said. He gave three points about living as a believer under the principle of grace. that it never will be God's will to do things that are forbidden by the Word.

Well, that makes all kinds of sense. Whatever God says is not of Him are forbidden. And so even though I'm a man who says all things are lawful, well, those are the things that are not lawful. So I'm not going to do those. It will always be the will of God to do the things that are commanded in His Word.

And I have to laugh, you know, because we think, well, you know, we're like the Jews in Exodus. Just tell us what to do and we'll do it. So the first command I would say to you is rejoice always. How's that working out for you? Rejoice every moment of every day of every night of every month of every year for the rest of your life. Rejoice always. Get back to source. Now this third category All other things are left for who?

For the mature judgment of a believer. So we have a lot of liberty as believers. We have a lot of freedom. We can make decisions about things. I mean, I can say, OK, as a believer, I know God doesn't want me to do this, and I know God wants me to do this. But outside of that, there's all kinds of things that are just left up to me. I get to decide. But what helps me make those decisions? What helps me understand? This is the area that's called liberty. This is the area that's called lawfulness.

All things being lawful don't include, obviously, the forbidden things. So last week, Roger went through a list of things that an unrighteous person would do, but the person in Christ would not do, which were Don't be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, etc., etc., will inherit the kingdom of God. Why won't they? Here's one of the problems I think we have when we look at verses like that. If I as a believer do something like that, I immediately am somehow aware of the fact that, oh, if I'm doing that, I must be that.

The point is that I'm not as a believer. I can function like that, but that's not my position. My position is in Christ. So there's a remedy. What do I lose when I do something like, I'm a thief, I steal something. Am I going to not inherit the kingdom of God? No, because my committing sin doesn't change my position. My position is in Christ. What did change is my fellowship with the Lord Jesus and with the Father. God gave us a remedy for that. If I confess, He's faithful and just to forgive me and to cleanse me from all unrighteousness. Or in other words, to restore me to fellowship.

These actions, we can say, well, my sinful actions have their source in Adam. But if I understand the Word of God and my relationship to the old Adam, I realize when I sin as a believer, I am acting totally inconsistent with who the Word of God says I am. Sinning for the Christian is spiritual insanity. It's doing the same thing over and over again, hoping for a different result. The different result is what? I'm going to be satisfied. No you're not. No you're not. You're going to be separated. So under grace, I can say all things are lawful for me to start with, but then it's going to be modified.

I just want to repeat again that Macaulay says this, living in a society that he talked about the morality of the Corinthians and he said there's two reasons why they don't really get that these things that they're doing are not right with the Lord. He said first they lived in a society which Sexual freedom was condoned by the public opinion and by the nations of Greece and Rome.

Christian morality received no encouragement, sounds like today, from the environment in which they lived. And second, they kind of developed a twisted logic concerning the liberty which is stated in verse 13. I would say One of their biggest problems, in addition to that, was that they didn't understand the principles of position and condition. They didn't really understand who they were in Christ, and that that position was theirs and it can't be violated. Under grace, what's the object of my life? What does the Word of God say? Where are we headed? Where are we going?

God says in Romans 8.28 that God is working all things together for good to those who belong to Him, to those who are saved by Him, to those who are positioned in Christ.

Why? Because He has a purpose. That He proposed a long time ago, way back when He created me, that my position being in Christ, that my condition would line up with that. Well, what is my position? I'm in Christ. To be conformed to the image of Christ is what God is about in everything that goes on in our life. Everything is about that one issue, being conformed to the image of Christ.

And why is that the motivation for everything we do? Because we are here to glorify God. That's the reason we exist. and we exist in Christ is to glorify God. And why? To the glory of God. It's the purpose to conform us to Christ's image. This process is accomplished as we intimately behold the glory of the Lord Jesus in his word. The Spirit of God conforms us and God does everything for his own glory. And as I'm conformed, guess what? I do the same thing. As the Spirit of God conforms me to Christ, my life begins to manifest and show and do for the glory of God and not for myself. Not for myself. That's a really, really important principle because we do live a lot of our life. as selfishness.

I remember years ago when Miles Stanford was here and he had that Tuesday men's Bible class and he was asked one day, what is the purpose of my life? Is it not to grow spiritually? And his answer was real simple. He said, if your focus is on your own spiritual growth, you haven't figured it out yet. Boy, my brain went crazy when I heard that. I thought, well, what else is there?

I mean, I'm supposed to focus on being like Christ. He said, no, we're supposed to focus on Christ Himself. Let Him do the conforming. We're to glorify Him by beholding Him and knowing Him. I thought, well, that sounds too easy. That's all I have to do? Yeah, that's really all I have to do, behold Him. Whenever I come into a situation, whenever you come into a situation where you're trying to make a decision about what you should do or not, is it too simple to say in your own mind, is what I'm about to do going to cause me to grow in Christ-likeness?

Is this going to glorify Christ? Or is this something that I need to do just because I need to do it? The glory of God becomes, as we grow in Christ, we become more like Him. And we were talking on Sunday school about having the mind of Christ. What's the mind of Christ all about? Glorify the Father. That's really where He is. So the motive, the motive as we are conformed, will be more and more focused on glorifying God. Whatever I do, is what he wants to happen to glorify him at the expense of any and everything.

So, he can say, all things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. So here I have this liberty, but now it's going to be modified. Alba McLean, who was a Canadian Theologian wrote or I don't know if he's yeah, he was I guess he's a theologian He wrote it. I said the standard for the Christian life is this the will of God in the context of his grace Given in our Lord Jesus Christ, which is our position and Revealed in the entire Word of God. I really like that because that's really where it is these all things that we're talking about here are are everything that's going on. All things are lawful for me.

In other words, I have liberty and freedom to do anything in that area where I get to decide. But I'm going to modify that freedom that I have. The first modification is going to be, is it profitable or not? Does it fit with, this word profit means To follow things, it means to bear together. It means to...

Is it advantageous for me to do this? Advantageous to who? To me or the glory of God? Is it better for the glory of God or is it better for me? Does it bring us together? Is it expedient? Is it good? That's often the strong talking Greek dictionary. It's interesting that in this verse, the Apostle Paul restated in general principle, but qualified it as he said, legality is not the only test of what a Christian should apply to his behavior. Whether you can do it or not, it's not the only test. Is the practice also profitable? Is it helpful? Is it admirable? Is it beneficial? Is it expedient? To what? Towards the glory of God. Towards the glory of God. It may really look like it's profitable to me, but not to God's glory. Now, there's a second part of this that we kind of need to be aware of.

And that is, if all things are lawful to the Christian, Paul refuses to be brought under the power of any of it. All things are lawful, but I won't be mastered by anything. Under personal self-restraint, I will not be mastered by anything. Why? Because I already have a master. It's the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, if you've ever listened to Chester McCauley's tapes on grace, he gives a couple of really good examples there.

He talks about a guy who was mastered by gardening. I like gardening. This guy loved gardening so much that he came home from work and he wouldn't even take his coat and tie off. He was right in the garden and he'd get a suit dirty because he was mastered by gardening. I've told you the story a lot of times about the guy that I knew from young life that was mastered by golf. Golf was his thing. I said to him one day, I thought the Lord Jesus was your thing. Golf is my thing.

When you take a look in your life and my life, there are things there that master me. I do things because I think they're beneficial to me and they control me. They control me. And sometimes they can be good things. The underlying principle of all of this is that I have the liberty and I can exercise the liberty depending on the circumstances and around what's around me. But is anything I'm doing really master me? Do I have to do things?

Probably my own personal experience was I 40 years ago I decided that, gee, jogging would be kind of a cool thing to take up. So I took it up. I'm paying for it now. But I can remember as the distances increased, the timing, that I could run a mile faster, I could run two miles, three miles, 10 miles. And one day I'm out running and this thought hits my mind, is this thing you're doing mastering you? Because I was always trying to get faster and run longer. And I decided it probably was. Because I'd look forward my whole day, or I'd get up early and go for an early run, or I'd work all day and then I'd get home. Oh, I've got to get home because I've got to get my shoes on. I've got to go for a run. It mastered me. I remember talking to Steve Dyer, who plays a beautiful trumpet. That was a concern he had. Did that trumpet master him?

The Lord Jesus is our master. He's the one. Whatever his will is, is what our will is. And not that we're not free to run, or to go to bronco games, or to play the trumpet, or to do garden. It can't master you because you have a master already. We're called to serve others. We're called to serve the Lord Jesus Christ. We're never to be a slave of a habit in anything great or small. Anything. because there is a danger sometimes of using the right thing and we come under its influence and its power. So, freedom is entirely consistent with servitude.

Romans 6.18 says, and having been freed from sin, freed from sin, and that's sin itself, the sin nature, You became slaves to righteousness. Oh, well, the Word says I became a slave to righteousness. Have I assented to that? Am I a slave to righteousness as we go on in our Christian life? Yes, we will. We became slaves to righteousness.

The key idea is that I and you have the liberty to change masters. We were never created by God to be these free, independent thinkers, and we make all the decisions about everything. We were designed by God to be subject to Him, so that He could bless us. The great thing about grace is, and being in Christ, is that I have the freedom to let God do what He wants to do, which is to conform me to Christ.

Freedom from human viewpoint and tyranny. Tyranny means that I must do more than just believe. And that was the whole Galatian error. And still is an error today. We see it everywhere. That faith plus some other teaching really equals tyranny. Why? Because it puts me in servitude to the other teaching rather than receiving the grace of God.

Acts 15.1 says that some men came down from Judea and began teaching their brethren, unless you're circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you can't be saved." Boy, that would scare them, wouldn't it? Put them under a cloud, put them under...

The other one, as we talked about months ago in Galatians 2, 3 through 5, Paul says, look, if you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, since that's true, Why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to such decrees?" And then he goes through them. Freedom is also consistent with authority.

1 Peter 2.13 says, Submit yourself for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether to a king, as to one in authority. Why? Because as free men, he says in 2.16, act as free men. Do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bond slaves of God. So, to sum up, liberty is not consistent with what I can do, which is sin. Liberty is not what I should do, a new set of laws, a new set of principles. Liberty is what I may do.

Liberty is found in the circumstances that surround it, how it affects others in stumbling. We've been spending a lot of time in the Roman study with that. Is the exercise of my liberty meaningful to those around me, to the glory of God and to the body of Christ? Exercise of liberty is determined by the person who practices it. You get to decide.

If I practice this liberty, Can I still maintain meaningful control of my body? In other words, is the liberty meaningful? Can I do what I'm going to do? Can I go for a run every day? Yeah. My body's under control. It doesn't control me. That's a really important point. Does it control me? Exercise of liberty. Determine by the person who practices it. If I practice this liberty, can I maintain self-control or does it control me? Here, as in the second half of verse 12, the focus is on how it affects self-control. If we exercise liberty, in the exercise of liberty, if whatever we exercise our liberty enslaves us, then we should walk away from it.

Again, the reason is that we already have a Master, and that Master is the Lord Jesus Christ, whom we are resurrected and seated with Him in the heavenlies in a position that can never change. The great thing that we look forward to is to be home with Him so that our liberty to love Him and worship him and function as a son has no impediments, none whatsoever.

And that's why we look forward to being home with him. But in the meantime, we're here to serve him. And we're here to show and demonstrate the grace of God. So let's close. Father, how we thank you. We thank you that you have given us this liberty to make decisions about where we go and what we do. We are thankful for the parameters and the principles under which we live. But we do desire to glorify you. And we do desire to be more and more conformed to the image of your dear son, the Lord Jesus. And we pray in his name. Amen.