Reckoning that Counts
Mike Doyle · Jan 2, 2005
Reckoning That Counts, No. 01
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4826231877937

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

Okay, in order to reckon, you've got to have knowledge, right? I mean, a growing believer sometimes will see Romans 6.11, and it says, Reckon yourself indeed dead unto sin, the sin nature, and alive unto God.

And in his mind, he thinks, Ah, there's something for me to do. Right? I'm going to get with this reckoning business. What has he done? Yeah, he's made a law out of reckoning. Okay, so how is reckoning then gracious? These aren't hard questions, come on. How does reckoning become gracious? Not legal. Something you rest in, it's not something you do.

You do do it, Because Romans 6.11, when the Word of God says, Reckon yourself indeed dead unto sin, that's imperative. It's active voice. So it's a command, and you do it. So just know that? Maybe ask it this way.

Is there more knowledge involved in reckoning than there is in faith? What do you think? Isn't reckoning more of a mind thing, where you're viewing things from God's perspective, where you're just aware of what His perspective of you as a believer is? Yeah, that's pretty good, we're tracking. Because the word reckoning in Greek is logizimae, and the root word there is logos, which is word, to understand. So what's happening is now, there's this term called the reckoning of faith. I think reckoning requires pretty specific knowledge and understanding.

And it's not just knowing the facts. Do you understand what I'm saying? If I say to you, and this is the first time you've ever heard this, knowing this, that your old man was crucified with him. That's the first time you heard it. And I show you in the Word of God, Romans 6.6 says that you know this, right? You say, okay, I know it. How much effect does it have in your life? Zero. Yeah, zero. Zip. Nada. Nothing.

But then, as the Holy Spirit takes you down into the valley of learning about the power of that sin nature, it starts to become important, doesn't it? And it begins to dawn on you that this may be the avenue to freedom from the power of sin. Right? And the question comes up in your mind, well, you know, if I'm dead, well, first of all, what is dead? Am I dead? Or is sin dead? Or what does death really mean? What does death mean? It just means separation, right? When a really close friend of ours died in her sleep on Christmas Eve.

Well, what happened to her? Her soul and her spirit left her body, separated. And she, as a person, got separated from the earth and went somewhere else. She didn't cease to function, right? So, when my old man was crucified, what happened? Facts are really important. What happened? My mind and my spirit and soul were reborn. But my old man, my flesh was still the same.

We're not going to reckoning until you understand this. Right. Death unto. The key word in Romans 6.11 is reckon yourself indeed dead unto the sin nature. Sin nature doesn't die. It doesn't go anywhere. It's still here, right? The difference is now, is that you positionally were separated from it. It still functions in you. It's still there. Maybe look at it this way. A non-believer is in the sin nature and the sin nature is in him, right? No question. A believer is in Christ and the sin nature is still in him. But he's not in the sin nature anymore. He's not identified or attached to it.

Now how was that carried out? How was that accomplished? How did you get free from the sin nature? How did you get separated from it? How did that happen? By being identified with Christ. Being identified with Christ. It goes back to something that happened with Christ. What happened with Christ? How did he get aligned with this sin nature and then subsequently be separated from it? What's that? Go ahead. Through his death. Before his death, though, something else had to happen. He became sin. That sin nature was put on him.

We're not talking about sins now, all those bad things you guys do. I don't do them, but you know. We're talking about the cause of the sin, which is the sin nature, okay? Now, when Christ came to die, yeah, and everybody, all Christians have clear understanding that he died to pay the penalty for the sins of the world, right?

But the sin nature issue is another whole issue. And that's where you got included in the death of Christ. Your sin nature and my sin nature were put on Him, identified with Him, right? So when He dies on the cross, if death means separation, what did He separate from? Sin nature, right? Where were you? You were in Him, right?

Romans 6.3 says you were baptized, placed into Christ's death, right? Boom, that's when you went in. Good place to go in, right? Best place to go in.

Because at the point he's dying, he's separating himself from your sin nature, positionally, okay? So, that's fairly precise information, isn't it? Now, once that separation takes place, you are now attached to Christ. He's now your identity, right? So from that point forward, whatever is going to be true of Christ is going to be true of you, right? Or not? He gets buried, what happens to you? He gets resurrected, what happens to you? He got resurrected, he went to heaven, where'd you go? He's seated right now, where are you? You're seated in him.

What kind of truth is that? Positional truth. I see she went to the class. It's a positional truth. It is something that the Word of God says that's true of you. So now that you know the facts, you've become acquainted with and a thorough grounding in those facts, now you're approaching the capacity to reckon. You can believe those facts as they come along, but the work of the Holy Spirit is ongoing in you When God says to you that I have freed you from the power of sin, you don't have any idea what the power of sin is unless He shows you how powerful that sin nature is, right? Otherwise, you might as well be reading a comic book. It's just telling you a story. So you go along in your life and you begin to find out through your daily experiences and your struggle with the sin nature that, boy, this sucker is powerful. And I don't want to tell anybody, but I'm coming to the conclusion I'm not powerful enough myself to stop sinning. What a huge, wonderful revelation that is.

Don't you agree? If you shake your head no, you're in the wrong class. And so then you think, oh boy, you have to ask yourself this question, is God's Word and what He's telling me really the truth or not? Is it really true or isn't it? Have I been crucified or not? And boy, if I live by my experience, it sure doesn't demonstrate what God's Word is telling me is true. Right?

Romans 7 struggle. So you come down to the point where you become dependent because you know through your own efforts that you can't deliver yourself from the power of sin. And you get to that cool little phrase in 723 that says, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the power of sin, or from the body of this sin, right?

I need deliverance. Gee, I'm this really cool Christian. I've been cruising along for years. I go to church every Sunday, write checks to the, you know, I'm doing great. But I need deliverance from the power of sin, right? So, how do I get delivered? How do I get delivered? Practically, conditionally, how do I get delivered? First of all, I get delivered. I'm the one who gets delivered. I'm not delivering myself. How long does it take us to learn that little trick?

So reckoning comes along in here and you begin to, because you really don't have any other choice, you begin to have to rely on what God has told you and you begin to reckon it to be so. Like you don't have any trouble reckoning the fact that sin is powerful, right? The sin nature is a dirty dog. All through this the Holy Spirit has been implementing this processing that's been going on.

Do you agree? He's the guy behind the scenes that's teaching you that the only thing that your sin nature deserves is death. I have this discussion with a lot of people. We'll see how honest you guys are. Do you see yourself as being a saved sinner? engaged in learning how to be a good Christian? Or, do you see yourself as being in Christ only? What's that?

Conditionally, which day is it? Yeah. According to what he says, conditionally, what day is it? It depends on the day. From a positional standpoint, who are you? That's right. You're complete in Christ. All of those wonderful positions that you've studied and are now part of your very existence. But when you're going down the I-25 in T-Rex on Tuesday and some guy cuts you off, who are you? You're still the Son of God. Nothing changed. Nothing changed. You feel bad like hell. That's right.

But what do you begin to see? What do you begin to see as you grow in your position in Christ? You begin to see that the guy who reacts to the situation on I-25 is not who you really are. Sounds nuts, doesn't it? Because you've always viewed yourself as being a sinner, saved by grace. But God says over and over and over again, no you're not. Do you know that the term saved sinner is an oxymoron? There is no such animal. Do you think there is? Is there a thing called a saved sinner? And if there is, show me one. Show me a safe sinner. Who is one? They're in one.

You're either in Christ, positionally in the Son of God, and that's your identity. Now, you may not act like that, but your not acting like that does not change who you are. Or, you're in Adam and you're a sinner and you're totally condemned in trespass and sin. You're one or the other, positionally.

The Holy Spirit's job is to get you to reckon yourself alive unto God. so that you see yourself and you function from your position in Christ. Now I've just told you what's going to happen over the next 35 years of your life. So don't be in a hurry. Do you understand what I'm saying? But that truth is not proclaimed or radiated by any church. None whatsoever.

That's so unbelievably new. Don't you find it interesting, Helmut, that the truths of Romans 6, and then subsequently of Romans 8, are the sixth and the eighth chapter of the first book of Christianity. Everything from Romans 6-6 on is based on the truth of Romans 6-6. Paul assumes that you know all this, because in Corinthians and Galatians and all of the rest of his writings, Your being united with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection is a foregone conclusion. He writes to you as though you were in Christ.

He doesn't have any problems with the fact that you may function like you're not, and you need to be restored to fellowship, but never will you find him impinging on your position under any circumstances. It shows you where the church goes. The church gets as far as Romans 5.11 and it stops. It doesn't go beyond 5.11. Why not? Why do you think when the Word of God begins to talk about two men and then in 6, identification, those things, why do you think they stop there? They just can't comprehend it.

What's that? The self is powerful. The self is powerful. Anybody else? What do you think? Have you ever thought about it? I think about that all the time. Because it separates us out of the equation. Yeah, it takes us... We want to do something. Yeah. I mean, just the realization that you're saved by grace and not by works. I mean, it took Luther, most of his life, until he finally fell over that. He couldn't comprehend it. Right. And he never was taught that. And he was a fairly good Catholic, I would say. Yeah, he was. Isn't that startling, that it took until 1500? Anybody to kind of reinvent that? Well, yeah, and it's not... I mean, the salvation by grace method, by grace through faith, 1500 years.

So, are you tracking with me? I'm getting to a reckoning here in a minute. As we begin to find out and subsequently believe all of the positions that are true of us, like we went through over the last 12 weeks, we begin to rely on those positions. They really are who I am. Not what I'm going to be when I die and go to heaven, that's who I am right now. And so we begin to try to abide in them. Slowly but surely, we begin to be enlifed in the position that we have. And there comes a time when we do trust God rather than trust our experience, when we rely on Him.

You know the guy in I-25 that cuts you off? It's almost like you can stand and watch your sin nature do what it's going to do and you know it isn't you. This sounds idiot, it sounds like idiocy when it first dawns on you that, wait a minute, that's not who I am. Well, where did that thought come from?

It came from the study of the Word of God and a growing knowledge in who you are. Positional truth. That's so difficult to understand why Christ said, not my will, but thy will. And also all the martyrs, they kind of say, Father forgive them for they know not what they are doing.

I mean, that's so, so unnormal, at least by my standards. Right. Don't you, I've always been intrigued by that. that what Stephen did when they were about to fire the rocks off his head, he almost quoted Christ on the cross. Why did he do that? The same life functions the same way every time. It would be uncharacteristic of the life in Christ not to forgive those who were about to kill you. The life, that's the way it is. He didn't have to say, I wonder what Christ would, you know, the WWJD, forget that.

You know, the life functions. I use the term all the time, I'm trying to relate this to, I don't have to teach my dog how to bark. He knows how. It came with the dog. The Lord doesn't have to teach you how to forgive those who are about to kill you for your faith because you have the life that does that.

See that? Position. But that's a tremendous shift from what you were in the world. Oh, well. Yeah, and then you start to find out, now wait a minute, this crucifixion not only separated me from my sin nature, but it separated me from the world, and Satan, and the law. Oh my goodness, how am I going to live?

You're not. You're not supposed to live of the world. You see that? You're a son of God. It's almost like God took us all to heaven, recreated us, and sent us back and said, look, you're this new kind of man on the earth to represent me. You're not of them. As Peter says, you're a sojourner and a pilgrim. That's who you are. You're not from around here. You didn't grow up here. Your history isn't here anymore.

Your history is now heavenly. and you're here to manifest the life of the Lord Jesus. That's who you are. See? So, well, that's kind of a scary thing, because you think, how am I going to feed my family if I'm walking around with my head in the clouds like that all the time? You know?

Romans 6.11, spend some time there.

There are two sides to Romans 6.11. There's the reckon yourself, indeed dead unto sin, and there's the reckon yourself indeed alive unto God, both sides, both at the same time. You don't get to sit in the middle. Both are true of you simultaneously.

So, a believer, in order to reckon, I'm going to say that made me make this statement, has to have specific facts and thorough facts. And his faith follows effortlessly from what he knows and what he reckons to be true. And it is because he sees himself exactly where he has been positioned all along. I think that reckoning requires a work of the Holy Spirit in a believer's life, so that not only does he believe the facts, but that they have been worked into him to such a degree that he's accounting them to be true about himself, no matter what the circumstances are. You alright with that? That takes the legalism away from it.

When Colossians 3 said, for you died, did you die? Yeah, I did. Unto the old self at Calvary, unto the world, unto the flesh, and your life, the new creation life, is now hid with Christ in God. There's nothing future in there. This is true of you now. That your life is hid with Christ and God. And so now, you can begin to walk in newness of life. Because that's who you are.

Alright? So. Reckoning. Logizomai. It means to reason, to word, to count, to reckon, to impute. It means to number also. It means to put together in one's mind, to count, to occupy oneself. It means to even calculate. In Romans 4, 4, and 5, now to him that works not, Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned. Are you with me?

Let's go to Romans 4.4 and 4.5. Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace but of debt." See the word reckoned there? Same word.

In Romans 4.4, it's an interesting verse because it shows that the reward is not given to you by works. It's not reckoned to you by works. But if you are a worker, then the reward would be because you earned it and there was a debt owed. Right? So in any sense in your life, if you can go to God and say, look God, I've done the first seven things, you owe me, then it is not of grace. You know? You told me what to do and I did it and now you owe me. It's not grace. Okay?

Five, but to him that worketh not, but believes on him that justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. The word counted there is reckoning. God reckons you righteous because of your faith. So reckoning is something even God does. This term is a technical term applied to God in the act of justification, which is more fully explained a little farther in verse 6. It is that imputation of righteousness, which is the freedom from guilt, and the emphasis clearly rests upon it is counted.

In Romans 6.11 now, moving forward, the word reckoned there is present, imperative, active.

Everybody know what that means? You Greek geeks know what it means, right? It's present tense. What does present tense mean? It's a continuous action right now. It's going on right now. It's imperative, which means it's a command. Moral or logical? You understand the question? Yeah, it's a logical command. It's not a moral command that if you... A moral command would be that you get the reckoning and then we'll get something. It's logical, because you already have, you reckon. It's logical that you would do that.

And then it's active voice. What does that mean? It means that you're doing it. You're doing it. It doesn't mean it's being done to you. You're doing it. So you, right now, logically commanded, reckon yourself indeed dead unto sin and alive unto Christ. You do it. It means to account, to conclude, or to infer. It also means to believe. But it's more than just believing, don't you think? You think it is? I think it is too.

It's predicated on something that one already knows. You've probably heard this story before. You know where Corinth is? Have you ever seen it on a map? It's on a real narrow strip of land and it became a very wealthy city because people would bring their boats in there, their freighters, and they could unload those boats move all the cargo, I don't know, 11 miles across the Isthmus and then put them on another boat and that would save them like a month's trip around around, you know, Peloponnesia or wherever that is, you know. And so when they took all the cargo out of a boat, there was, you know, my CPA was there and he was, yeah, you know, 16 bales of hay, you know, 45 jars of this and that kind of thing. What was he doing?

He was reckoning. Did his reckoning make it true? No, it's already true. He's just checking. He's reckoning the count. So when you reckon, you're not making anything true. It's already true. You're just accounting it to be. You've checked the numbers and they all added up. You reckon it to be whatever it is.

So you have to have fairly specific and accurate knowledge in order to reckon. Do you agree with that? You have to have counted the cargo. You have to know the specifics. You have to know how many. And all of your doubts have to have been answered. Maybe that's a good way to put it. There aren't any doubts now, and so you reckon it to be so. Your reckoning doesn't make it so, you reckon because it is so, and you're persuaded.

Now, how do you get persuaded? How many spiritual push-ups do you have to do to get persuaded? How do you get persuaded? Yeah, it's the Holy Spirit job, and maybe put it this way, there's a Spirit-dependent study and a concentration on the part of you, the believer, as you enter into the information about spiritual growth. These positional truths that we talked about for the last 12 weeks, There's a spirit-dependent study of those things, you know, so that the thoroughness of them is apprehended by you, okay?

And so when it comes down to it, when God says to you and gives you one of these logical commands based on the death of Christ and your death with Him, here's what I want you to do about it. What does He want you to do about it? What does he want you to do about it? He wants you to reckon it's so. That's all. He never asks you to do anything else, just to reckon that it's so. It's too easy, isn't it? Way too easy.

Now, through that process you find out that, well, let's see, sin didn't die, I didn't die, in the sense that I'm still here. But I find out that death means separation, all those little things that we talk about. The little nuances about this kind of thing, I end up in these discussions every once in a while A person who's a one-nature person, you understand what I mean by one-nature? Anybody not understand what a one-nature's viewpoint is?

A one-naturist believes that Romans 6.11 means that the old sin nature got eradicated, that the sin nature itself died. And so therefore they're always dancing around trying to figure out what the source of sin is in their life. Well, if I enter into the identification truths and begin to see these things, I get really excited about them, but I come into it from the one nature position. How effective, well, ask it this way, am I going to be able to reckon and therefore get free from the power of sin?

The right answer is no. Why not? Because if you don't know what you're going to get, you have no idea. That's right. Reckoning has to be on the truth. Reckoning has to be truth-based. If you reckon on something or try to reckon on something that's a half-truth, there's no freedom. You don't get half-free, you get no-free. It's got to be specific and precise. And so therefore, that's why spirit-dependent study is so important. And also, if you only had the new nature, why would you not reckon? You wouldn't need to reckon. Yeah, because there wouldn't be a contrast. And why would the Word not tell us to reckon?

Yeah. Well, you know, the word that is the undoing of all one nature people is unto. That's the killer word. Reckon yourself indeed dead unto. Can't get away from that. Unto means unto. Alright, now, how about this statement? Apart from such reckoning, it is clearly implied that sin, as a living force within, will reign in your mortal body. You buy that? I'm going to say it again. Apart from such reckoning, it is clearly implied that sin, the sin nature, as a living force within, will reign in your mortal body.

How many think it's true? How many don't think it's true? Oh, chickens. Boy, we've got chickens today. I'm going to say it again. I've got one guy thinking. Apart from such reckoning, which is spirit dependent on the facts, it is clearly implied that sin as a living force within will reign in your mortal body. True? Absolutely true. I think so. Now, you're going to get arguments that that statement isn't true. Well, I see people growing and I don't know. No, they're not. They're dancing. They're not growing.

Specifics is really important. A specific study of the Word of God, especially identification and positional truths, is absolutely imperative for you to be able to reckon. You've got to know to reckon. It's precisely... I'll allow that. Yeah, that's right. Well, what I find is that there are people that study growth truths just to enhance their knowledge of historical facts. Let me throw a little bit of a monkey wrench into that.

It seems that you could be persuaded that God has the power to do what he promised. That you can put your faith in the person and not know all the details of how he's going to accomplish that. I think that may be a true statement for a young believer. I think a lot of times a young believer in the first couple of years of their being saved, they just think of something they want to ask God about and He does it. They're protected. They're such a baby. It's like all of you that have had babies, that you protect them. You try to anticipate their needs and fix them before they even become a need.

But then there comes the day to grow up. And when the day to grow up comes, the confrontation is with sin. That becomes the issue. Sin. It isn't sinning so much as that this sin in me is somehow not controllable by the things that I know to be true of me in my birth. There's got to be more than that. Just because Jesus died for my sins, somehow the sin nature didn't get the memo. You know, and it's going crazy. And I, you know, and I'm, yeah, I'm saved. What happens? I begin to doubt my salvation. Wouldn't that be logical?

You think, well, if I'm a Christian, I'm not going to be so overwhelmed by temptation, that kind of thing. Unless at that point, there begins to enter into the understanding of the believer, growth, truth, identification, those kinds of things, there isn't going to be any freedom. I have an idea. All of this truth that you put out, Alexander, about the position of a musician, including the pre-christ, is what God is in Christ. So you can, I think you can, at a certain point say, Well, I just believe Christ, but then there's a point where you have to know who he is and how he operates. I think, I don't know. Yeah, no, I agree with that. I mean, you have to understand a certain degree of the facts, obviously. You're dead on the scene. But it seems that the Lord will get you there. Oh, I see, yeah.

And the underlying question there is If there are so many non-growing believers, is the Lord being lazy? If we believe what we believe and we see the sequence of truths that have to do with spiritual growth, how come those Baptists aren't getting it? You know what I'm saying? All of Denver isn't full of churches that teach positional truth and identification. Why not? Maybe the power of the sin nature controlling the mind of the believer is greater than the power of the Holy Spirit. Why not? To me, that's really the underlying question. And so you try to make excuses for that. I think I do.

I say, well, you know, you've got to give the Lord as much elbow room as necessary. My own personal answer to that is this, that God does work in every heart and every believer to bring him along. And as he equips saints for the ministry, that's the ministry he's equipping you for, so that you can recognize a hungry heart when you see one. No matter where they are, no matter what church they're in, it doesn't matter where they're hanging out, because they'll show up and you'll see it. and you'll be ready and you'll be equipped to bring them along. But I think growth is more of an individual thing. It's more of a one-on-one thing or small groups.

It's not a pulpit kind of a thing. I don't think these things make sense. talk to a big crowd. We're talking about 1500 years for Luther to come out. We tend to be the fast food. I think that's growth. Growth is a long period. And a lot of leaders, it'll take them 50, 60 years to really kind of rest. I'm becoming more and more aware of that. I've asked this question to Michael all the time. I feel like sometimes we get to go and drink a great Kool-Aid here.

Otherwise, it's more prolific. I think it's just individual growth and individual people. The Lord works individually in individuals. It seems that way. Otherwise, there's a 10,000 member church that proclaims position and condition. I've asked that same question a hundred times, and the more work chooses to work in individuals, I think more of them will come to asking that question several times.

What gets to be kind of a mind twister is that as you get settled down in these truths, and you become a real student of the Word of God, and you really are involved, And then you are exposed to doctrinal statements of these places, and the books come along like Purpose Driven Church, and you read that and you think, it just isn't true. Put it that way. It's not truth. And you see it as that. And you recognize that the 40 million people that are studying that aren't going anywhere. Well, you're just an arrogant pup to think that, aren't you?

So, next week we'll blaze into chapter one and we'll talk about the principles of reckoning. Dear Father, how we thank you for your son, how we thank you for life, and how we thank you for the work of your spirit to cause us to grow in the knowledge and grace of your son, to be conformed to his image, to manifest his very life, which is victorious. We thank you, Father. We pray in his name. Amen.