Reckoning that Counts
Mike Doyle · Feb 27, 2005
Reckoning That Counts, No. 09
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262321321830

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

the self-life hit the one nature position. Did you notice that? So if you're ever in a debate, I suppose I ought to ask, do you know what I mean by one nature position? Everybody know what that is? And it just means that the believer only has one nature, which is the resurrected life of Christ and not the old sin nature, that the old sin nature has been eradicated. And I think Miles does a pretty good job in that very first paragraph of describing, actually the first two or three, of describing the One Nature position and why it's a problem.

So, my first true or false question was, we should reckon the old man to have died to sin. What do you think? It's kind of tricky, isn't it? So, what is he saying about the one nature that is crucifixion? That's right. The old man and the new man, the old man is under the doctrine. He's still alive. Right.

And that's probably the most important thing that we get our arms around today is understanding what death is or crucifixion is. and where it leaves you, the believer, in relationship to sin, your sin nature. And I think that's critical because if, let's assume for a minute that the sin nature in fact did die, okay, then would it not be reasonable to assume that you would no longer be sinning? And so if it did die and you are still sinning, now you've got a big problem. Because sins just don't fly around in the air and land on you like a bird. There has to be a source for your behavior. I was talking to a guy last night, or a woman yesterday from Florida, and we were talking about this very issue.

So I asked her, I said, when did you become a sinner? When did you become a sinner? Was it when you committed your first sin? Answer, no, because in order to be a sinner, in order to commit a sin, you've got to be one. The only two people that ever acted out of their free will before they were sinners were Lucifer and Adam. Everybody else acts out of what they are.

So, if you have a sin nature, when did you commit your first sin? Tricky. When? When you were conceived? Or when Adam sinned? You sinned when Adam sinned, that's what Romans 5.12 says. You sinned when he sinned.

So, sin, sins have to have a source, which is the sin nature. My dog barks because he has a source, he has the nature of a dog. He doesn't meow like a kitten. So the one nature position, the eradication theory, runs into a lot of problems when in fact they have to explain what the source of sinning in a believer's life is. Sure. That's where they ultimately have to go. They ultimately have to say that my sinning is Satan's fault. That's really where they end up. If you follow the string all the way to the logical conclusion, that's where they have to go.

We are certainly not to reckon the old man to have died to sin. That would be like him dying to himself. He is sin. So what did die to sin? Actually, we had a long discussion on this. You know, what does it mean when 611 was died unto sin? This one is a little tricky in that you're interjecting the old man.

That's right. That's right. The difference between 611 and this is you're putting the old man. That's right. So we have died unto it as new creation. Yeah. We're not under the power and principle of sin. That's right. And we've died unto it. The old man in the middle of that, not to consider him to be very much alive. That's exactly right.

So, the other thing he said in that paragraph, the more we are to reckon him to be alive, any more than we are to reckon the old man to be alive unto God. You see that? You don't reckon the old man to be alive unto God either. Reckoning, although, is the key, but it's the new man that does the reckoning, not the old. There is no need to begin the day reckoning. We should wait until a need arises.

You know, we do laugh at that, but realistically, that's kind of how it goes until you realize that, hey, this life I have is a 24-7 kind of a life. My reckoning starts when I'm conscious, really. I am who I am because God told me and my position and relationship to this in nature is what it is all the time. See that? Miles calls it a mindset or a set of mind. You don't wait until the need arises, you already are. When you're walking in the Spirit, you're walking by reckoning. by faith.

I think the answer to that is it goes to what the definition of death is. And it always means separation. It never means annihilation. We view it as annihilation Or man views it as annihilation because when Anne Ruby died, she left and her body went in the ground. So as far as we're concerned, she's out of here. We have no interaction with her anymore. She could be annihilated, she could be something, but she isn't here.

So the viewpoint of the natural man is, It's like when an animal dies, what happens to him? He dies, ceases to function, exists. But human beings don't, they go from one place to the other. They go from this dimension or this creation into the next one.

So when the believer, a person becomes a believer and reckons on the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ and is identified with his death, burial and resurrection, I've always found it interesting that in Romans 6.3, when it talks about that the Holy Spirit baptizes us into Christ, he does it at the exact point of Christ's death. Perfect time.

And the reason is, the Word of God says that Christ was made sin for us. Well, how did he get made sin? He got made sin because everybody in this room and every other believer were put on him or baptized into him at the time that he died. So he's got my sin nature on him, and yours, and yours, and yours, and yours, and yours.

And so, at that point, God turns away from him and he cries out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He's forsaken him because he's now identified with sin, the sin nature. He dies, or he separates. So what does he separate from? All those sin natures. Sin itself. So because you're in Him, you go through the separation process too. You're buried with Him, and when He's resurrected, so are you into newness of life. The problem is that there's a judicial, spiritual separation from the old man. He's still here, but He is no longer what your identity is. Your identity is now Christ.

So, I'm positionally separated from my old sin nature. One, if I don't know that fact, I have no chance of ever being free from sin because I don't have the information in which to believe and to reckon. Two is, once you acquire the information, of identification, it doesn't mean the old man says, oh, the jig's up, I guess I better just go to Florida for the winter. As a matter of fact, it's almost like he gets stronger, because he's going to try to disprove in your experience what you've learned about your position.

But as time goes on, God will work into your experience what he's already told you is true of your position, that you will be on an ever-increasing basis, free from the power of sin, and it's all based on the fact that you have been separated from it, or crucified from it, at the time in which you believed and were identified with Christ in this.

So it doesn't die. Now, what happens when you leave here? What happens to the sin nature when you go to be with the Lord? Yeah, your body dies and your sin nature stays with it. But you, what happens to you? Because your essential identity is you're a spirit who has a soul that lives in a body. So your spirit and your soul go to be with the Lord, right?

No sin nature, right? When a non-believer leaves this planet, because his identity is with that sin nature, it goes with him. The nature goes with them, because the separation has never happened. See that? The death to sin has never happened. So that's why this discussion we had a year or so ago about penalty of sins and forgiveness for the non-believer got to be such an issue, because the Adamic man, or the man who's not a believer, who leaves this planet attached to the sin nature, his condemnation is not because the penalty for his sins hasn't been paid, because it has, right? His condemnation is because that sin nature has been condemned.

He's attached to it, so he's going to go where it goes. You're going to go where your new life goes, Christ himself. So whatever is true of him is now true of you. It all hinges on this identity and this crucifixion. Question? I would say it's the fulcrum doctrine of Christianity, your identity with Christ on the cross. And as you rest by faith in the facts of your being crucified to sin, increasingly the Holy Spirit will work that into your life.

And you will actually think, wow, that's pretty cool, you know, that my old man and my old sin nature isn't who I am anymore. That really is not who I am. Think about the mindset switch from your perspective when the day comes when you look at sin and you realize, wait a minute, that's not me. That's not who I am. I've got one, but it isn't who I am. But most believers go all their life thinking that they are sinners saved by grace. No, you're not. You're not a sinner anymore. And the reason you're not is because of the cross.

See that? Perspective is everything. Viewpoint is really important. By our crucifixion with Christ, the old life has gloriously changed and made new. That's an easy one. The Adamic life is still active in my body. I don't know about your body, but it sure is active. We are not to reckon the old man alive unto God in Christ Jesus. What's interesting is, Myles made a great statement in there.

He said Romans 6.11 has nothing whatsoever to do with the self-life. Do you understand what he means by that? Maybe I ask it this way to clear it up.

Who does the reckoning? Old man or new man? New man, right? Because the old man wouldn't reckon himself dead. It's the new man who does the reckoning. He looks at the Word of God and the Holy Spirit illuminates him as to the truth. And he reckons it to be so from what position? From being a new man in Christ. I have been crucified.

You alright with that? Our failure to reckon will release the old man from the cross to resume his sinful reign in our members. True or false? Sure. So the only way Or the biblical method of keeping the old man in the place of death is you walking by faith, as you have begun in the Lord Jesus, so walk in him by faith. Here are the facts. Do you believe them or not? Are they true or not? What's the difference between reckoning and just faith? Has that question come up in your mind in the last two months? What is the difference?

I'll take a shot at it. Just to give you some fodder for a correction here. I had a guy on Tuesday accuse me of beating up the guys too bad. I think of it, I simplify it in my mind as an attitude of ongoing, day by day rather than a one-time active thing. I think that's right. I really did. See, he set me up so I couldn't criticize him.

It is an attitude, it's an ongoing, it's a mindset. A mature believer would never question the security of his salvation or the standing he has before God. It's a mindset. The maturing believer who understands this, the Holy Spirit develops in him a mindset or an attitude on a moment-by-moment basis, this is who I am, this is true of me.

And so reckoning is just, you know, it's like living in Denver, I reckon I do, because I do. It actually is kind of the modus operandi of a moment-by-moment walk with the Lord. And that's why I like the way that Myles titled this book, The Reckoning that Counts. It's got to count. If it doesn't count, it isn't real. Fill in. The price of birth is what? For us. The price of Here's what? With him. See that? You okay with that? That makes sense? Alright.

Many of us are willingly, many of us willingly reckon upon the what? Only to draw back from the what? When we feel what? The bite of the nails. What a great line that is. The thing about that, the work of the cross in the believer's life, is that it is coming to put out of business the entire old man, including the good parts of it. That's the hard part.

If you grew up a Christian and lived all your life a Christian, you really are a pretty good person. But if you didn't meet the Lord until you were 35 like me, there's no question that you're a rotten dog. There's just too much water under the bridge. When it says, saved by grace, no problem. But then the Holy Spirit comes and begins to show you that old man, and most Christians are surprised by what they see there. In me, that is in my flesh, dwells no good thing? Won't you settle for 80-20? You know? I'm twenty percent. I'm a pretty good person. I never did any of those bad things I read about in the paper. You know?

Nah. No good thing. Hard lesson to learn. And the cross is applied to the entire old man. The whole thing. That's the bite of the nails. What are the types of suffering we will have as we take a firm stand against the old man? And, you know, this is a reality that is part of what goes on in our life. In the first place, what? We are in union of life with a suffering Savior, whose earthly ministry was expressed in the sacrifice for others. That's an important point here.

Although the work of the Spirit is to reveal the glory of the Lord Jesus where He is now, Because we are on this planet, we function like He functioned when He was here. We are a suffering servant. And the big reason why we suffer here is, as you behold the glory of the Lord in the heavenlies, but you live here, that in and of itself is suffering. Because nobody loves your Lord.

Nobody could care less about Him. You understand what I'm saying? It's like if someone came up to me and told me that my wife was really a jerk. That would bother me terribly. The whole world would crucify Christ this afternoon if they could get their hands on Him.

Yet He's your life. So there's a suffering associated with that. And you have that sin nature cooking inside of you that doesn't care about Christ either. So suffering is part of it. So as your life is self-sacrificing, for the benefit of others, there's just suffering involved in that.

If you're somebody like me who's a teacher, part of the suffering is that people that you really care about don't get it, or don't care, you know? They just don't care. And you see the freedom and the glory and, you know, they listen for a while and then they go somewhere else. They don't care about Him insofar as He can Give them something, they're interested.

But crucifixion? Nah, I'm not having any part of that. The bite of the nails isn't for me. Secondly, there's a suffering we go through when we fail to abide in Him but walk in the flesh. The suffering of sin and its inevitable consequence. So because we have sin natures and we walk in the flesh, we suffer because of that. I mean, all sinners do. But I think we suffer maybe more because we know. We really know. The great thing is we have a path back to fellowship through confession and being restored to fellowship.

Thirdly, there is a suffering that results from our day-to-day emancipation from the influences of the self-life by means of crucifixion. give various meanings of the word destroyed. What did I do there? I made a mistake there. Give me an example of that. There's a suffering that results from our day-to-day emancipation from the influence of the self-life by means of crucifixion. Give me an example. Ever experienced what that is? With with. Well, give me an example.

That's sort of like when you realize that some aspect of your. old nature that you thought was pretty good that you had come to rely on, you realize it's not. You know, the little old lady that's been playing piano in church for 20 years and has figured that that's Bach or something learns then that it doesn't, right? Is that what you're talking about? Yeah, it's part of that. Or you're cruising along and then somebody who you're interacting with It dawns on you that they aren't, like I mentioned a minute ago, they are not with you. And you've thought you've done a great job with them.

You find out that they haven't heard a thing. And so good old self says, what's the matter with that bum? I mean, it's subtle. It's very subtle. And why would God do that? To show you. You know, we talked on Tuesday, we were talking about our buddy, Job. And the interesting thing about Job was that he had, even though God had blessed him, he had an opinion of himself that was inflated because God had blessed him so much. even to the point where he thought that he was able to stand in the presence of God and question God as to what's going on. So God comes to visit him and talks to him about, Hey Job, you know when I put the stars up in heaven, I didn't see you around. And when I was naming things and doing stuff, where were you? And Job makes a very interesting statement. He says, I have heard of you by hearing, but until I saw you, I didn't really understand, and so now I repent in dust and ashes."

Isn't that interesting? So here comes the Lord to a believer like one of us, and the Holy Spirit reveals a little more intimacy with Christ than you had before. It makes you humble. It really does, because who is God that he would think of me, that he would even come? And so God puts you through circumstances to expose your good old Adam to you, not to condemn you, but to approve you. So that you can say what Job said, I've heard of you, and I read about you, but boy, until you showed up one day, and there was some intimacy between you and me, wow, what a difference. You are who you say you are. And I'm undone. And I think about the Apostle John.

He's 90 years old and he's writing the book of Revelation and he has this experience where he's taken off into heaven. He runs into an angel and the first thing he does is hit the floor. And the angel gets him up and says, wait, whoa, you don't belong down there. You're a son of God. Stand up. That kind of thing. He didn't know who he was. but knew, as he compared himself to this glorious angel, he didn't measure up from his experience, but he does. He actually is superior to the angel from his position. Isn't that something? Because who's going to judge the angels?

We are. We're the ones that are going to do it. As we reckon upon our crucifixion with Him, the Spirit does what? Have I got that out of place? No. Okay, as we reckon upon our crucifixion with Him, what does the Spirit do? Yeah. See, it's the job of the Holy Spirit to apply the cross to your old self-life.

So don't be surprised when it happens. He's at work in your life. My buddy Bob Strawn used to say, boy, you learn this stuff and you believe it, you better hang on because here we go. So he applies the cross to the self-life, holding it what? Yeah, so thereby free us from its power. So what you do is you reckon on the truth, you believe the truth. The Spirit's job is to apply the work of the cross to your old man so that you are free. Give the various meanings of the word destroyed as used in Romans 6.

Give me one that Malloy uses all the time that's not in this book. Being an electrical engineer, this one would work with him. He uses the term taken offline. You know, he's got that little thing that he switches. Taken offline, yeah. The power is broken or it's put down. Destroyed. It's a problem with the King James Version. The King James guys used that word destroyed in 6.6 and they could have chosen a better word. Because destroyed, you know, a synonym for destroyed can be annihilated.

And it doesn't mean that. Alright, matching. Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. 611. 611, right. Present your bodies a living sacrifice. Okay. We which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake. Yeah. Is that true? You sure? And what's the rest of the verse? Anybody remember? We which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake. For what purpose?

So that there might be life in you. Yield yourself unto God as those that are alive from the dead. Yeah. For as much then as Christ has suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourself likewise with the same mind. Even Peter knew this stuff. Let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to Him. Again, Peter. Okay, the rest of the time we can talk about these essay questions.

In Romans 12.1, what new significance can you attach to the word living?

So, let's look at Romans 12.1, unless you know it by heart.

I beseech you brethren by the mercies of God to present your body a living sacrifice unto A living sacrifice holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. So, talk about the word living there. What is a living sacrifice? It seems like an oxymoron, doesn't it? It's like giant shrimp or jumbo shrimp. What is a living sacrifice, maybe, is a better question. What makes it sacrificial, though?

Yeah. Present your body. condition and trying to view that as doing your position. Right. Right. Moving. Moving your position. That's pretty good. Do you see, do you view your moment by moment life really as a sacrifice? The old man probably. Yeah, well, in essence, that's what's really going on, because as the Holy Spirit applies the cross to the old life on a moment-by-moment basis, that's a sacrificial application, you know, and so being a living sacrifice is one who is living.

Galatians 2.20, I have been crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live. The life I now live in this body, how do I live? I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. So I'm living, but there's a sacrifice going on in order for my life to be living.

And the sacrifice is the application of the cross to the old man. So believers are constantly a living sacrifice. That's what they are. This conditional application of the The cross of Christ to the old man is a living sacrifice that goes on every minute. Does that make sense? I think I know what you said about we're living this spirit life. Our fathers are still here. The old man is still alive. Sure is.

A sacrifice, not just knowing where we are in Christ and dealing with our bodies. Let's say this is a Christian, and inside of him is two natures, old man and new man, and the idea is which one is going to come out of him. and manifest itself. Is it the old man or the new man? Because those are the only two choices. There isn't any yellow line or middle ground. There's no, I'm going to take the day off and I'm going to be neither a Christian or neither an old man. No, no. It's only one or the other.

So you as the person, what do you do to be engaged in the manifestation of either one life or the other? What do you do? Are you involved? Maybe a better question. Are you involved in the manifestation of one or the other? Answer, yeah. How are you involved? What are you doing? You're either living by faith or living by experience. Right?

You're either living by what God says is so and trusting Him or you're living by faith or by sense and reason and experience. So, you have a new life that has a desire and built into it a taste for the things of God. You want the life of the Lord Jesus to be manifested through you. But until you discover this whole operation of the cross of Christ, you don't realize that in order for that life to come out, yeah, I have to live by faith, but there's another player in here. and the other player is the Holy Spirit himself. And his job is twofold. He applies the cross to the old man so he won't come out, and he manifests the life of the Lord Jesus through you. It's his job to do it. It's your job to trust him and believe him.

Now, your experience may be suffering and painful, but what's really going on is that what you're doing At the very moment that you're walking in the Spirit, where's your focus? You're checking to make sure it's happening. What are you doing? Where's your attention? Yeah.

And you can be in the middle of your business day, doing whatever you're doing, and still behold the glory of the Lord because it's the Holy Spirit who's doing the energy of supplying your ability to behold Him. Right? and holding the old man in the place of death. And you're just functioning by faith and by reckoning. And you can be in the middle of any type of circumstance, a give and take, anything like that, and still be walking in the Spirit, even though you're engaged in some earthly interchange.

Isn't that something? It's really cool that that can happen. So, living sacrifice. Any questions about that? Understanding that we are alive from the dead is key to that picture. Now, give an allegory which pictures how the Adamic nature is held in the place of death. He gave a pretty good one and I think he stole from Watchman Nee. It's really a good one. What's the allegory that he gave?

The captain of a ship and there's a mutiny and the captain is tied up to the to the mast. He's been displaced, he's no longer the captain, but they forgot to put the gag in his mouth. So he's barking out orders to all of the men on the ship and they can hear him. Is he still in charge?

No. He's been replaced and when they get to shore he's going to get the It's a good allegory because it's really what goes on. The old man barks orders at you, tempts you to sin, and you go for it because you listen. Read in James 1 about how temptation goes. Dangle the bait, you grab the bait, because you think it's going to be beneficial to you.

When in fact, That captain, even though he's speaking, has no power over you at all anymore. None whatsoever. I've been accustomed to taking orders from the captain. That's what they do, so they don't know. They hear the orders and then they'll do it. It's natural. Because that's what most of their experience is.

And the captain gives you an order like this, I told you you had free will and you do have free will to listen to me if you want to. Demonstrate your free will by listening to me. When in fact you're not free at all and never have been. The greatest example of free will ever is the Lord Jesus always doing the will of the Father. That's the greatest freedom there is. the best demonstration of it.

So our attitude towards the old man should be the same attitude that this allegory has to the old captain. You can talk and you can do whatever you want, but you ain't captain anymore, pal. I'm free to behold the Lord. I've never thought of that. That's really cool. He's nailed there. Similar to the Catholic. He's not dead. He's still burning. He's nailed but not dead. He's nailed on the cross. And he ain't getting down. That's right. Okay.

Summarize the three parts. of our one-heart attitude and reckoning, including some justifying answers. Maybe, what are the three parts of reckoning? Maybe we'll do that and then we'll talk about... What's the first one? The first one was identified with Christ. Identity is important because just like you were identified with the old captain, now your identity is Christ.

A guy told me one time, I thought it was encouraging to me, but I've never really investigated to see if he's right, but he may be right. He told me, he said, when you read Paul's epistles and you read all about the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ and all that's true of Him, you're reading about yourself too. Because you're identified with Him. What's ever true of Him is also true of you, except for His deity.

But everything else is who you are. Isn't that something? You think about it, you've heard me say this before, in the millennial kingdom or in eternity, all of creation will look at you and just by looking at you, know that you're a son of God. because you'll manifest the glory of God. You'll be the one. They'll just say, there goes the son of God right there. There's one right there. And that'll be you. Because your identity is Christ himself.

And the example that he used was water baptism. It's a pictorial testimony of his finished work. Knowing ourselves to have been identified with Christ, we are able to reckon ourselves to have died unto sin. Sin nature. What's the next one? We were brought out of death into resurrection of life. Give us ground upon which to reckon ourselves alive unto God. Now, let me ask you a question. The first part of the Christian life is to reckon yourself dead, and the next part is to reckon yourself alive unto God.

Or, are they simultaneous? What do you think? How many say they're simultaneous? Yeah, you're right. They are. They are. I think as a growing believer, sin is an issue for quite some time. But then as sin, as the Word of God demonstrates to you that He's taken care of the sin issue, then the reckoning begins to switch over to being alive unto God. You know, I really am alive unto Him. I really do have a standing before Him. And not only that, He wants my company. He enjoys me to be in His presence. He wants me to fellowship with him and have intimacy with him now. And sin is not in the way anymore. See? What's the last one? Free from the power of sin. Right. Free from its power. And it's powerful. And you've got to learn that too.

A believer tells you that for years he has struggled to overcome and crucify the old nature, but the result is only miserable failure, what would your counsel to him be?" How would you handle that? I had a guy come up to me Tuesday and say to me, you guys are so simple. How about if somebody's daughter gets raped by this guy in inner city Denver, so you go see him and say, don't worry about it, you've been crucified with Christ, isn't that a little ridiculous? I said, well I don't think we'd go at it that way. So, how would you deal with that?

Maybe not that circumstance, but this one. Somebody comes to you and says, you know, You're the first one I've told this to, and I'm really struggling with sin, and I'm losing. And I have tried as hard as I could to put the old man to death, to put him out of business. Because that's what I read.

Can you help me? What would you say to him? How would you go at it? Well, I was going to just say, the first thing that comes to mind is when I'm struggling with something, I have to get to the end of myself and focus on the Lord. And it kind of seems obvious that this person is just so focused on himself and his old man, instead of resting in what Jesus has already done for him. Right. That's good. I try to nicely say that. I'm not being ridiculous. No, that's good. Anybody else? Go ahead and talk.

I think a lot of it is our dedication to Christ. I think Paul is the greatest example. To the point in Romans 7 where 19 for the good that I want to do, I practice for the evil that I do not, and I'm doing a great thing I do not want. comes to the wretched man that I am, who will deliver me or set me free from this body of death. You have to get to that point where it's not the only one, it's Christ and the reliance on Him. You can try all you want, Paul says.

I think you just introduced a really valuable point, and that is, you let the Word of God do the talking. You say, well, get your Bible, let's take a look here and see what it says. And so, you know, this guy's problem is that he's been trying to crucify the old nature. That's not what the Word of God teaches. So you can take him to that point and say, well, read that, what does that say? And how does that compare with what you're saying? Who does the crucifying? What is God's job? What's the Holy Spirit's job? What's your job? What are you called to do? To live by faith. not to effectuate this crucifixion. That's not your job.

And so there may be education about position and condition. That's really important. What you learn, I think, if you find yourself in this kind of a circumstance, you have to give a lot of elbow room to the Holy Spirit, because He's the one that does the teaching, and He does it through the Word. So it's really important. That if you do that, if you use the word as the tool, it'll do its job. Because in Hebrews, you know, it said that the word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword.

It's able to pierce, divide us under, even the soul from the spirit. You know what's cool about that? The sin nature is attached to the soul. The spirit is dead to God in the old man. The believer's spirit is alive unto God, but he can't distinguish between soul and spirit. He doesn't know what's of the soul and what's of the spirit, but the Word of God can show him the difference. See? Isn't that something? The Word of God can do that, even show him, show the believer, well, this is spiritual and this is soulless.

All right. We almost made it. Let's close. Our dear Father, how we thank you for your word. Boy, there's sure a lot to absorb. But we trust you because, one, you've made it a positional truth that we're free from sin and that we are to reckon ourselves alive unto you. And that we also have learned that it's of you, in terms of the work of your Spirit, to effectuate this in our lives as we believe you. And so we do. We trust you and we rest. We pray in your son's name. Amen.