God's sovereign will: Our position in Christ II
Vern Peterman · May 2, 2004
Will of God, No. 05
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4826235515438

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

Well, let's see. We had begun last week to look at this two-sheet, four-page handout, The Believer's Unfathomable Riches in Christ, and we kind of introduced number 11 last week as we were closing and ran out of time, but with the idea that we'd be looking at the details under item 11. So anyway, let's take a look. We'll start with letter A there.

It says made acceptable, excuse me, under the category acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. It's made the righteousness of God in Christ. What's that talking about? Made the righteousness of God in Christ. Let's start with the contrast. Before we became believers, what was our standing before God with respect to righteousness? We didn't have any. It had a non-entity there, negative righteousness. We had an empty tank, didn't we? We looked down at the fuel gauge, it's below E. So that's where we started, but we have been made the righteousness of God in Christ. And let's just kind of break that apart.

What does it mean? Why does it say, in Christ? What's so important about those two words? Yeah, this is our position. We are, as believers, in Christ. In Christ. And why does it say the righteousness of God in Christ? He's the only one that's righteous. Ah, okay. He is righteous. He is righteous. Let's ask this question. Adam and Eve in the garden, before the fall, is Adam righteous?

I would say so. Okay. Okay. And why would you say that? Oh, that was before the fall. Okay, it's before the fall. He certainly had not sinned. No. Okay, alright. But he didn't have... I might back up a little bit. Okay. I mean, Christ is our righteousness. Okay. And, you know, the New Testament we see reference to Adam in the garden was the first Adam. Okay. Christ is the second Adam, as Paul makes the comparison. And he is the second Adam because he is the start of the new creation. A new humanity, if you will. Here is Adam, the head of the old humanity.

He certainly had not sinned. Matter of fact, we tend to call that innocence. Right? Now this is interesting. You have Adam in a place of not having sinned. but having the capability to do so, he had a choice to make, he certainly did, and as he made that choice, as he made that choice, he stepped out of that position of innocence into unrighteousness. Now, did Jesus Christ have the opportunity to step into unrighteousness? He was sinless. Ah. He was sinless. Could he have sinned? Like Adam? No. No. I see heads going, no. How come? What's the difference? He's God. He's God. Okay. Yeah. What's that? Ah, yes. And this is a word that Richard used not too long ago.

His very character, was contrary to that. We can look at Adam, and in one sense he was righteous, in the sense that he had not sinned. But his essential and eternal character was not righteous. You see the difference there? God is righteous eternally by his very character. But did he have God's righteousness? Whose? Adam? No. Before he sinned? That's the difference.

He was innocent, but not having God's righteousness. There is a distinction. We frequently speak of kids as innocent. There is a distinction, and that's that every child born since the time of the fall is born with not having acted out sin, not having experienced sin in terms of life from the outside coming in. They're innocent in that respect, but they're born with a sin nature. And that would be the difference. Think of it, you've got different people over time.

Here's Adam and Eve in a position of not having sinned, but with the capability to do so. They were righteous only to the extent that they had not sinned, but they weren't inherently righteous, not righteous by character, by essential character, by eternal character. And then you have every person since then born in sin.

And then, and this is why Paul could write in Ephesians 2.1, we were dead in our trespasses and sins, every human being. Then you have Christ, the second Adam, if you will, born, but without the capability of sin. Born in a world in which sin was already established and entrenched throughout the human race. And then you have believers who have been separated from the sin nature and who have positionally the righteousness of God. There will come a time when all wills will be fixed beyond this life. All wills will be fixed and we will permanently and irreversibly have the righteousness of God not just in our position, but in our condition.

It's interesting this sense of wills. We look at the will of God. God's will is unchangeable. As human beings, our will is changeable, isn't it? Now, it is. There will come a time when that window of a changeable will will end. Our wills will be fixed. Isn't that interesting?

Our wills will be fixed. We won't go to be with the Lord and say, You know, Lord, give me about 500 years. I'd like to have sinned for a while. I'll be back, you know, but see, it's not going to be that way. Our wills will be fixed. We have a window in which our wills can be moved one way or another. But there will be a time when that ends. Okay, then we've got the next one. Sanctified positionally. Positionally set apart in Christ.

This word, we say sanctified, which is a word that's almost unusual in our culture except in a church context, isn't it? You don't walk into the grocery store and hear people talking about any of the groceries or anything being sanctified. You don't walk into the clothing store and they don't say, boy, this is really sanctified clothing here. They just don't talk that way.

It's a word that has gotten relegated, for the most part, just to Christian usage. Its original use, and it actually started being used among the pagan temples, was anything that was set apart for religious use. It was called hagios. and that's the root for this word that we call sanctified. So Paul adopted that word, and we see that word adopted throughout the New Testament for anything that is set apart for a spiritual use. So we have been set apart by God for a spiritual purpose, set apart in Christ.

It's a positional statement. Now, then, perfected forever. Boy, you wake up this morning perfected forever? Do you feel like you did? Not until you've had a cup of coffee or two? Yeah, as I get older, the list of things that my body doesn't cooperate with me in, it seems to get longer. And sometimes perfected forever seems a little bit amazing.

But this is not talking about our condition, is it? This is a positional statement. We have been positionally perfected forever. When Christ was done on the cross, he didn't say, it's almost finished. It is finished. Perfected forever. Which is also another statement that says you can't lose it. You can't lose it. And if you look at the Greek structure, it's especially emphatic. It is permanently perfected forever once for all. I mean it's nailed down tight. This isn't a perfected forever except. Perfected forever unless. That's just not the Greek structure of that.

Hebrews 10.14 doesn't even allow that. Made accepted in the beloved. This is one where we talked some about accepted last week.

And we brought out the fact that in the Roman Empire it was It was perfectly legal and only the father could make this decision. It was perfectly legal for the father up until either legal acceptance or a child come of age. In other words, legally an adult. Either one of those two stages. Unless that took place, a child could be legally abandoned into life-threatening circumstances. They could, for example, take a child that they didn't want, and if the father decided so, the mother did not have the choice, if the father decided so, it was legal in the Roman Empire, take the baby out in the woods and let the wolves have at him.

Okay? And this seems amazing to us. We'd say, well, something's really wrong. But to them, that was perfectly legal and normal behavior. If somebody says, I'm going to take my kid and leave him out in the woods tomorrow, instead of calling the police, they'd say, well, okay. I guess that's what you're going to do. Have a nice day. Because there was absolutely nothing illegal about it at all.

Therefore, when we see this made accepted in the beloved, it's not just some sort of a psychological statement. It is the father accepts you. And what does that mean? You're no longer subject to the death penalty, basically. You are no longer subject to abandonment.

And by the way, one of the things we looked at previously was adopted. Adopted as sons. And according to Roman law, if you adopted somebody as a son, that was typically an adult process anyway. But there was absolutely no possibility of abandonment. Just cut it off right there. So, I mean, there's every emphatic statement in what we're going through that you are not just in some sort of a vague emotional way, but absolutely with the utmost certainty, totally accepted in the Lord. And that acceptance is not reversible.

And finally, made qualified, and we looked at that here as we were studying Colossians 1.12. I was going to say last month, but it's really back in March now.

But Colossians 1.12, and it is the Lord who qualifies us. A lot of times we may feel inadequate for various circumstances, for situations. The Lord is our qualification, not ourselves.

The next one, justified. Does that mean we've made a whole lot of really good excuses for ourselves? What does justified mean? Yes, that's it. Declared righteous. It is a legal transaction. Declared righteous. In the Roman court of law, the way in which this would be carried out, you would have a prosecutor saying, this person is guilty. And the prosecutor would be laying out, here's the offenses, dot, dot, dot, dot, laying those out. And you stood at risk of condemnation. Once the judge, however, said this guy is declared righteous, bang, down goes the gavel.

It's over. Decision made. He's free, okay? Declared righteous. Yeah, Richard. You can say that point 11 and 12 go hand in hand together because we were talking about righteousness earlier. Now we're talking about being justified. They go together. And the thing is that when you're declared righteous, it's just as simple as that. It's just almost like a court case. like you mentioned earlier too. You're innocent until proven guilty.

And then once the decision is made... The decision is made. It's final. Are you going to quibble about the result or the end result? You're going to have to have probably a good appealing to do it. There's just no ifs and ors and ands and whys about it. Okay, next one. Forgiven all trespass. And as you see the references there, notice where they come from. Colossians and Ephesians. So these are verses that we either have looked at or we will be looking at as we go through Ephesians and Colossians. But a key point There is no end run around this, is there?

Forgiven 50%? Forgiven 75%? 95%? 99.9%? Most? Forgiven all with rare exception? Occasionally forgiven trespass? No. This is forgiven all. Flat out statement. Forgiven all trespass. It is consistent with perfected forever. It is consistent with Justified. It is consistent with declared righteous. Forgiven all trespass. Now, made close.

Does that mean that we all have to sit on the same couch? What's that talking about? We'd be close then, right? Is that what we're talking about here? What does he mean by made close? have a relationship, a close relationship between the Lord and you. Right, yes. This particularly comes out, and we'll see it as we proceed in the book of Ephesians, because you see the reference there is 2.13. What Paul's point is that there was a distance there that has now been resolved. There was a distance there that It was between God and man, and that distance has been dealt with. We talked about, in Colossians recently, and we'll talk about it again, delivered from the powers of darkness. Now, have any of you had any tough time during your life? Ever had any tough times? If you've been born, you've had a tough time somewhere, right? At least one. Maybe some more. So what's this talking about? If you say, well, wait a minute.

I've been through some tough times. Is there a difference between that and being delivered from the power of darkness? What's this talking about? Delivered from Satan's wrath. Okay. We've got Satan's realm, right? If he's the one that calls the shots, that's the powers of darkness. We are delivered out from a place where he calls the shots. We are delivered out from the place of his absolute influence. Delivered from Satan made me do it. Delivered from the devil made me do it.

And then the flip side of that is translated into the kingdom. translated into the kingdom. And this kingdom is not the kingdom of God on earth in the sense of, you know, we're claiming control of things here on planet earth. That's not going to happen until the Lord comes with us. But what that's talking about is certainly delivered out of Satan's domain. And we now have a heavenly citizenship. We now have direct access to the Lord Himself. Then it says, On the Rock, Jesus Christ. And this is a statement that's made in a few different places. Why don't we say, On the Rock? How's that helpful? All right, yeah, we think of a rock, we think of something really solid and immovable.

One of the things that they used to do in biblical times and even since then until the invention of more modern weapons, the defensive walls on the outsides of the city were typically built down to bedrock. They didn't want to just set them on the soil because somebody could come in and undermine the defense. So in order to have a solid defense that can't be successfully assaulted, they would take these walls all the way down to bedrock and found them on bedrock. So there's no undermining. And you want to try to undermine it, you're going to have to dig down and you're going to be sadly disappointed because you're going to hit rock instead of anything that can be undermined.

So solid on a rock. And what's interesting too is that the Old Testament frequently refers to God as the Rock. So this is a claim of deity. The Jews were often told by the Lord, I'm the Rock. Personal claim. I am the Rock. Yeah, Richard? You can just say that actually Christ is the Rock because when Peter was given the keys of heaven, The Lord told him, Peter was told that on this rock, I will build my church.

And the church at that time was experiencing many, many things. A lot of people were looking at the church and then they weren't looking to God. The church would probably save them or whatever you want to call it. And then we got a hymn about the solid rock. And it says in there that we'll stand on that rock with Christ. So, I mean, we have a lot of references to this, and we should look at actually Christ as the solid rock. If we can't go to Him, then we're lost. So we need that solid rock. A gift from God the Father to Christ. Now this is interesting.

Did you ever think of yourself as a gift? You wake up this morning and think, boy, I'm sure glad I'm a gift. You think about that? Sometimes we refer to someone almost sarcastically as that person thinks he's God's gift to somebody. So this is kind of almost a surprising thing to hear, isn't it?

A gift from God the Father to Christ. That was in the prayer that Christ made. Yeah, isn't that interesting? You look at the passages there, this is in the prayer that Christ, you gave to me. Yes, a gift. Even, it's not mentioned here, but I would just add to that, we've seen in Ephesians 1, we are looked at as the Lord's inheritance. How about that? And it's just hard to fathom sometimes, isn't it? Kind of amazing. Why would we be a gift? I thought we were these fallen creatures. Why would we be a gift?

I'm glad you said something. That was baffling people. Okay, yeah, but you at least asked a question Yeah Okay, certainly each each each of us as believers is part of the church the body of Christ called the church, right? That's certainly true Okay But but I thought You know gosh, you know, we already mentioned earlier in this time here together that We were born in a state of sin David wrote in the Psalms, in sin my mother conceived me. So why would we be a gift? What's different? What happened? Christ's work on the cross. Ah, okay. And what does that do? What does Christ's work on the cross do? He died for us. And we are jointly seated with him in heaven.

Ah, okay. So we're not the same as we were. Yeah, we're not the same as we were. We now positionally have an entirely different character. Before, we were not giftable. Yeah, we have a kind of a term. In fact, we sort of played a game with it last December. We could sort of call something a white elephant. You know, white elephant gift, this is a gift that sort of everybody knows this isn't necessarily a gift. We were all white elephant gifts or worse.

But what the Lord did is He said, okay, I'm going to change the very character of these people and make them giftable. Make them giveable as gifts. Why? Because of a different character, Christ's character. Being in Christ makes us giftable. Okay, circumcised in Christ. Now maybe you look at that and you say, well, boy.

And if you're not a male sitting in this room, then it makes it even harder. Now, what is he talking about? Cut off. Cut off from what we were. Okay, that's one point. Cut off from what we were. There's definitely a change going on here, okay? Cut off from what we were.

What was circumcision? What was it all about among the Jews? Yeah, it was a certain identification. As a matter of fact, the Jews would refer to themselves as the circumcised, and they would refer to the Gentiles as uncircumcised. So here's David, he faces Goliath, Who is this uncircumcised giant, you know? It was a mark among the Jews. And one of the things we pointed out even as we were going through studying Philippians was in the major cities they would have these public restrooms. They would not have dividers like we have.

And so it would become very apparent in the public restroom, you know, who's circumcised and who wasn't. And so this became a very personal identifying mark. So what is this saying? Circumcised means that you are, as has been pointed out, cut off from who you were, one. And two, that you have been marked with having a new and separate identity. Marked as having a new and separate identity.

One other thing is that the Jews, unless someone was converted later in life, would typically have that circumcision, how many days after the birth? Eight. Eight days. It was typically associated with the birth. So this is the other aspect of it, that being circumcised is associated with the birth. In this case, it's the new birth. The new birth of the believer. On to page 3, top of page 3.

Partakers of the holy and royal priesthood. Now how many of you feel like priests? When you walk into a room, does everybody conclude, oh, there comes a priest. Depends on your definition of what a priest is. Ah, okay, yeah. I don't feel like a priest with a collar on.

Yeah, we tend to have a modern definition of it, don't we? And that definition would differ from, let's say, a priest during the time of the Temple in Jerusalem. Even today's modern definition would look different. But nonetheless, if you look at it, a priest, in the Old Testament sense, because frankly, when this was written, they knew nothing of these collars with little white pieces sticking out. The definition of a priest was one who had direct access to God, and who would represent people before God directly. Direct access to God.

And people would say, well, I can't go and take that lamb and sacrifice it. The priest has got to do that. Why? He's the one that's got direct access to God and the right facilities to do it. I can't just go and decide I'm going to go do this and then find some rock somewhere and sacrifice this thing. That's not right. The priest has to do it. He's the one who has direct access to God.

He's got the facilities to carry this out. What have we been given? Direct access to the Lord. Each one of us. It is a neat thing. The Lord doesn't say, hey, you've got to come through somebody else. He says, you, as a believer, have direct access. Even to the point where both at the church at Galatia and at Rome, Paul speaks of Abba Father, which in our language would come across as Papa. Talking about the Lord as Papa. Direct access to God. Intimate access to the Lord.

When I got out of high school, I worked at an electronics assembly plant in the San Francisco Bay Area. And it was just doing very mundane stuff. I mean, things like bending resistors, and putting lugs on wires, and real sophisticated stuff like that, right? So anyway, but it paid a little bit of money, so that's what I was doing. Obviously, I was at the lowest level of the totem pole, having just started there and having no particular specific education and just doing the most mundane work that they had at the place. Anyway, in the room, in this fairly large plant, in walks my dad. I said, well, hi, Dad.

And one of the supervisors comes over and he says, you shouldn't talk to him like that. And I said, well, why not? He's my dad. And I said, well, he's the general manager of this whole plant, you know. And I said, yeah, but he's my dad. See, she didn't understand, did she? And I don't mean to be disrespectful or completely out of hand, but the point being that I had a relationship with that guy. And when he walked into the room, my supervisor looked at him and said, who's the general manager? I looked at him and said, hey, there's my dad.

Different view. What this is looking at is, here is the creator of the entire universe. Here's the one who is eternally the same. Here's the one who knows all and is all-powerful. And he says, I want you to call me Papa. I want you to have that direct access to me and intimacy with me. That's what I want. Isn't that neat? And that's what the father and the son have in the relationship. Yeah. And he's calling us into that. Calling the Papahood. Yeah.

In number 21 there, chosen generation, a holy nation, a people of God's own possession. Why would he use these terms? These are terms that are paired up, but they communicate some different ideas by themselves, don't they? Let's start with the first one. Chosen. Okay. Interesting, huh? Chosen.

A lot of people want to get into all sorts of heavy handed theological arguments about a word like that. They want to just start arguing back and forth. The intent here is not to get into some heavy handed theological argument. That started about 400 years ago with the Calvinist-Arminian thing back and forth. But it's a rope in a game of tug-of-war that scripture never plays. Scripture doesn't play that game.

The reason for telling you you were chosen is that means you're special. It's not to have a theological argument over. You're chosen because you're special. It has to do with very definitely God said yes and that can be as baffling as it can be. Why would he choose me? But his intent in telling me that is not because he made some sort of a cold decision or he just flipped a coin and he says you're special. He says I love you and you count. That's what it means. It's personal, not just logical. It's God being personal with us. A holy nation. We are a people of one character. We are a people of one citizenship. Having been made holy.

Citizenship in the New Testament era was something much more rare than we take it now. And during the time of the New Testament, particularly, it was something that if you had a Roman citizenship, for example, that was really a special thing. And not everybody had it. Roman soldiers, with some exceptions, worked their entire life, and it wasn't until they retired as Roman soldiers, having served Rome all those years, that they got the citizenship.

But here he turns around and says, you are a holy nation having a citizenship in that holiness. And finally, a people of God's own possession. The Lord has ownership. Why? He died for us, which can be in one sense stated, he died in our place, but he also died to purchase us. Paul writes to the church at Corinth, and he writes in chapter 6, and again in chapter 7, you are not your own, you have been bought with a price. Go for it! I noticed you didn't mention the fact that before Christ died there was also a chosen generation, a holy nation, and a people of God. Yes. Yes.

Because he quotes these out of where? I forgot where he came from, but these are references to Old Testament stuff. These are Old Testament references and God speaking to the Jews. To the Romans. Yeah. Speaking to the Jews, he tells them this before they're about to enter into Canaan, the Promised Land. And so he lays that out before them.

I thought the church was supposed to be different from the Jews. How come he's using the same terms? I think he's trying to say we're grafted in. But I'm in the place of those chosen people now because of Christ we're taking over that If you look at it, the church is not identical to the Jews, to Israel. The church is not the replacement for Israel. There are respects in which the church enjoys some things that are similar to or the same as what Israel has, as well as things that are different. We are called saints, so are the The believers in the Old Testament are called saints.

So we have that in common. There's a commonality there. The church has this in common with those who are saved of Israel. Same thing. And then 22, having access to God. This is in parallel to a priesthood arrangement. Having access to God is explicitly stated and it parallels number 20 there. It's priesthood.

Have you ever been in a situation where someone recognizes that you're a Christian and they come to you with particular questions or requests or maybe even ask you to pray because they recognize that you're a Christian? Ever had that happen? You might have run across that. People will ask you questions. This person has got some understanding I don't, and they might recognize it. They may ask you to pray about something even, because they recognize you've got some access to the Lord they don't have. This says just very directly, we have access to God. Very directly. We're going to call it there.

So we're out of time and we'll finish this, the rest of this page and then through number 34 on page 4 next week. And by the way, just kind of a closing comment. I recognize we're going through these quickly and that we could certainly spend more time on them. These are an item we're spending three weeks on. We spent six months on them in the Who You Are in Christ elective. So recognizing that certainly we could look at these in more detail.

The idea is in general to we need to at least start off with a hit the high spots kind of a picture of an understanding of these are things that are true because they are God's will for the believer. They are true of every believer. They are true of every believer here in this room here this morning. They are true of every believer always. They are true of every believer and not, you know, like to say for the next 10 years or, you know, until some event, but they are true of every single believer.

They are unfathomable riches because we didn't earn them. Okay? We didn't earn them. And that's a good thing. If it depends on me to earn them or keep them in place, then we've got trouble. But they're unfathomable because we don't deserve them and I can't oops. They're not going to drop out or get somehow cut off because Vern pulled a goof. Vern can't mess it up.

And that's good. That's a good thing. Let's pray. Okay? Lord, we thank you. These are just marvelous riches that we have. And we can begin to touch on them in these few weeks that we're looking at them. But we thank you for them. We pray that you would continue to teach us about the richness and the depth and the marvelous grace of them. And we give you thanks for it all in Jesus' name. Amen.