dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus

in this study. So let's step our way through it. Looking at this, we're at a major turning point here. This introduces some imperatives. And looking through that, we've got a key and repeated New Testament manner of conveying spiritual separation. One of the points, and it's been pointed out before, we need to keep it in mind as we look at this, is spiritual separation.

Death is separation, but not elimination. Oftentimes, people will look at this passage and lose sight of that. Death is a separation, but not an elimination or termination. They give us a reference, a passage we haven't looked at yet, but we'll soon look at, and that is the believer is separated from the law, but it doesn't mean the law stops existing.

So, key point to look at there. The word sin in this passage is a definite article, and we need to keep that in mind. In our English usage of it, if we say sin, we can easily fall into just thinking of it as a verb. And what this is talking about, this isn't the verb. This isn't just sin as some sort of a general category. It's the sin, referring to the sin nature, the source of the sin. It's not talking about sins as the things we do, the outward acts. It's not talking about those.

But instead, it's the sin nature, which pertained to this Adam, and reigning when each one was still in Adam. Now, for the believer, the sin nature is still present as long as we're in these bodies. The sin nature was something that pertained to Adam. Adam was that expression of the old man. The Greek there is old and worn out. Dilapidated. Old and worn out. And so, it was taken out of commission by Christ's death on the cross. We are identified with Him in His death.

Now, we're at this turning point. Passager introduces these imperatives. And so I want to take a look at what are those imperatives here. Introduced here, we've had chapters and chapters, but now we see them. These first ten verses have been laying out our identification with Christ. And what's it been saying? What's been the repeated message in the first ten verses? We died with Christ. Good. That's a good first start. We died with Christ. And why did that happen? Because He died. And we were what? What happened to us? We were identified. We were identified. We were baptized into Him. Therefore, starting point, identified with His death. Now, that's so far so good, but is that the whole story? Is that all that Romans 6, 1-10 presents?

Jim's saying no. Okay. Is that it? Just no? What else? What else has taken place there? Ah, that's key. There is a death and there is a living. We have died with Christ. We have risen with Him. So that is the message with variation, with the different impacts and emphasis throughout those first ten verses. Now, this is a pattern we tend to find in the letters of Paul where position is presented first. And then the imperatives are given. Remember when we went through the book of Ephesians, I got everything from people showing up personally, to emails, to phone calls. Vern, we've been going through our position in Christ for months and months. Why so much? And I'll ask you, why so much? Why would there be months and months and months of presenting our position in Christ? Why would Paul do that?

Why do you have to know that? This is the way it's going to be. If I were to point to an animal and say, that animal there is a crocodile. It so happens that I don't have to teach the crocodile how to act like a crocodile. Why? Yes, it is a crocodile.

That is its character. That is its soul nature. It has a position that is crocodilian. And it is going to act out of that position absolutely. When that thing comes up to you and meows, you've got to wonder. So this crocodile is going to act like it is. It's its character, right?

And so what Paul is doing is laying out for the believer, because when a person first becomes a believer, a whole bunch of things are true of them. They have a position. But the difference between us and the crocodile is we don't know it until we see that it's been revealed, right? So that's why Paul spends time laying it out here.

Chapter 6 here began by telling the believers with repetition and variation and explanation as he went through that they were baptized into Christ, they died to sin, but were alive to God. That relationship he reinforces and underscores and explains and tells repeatedly with variation and with further explanation as he goes through it, doesn't he? Alright.

He's also told the believers three times that they do know these truths. It is stated as, you know it or certainly you should. Don't you know or because you know, because you know. Verses 3, 6 and 9. With the repetition, he's not leaving anything to be assumed. Notice he keeps repeating it. He tells them that they either know it or it's assumed that they certainly should. He's not leaving anything to be passed over lightly as well. Nothing to assumption, nothing to be just sort of passed by quickly, laid out intensively.

He wrote with variance, he didn't just say the same thing six times like we do sometimes upstairs, but he wrote with variance. Why would he say the same thing over and over again, little nuance and variance and supplemental information. Why would he do that for ten verses?

Okay, try it. Try to get the point across. And so that would be one thing. What else? Say it in a way that everybody can understand in one forum. OK, yeah, in other words, he's couching it in slightly different terms so that one way or another it's going to sink in. OK, good. What else? What would be another reason why he would repeat it but with the variance that he does?

Emphasis. Emphasis, right? To show it again and again and again to emphasize it. What does that tell you about how important this is? Variance. Variance. That's one of the reasons why we hit the slow button here. Just like they'll do sometimes in the film industry, they'll put through and you'll show slower motion in order to put an emphasis on that action. Emphasis. Why else?

He doesn't just say the same thing and reword it. What does he do along the way? He also drops some additional insights, doesn't he? He brings in addition to emphasizing it, repeating it, bringing the point home again, he also brings in additional insights as he goes along, because he wants us to have a full understanding of what it means, not just a, you know, here it is pounded into your head. He's talking about nuances. He's talking about the impacts. He's talking about what things flow from these truths. So we see those things coming out.

All right now, Why is he introducing now these four imperatives? We've had chapters and chapters without them. Why do we need them here? Couldn't he just leave them off altogether or start off with them? Why is it so important they show up here? He wants us to totally understand our position. Yeah, in other words, He has thoroughly laid down, here's our position. Now, now that that's been laid down, now here are the imperatives. And not before, right?

What would be the impact if He just started out saying, My name is Paul. By the way, you need to reckon yourselves dead to sin and alive to God. What would be the impact if He did that? Yeah, it would be law. What would be your perspective? If you just started off, you better start doing this. You better not do that. It would be law. What else would it tell you? Or not tell you? You would think if you just got the imperative that this is somehow out of me. And you might get that mistaken.

But what does he do? But he underscores it with this imperative that look, it's what God has done. is the very reason that we can have these imperatives. And it's based on what he has done, not what you have to do, or pull off, or show yourself to be. It's God's accomplishment. What's his intent? Why is he giving us these imperatives?

Why couldn't he just say, look, this is your position. Get used to it. Why couldn't he just do that? What do you think? Yeah, he's looking for that impact, that practical impact, and here's one of the things to think about. He doesn't skimp on telling us our, and I'll use this word pair, eternal position. He doesn't skimp on it because he wants there to be reality in our daily, moment-by-moment condition. And the only way to do that is for us to know our eternal position.

The crocodile example that we gave earlier, we don't have to explain anything to that crocodile. As a matter of fact, they do amazing things without any explanation to them. Not that that would do any good. They have things that they do and the ways that they behave that God has built into them.

For us, we need to understand what our position is. That needs to be put into our minds. And then, that is given to us, not just for us to just sit there. You know, I've got a CD that's got this overhead. And I can take the CD and just lay it down there and does it have all the facts? Yeah. Can it do anything with it by itself? No. What the Lord is looking for is definitely implementation, but not without fully understanding our position. We need to know who we are. And He doesn't want to skimp on that because it's so important. Alright. Verses 1-10 are all about my position in Christ. My position in Christ is so very important to know. What could I need to know beyond that? What would we need to know beyond our position in Christ?

Yeah, how does this get put into life? That's the key. bring someone who knew, you know, next to zip about cars. I said, look, this is an engine and boy, this thing is powerful and I can rev it up and it roars. And if I just stop there, are they going to be impressed? Maybe just by the noise, right? But the thing is, until they recognize, hey, that puts power to the wheels, it doesn't do you much good.

And so this is what he's telling us here. In essence, look, this is how this power gets connected up so that the car actually moves. This is what puts it into action. Okay. The believer's position in Christ is intended to be applied, is the basis of every application in the Christian life.

Let me ask this. Is there anything that God asks us to do that isn't in our position? Can you think of anything? Why would that be? Why would it be that God doesn't ask us to do something that isn't already based in our position? Ah, yeah, it would be for us to do. Our position is all about what He has done and who we are in Him.

Right? And so He's not saying you do that plus something else on your own. No, it's all of our position. It's all out of that. Okay? Alright. Who you are because you are in Christ is the basis for everything that is to be lived out. That's the foundation right at the outset. Okay.

Application in the Christian life is about who Christ is in His life. Therefore, it's about who we are in Him. Our position is not most of everything. Our position is everything about what the Lord asks to be implemented. The whole thing. It's all of Him. It's all what He's done. Okay, this passage here is going to reveal some spiritual mechanics, and I'll use that term, of victory over the sin nature, and this presenting or yielding, as King James has it, our bodily members as instruments of the Lord.

What's this chapter not going to tell us about? Where does this chapter leave off and not tell us something? Okay so Rogers points well taken he's got more to tell us so this is one, important thing for us to recognize it's to use an analogy, It's good to know that we've got the skeleton and know what it does, but it's kind of freaky for us to think about skeletons walking around. The living out of it and the fleshing out of it, he's going to do later.

We shouldn't let that bother us, recognizing he'll get there. He'll explain because this is the spiritual mechanics, but we have next coming the Holy Spirit dynamics. So the Holy Spirit's involvement is also going to be touched upon here as well. Now we look at this passage. He introduces this first imperative. We need to note some things about this carefully chosen imperative. This imperative here is legitimai. We have a related word in English, logic. He's not asking us to be just purely logical though. Computers can do that. But he is asking us to do something that is spiritually logical.

It means to count or count upon, to consider, to reckon. Ever have a problem with your checking account at a bank? Oh, okay. I see Hannah. Yeah, I have too. And the problem comes in somebody doesn't consider something. It's either you or they didn't consider something. They didn't count upon what has taken place. And it's a present middle imperative we must right now continue to consider regarding ourselves. He specifically has, in addition to the verb, this yourselves in there. It's an additional word. So there's a focus upon yourselves or ourselves.

Paul doesn't mean it in a legal sense under law as if there was any hope. Remember right back at earlier chapters, we looked in chapter 3. Not a chance, no way did he intend that this be carried out legally, okay? When he's laying out the imperative, that's not even in his mindset. He's not saying, you know, do this and I've got law behind it. He's already put that out of the way. What's he going to say additionally after this that's going to make quite certain that that's not his intent?

We brought it up there in chapter 7. what happens there in the first half dozen verses of chapter 7 that we haven't gotten to yet. The first verses of chapter 7 are going to say we died to, not just the sin nature, but the law. So he has already said in chapter 3, forget righteousness by the law. Don't even think about this as law. And then he's going to cover it again in chapter 7, right immediately after this, we have died to the law. The law is not thought of as any part of the fulfillment of this.

Paul bases the imperative upon the logic of their eternal position in Christ. Look at the verse. What does he do? He summarizes the first ten verses. immediately afterwards, to underscore that this imperative is based on dead to sin, alive to God. Now, here's this legitimai. Paul puts together two important concepts here in this word legitimai, as he starts out this carefully considered verb that he's put there. Legitimai is faith because notice, legitimai counts upon the truths already laid out. So think of legitimai as this. Whenever you hear legitimai, it's saying you're counting upon something.

It's asking the question or assuming, what are you counting on? That's the character of the word. It looks to, what am I going to count upon? And then it looks ahead to, what am I going to do with that? That's the way of the word Legitimai. It is a faith word. It's a word that says, I'm going to count it as true, but not hypothetically, not just intellectually, personally. We'll get to that in just a bit here. It's also an imperative which in the New Testament has an appeal to the human will. That's the character of imperatives, that they appeal to the human will.

So what Paul is saying with this word here is that we're to will or choose, and he is saying that we're to place faith in the spiritual fact that in Christ we have died to the sin nature but are alive to God. How do we put that together? How do we put this together here, these two concepts married? What this is telling us here is we're called on the basis of what God has accomplished in Christ to choose to count upon, that is, have active faith, in those spiritual facts.

And this choosing is not a work, and it's not a gift. We can't say, well, boy, I wanted to have faith, but the Lord just didn't gift it to me, so I sinned anyway. Or, no, I'm not going to do that because that's going to be a work, and so I better not do that. No. He doesn't lay it out like that, does He? It's neither a work nor a gift.

It can be put together this way. It's the believer's responsibility to choose to place faith in, which is dependence upon, key point, God's provision. This provision is what? Our identification in Christ's death on the cross and His resurrection. Those are the key points that he's been bringing out and he underscores here in verse 11 as well. So, it comes down to this.

Which chair are you going to place your faith in? You've got two chairs. You've got a dead-to-the-sin-nature chair, or you've got a life-to-God chair. Which chair do you choose? Now, let's think about that. If we use the example of the chairs, and I put the quick summary there, dead-to-the-sin-nature, how else can we characterize this chair? What else can you say about this chair that we're going to sit in or depend upon?

Pardon? Oh no! You're kidding! Alright, it's not very dependable. What else? It doesn't have any future. That's one thing to remember. That what Paul has laid out is this chair here, the sin nature, it's not going to hang around very long. It's terminal. So whatever it's trying to entice you to do has no future. Excellent point. Anything else? What else can we say about this chair? Yeah, key point, key point.

There is a lot of secular psychology. There's a lot of everything from motivational seminars and themes and slogans and things that people will sell you that are designed to fix that chair up, right? It's pretty dismal, okay? It can't be fixed. It is not going to get better, all right? Good point. What else can we say about this? chair on the left.

Do you belong there? No. Have you ever been in a situation where you suddenly realize you don't belong there? You know, I hear a guy, I find, gee, this bathroom doesn't have any urinals, you know? Uh-oh. I don't belong here, right? At our wedding, At our wedding, there was a friend of mine from years back that I had invited and he was kind of thoughtless.

This is not done. He came right up to the front and sat right in the middle, right at the front row. I said, I need to move back. Wrong place. That's one thing about this chair. You don't belong there. What else can you say about this chair? Does it have your best interest in mind? No. No, it doesn't. What about this other chair? What about this chair? It looks pretty secure, yes. Are you going to be able to rest in it? Yeah, you're going to be able to rest in that chair. What else can we say about that chair?

We had the example of the, you know, like I gave the example of me walking into the ladies restroom, because I don't belong there. What about this chair on the right? I belong there, right? Yeah, that's where I belong. Certainly that's where I belong.

Does it have a future to bring up Winnie's point? Yes, it certainly does and that Paul underscores tremendously. It has a wonderful eternal future. As a matter of fact, where the chair on the left is looking worse and worse, the chair on the right just looks better all the time.

It doesn't need to be fixed and it never was your job anyway, right? You can depend upon the chair. The chair on the left is Very undependable. Very undependable. When Nancy and I went to Germany some years back, this is a chair that they reserved for witches. It had a bunch of sharpened dowels in the seat and in the arms and in the back. I mean, it was awful. That's probably not a bad characterization of the Sin Nature chair, okay? The point in bringing this up is that our faith is not some place we work towards. It's not a work.

It is merely a question of where you're going to sit. On what, or really more correctly, on whom are you going to depend? On whom are you going to depend? And that's key. That's really important. Because it brings to focus the real issue here. It's not a matter of working. It's not a matter of bringing law into this formula. But it's a question of dependence. Which one are you going to sit in? Now, one of the things, this is a present middle imperative, which has the implication that you're right now to choose.

Why would this seem like, gee, I don't Subjectively, I don't feel like I'm constantly choosing. Why would that be? Why would you not subjectively have a sense all the time of I'm choosing, I'm choosing, I'm choosing, I'm choosing, I look down my watch, next second, I choose again. Why would that be? Why would there not be this feeling of I'm choosing, I'm choosing, I'm choosing, I'm choosing? We have the Holy Spirit who guides us. Ah, okay.

Yes, there is an involvement of the Holy Spirit. Which chair is the Holy Spirit going to be working with us towards? Of course, we're going to get into this in chapter 8. The Holy Spirit is always going to be focusing a number of ministries in our hearts because He indwells us. A number of ministries in the direction of getting us to understand that that chair on the right is the one that we need to be sitting in. It may well be that we have the Holy Spirit working there and it becomes clear to us.

There may also be a sense of, do I have to get up out of the chair and then sit back in the chair every second? No. If I'm sat in the chair on the right, it may already be a foregone conclusion that, oh yeah, this is the chair to sit in. This makes perfect sense. Now, if I'm a believer, and we're kind of jumping ahead here, but you bring up a good point.

If I'm sitting on the chair on the left, the Sin Nature chair, is the Holy Spirit going to sit by passively as that's going on? No. The ministries of the Holy Spirit are going to be directing me towards the chair on the right, and what is the Holy Spirit's personal response? to my sitting on the chair on the left?" It's out of Ephesians. The Holy Spirit is grieved when we sit on that chair on the left. So there is, and we're kind of jumping ahead, but just to make the point, there is a spiritual lopsidedness to one chair or the other.

What Paul has laid out in Romans 6, And what is made abundantly clear in the rest of Scripture is that the believer has absolutely no business sitting on that chair on the left. And everything about the believer's eternal position and about the ministry of the Holy Spirit is about sitting in that chair on the right. And the choice is not one of works. As a matter of fact, it isn't even one of getting out of the chair and having to re-decide every second. because the active will choice very well may come across to us as, well, I'm sitting in this chair and this is the right place to be. Is that actively believing? Yes, it certainly is. But, it is staying with the conclusion that the Lord has already carried out His ministry in our hearts to bring us to. Alright, let's move along here.

So, there are two things Here, which the believer will be choosing by faith not to happen as the believer considers, that is reckons or counts, himself dead in relationship to the sin nature. And here's verses 12 and 13. Do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts. What is that verse telling you? Think about that. What's that verse telling you? Of course, saying several things. Let's see if we can observe them.

Yes, don't sit on the chair on the left. Because here's the interesting thing, is we make a choice to depend upon one chair or the other. And the left-hand chair wants us to depend upon that chair. But what's that sin nature going to do with our dependence upon that chair? Is he just going to say, hey, have a nice seat, and that's it? What is the sin nature going to do with our sitting down in that chair?

He's going to say, gotcha. Right? Because what happens? What's the word? Rain. The sin nature wants to rain. The sin nature has this character. That's what it wants to pull off. It is a deposed monarch. Before we came to know the Lord, Who called the shots? Sin nature called all the shots. There wasn't any choice. And the only latitude of freedom that we had, and that was only because of the Holy Spirit's ministry, the only latitude of freedom that we had was to actively believe. And that wasn't because we can give any credit for the sin nature in that latitude, right?

So now, what happens? The sin nature says, And the sin nature says, alright, now, I have some plans to put into place. What's the plan? What's the sin nature want to pull off? It wants to energize these things in the flesh. It wants to pull that off. It is a usurping ruler that wants to call the shots in our lives. So in verse 13, do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin. Now, remember, that's the sin nature, right? Don't go on presenting the members of your body to the sin nature as instruments of righteousness.

One of the things that we want to point out about that, that word instruments, is a word that means military assets. It was everything from the soldiers to the things that they were wearing and the things that they pulled along. It's the whole range of military assets. So what this means is that there is a command of that reigning sin nature. He wants military assets for his accomplishment. What the sin nature longs to do then is to grab those military assets, either with our unwitting allowance or willing cooperation. Now, why would I put it both those ways?

What if you have a person who has become a believer but doesn't understand these things at the outset? They may not even be aware of what's the spiritual landscape, so to speak. What's involved? What's happening? So they may just be pulled along in this thing because they don't understand anything yet.

So that could happen. How about the willing cooperation? Can a believer consciously decide, you know, I'm going to do this sin thing? Can you decide that? Yeah. A believer can decide. So it can be both something that out of ignorance has just fallen into or Willingly, knowingly, I'm going to do this. I'm going to step in this direction. So it could be either one.

Either way, the sin nature has a desire to reign illegally. As a deposed monarch, the sin nature wants to step back in. He wants to step into a reign of spiritual tyranny. And, we're going to see at the end of the chapter, the wages of sin is death. So, the sin nature wants to faithfully pay its wage.

Isn't that nice? And what's the wage? Death. Nasty, isn't it? That's why that chair on the left is so lousy. Here's this terminal chair. It has no right to reign. It wants to use us and pay us a death wage. That's just rasty, nasty, awful. So the question is, what's this supposed to look like?

What does this come out to in life? So the choice of faith, and again, faith is a dependence. It's which chair, right? The choice of faith It's going to be for us as believers not to present ourselves as these military assets for the sin nature's spiritual tyranny, but military assets for the righteousness of God. That's the point in question. Verse 13, but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness. That's the instruments of the military assets here. The verse used the same word for present as we're going to see some time ahead here in Romans 12.

Therefore I urge you brethren by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God which is your spiritual Service of worship. Now, we're going to have a worship service upstairs before too many minutes go by here, right? But what's interesting is while we'll say, okay, that's a worship service, what does this verse 12-1 say?

What does it say worship is? presenting our bodies, right? Isn't that something? This is worship. It's interesting how we'll oftentimes couch worship in terms of, oh, it's this music and this, you know. And what he lays out here is, do you want to know what worship's about? This is it.

So the verse that we just saw here in Romans 6, he gives us the further insight in Romans 12.1.

That's a worship service. And when can you do that? Where can you do that? Do you have to wait till Sunday morning for that worship service? No. So here is a worship service to the Lord. Present yourselves. when you get up in the morning, when you're brushing your teeth, when you're first getting a coffee down, if you happen to go for that, all those moments, those in-between times, every moment is a time to present yourself. That's a worship service. Worship service has his instruments.

Human beings are not designed to rule the roost. Now notice one of the things that he presented here in chapter 6. What are the two chairs that we can sit in? We've got a lousy chair. That's the sin nature, right? Or we can be alive to God. That's the good chair. That's the one that we belong sitting in. So we've got both of those there. He lays them out there. Could we just kind of stand in front of the chairs and just sort of say, I like standing here looking at the chairs. Is that an option? Could we do that?

Roger's shaking his head. He's saying, yet. I mean, no. Yeah. Yeah, very important point. People oftentimes think, well, I'm just going to kind of stand back here and just kind of look at the chairs and I'll just decide for a while. And one of the points that Paul makes abundantly clear, we're going to see the last half of chapter 7, he even uses the verb for willing several times. And he says, I tried that. It doesn't work. I can't just stand apart and look at the chairs and study them for a while and say, hey, I'll just kind of go along and I'll will to do the right thing or the wrong thing or whatever. No, you can't do that. You're going to sit in one chair or the other.

So it isn't a question of us calling the shots, being all royalty and all that. It's just a question on which are you going to depend. Where are you going to place your faith? That's the only question before us. We cannot stand apart and just will ourselves to some behavior.

Not going to happen. Romans 7 says it. Galatians 5 says it explicitly. You cannot stand apart and stand aside and sit in some decision limbo land and not sit in one chair or the other. Not going to happen. We are not made that way and very important for us to understand. It is not for us to decide we're going to stand there and look at the chairs or we're going to decide what happens.

One nature or the other will be calling the shots, period. and so it is only a question of which chair. Now, we are human beings that by design will serve one master or the other. He's made it clear that the Lord of Glory is the one master that we rightfully are free to serve under. The other one is a usurper. The other one is terminal. The other one is nasty. The other one does not have anything in mind for you. Now, as we look at it, how far better to serve the Lord Jesus Christ, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross. Did the sin nature for the joy set before it endure anything for you?

And that's the thing as well. What we have presented here is the mechanics The key thing to remember is that what this is looking at, this is not just a mechanical choice, it's a personal issue. And it's a matter that Paul lays out here. He endured the cross for us. That separated us from the tyranny of the sin nature. That deposed the sin nature monarch and pitched him out of any right to any place in our lives. How much better to worship the risen Lord with whom you're now seated. Talking about choosing your chair? The chair that the Lord has called upon us to sit in has a place. Where is that place?

It's in the heavenlies with the Lord Himself. It's very much personal here, even though what He's presented in this passage appears like mechanics. It's very much a personal issue. presenting ourselves to God as military assets for His righteousness. It's the only thing that makes sense.

And what he has done in this chapter and this set of imperatives is the focal point. What he's done is to lay out the character of the chairs. To lay out the character of the chairs. And what he does is he says, here is your relationship to these two chairs. and here is the character of this chair, and here is the character of this other chair.

So that if you understand it spiritually, there is no question which seat you belong in. There's no question which one makes perfect sense to sit in, to depend upon. So, in which chair are you going to place your feet? And what he wants us to see, because without God's revelation, do we understand the distinction between those chairs without the Lord having laid it out? No. Human beings don't have that visibility.

But it says, Ephesians 1.18 lays it out, the eyes of your heart having been opened. The Lord is presenting before us the character, if you will, of the chairs, so that we understand it's not a question of are we going to reign of ourselves?

No. Are we going to will something of ourselves? No. Is our willing something to happen going to make it happen? No. It's a question of on whom will I depend? Where is my dependence? And as he makes it clear elsewhere, it's a personal issue with the Lord, not simply a matter of the mechanics, although he's laid that out here. It's the Lord of glory with whom we're seated. That's the chair to sit in. Okay, we've just hit the out of time button, but questions, comments, exasperations. Yes, Hal. Just one comment. Yes.

When you said that the Sin-Naked Page is Jesus' soldier's way to end his death, my concern is somebody listening to what you said, because most people interpret Romans 6.23 as a quote that Good point. Hal's point, and I'll repeat it for the sake of making sure people who are listening get it, that this death that is separation is not a loss of salvation for the believer, But the believer can be in a position of experiencing that spiritual death, even though they are saved. And what is that? It's not a loss of salvation. It's simply the lack of the life of the Lord. It is the life of the Lord that is, He is our life.

Galatians 2.20, it's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives. It's His life that is the only source of life. The absence of that, is spiritual death. Good point. Thank you. Other thoughts? You should have put a picture of the chairs in here, though I don't think I'll ever forget that. Yeah, I mean, I think the thing is you look at it. Have you ever seen a chair like that and try to sit on it?

It's really uncomfortable. Pretty soon, what I find, I sit in a chair that's like the one on the left, I'm real soon needing a chiropractor or massage therapist or something, because the hips are out of whack. And then the other thing is, because it's broken down, my knees are up to my chin. I mean, this thing is nasty. Plus, the other thing you notice, you're falling out of it. Talk about not resting. There's no rest in dependence upon that chair. It is restless. Whereas the one on the right is completely the Lord's peace.

It is worth depending upon. Right? Okay, good. Other thoughts? Do you quickly have an answer as to why, in verse 11, when you get somebody to translate it, consider or reckon as opposed to what one ought to believe? Right. Do you know why they did that? Because it really comes across different. Ah, okay. I mean, when you read consider or count or, you know, like it's been translated.

Let's think of, Jim's asking the question here, that here you've got these words, reckon, you know, why does he use logizomai? Why didn't he just say, believe it? Why didn't he just say, you guys need to believe these things and move on? Why would he say this? Why would he use the word logizomai that's been translated reckon, count upon, you know, consider? Can you think of any reasons why? Well, you want to go back and take account of the first ten verses. I'm dead to sin. I no longer need to serve that. So I don't think there is a spiritual accounting or reviewing in your mind. Yeah.

To use the analogy, when we went back to the bank account problems, you don't want either yourself or the bank to just make a bunch of assumptions. You don't want to have a sort of a hand-wavy, they put some money in there. Let's get down to the details here. This means something specific. And we want to count upon what is specifically said.

He's not just saying, you know, the sin nature isn't so good and being alive to God that's better, you know. This isn't like the optometrist where they ask you, which is better, this or this? And neither of them is, right? This is instead a counting.

And he says, when you count it, what will be the accounting? How many pluses do you give for the chair on the left? Zip, right? It's the chair on the right, it's the only one that gets the pluses and it's so massive you can hardly add it up. You get to a point where you say, this is an incredibly lopsided decision, if you understand it.

So the point is well taken. Ligitsimai is to look carefully at the facts and then to count them. So it's a faith decision that's not mindless, it's not check your brain at the door, but it is a matter of Here is what is spiritually true. Consider it and on that reckon, count upon it, depend upon it as real.

Ever sit down in a chair and miss the chair? Okay? Occasionally things like that happen or somebody will try to play some joke and the chair is pulled. Missing the chair is not good. He wants you to actually sit down in the chair, to use the analogy. Okay? Make sure you're seated in this chair. and not the other one. You need to understand the radical difference between the two. You belong in the chair on the right. You have no business sitting in the chair on the left. Okay, good. Hal? The one thing you forgot on the chair on the right, and that is it has a sleep number. Okay. Automatically heated in the wintertime. Yeah. It does not lack any feature. Yes, thank you.

If you look at it, Paul's assessment of the blessings that we have are unfathomable. Unfathomable blessings. And it's almost like if you ask the salesman, well, tell me about this chair on the right. Boy, he just has a hard time laying them all out. I mean, he says, how much time you got? Because there is so much. so much to find and understand and learn about how wonderful that chair on the right is.

And the price is right. Yes. Yep. Price is right. Excellent. Thank you. Good point. And how much is the chair on the left worth? Zip, nothing, nada. Not a thing. Count on it. Count that the chair on the left is worthless. Count that the chair on the right is incredible benefits at no price at all.

Okay? Let's pray. Lord, thank you. As we look at this passage here, oh, what marvelous things we have. What tremendous things we can count upon. And that what turns to a who, Lord, because it's all of you. It is what you have done and who you are, the slain and risen Lamb. And we thank you for that. Thank you for that seat with you. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.