Biblical Anthropology - Old & New Man, Old & New Nature - Part II
Bradley W. Maston · Mar 9, 2008
Biblical Anthropology, No. 10
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926055193129

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

Alright, so, in review, actually, we'll review and then we'll look at these charts so we've got everything. So in review, we've got the old man, which is positionally where? Our old man, where is he? In Adam, right? And our new man, which is where? In Christ. Now the question was raised, can you ever be in the neutral third space? No. There's no moment where you're not either one, in Adam, or two, in Christ, right? And this is salvation stuff, right? This is something that happens in one of the ministries of the Holy Spirit when we are saved, correct?

This is something that's done once, and it's never done again. We'll never be moved back into Adam. We'll never be moved back into the old man. So we don't need to worry about the old man creeping up or putting off the old man every morning or anything like that, just like we don't need to worry about crucifying ourselves with Christ every morning.

Right? I mean, it's just not something that's biblically prescribed. So, positionally speaking, the believers in the new man and the old man can never return. there may be a growth and realization of those truths. In other words, we're growing in the direction of recognizing and understanding, living in the position that we have in Christ. And so, that's why Paul would remind them, you know, the old man's been crucified, you know, put him on, et cetera.

Fantastic. Yeah, so there's the last thing that affects that whole be who you are argument. This is who you already are in Christ. Why don't you be consistent with it? Which actually is a lot of what we're going to get to talk about today, which is cool. I'd like to draw your attention to the handouts. We've got some really cool appendices. I don't know why, I just feel smart saying appendices and not saying appendixes. I assure you I have said appendices before, but now it's only appendices for me.

This first chart was designed, I believe, on the prompting of someone asking, well, if all this positional stuff is true, how come I'm still struggling with sin? What's going on with that? How does that happen? If that's the way the Lord has made it, why can't I just have faith in that and never struggle with sin again?

And yet, this chart is great because it shows us, on the right hand side, our position in Adam. The old man, you've got footnotes here that are pretty extensive with scriptural citations. things of that nature, but basically all who are the unbeliever are in his or her position of Adam.

So in other words, does the non-believer have an old man? They really just have a man, right? It's just their only man. They never had a man before this. So everything about the unbelievers and this old man, everything about us before we came to Christ, before we came to a point of belief, was in this Adam.

And we operated from this old nature or sin nature, which are synonymous. That the sense of old scripture uses means old worn out, old worn out. I mean, and it's not just old in sequence, but it's it's it's done way So with this though, scripture also talks about this old, I like that, that old worn out sin nature that that we have. Now, upon becoming a believer, our position changes from being in Adam to in Christ. Our old man is completely gone from us. We never have to struggle with him again. He doesn't rise up again. He doesn't come back on us.

But rather, we're totally in the new man as a position. So all of who the believers is in his or her position in Christ is encompassed in this new man. That's where we're at. And then you also get this new nature to operate from. But that old sin nature continues on. That old sin nature continues on with us. For some reason that sin nature is so attached to this physical body or something to that effect that the Lord does not choose to cut us off from that sin nature. We still struggle with that until we're taken home, until we're raptured to go to glory.

That's one chart. I think it's a really good resource. It really clarifies. On the next page, you'll see a chart that I believe Randy put together. This is really cool. You've got in these tabs, you've got your position, your condition, the will, your old man, new man, old nature, new nature. So you kind of got to read it really You've got to read the entire thing to kind of understand where it's getting at. But the whole thing moves this way, if you're looking at it in time, right? And then you've got, when you're in Adam here, your will was controlled by, or maybe controlled by isn't the right word, but influenced by the old man and the old nature.

And you'll notice the human will is neutral. In Christ, once you kind of get to the cross there, in Christ, you're constantly in Christ, no matter what's happening here in your condition, it's not affected. However, we see in our condition, we grow when we're in fellowship with God, and when we sin, that fellowship is broken, and then when we come to confessional repentance, you begin growing again to sin, and that's the pattern until death or rapture comes to us. We see also in our new man, we are in sin when we're abiding in our old nature, and we're in growth or in fellowship when we're abiding in our new nature.

Do those charts make a lot of sense? I think they're really cool. I'm going to draw your attention to those. Those go in the back. Those are Appendix Items 11 and 11, so there you go. We left off last week. Sorry, it's hard. I can't do the, like, read to kids this way. I just can't do that. I can't read upside down. Never learned that skill. So last week we talked about, and I'm still doing it. All right, let's do Ben White. There's a continuity of person, though, is what we've studied last week, what we left off with last week. continuing sense that that was me who was the old man.

That was me who was in sin and in Adam and all that thing. It wasn't as if when I became a Christian, I became a new person completely, like in terms of my personality and the things that I'd done, in fact. In consequently dealing with My life as a believer, I'd have people come up to me and say, hey, when you did this before you were a Christian, or when you said this before you were a Christian, that really hurt me. I'd say, oh. Well, I don't say, well, that actually wasn't me. That was somebody else. No, I'd say, oh, I'm sorry. That was horrible of me, or whatever. I apologize. Because that was me.

There's an element of continuity that continues. As an example, we have Acts 26, 12 through 15. Would someone mind just reading that off the page, since we've got you all mic'd so well? Someone feel particularly fortitude rising up within you? The moment of glory has come. Wayne? Would you mind reading? Oh, yeah. Thank you.

While so engaged as I was journeying to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests, at midday, O King, I saw on the way a light from heaven brighter than the sun, shining all around me and those who were journeying with me. And when we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in Hebrew dialect, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick against the goats. And I said, who are you, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Fantastic. Thank you.

So here we see Saul talking about the moment where the Lord appeared to him, and even though this is before he came to Christ, he keeps saying, I, I, I, I, I. The Lord appeared to me. Not the Lord appeared to my old man, or the Lord appeared to who I was, or the Lord appeared to Saul, but the Lord appeared to me, and the Lord appeared to me.

So there's this continuity of person, even though, as we see in the next chapter, the new man is completely spiritually new in kind. So it's pretty amazing to think that that's the way the Lord structured it, that there's this continuity of who we are, and yet at the same time we're completely in this new kind of man, which we'll look at a little bit more as we get going.

The final paragraph there in this introductory section, in this first section, says, The physical body of the believer will be changed when the rapture occurs. And the new body will not have associated with it a sin nature to choose. The well-believer will be, in eternity, will be free to exercise itself only for God.

This is fantastic. So eventually, we'll get new bodies, which I kind of wish we got them right upon conversion. How cool would that be? All of a sudden, I became a Christian. Now I can eat donuts all day and never get fat. Which I obviously can't. So, we're looking forward to this point when we get this new body, and when we get this new body, we'll no longer have to struggle with the old nature. That's when the time comes that we're not going to be, essentially, having to deal with whether we're going to abide in that sin nature or whether we're going to abide in our flesh. Or, sorry, that's not right. Abide in the sin nature or abide in the new nature. Abide in Christ. That's when in eternity, I've heard it said before, we'll have a fixed will. Everything that we'll desire to do will be to glorify God, will be in line with His will.

And it'll be fixed on that. There'll be no off switch. The switch will be broken in the on position. However, I like this even better. It says, so the believer in eternity will be free to exercise itself. Fixed has this sense of like, and now you are controlled.

But the reality is that that's what our spirit, and Paul talks about this in Romans 6-8, that's what our spirit wants. That's what we want. We know we want it, and yet we do find ourselves from time to time abiding in the flesh. And it's much to our grief. And we hate it. Truth be told, it winds up happening because we still have that same nature with us. It's still hollering at us. It's still hooting and hollering. Because our wills are not fixed, we will, by our own lapses, wind up abiding in that nature. So, that's what we have to look forward to. Complete freedom to where everything we desire is good.

If you've ever read the Narnia books by C.S. Lewis, in the very one, the last one, the final battle, they all kind of come into heaven, for lack of a... yeah, or the picture of heaven that's presented there. And one of them says, they see these beautiful fruit, she's like, oh, you think we can eat them? They look so good!

And Peter, one of the characters, says, you know, I think we're past being able to desire anything wrong now. I think we're beyond that now. I think anything that we would actually want to do would be the right thing to do. So, that's what we're looking forward to, is that moment where anything that we want to do is good, and if anyone were to present a prophecy or something that was not in line with God's will, it'd be, you know, like, Hey, how would you like to eat this mayonnaise that's been out for four weeks? No, thank you. I just don't want to. So, that's what we're looking for. We're getting to see that the four-month-old moldy mayonnaise for what it is of sin. Moldy mayonnaise. And that's pretty fantastic, too. So, in what ways can we sum up the position of the believer?

So the new believer is in Christ, as we see in 1 Corinthians 1.30, and is described as the new man, Ephesians 4.24 and Colossians 3.10, who has a new nature and is involved in his position by the Holy Spirit. At the moment of belief, just a little bit of review, what happens to the old man? Done away with. What about the old nature? Yeah, it's still here with us, isn't it? If the old nature is still around, then what has changed practically? The old nature is still around. We're sitting here as the old man with the old nature, as we look at our chart.

Then we move over here and we're in Christ, we're the new man, and the new man with the new nature. But we've still got, or sorry, we're the new man, but we've got the sin nature, so what's changed? We've got old nature here, old nature here, old man here, new man here. What's different? What's been changed, as far as our nature's concerned? The old nature's been dealt with. The old nature's been dealt with, we've been forgiven. What else? What's been added? And why don't you have to access it? Because now we have an option.

When we're in Adam, the old nature's the only running program. If you're on an IBM and you're running Windows 98, you're like, I don't like this. I think I'll switch to a Macintosh. You can't reach in the back somewhere and flip it on and get a Mac desktop, right? There's no button for that because the program's not on your computer.

So before, the only nature you had to abide in was the sin nature, right? And as we move over to the new nature, now all of a sudden there's two options. You can abide in the new nature or the old nature. So that's what's changed. So, what was our relationship to the old nature before the coming of Christ then? What was our relationship like to the sin nature, the old nature?

We were one with it. We weren't free. At all. Every choice that we had was sin, right? I can sin, or I can sin, or I can sin. And we had that one choice that Scripture presents with non-believers. It's not, hey, clean up your act. And it's not, hey, do this. It's believe in Christ. We were dead. We were dead. We were separated from God, right? So that was our relationship to the sin nature or the old nature before. And what's our relationship with the sin nature now? What's our relationship to the sin nature like now as opposed to before?

We've kind of talked about it. You're dead again. Huh? Yeah, you're dead again. You're dead to that old nature. You're separated from that old nature. Bonnie is the great word. It's out of commission. Which is fantastic. All right. So that'll warm us up for where we're going for sure.

Would someone like to read Romans 6.12? Do you have a Bible? Because I don't think it's on here. Or maybe. No, it stops at 11.

Romans 6.12. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts. Great.

This specific verse is where we see the sin nature depicted as a deposed monarch. So does it as a deposed monarch. It was an ancient custom, if you were in the ruling nation, you were the king that beat the other king, to take the king that you beat up, cut off his thumbs and big toes, make him kneel before you, and put your feet up, and have the king who whooped him use him as a footstool. So what would be the purpose of cutting off his thumbs and big toes? No balance. No balance.

No hitchhiking. No hitchhiking. You're not going anywhere. Yeah. People think you're just directing. Can't use a weapon. Can't use a weapon. Yeah. You can't defend yourself. You can't, you know, you couldn't walk properly. You'd be off balance. You couldn't run. Basically, what? You can hold a fork or a spoon. And I get the weird feeling that they didn't actually make it that long after the whole I'm a human footstool experience. So maybe they didn't have to put up with it too long. But exactly, I mean, nothing, everything we do, we use our thumbs. Everything we do, we use our first fingers.

I mean, Game Boy and texting would be impossible. And tell me life wouldn't be a lot harder without texting. I don't know if I could do it anymore. So this is, This is, I believe, at least something that probably was present in Paul's mind when he says, hey, this sin nature, it's a deposed monarch.

No thumbs. No big toes. Can't walk, can't move, can't talk. So, if you'll imagine yourself, kind of going back to the ancient scene, here you've got this deposed monarch, no thumbs, no big toes, can't walk, can't hold a weapon, can't do much of anything for himself, right? And yet, as you go up to get the commands of the new king, the old monarch, with no thumbs, no toes on his hands and knees in front of the one, says, hey, why don't you go do this?

And you go, okay, off I go. That'd be insane, wouldn't it? It would just be silly, right? It would be silly to listen to this deposed monarch who had been stripped of his power, stripped of just his most natural human abilities. He's completely incapable at this point. So if you listen to him, it's kind of like it's just your own fault, kind of a deal.

Yes? I come in late. What page are you at? Oh, I apologize. We are at the top of page two. Page 2. 28. Sorry, I don't have to page numbers. I printed off my own. It's 28. Thank you. No, it's my pleasure. Actually, we've got a couple coming in a bit late.

If you're curious, if you were here last week, I'll just go over this one more time, you've got last week's handouts are also this week's handouts. So you've got appendix items from last week over here, this week's lesson and last week's lesson over here. And then you've got this, which is appendix item 11, which is really cool. So you're definitely going to want that.

And that's new today. And that's new today. So of all of them, this is the only one that's new today. If you were here last week, that's the only thing that you would want to put in your book. Unless you like doubles. That usually makes page turning confusing. So, once again, just because I love this image of sin, or the sin nature, as a deposed monarch in our lives.

What does that, in that picture, what does that deposed monarch still have? He can't hold a weapon, he can't eat, we talked about all the things he can't do, what can he still do? He can give commands. He can still talk, right? He can give commands, he can beg, he can scream, he can shout, he can reason.

Has anybody ever tried to argue with your sin nature? I certainly have. Is it always a waste of time? For me, yes. But you can do it. Get you into this whole argument about, you know, why you deserve to yell at that person, or why you deserve this, or why da-da-da-da-da-da.

Our sinful anger was totally, totally, completely justified, and blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah, because we're reasoning with that sin nature rather than abiding in Christ and going, you know, that just wasn't Christ-like. I was not abiding in Christ at that moment. That was the outcome.

I could see where you would say that. I'm comfortable with that. Actually, you're agreeing with your sin nature when you say it. In one sense, you're agreeing with your sin nature. Yeah. I think that's probably even better. You're listening to your sin nature's arguments that says, oh, this is why you want to do it, this is why you want to do it, or this is why it's okay, this is why it's okay.

And then when you come back to abiding in Christ, Then you find out that all that argumentation turns to ash. Haven't you already taken the bait, Sam? Yeah, after you've committed the... In the mind. Expound upon that a little bit. Just because you're having that struggle, you've already... I think that's exactly right, or at least certainly true in my life.

Once I'm kind of conversing with the sin nature, I've already lost the battle. I'm already not abiding in Christ. Because if I'm abiding in Christ, I'm not even going to listen to that guy talk. I'm not going to listen to that deposed monarch's words. But if I'm already listening, if it's already got my ear, then I'm already not abiding in Christ in the way that I ought to be.

So why is this issue of nature so very important? We talked last week about why this old man, new man thing is so important because, once again, if we felt wrongly as if part of God's plan for us was to wake up every morning and, in some metaphorical sense, crucify ourselves with Christ or put off the old man every day, one, we'd be living not not in line with scripture, not in line with God's plan for us. But two, we talked about how if you can get back into Adam, you can get back into the old man. If the old man can come back on you, you can get back into Adam. If you can get back into Adam, you are out of Christ positionally. And if you can get out of Christ positionally, your salvation is not secure. So that's why what we talked about last week is so extraordinarily important.

But what about this issue of nature? Now that we've really hammered down, you're in Christ, you're in Christ, and that old man, he's never coming back. Why is this issue of nature so important? Why is it so important to know that your sin nature is there?

Questions that go on for more than one paragraph should never be allowed. I apologize. But essentially, how are we told to conquer sin, and we alluded to this already. How are we told to conquer sin, to have victory over sin in our lives? Is it to grit our teeth, try real hard, and don't do that sin again? There's the magic word. Reckon. Abide. I'm starting to hear all the magic words. That's fantastic.

This paragraph below Galatians 5.16, which, actually let's read Galatians 5.16.

It says, but I say, walk, which is an active imperative, indicating an appeal to the will, by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. So remember, this word walk in Greek, peripateo, has more so the Hebrew idea, but the Greeks would have certainly understood it, of your whole manner of life. Everything that you do needs to be done in the sphere of the Spirit. Walk in the Spirit. So this is walking in the Spirit, as we'll see, we've got all the synonyms for this abiding, or walking, or resting, or however. whatever your brand is, we have all these synonyms for what it is to abide in Christ.

But here it's an active imperative. It's an appeal to the believer's will. And it comes up again later as you look at the bottom. Actually, is it right here? At the bottom you've got a great footnote that kind of talks about the Greek grammar of that, if that's something you're interested in.

From Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics by Daniel Wallace, just kind of talking about this whole active imperatives as an appeal to the will, and as logical imperatives for the believer. So, here Paul is appealing to the will of these really young believers, and saying, I want you, who have been a Christian for ten days, to walk, active imperative, indicating an appeal to the will by the Spirit.

So that's the exhortation that Paul gives the Galatians in Galatians 5.16. We see down in the paragraph below, I believe it starts in the second sentence, Once abiding in the new nature, which is from Christ, the believer's will is influenced by the Holy Spirit's ongoing ministry upon the heart, so as to will within the character of that new nature, but has the latitude of will to trust in the sin nature, but not without spiritual consequences.

What do you suppose the spiritual consequences would be of trusting in the sin nature? Broken fellowship with God? Yep, absolutely. When we walk in the sin nature, our fellowship with the Lord is broken. And as we've seen in our chart, and we've seen in the second chart here, the only place that growth stops, right? So we stopped growing. We have broken fellowship.

What does Romans 6.23 say? You can open to it. You don't have to pull it from me. I know we've got some ex-Navigators in here. For the wages of sins, death, and the gift of God is eternal life. Right?

Romans 6.23, try to position it in your minds, because I just did a study on Romans 6-8 and was shocked at how much scripture I used completely out of context.

And it actually kind of works out in the case of Romans 6.23. But it doesn't change the fact that that's not what Paul was getting at.

When you place Romans 6.23, I've always thought of this as a salvation verse.

The wages of sin is death. You're going to get death for your time outside of Christ if you don't come to Jesus. But the gift of God is eternal life, and using it for non-believers. And it's true for non-believers, right? But Paul, in Romans 6, where is the unbeliever in view at all? Is the non-believer in view even slightly? No. So is he talking about our salvation or our sanctification? Sanctification.

So for the believer, the wages of sin is death. walking in sin, reaps not the spiritual life that we're meant to be plugged into in Christ, but spiritual death, right? It's pretty amazing, yeah, how consistent Scripture is, and then this is the result, this is the spiritual consequence of our abiding in the sin nature, right?

So, now we're back down to the choice, I think, In the Romans class, I think they had two chairs. You can sit in one chair, you can sit in the other, was one example. As Jeremy Doan so aptly put it, I don't have my folder here with me, but the Molloy map, you've got a switch. Maybe that's the way you like to look at it.

The reason why I like the switch is that, with your light switch at home, you've got on and off. Well, unless you've got a dimmer, but let's presume you don't. No spiritual dimmers. You've got on, and the light is shining, and off, and the light is not. Same thing with the mat.

You've got on, and you're abiding in the new nature, or in Christ, or off, and you're abiding in the old nature, the sin nature. The way we talked about it when we were studying Mormon 6 in my Thursday night study, we talked about it's not a dial. You're not like a 7 on the holiness scale. Or you don't have, you know, 35% of me is in the old nature and 65% is in the new.

That works out. I never was strong at math. But the point of the matter remains the same. So, I work with cars all day. So if you have an automatic transmission, you've got an N on your shifter, right? What's that N for? Neutral, right? So do we have a spiritual neutral?

Now, there's no moment in our lives that we're not either abiding in the flesh or abiding in the spirit. No, like, well, you know, I haven't sinned yet today, so I must be abiding in the Spirit. Well, you know, it's completely between you and God. But the reality is that you don't have to have an outward expression, such as, you know, whatever your thing is, foul language, blowing up at a dog, kicking your pets, or whatever it is that you do that's sinful, that expression doesn't need to come out for you to have been abiding in the Old Nature.

Right? Always. I guess to say, it's bigger than that. I think oftentimes I fool myself into thinking I wake up in neutral and then kind of wait until I come to the first roadblock and then find out which way I'm going to go. And I realize the truth of the matter is the decision was made before I even hit the roadblock. The fact that I didn't have an outward expression of sin up until that point didn't change the fact that I was abiding in the sin nature, abiding in the flesh, abiding prior to the expression coming out. Just as you pointed out, once you've started listening to that old ruler, the battle's already lost. You already need to come back by the grace of God and say, hey Lord, I'm abiding in the sin nature, I want to abide in you once again.

So, Galatians 5.17, would someone like to read that for me? It's right on the page. For the flesh sets its desire against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. For these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. Good. We've talked about our relationship to the old nature, our relationship to the new nature. What's the relationship of the old nature to the new nature? They're basically just kind of peacefully passive and resistant, right? They don't care.

No, of course not. They are also warring against one another for your attention. The sin nature wants you to abide in the sin nature. The Holy Spirit wants you to abide in Christ. So they're fighting with, for lack of a term, they're malevolent against one another. They do not like being in the same container together. And the spirit knows that there will come a time when that old nature is swept away. And I think the old nature knows that as well and is willing to fight all the harder due to its limited time. They're not peacefully coexisting. So, can a believer abiding in the sin nature correct a sinful behavior or action? And is this a good thing? So, can a believer abiding in the sin nature correct a certain sinful action? Not really, right?

I mean, they've got all these great... However, if you think about it, they've got Alcoholics Anonymous, which we'll talk about maybe Faith is a piece of its pie, or a higher power, or whatever, but not a Christian organization specifically. And they have helped people who are totally reliant on the sin nature to never touch a drink again.

But they're not teaching them to abide in the new nature. They're not fixing the problem. They're just fixing a little symptom of the problem. They're just fixing a specific problem, like this is the most destructive thing. So I would say that even though nothing can address the problem, the reality is that the believer, by sheer willpower, can choose not to do a specific sin.

But even that is not a good thing. Even though, if you're abiding in the sin nature, and you say, I am not going to kick my dog today, whatever the sin is, I'm not going to kick my dog, you might not, by just sheer willpower, kick your dog. But it won't be as if that's a righteous act before God. Does that make sense? Because it's not coming from faith, right?

So oftentimes, I think, in my life, I will get caught up in doing or not doing something, and not paying attention to the real issue of what I'm abiding in, which nature I'm abiding in. Because that's the part that matters. That's the part that's important.

It's when we're abiding in the new nature that we're able to, as Ephesians 2.10 says, do the good works that the Lord has prepared in advance for us to do. That's when we can do good works, because He's doing it through us. However, when we're abiding in the old nature, even the good things we do are just filthy rags before God. or the bad things that we fail to do, that we don't do, are still just filthy rags before God. God's not up here giving extra credit going, I know that was really hard for you and you did it out of your will instead of doing it out of my spirit, you know, out of my empowerment, so we'll give you an A-plus for trying so hard. He's saying, you get an F-minus for stupidity.

You are not... Here, I gave you all the power to conquer that and you decided to go like this, I'm not gonna do that! Way to go! Like, good job, you know? That doesn't do anything productive for you, although your dog may appreciate it. It's not the way that God designed it to be. He gave us all the power that we need to have victory over sin right here, as we abide in the new nature. And that's where he wants us. That's what he wants us to do. Bernie?

I was thinking that the focal point as we talk about abiding in the new nature, the focal point there is Christ, the person of Christ. And the difficulty with the sin nature is that the sin nature really has no eternal person to focus on. Whereas abiding in Christ, He is our focus. We behold Him. And it's personal. And the problem with the sin nature is that it tries to find life and substance and meaning just in ourselves. and only in Christ is there life.

Well, and isn't that all the world has to offer? I think it's called The Power of Now. This book I'm flipping through, but he's a non-believer, totally secular, and it's basically just soulish stuff. And it's finding the answers within yourself. Finding the way to patch up your soul within yourself.

As Fern pointed out, there's no person, there's no relationship, there's no personal God that you can look to, but it's just you and you alone. And how hopeless that really is, especially in counter-distinction to what we have in Christ. But there it is. So, I believe that puts us... I guess we'll pick up here at the bottom. It says, based on the believer's eternal position, the only logical course of action is to abide in the new nature, which is from Christ. So, Fern gave this great analogy.

He said, imagine you go to the zoo. and you see the crocodile. You're picturing the crocodile in your head, right? But you don't see him where he usually is. You see him up in a tree, and he's trying to gather sticks together, and he's whistling and chirping. What would you do? I don't know what Jesus would do, but what would you do? That crocodile is acting like a bird, right?

That's not his nature at all. It doesn't make sense. It's just silly. For a crocodile to act like anything but a crocodile, I would say, that's just really, really strange. Right? He's not keeping consistent with the nature that God has given him. It's the same thing when we choose to abide in the sin nature. It's like a crocodile in a tree.

It's just silly. It doesn't make sense. It's logically, and one, it's bad for us, it keeps us from growing, so here's all these other reasons, but it's just ridiculous. It's just spiritual insanity. It's just goofy. for us to abide in our sin nature.

If you read ahead of sentence, you'll probably get the answer to this. So what is our motivation as believers to rely on the new nature? Why would we do it? Why are we to rely on the new nature? What's our real motivation there? What motivates us as believers?

Grace, right? Not punishment. God's not up there with a stick going, Abide! Abide! Bam! No. He's not! It's grace. No matter how many times we goof up and wind up, you know, like the crocodile on the tree, abiding in our sin nature, there's still grace to come back. Every time I'm like, wow! Grace is so much bigger than I thought. Grace is the greatest motivator of all time. Ever.

And that's what God wants to motivate us with. And it just goes back to the reality that God doesn't want us to change our actions. God doesn't want us to change our role. He wants to change us as humans. He wants to change us to be in the image of His Son. He wants us to grow up right, I guess is the only holistic thing, to the point where we're actually spiritually mature, where we actually choose the right thing for the right reasons.

How many of us didn't speed on the way to church today? And why? Did you not speed because it's the law and it's the right thing to do, or because you were concerned about the safety of your fellow man, or because you thought there might be a cop around the corner? I'm in the cop group. I can confess that. I may do the right thing, but oftentimes for the wrong reason, because I don't want a $75 ticket and three more points off my license.

I'm comfortable admitting that before you. But the reality is that God wants to make us into people, and grace is the motivator, grace is the tool, grace is the amazing gift that makes us say, yeah, I can go over there and I'll still be forgiven, but I don't want to. I've been forgiven so much, and I know I'll be forgiven again, and that's not the issue. It's not about me owing God anything, but I'm just so blown away by God's grace, so blown away by His love, that I think I'll just stay here.

I think I'll just stand where He's put me, if you will. Does anybody else have any other comments on that whole struggle, if you like? Or what else motivates us? Then we can move on to the next page. Plan on getting coffee? I plan on being done early. So, would someone be so kind as to open up Romans 6, 11-13 quickly?

Consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God and Christ Jesus. Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey its lust. And do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness. But present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. Fantastic.

So why should we not then allow the deposed monarch to rule? It's okay to restate something I've said before. Why should we not allow the deposed monarch to rule? Maybe a better question is, why would we allow the deposed monarch to rule? What's the good reason? There is not one. There is not one. As fantastic as that is.

It says here, surrounding that verse, it says, in Romans 6, 11-13, for example, conveys that though the believer could choose to allow the sin nature to reign, the only conclusion that makes any spiritual sense at all in view of the revealed spiritual facts is to choose to reckon oneself dead to the sin nature and alive to God, which is actively placing faith in what God has accomplished in Christ. So we're back to that personal side again.

Could God justly That coffee thing, I was lying, I apologize. Could God justly say, abide in the new nature, don't abide in the sin nature, or I am going to cut you off? Could He justly do that? Yeah, if justice were the line, He absolutely could, right? He could punish us for that versus letting grace be the great motivator. He could use law in some way, but he doesn't at all.

In fact, if you imagine, you know, in your heart is one throne on whom only one ruler can sit. Christ will stand up and say, all right, you want him to run the show? I will. And then you can also imagine when you say, oh, That was a mistake. Christ, would you please get it back in?

The sin nature is kind of holding onto the handles and saying, no, I don't want to go, I don't want to go. She doesn't have much on Christ as far as power to resist, which is pretty fantastic when you think of it. And yet God is such a gentleman that he won't force his will on any of us, even though he knows best. even though I would sometimes beg him to, if I could. Lord, just take away all the choices. I don't want them anymore. Just make me a nice little robot, and I'll accept that. And he's like, no, sorry. I want you to grow up to maturity, not to being a robot. Alright, so, what's the big verb in Romans 11? What's the big verb? 611? 611, sorry. It is in 611, isn't it?

Therefore... Therefore is a big one, because it's based on everything we said before. Some of us, it's going to be, we've got different translations. And the one you have here at the bottom, at 611, it's consider. Consider. What's the King James Version? Reckon. I like reckon more. I just have to be frank with you. Reckon's kind of got some, just reckon and true. So what does reckon mean? What does it mean to reckon? Put it down as true. Yeah, put it down as true. Consider it as true. Consider it as fact.

So when we have someone, anyone, as a believer struggling with sin, they say, look, you told me all this stuff about my position in Christ, you told me about this stuff, you told me all this, I can't believe it because I'm still struggling with sin. All the evidence is the other way. What are they told to do? Don't believe your eyes. Don't believe your experience. Believe what the Word of God says. Right? Reckon. Consider it as true. You are positionally moved, whether or not you spent the week in sin or not. You are positionally consistently moved. in Christ. You have the power to abide in the new nature. So, that's where we're at.

Alright, as we close up, I just wanted to, as we look, I was going to have us read all 1 through 11, but I don't think we'll make it if we did. But if we just look at verse 6, he says, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with him in order, I'm sorry, in order that our body of the sin nature might be done away with, not annihilated, but put offline. So that we would no longer be slaves to sin, which there is talking about the sin nature. So, we talk about your sin nature is not annihilated, but I just love this analogy that Have you ever seen Windows Vista?

And I think XP is this way too. You sign on, and then you've got users. You choose your user. And once you get into the user, that determines everything about how you're going to use that computer that day. So one user may have access to Microsoft Word, the internet, and da-da-da-da.

But if it's your child and you don't want them to have access to the internet, you can just take away internet access on their account or hide that icon in some way so that they can't get to it. So, I just love the idea that ultimately, in the morning, we wake up, or, well, anyway, as we choose who we're going to abide in, it's like choosing a user.

And if you choose the sin nature, good works, righteousness, holiness, those icons aren't on the desktop. Love is not on the desktop. True, God's love, agape love, is not on the desktop. All the good things that God would want for us and for us to be living out in our lives are not on the desktop.

We have to log out and log back in under price login in order to have those programs available. In order for us to run like we're supposed to run, if you like. And the funny thing about it is that unless your computer is horribly virused, which most of mine might not be, for some reason, you're never going to get kicked out of that login. You have to do it yourself. It's not just going to boot you out of your login and move you to the other.

So, any other questions, comments, complaints, exasperations? Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this time. Lord, look at your word. Lord, thank you so much for the clear distinctions in your word. Thank you that you have put off the old man, that he has been crucified with Christ, and that positionally we have no insecurity at all, Lord. And thank you that your word is so clearly displayed what insanity it is for us to abide in the old nature and the sin nature. And listen to that dethroned monarch as he shouts his commands and makes his arguments and fusses. Lord, I pray that each day we would be overwhelmed and overcome with your grace, and overwhelmed and overcome with the fact that you continually beckon us to abide in you and simply rest in you so that you could live your life out through us. And that's your goal for us. Thank you so much, Lord Jesus. In Jesus' name, amen.