You In Christ and Christ In You

Okay, we are in Lesson 8, and we have gotten through Question 11, which had to do with, we're talking about, we're right in the heart of the Identification Truth, which is Romans 6, and we're working our way down through 6, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, etc., working towards 14, essentially. And last week, the last question we discussed was, Does the old man being crucified mean that he's obliterated, eradicated and gone forever? Well, the answer is no. The old man is not obliterated or eradicated.

We have been crucified. The old man and I have been separated because that's what death means. I've been separated from it. He's still active, still functioning. but he's lost his power and control over me if I believe what God says about my old man being crucified. He says in 6.6, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the whole body of sin might be put out of business, that we should no longer serve or be slaves to sin. So the idea isn't that the old man dies, it's that I die to him.

And as I mentioned last week, it's important because there's a whole group of folks that are what are called in theological circles, one nature people. They believe the old man has been eradicated. And the problem with that is that if the old man was eradicated and you committed a sin, what's the source of that sin? Memories. They would say it's memories, it's habits, it's Satan. It's anything other than the sin nature. I'll give you a good example.

Brian White calls me last week. He's all excited because he goes to church on Sunday, and he's kind of in a new church. And there's a substitute teacher, and he's a German man. And he gets up, and Brian, they're not paying much attention, and the guy launches into Romans 6 truth. And he starts talking about spiritual growth cannot happen unless you realize you were crucified with Christ.

And he goes on and on like that. And so he calls me up on Monday or Sunday night, and he's so excited. And he said, I'm going to send a link to you so you can listen to it. And in the middle of the conversation, he said to me, yeah, I want to talk to him afterwards.

And he recognized some of the names like he knew who Miles Stanford was and had read the Green Letters. But then he mentioned the name Charles Solomon. Charles Solomon is a Denver guy who wrote several books and he's a One Nature guy. So I said, I suspect that he might be a One Nature guy if he is a fan of Charles Solomon's.

So I listened to him and the guy was really, I mean he was really exciting to listen to, but right in the middle of it he said, yeah, your Sin Nature has been wiped out. but you're still going to be influenced by the flesh. Well, what's the difference between the flesh and the human being?

So I called Brian back and I said, yeah, he's a one nature guy and I'm back and forth. So I said, maybe he said, cause Brian had said to the guy, you know, when you get back into town, I'd love to have lunch with you. And the guy said, okay, that'd be great. I said, well, go at him right away, right at that. Cause that's where it all lies. So, anyway, there's a big ministry in Denver called Exchange Life Ministries. Anybody ever heard about it? They're all one nature people. So, all right.

You have counted yourself so incorrigibly bad that being crucified is the only proper... I'm sorry. Have you counted yourself so incorrigibly bad that being crucified is the only proper remedy for your old man? Should I ask everybody to raise their hand about that one? What do you think? Do you really look at yourself? Have you really come to the conclusion that the only thing proper for God to do with you was to crucify you?

That he didn't fix you up, he saved you, but oh did he really? Did he save old Mike? No, he crucified Mike. Why? Why were we crucified with him? Because that was the only thing that made any sense. If you look at, farther on in Romans 8, here's what 8.3 says, what the law couldn't do, in that it was weak through the flesh, couldn't do it because the flesh wouldn't respond.

God sent his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin he condemned sin. So we've talked about for weeks now, he paid the price for your sins. You're never going to have to face the penalty for the sins you've committed. But he did not forgive you as a sinner. He crucified you.

You're with me? Okay? Okay, wait a minute. So if we die and we go to heaven, we have to pay for all the things that you just mentioned? No. He paid the penalty for all the sins. All of them. So we'll never face those. There will never be an accounting for the sins you've committed because they've already been paid for.

Okay? And you will be allowed, you will have the privilege of being with Christ forever because you have been separated from the nature that did the sinning. Let's say in 15 seconds the rapture happens, and we all leave, and we meet Christ in the air with new bodies. How many of you are taking your sin natures with you? Nobody is. It stays here.

And when you go to the beam of judgment, which really is a place of rewards, are your sins going to be an issue there? No, they're not. The sin issue is done with. See? It's done there. So, what we're talking about is not so much the acts of committing sins, we're talking about what God did about that nature that produced the sins. That's what we're dealing with. Okay, so there's no accounting. Oh, there's plenty of accounting. But it's already been done. Okay, we've been forgiven, but we still have to account for all the garbage we did? No, no, we don't.

The accounting at the BEMA is to reward you for what Christ was able to do through you while you lived as a Christian. So back to my question, do you really view yourself as being that enough that you deserve and needed and the best thing for you is crucifixion?

If you shake your head no, it's okay, the Lord will bring you to that conclusion. He will, I'm convinced he will. Because Paul said in me that as in my flesh dwells no good thing. And as a young growing believer you have a percentage going in that arrangement. I have 80% bad, 20% good. God really saved me, I'm a pretty good fella. He got a good deal when he saved me.

No he didn't. No he didn't. No one by nature will be ready to count himself so incorrigibly bad that he needed to be crucified. You won't do that from nature. But when the Spirit of God turns the light upon what you are from Adam, these will be blessed words of relief. Our old man was crucified. So my last question is, why wouldn't dying to yourself be appropriate in light of this verse?

How many times have you heard in the Christian circles where these are some really highly spiritual guys, right? And I can remember walking up to a guy and saying, how's it going? And he said, I'm really trying hard to guide myself. You ever heard that? Why isn't that an appropriate comment? We have to perform something. We have to add something to it. Even more subtle than that. We're already dead. That's right. We're already dead.

I remember the guy that led me to the Lord, Bob Strong, was just a great guy. And he was a very pragmatic man. He spoke his mind all the time. But he struggled with this issue most of his life. And a guy said to him one time, he said, Strong, you're like a guy riding a horse looking for a horse. Wow, that makes a lot of sense. Here I am, I'm crucified with Christ and I'm running around trying to get me to die. Wait a minute, I'm already dead. Isn't that cool? You guys can let your horses go.

So, when Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15.3, I die daily, what does he mean? If you're already dead, Paul says, I die daily. What does he mean? What is that? First Corinthians what? 15, I think. 1531. Because you keep committing sins.

No. Here's the thing. In part of our class, position and condition. This highlights position and condition. Romans 6, 1-10 is position of truth. It's not experiential. It's position. Understand what I mean by position? 1 Corinthians 15-31 is condition. In other words, I have positionally been crucified with Christ, right? But in my everyday walking around, there's a working out of that death, so that I'll live crucified, buried and resurrected. It's true of me, positionally, but it may not be applicable to me in my everyday living life. Position cannot be changed. Condition changes all the time.

OK with that? So that's why part of our class, especially the last part of it, is going to be a lot of discussion on the difference between position and condition. What we're talking about now in Romans is position only. All right. All right. Let's go to lesson nine. To read Romans 6, 6 and finish up and then through 10, it's the following statement true.

If I did not die with Christ on the cross, I cannot be living in Him risen from the dead, but I am still back in the old Adam in which I was born. Is that statement true or false? You can't mess it up too bad. Is this statement true? Yes. Yeah, it's true. Why is it true? We can't be identified with it if we don't recognize that we just saw it. That's exactly right.

What's interesting about this is that you cannot, and I say this a lot and people look at me like, and they'll come back to me and say, well I know plenty of people that are really spiritual that don't understand these truths. And I politely say, well, I suppose you do. But trust me, I don't believe that there are. If you don't know this, you can't live free from Adam. You can't do it. Because we live by faith, don't we? And we've got to have an object for our faith. We've got to know the facts.

And this is one of those questions that says, I cannot be living with him, risen from the dead, but I'm still back in the old Adam in which I was born. I am crucified with Christ, buried and resurrected with him, but if I don't know it, How can I live that way? Christ died on the cross for the sins of the entire world, right? My buddy who lives across the street, if he never finds that out, is there any chance he's ever going to get saved?

None. Because he's got to have the facts. He's got to know what to believe. If you're going to live free, you've got to have the facts. You've got to know that we were crucified, buried, and resurrected. You have to know that. And then, oh by the way, when you do know it, what do you do with the information? You reckon on it. You believe it. You believe it! And trust me, there's nothing in your everyday experience that's going to demonstrate to you that you've been crucified.

Because what you deal with is same old body, same old environment, same old sin nature, rocking and rolling, and all of that happening, and then you have a choice to either live by circumstances, or by what God tells you is true, or which is it going to be? You see that? Have I really been crucified? Am I really separated from this incredibly powerful thing called the sin nature? Answer, God says, I am. Yeah, but God, you just don't, you know. Sorry. You sure you meant all that? How many times did Christ die? Once. How many times did you die in Him? Once. And it's over? So I'm never told to do my own dying. I've already died. I've already died with Christ. I've already been buried. I've already been resurrected. So, now what's happening, from a conditional standpoint, the Holy Spirit is conforming me to what? To His death. He's taken my condition and implementing in my everyday walking around condition what he's already done in a position. See that?

So in verse 6, what does the body of sin might be destroyed mean? Somebody read the second part of Romans 6. Mine says, the body of sin might be destroyed. Hal used to say, because he was an electrical engineer, that it might be taken offline. Somebody else might be done away with. What does that phrase mean? Well, the note on it says, made ineffective or impotent. Okay, that's a good note.

What's the body of sin referred to? This? The body of sin? That's not the sin nature. What is the body of sin? The note again says that the body of sin does not mean the physical body itself, sinful, but that our body can become the instrument of sin. So it's saying that it's the body of sin meaning the sin nature that's in the body.

Some people think it refers to your body, this body, that is yet unredeemed and not delivered from sin's rule. Others say that what that means is the whole entire environment of sin, the whole thing of sin itself. I think it's the body. And delivered from it means that Here's another way maybe to say it.

Newell says, If Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin. Since the old man has been crucified with Christ, all the rites of sin are gone. And the indwelling Holy Spirit can annul the body of sin, thus delivering us from sin's bondage or rule. The word annulled or put out of business or destroyed is ketergeo, and that word means to put out of business. So the purpose of the cross and your inclusion in the cross was to give your sin nature no place to operate.

Maybe I'll say it this way, see if you pick up on this phrase. The best way to deal with the sin nature is not to have to deal with it at all. Because the sin nature wants to express itself through your body. You see that? It will pray, it will do good works, It will murder. It will get on its knees and want to be forgiven. As long as it can do something, it's active. This means that the cross of Christ was specifically designed to give the sin nature no place to express itself. Do you understand what I mean by that? The only thing the sin nature will not do is not do. Are you with me?

So, the sin nature can look holy, can do all kinds of cool stuff, but the idea of the cross is to sever us from the sin nature so that it does not have the opportunity to be in business. It went out of business. The doors are closed. It went to foreclosure.

Now it's Obama's problem. to feel sin nature, if you don't take the bait, it's not a sin. If you don't take the bait, it's not a sin. And what's interesting is that even before that, if you recognize these truths, when the dangling of the bait comes, it's almost like, it's like dangling the bait at a dead person.

Why would you respond? If it doesn't have a slavery or dominion over you, how many of you really are convinced that your sin nature controls you, you don't control it? How many of you think that's true? Nobody? So you all think you can control your sin nature? Do you really think you're doing that? We're not. We're dead to. It's very powerful. You cannot deal with it.

What did you say the body of sin was? To be honest with you, there's two viewpoints about this, and I'm conflicted about them. It can be your body in which the sin nature expresses itself through. The other viewpoint is that the body of sin should be put out of business. That the whole thing of sin itself... I can't come up with a better word. All that we are an atom? Yeah, all that we are an atom.

The whole environment that sin exists in would no longer be operative. Now, sin only can express itself through your body, right? It isn't sitting out here someplace. If a sin is going to be committed, it's going to be committed through your body. Either your mind, your emotions, your physical carrying it out. You see that? Your will. Another way to look at that body of sin, anybody in art or any profession, they can have a that's what that's saying.

There's a body of work over here that I can be, what's it saying here, that body of work can be done away with and from that action, then I'm free from it. Or maybe this way, before I was saved, I created a huge body of work of sin, you know, enough to fill this room and then some. I'm saved by believing in the person and work of Christ. In positioning I'm crucified and separated from that whole body of work.

That's not me anymore. Now I may remember everything I did and personally identify with every single action. But you know what? It isn't attached to me anymore. My history is not that. Isn't that something? And I dare say that when you learn the identification truth, one of the first questions you begin to ask God is that I did A, B, C, and D, which are almost unforgivable kind of acts. Am I really not going to face those? Aren't you going to take me behind the room and say, hey Mike, how about this and this and this? The answer is no, he's not going to do that. And the reason he isn't is because this body of work is not supposed to have, I'll put it this way, this body of work has no influence on me as a positioned believer in Christ. Now it may have a lot of influence on me because this when I believe that ugly, ugly, you know, I can, I can identify that nasty thing. So it doesn't mean that now on I'm, I'm fine. I think the harder part is.

The old man that did all that. When we get down to 11, that's exactly right. Because now I'm a believer, right? Oh, it's all great and wonderful. Why do I, as you say, keep dancing to the music? That's right. The music starts and the feet start to move. And why do I keep doing that?

And I think the maturity part is at the end of the line, first and foremost. The old man, to understand what he is as a part of you. You know, that all those things that I do under law are just so good. And my spiritual push-ups are just so, so good.

So you say. But I mean, identifying that. What I'm trying to say is, it's easy to show that other body worked before as, you know, oh, that's ugly. And I'm making up for all this. But now, yeah, now I'm doing those push-ups and I'm bulking up. And that's harder to identify, I think, than all that other stuff.

I agree. I had written down something that Newell said. He said, sin controlled man, both spirit and soul, through the body. Yeah. Through the body. That's how he did it. That's the vehicle. So if you recognize that you have been separated from sin, then that, you know, it's like, well it's like Hal says, you move the switch, the current stops flowing, and the body doesn't produce sin anymore. See? You go up to the hose on the side of the house and you turn it off. That's what happens, or you cut the hose.

Okay, staying on the same subject, in verse 7, what does being freed or justified from sin mean? Verse 7, for he who is dead has been freed from sin. Now, George Watson died. He's freed from sin, right? But not me? I haven't died yet. Am I freed from sin? Absolutely I am. When did I die? 10,000 years ago. Am I freed from sin?

When I wrote down was let us distinguish at once between being justified from sins from the guilt thereof by the blood of the cross and being justified or freed from sin the thing itself. Paul knew that he had been justified from all guilt by the blood of Christ and he knew that he was also justified or cleared from the sin itself. The declaration that we died and we are now here justified from sin. I'm not going to go there because that's something I don't remember clearly because in Scotland there was a sign about a guy who got executed and it said this afternoon at four o'clock, Jim was justified.

So what's a believer's relationship to sin now? What's your relationship to sin? Well, I don't know. Okay. What's yours? Separate. Separate. Don't have any. How about that? How about saying, you know what Lord, thank you. I don't have a relationship to sin anymore. Oh, I know what you mean. Yeah. Because we put it on the back burner. Well, we've been separated. I mean, we got moved out of the house. Right. You know? Yeah.

And what happened was that we ended up in a whole new creation where there isn't any sin. I don't have a relationship with sin, positionally. So, does being justified from sin mean sinless perfection in the believer? I told this story a lot and it always gets a chuckle. When John was born, Donna was convinced he was the one human being outside of Christ that didn't have a sin nature. That's what you did. He proved her to be wrong. He was not sinlessly perfected, trust me. Do you understand what I mean by sinless perfection? You don't sin anymore. Yeah, you just don't sin.

Again, it's a position condition question. Sinless perfection, if you come from a Methodist background, The whole Methodist viewpoint is to arrive at this sinless perfection thing by doing as many good works as you possibly can. The problem is that if you don't distinguish between position and condition, you're in trouble. But it shouldn't be through works. It can't be through works. Not only shouldn't it be, but it can't be.

So, we were positionally and judicially, understand what I mean when I say judicially? account of holy, righteous, or separated from the thing sin itself. When O.J. Simpson was pronounced not guilty, he judicially never committed the murders. Whether he did or not doesn't matter. From a judicial standpoint, he's free. Now in the cross of Christ, not only positionally are we free, but judicially we are free too.

The court can never come back and say, well, you know, like what they do in our society is if they can't get you on a criminal charge, they'll sue you and get you in the civil courts and take all your money from you. You know, you're going to pay one way or the other. Well, you don't pay one way or the other in the court of God. He took care of the sin issue, and He took care of your sin nature, and you're never going back to have to face Him positionally.

So, sinless perfection. What about sinless perfection do you... We would never allow that sin is gone from the flesh, right? We would never say that we are free from the influences of the sin nature. We would never say that, you know, I went a whole week without sinning. So we would allow that the presence of the sin nature is still within us, it's still alive and active and still trying to express itself through us, right?

So the issue here is that we do not have to respond to it anymore. It's like when you're training a dog, if you're training a dog to come back to you, The best way to do it is to keep making the leash longer. And every time you tell him to come, you give him a tug. He thinks in his mind, I'm on the leash. And eventually you can get him way out there with nothing on him and say come, and in his mind he's still on the leash. So he comes to you.

We still think sin is there in the sense that when it tugs, oh yeah, we respond. I remember that. But as the Holy Spirit works this positional and judicial separation from the power of sin, and we begin to believe Him, it will lose its power over us. But like God, the way God does everything, He takes care of the problem first, and then He comes to us and says, OK, I took care of it, will you believe me? You know, will you? And we say, well, we'll have to work it out. And he says, now let me work it out. And he does.

We will be increasingly free from the power of sin. But we will never be free until we physically die from the very presence of the sin nature. So it's going to dog you until the end. Maybe we should be concentrating more on our heavenly standing. That's right.

611 when we get to it, dead unto sin, alive unto God. On Tuesday we were studying Colossians and we did Colossians 3, 1 and only got halfway done in an hour and a half. You know, since you'd be risen with Christ, another truth, seek those things which are above where Christ sits at the right hand of God. We went an hour and a half just on that because it's a positional truth but when you start to talk about it from a conditional standpoint it really gets, actually the conversations are great because You begin to realize, well God didn't crucify you and just leave you hanging out there.

He said, now that you're crucified, buried, and resurrected, I've got something for you to do. And the something for you to do is to seek those things which are above. Oh, you mean I can do that? Yeah. Where Christ sits at the right hand of God. So we spent 45 minutes talking about what the things were.

Because we're so used to being in this environment fighting sin, we have to learn what it's like to be seeking the things of God, the things of Christ. Does verse 8 tell us to take for granted that we died in Christ? Verse 8 says, Now if you died with Christ, we believe that all souls shall live with him. Does that verse kind of take for granted that we died?

It does. It takes for granted that you died. It's really cool. You did die. We're having a memorial service today for George Wasserman. Why are we doing that? We take it for granted that George died. Aren't we? So we're having a memorial service. The word of God is taken for granted that you died to sin. So why does verse 8 say that we are to believe we shall also be living with him? Why does it say that? Well, if you died, what's next? Life.

Right, so Christ is alive and so then we are also alive. So F.B. Meyer said, whoever has died with Christ is now also of the belief that his life, i.e. the positive active side of a moral being in nature, shall be a fellowship of life with the exalted Christ, that is, shall be able to be nothing else than this. Rotherham, an old brother and guy, said, if we jointly died with Christ, we believe that we shall also jointly live with him. Coney Bear said, if we have shared his death, if we have shared the death of Christ, we believe that we shall also share his life.

So you don't die and go on the ground and that's the end of it. You don't die on the cross and that's the end of it. The Christian life, the world lives life until you die. In Christianity, you die first, then you live. You understand what I just said? You die on the cross with Christ. Why? So that you might live. You die first. You don't die second. You die first. And then you live. You live in Christ with his life. So, what is the reason given for this assurance that we shall keep on sharing the risen life of Christ? The answer is verse 9. that Christ having been raised from the dead among the dead ones dies no more.

Death over him no longer has dominion. Now you've heard me say that when you're reading Romans 6 about Christ or the New Testament about Christ, who else are you reading about? Me. You. Because you could say knowing this that Christ and me having died and having been raised from among the dead, I don't die anymore. Death over me no longer has any dominion.

We were talking about, what was the circumstance? Oh, Wednesday night at our house we were talking about, in 1 John 5, the sin unto death You know, you read in 1 John 5, I think it's 17, 18, that you pray for somebody who hasn't, isn't sinning a sin unto death. And so we talked about that the whole night. And what was interesting is I just lost my train of thought.

Boy, you just went. It's gone. Sure. Never mind. It's that new body, right? It's just gone. Yeah. All right. Question nine. What makes the fulfillment of John 8.51, and that John 8.51 is, Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my word, he shall never see death. What makes that possible? Because you died with Christ and then you lived. Oh, I just remembered my train of thought. We went from that verse into this verse in John 8, verse 51. What happens when a believer leaves the planet? What word does Paul use to describe a believer who leaves? Absent from the body.

And another word he uses is sleep. Is he just playing a little word gymnastics here? Does he really use words that would indicate? Why would I say to Courtney, well one of these days, Courtney, you're going to fall asleep permanently. And I didn't use the word, one of these days, Courtney, you're going to die. Why would I say it? One of these days you're going to sleep permanently. Yeah, he's already dead. He already died. You see that? So the Lord can say, If a man keep my word, he shall never see death. You're never separated from God. That's exactly right.

And that's what death is. If you're resurrected, you're not going to die again. Now your soul and your spirit is going to vacate your body, but now it's not like a non-believer where that is the end of something. That's actually the beginning. And the reason it is, is because your death already occurred. You already died. That's also why I think it's, oh death where is your sting?

The victory of death is gone for the believer. It's gone. Death had victory over every man outside of Christ, but it has no victory over us. That's right. We died with Christ and we now live. See the big lever that Satan has always held over all humanity is death. Okay. Now that I've died is there a lever over me anymore?

No. Now, I'm not discounting the fact that if you're approaching death and you're a little bit ignorant of these truths, it can be a scary proposition. But if you're not, you know, and I use our buddy Hal Malloy, boy, what an example he was. You know, the day that he died, he knew his body was about done.

And he said to his family, he said to Lindy, call a truck. It's time for me to go to the hospice. Time for me to go home. I've always said there are two great days in a Christian's life. The day he's saved and what's the second day? The day he gets to go home. See? We don't belong here. So, I'll read what I have.

Sin never had dominion over the Lord Jesus and death could have had no dominion. Death could have no dominion except that our sin was transferred to him. Death therefore, the wages, had a brief dominion, but now that has ended forever and we are in him also forever. Therefore, death with its dominion is, for the believer, forever passed away.

Our identification with Christ in death at the cross made possible the fulfillment of the promise of John 8.51. If the believer falls asleep, his spirit goes to be with Christ. There is no, as some people say, dark valley. None. Question 10.

What does it mean for death to no longer have dominion over Christ? Did death have dominion over Christ at any time? Answer, yes it did. When he was made sin for us. But now it doesn't have any dominion over him. Because he's never going to be separated from the Father. Yeah, he's separated from the whole sphere of death. Okay? Into newness of life, right? And now he lives under God in a glad resurrection life that doesn't ever end.

So, in question 11 we've already answered, did sin die? No. If you're ever confronted by a one nature person, here's the shortest and simplest way to deal with them. Go to verse 10. And say, let's read verse 10. For in that he died unto sin, he died once and for all, but in that he is living unto God, he is living unto God, he is living unto God, he is living, he is living unto God.

You see that little word, unto? That's the key word. I'm like, you know, one little confusion point, if you don't have a King James, it's rendered to all the newer translations, so you have to kind of pencil that in there, it's unto. That's great. It does help if you do that. So this is a study, a homework assignment for you. Get familiar with unto. In the King James. Because that's the key. It also says unto the sin. The sin. The sin nature. It doesn't say that the sin nature died, it says I died unto it.

That's a really important point, okay? Does God intend to change the old man? No. Weren't you hoping? Why do you think the saying is you must be born again? So, 13. If God is done with your sin, how come you're not? Really, now think about it. Are you done with your sin? Positionally, yes. Positionally, you are. How many people in this room think, boy, I hope he doesn't look at me and ask me that question. Right? But it's the relevant question. It's the best question you can ask. Is, number one, is God finished with my sin? Is he? Absolutely he is. So why shouldn't I be? And so, you know, I mean, if you get honest with the Lord, you say, well, you know, Lord, all day long I'm tempted and, you know, I'm sinning and, oh, I got mad and kicked the dog and, you know, all of this stuff.

And, you know, my wife, she's not as cool as she used to be. The burgers don't taste as good. And my son really, you know, the guy cut me off on the freeway. And not only that, you know, I'm thinking about switching churches, those people down there, they don't like me.

All this garbage that goes through a person's mind, in any environment they're in, that leads, tempts us to commit sins. And you come to the thought that, wait a minute, God is done with all of this. Shouldn't I be? Should I be? But it's not our nature. Yes, and we have another nature. We only have one nature? We got two, don't we? What's the second one?

It's the nature of the resurrected Christ. That's the nature that's done with sin. So if we abide in Christ, we're done with sin too. In Galatians 5, it says if you walk in the Spirit, it's totally impossible to fulfill the lust of the flesh. Why? Because walking in the new nature, walking in Christ, There's no sin.

As a Catholic, we don't believe it. Well, there's two things. One, we don't have the information, and when we do have the information, maybe we don't believe it. What's wonderful, if you come out of Catholicism like I do, which means you trotted down to church every Saturday to confess your sins, and you really tried hard to make it to Sunday without sinning, which you hardly ever could do, When you find out that there's a real possibility that sin is not going to control me and that I'm going to be free from my own sin, that's such exciting news over the time.

It really is. I get to be free from me, from my sin nature. Alright, we got to close. And I've got the handouts for next week. Dear Father, how we thank you. How we thank you so for Our relationship to sin is the same as your dear son, the Lord Jesus. We're free. Father, that we may continue to grow in the knowledge and grace of him so that we might be occupied with him and not with our sin. Thank you. We pray in his name. Amen.