You In Christ and Christ In You

We finished up nine, didn't we? So we're in ten, and we've been working our way down through Romans chapter six, which from my perspective, Romans chapter six is kind of the fulcrum of spiritual life. It's so important for a believer to understand that he was crucified with Christ, buried and resurrected. If he does not know that and or believe it or understand it and believe it, I don't think he can grow because he's left spending his whole efforts working on the old man who was crucified. So my first question today was we now have arrived at the part in God's plan for freedom from the power of the sin nature. What does the word reckon mean?

And maybe we should read Romans 6, 11-13. Likewise, you also reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal bodies, that you should obey it in its lust. and do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves unto God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God."

So, up until this point, we have been given pretty much what we would call positional truth, right? God has been telling us that our old man was crucified and he's been telling us certain things that are relevant regarding that. Now, he's asked us to do something. This is the first time he's asked us to do something. And he's asked us to reckon.

So what does reckon mean? The word, the Greek word is logizimai, that will help you. Put it down as true, okay? In order to reckon on something, what must you have in place first? You have to have the knowledge, don't you? You have to know what you're going to reckon on. What else do you have to have? You have to know that the information is true, right?

And you have to believe it. Is faith and reckon the same kind of thing? Sort of. Yeah. What do you think? How come it's two different words then? Faith is fistus. Reckon is logitima. Because you can use reckon for different things. And faith would be just forgotten. Well, no. You have to wipe that away.

I can believe something that I don't reckon upon, right? Can I believe something biblically that I don't really reckon on? What do you think? What are you saying? You don't have the facts. I have the facts and I believe the facts, but I don't reckon on the facts. Is that all right? Are you comfortable with that or not?

No. Here's maybe to give you a good example of what this word really means under the Greek. You know where Corinth was? Anybody see where Corinth was on the Peninsula there. And it was a town. It was on the forget what side. Let's see. And there was a it was a real narrow isthmus between where Corinth was and then over to the other side where the other body of water was, which would be the body of water between Italy and Macedonia. Now, you had a choice if you were driving a cargo ship, you could stop at Corinth. You know, get lunch and then spend the next two months going around the whole peninsula of Greece up into Rome. Or you could unload the boat or pull the boat out of the water, hustle it across, which was about eight or nine miles and take the goods out of this boat, take it across this this little narrow strip, put it on another boat and save yourself two months time. It's like the precursor to the Panama Canal kind of thing. Right.

When they took all of the cargo out of one boat, there was a guy there counting things. You know, 500 bags of this and 3,200 pounds of this. That guy was the guy that was reckoning. When he counted 40 bags of grain, he counted every single one of them and he wrote down 40 bags of grain.

That's what reckoning is. In other words, what Paul is saying here is that you know the truth, you've handled it, you've received it, you believe it, and you know it's true. And now this is what you do with it. You reckon it to be so because it is so. Your old man was crucified and you reckon that to be so. Why? Because it is so. Your reckoning doesn't make it happen. It's already happened. This word is used in Romans 4 a whole bunch of times, and you can write this down if you want, in verse 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 22, 23, and 24, same word.

It's an attitude, maybe, in view of belief. The belief of the fact and the attitude and view of the belief are both involved in the word reckon. If we have time today I'm going to tell you what reckon isn't because it's important to know what it isn't. I don't know if reckon is application as much as the next word present is application. I would say that if you reckon on your identification with Christ, death, burial and resurrection, it certainly does change your behavior pattern, if you reckon it to be so.

I went to the Nuggets game last night, they won. If I had the paper this morning and looked at the sports page, I wouldn't even have to look at it, I reckon they won. Why? Because I was there and I saw it. See? I saw them win. So I know it's so. Does it make a difference in my life? Not if the Nuggets won, but it sure makes a huge difference in my life if my old man has been crucified with Christ. Would you agree with Newell's statement that Reckon is a word of faith? Faith? Faith. I think so. I think so. But it isn't faith itself. It's more than that. Okay? Yeah. You're lost.

Dead reckoning. Find the location. What is the term dead reckoning in connection? Well, I think what dead reckoning is, is I think that way's north. So I'm going to dead reckon. I'm going to go that way. Or like the old cowboy word, I reckon. So let's hold that in place because I've got some some more. We're going to come up and reckon. Is reckon in this context a command by God? Is this a suggestion or is he saying you reckon? Is he commanding us? Absolutely he is. On a legal basis or a grace basis? It has to be grace. It's based on the facts that he's already given us.

So why is your relationship to sin exactly the same now as the Lord Jesus's is? Why is it? Reckon yourself indeed dead unto sin, so why is your relationship now exactly the same as the Lord Jesus? Nobody knows. We died with Christ. That's right. We died in Christ.

He's now our, I could say it this way, Christ is now my Adam. He's now my federal head. What's true of him is also true of me. Whatever's true of the old Adam isn't true of me anymore. I'm dead unto sin. When Christ died, when he was on the cross, he was made sin for us, the thing sin. And then when he died, what happened to his relationship to sin?

He separated from it, right? So, if he separated from it, what did you do? Same thing. You separated from it because you were in him. And that separation is a forever kind of thing. It's a positional separation. So he doesn't bear any sin anymore because he's died unto sin, separated from it.

Steve's mom is in glory as of last Sunday. She has died to the world. She's not going to come back here. She doesn't want to. Why would you want to? She doesn't have to reckon because she's beholding the glory of the Lord. Just as real as Steve's mom going home to be with the Lord is, is your death with Christ. It's the same reality.

Right. Is this a positional truth or conditional? The reckoning part or the unto... The reckoning makes it conditional. Right. I guess that's what I was going to say. So reckoning is a conditional. That's what makes it conditional. You understand what Courtney just asked? You're being dead unto sin as a positional truth. It becomes conditional when you reckon it to be so for you.

Do you see that? Which goes to that one nature, two nature. Reckoning From the Greek side, it's the present, which is continuous. Right. So you're continually reckoning yourself. And the middle voice, which you're a participant in it. So that versus the one nature. This is showing us that you're still reckoning. You're still conditionally reckoning yourself. A one nature person here would reckon the sin nature dead. He would not reckon himself dead unto it. Understand the difference? It's a really key difference.

So is Romans 6.11 a matter of feelings or facts? Now don't you find it interesting that the word reckon takes something from position and condition but it's still not experiential? Right? When you reckon, do you wait around for some skyrocket to go off? No. You reckon it because it's so.

The Spirit of God has persuaded you that that's the truth. But it's not an experiential thing. But it is true. The truth about believers is that they are dead to sin and alive to God because they're in Christ. And they hear it said by God and God asks them to reckon. Their path of faith is plain. God motivates one to respond in faith. Question 5.

There are two words signifying death in this passage. The word for death, necros, here in verse 11, does not refer to the act or the process of dying, but to the state or the effect produced by death. The other word signifies the act and occurs in verse 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10. and is used when Christ dying or are dying with or in him is set forth.

Which of these words best describes your relationship to sin? Did you understand the question? It's a long question. Alright? Which word describes your relationship to sin? Is it necros or... I can't pronounce the other word. Which one is it? It's Necros, and why? Because it's an already accomplished fact. It's done with. You're not trying to do this now. It's already done. Christ died unto sin, and we died in him unto sin. It's over with. You already are dead to sin. and it's because you're in Christ.

So, question six, do you think there's any other way to establish your soul in rest than this declaration by God? Now, that sounds like an easy question, but it's not, because the question is, is there any other way for you to establish your soul in rest from a conditional standpoint and other than reckoning yourself indeed dead unto sin but alive unto God?

What do you think? Any other way? How about if you're just a really good Christian person, but you don't know this information? How about if you're a good suburbanite Christian who does a lot of stuff for his church, goes on mission trips, you seem to be just a wonderful personality, but you don't know this? Do you have any rest in your heart? What do you think? Paul didn't have it until he knew it. That's exactly right. The Apostle Paul didn't have it until he knew it.

What's the biggest struggle in a Christian's life? What does he struggle with? Sin, isn't it? So you find out that you've been crucified to sin, you're dead unto sin, and you don't have to struggle with it anymore. That's a tough one, isn't it? In terms of, okay, yeah, no problem, I won't struggle anymore. Not a big deal.

But when you begin to understand that God is telling you the truth, and he says to you, you reckon this to be so because it is so, the struggle with sin becomes God's struggle and not yours. Understand what I'm saying there? Why would it be God's choice? Because he's the one that engages in the fight, not you. Your job is to believe him. His job is to deal with the struggle.

But you're the one that's sinning. You're the one that sins. Right. But when you sin, what happens is you break fellowship with the Lord, right? He has provisions in place to restore you to fellowship instantly. You don't have to go through any spiritual gymnastics at all. You're instantly restored to fellowship. The issue here is if I'm struggling against sin, as long as I'm doing the struggling, then what I'm saying to God is that you didn't complete the work. And he's saying to me, yes, I did. You just need to abide in me. I'll deal with it all. See?

Can we apply David's statement that the battle is the Lord's to this? Absolutely. The battle is the Lord's. It's not yours. The battle with sin is something God took care of. Your job is to believe Him and abide. The minute you go out to fight sin, you're toast. You're going to lose. Mike, it's interesting that the same is true of Satan in the same way. Same with Satan, same with law. It's the same, you know, God approaches that too. He's dealt with Satan. That's right. Just trust me.

So, this word, logizima, or reckoning, would not be a word that was used by Paul if there was something left for us to do. Do you see that? If he got 80% of the job done and said, OK, I did most of it and I want you to finish it up for me, he wouldn't have used the word, reckon yourself dead indeed unto sin. He would not have used that word. But he did use that word which means that the job is done.

You okay with that? Now trust me, I don't have to even say trust me, you already know that the entering into the rest of this struggle takes some time. Some of the really smart guys next Thursday, but most of you probably a couple of years or longer. So I would say Here's what I wrote down, those who refuse or neglect to reckon themselves dead to sin as God commands, we press the question, how are you able to believe that Christ really bore the guilt of your sins and that you will not meet them in judgment day? How do you know that? Because if you're a believer, a young believer, there comes a time when you're struggling with sin and you're thinking, boy, I hope God did more than just forgive me. You know, this is ridiculous.

So it is only God's word that tells us that Christ bore our sins in his body on the tree. What evidence do you have that Christ died for your sins? What evidence do you have? The only evidence you have is in the word of God. He told you so. Any other evidence? It is that same word that tells us you, as connected with Adam, died with Christ and that your old man was crucified. He told us again. He told us something new.

And since you are in Christ, you shared his death unto sin and are thus to reckon yourself in your present relationship to sin. You are separated from it. You are dead unto sin. That's a pretty good definition of grace, by the way. I just thought of a question.

So you were asking how do we know that? So it's easy to say that there were those witnesses that witnessed the resurrection of Christ. So I guess the whole deal is when we're saying how do you know that he died for your sins saved you. That's because of Paul and everybody else that's teaching us that.

Yeah, they wrote it down. They put it in here. That's how I find out about it. Now I may find out about it because you verbally told me about it, but you told me what's in here. You see that? And so my faith is based on the Word of God. Now I may have heard it verbally. It's like the MP3 players that we sent to Uganda that have the New Testament translated in. Those people, a lot of those people can't read. Did they get to read a Bible, understand the Word of God? Absolutely they did, but they heard it. So you see a Ugandan sitting in his hut and here comes Romans 6 truth. And here comes the word reckon. Does he need a Scofield King James to reckon? No. He needs the information.

I guess the distinction is there's a lot of people in scripture that were raised from the dead. The distinction is why Christ arose from the dead. Well, I would change the question. I would say that it isn't why so much as what's the difference between his resurrection and say Lazarus. Lazarus came back into the same old life.

Romans 6.3 says that Christ was raised in newness. Brand new life. There wasn't this kind of life anymore. Just as Christ was raised, how does the verse go? 6.3? Somebody recite it for me. Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death? And for? Therefore, we have been buried with him through baptism into death. in order that, as Christ was raised from the dead for the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life." The key word there is newness of life. Lazarus didn't come back to newness of life, he came back to the same old dance. Christ's newness has come into a new state of being, that's what that word means. That's the difference.

And so we're included in that because we're in Christ. So when God says to us, you need to obey me, what does he mean? When he gives us a command like reckon, what does he mean? How do you obey God as a believer? You believe him. You reckon. And we'll see, he'll command us to do some other things, but it's all based on our faith in the facts. He says to us, reckon yourself indeed dead on the sin and alive unto me, right? So how do you obey him? Say, okay. I'll have to wait until I have an experience. No. No, because you have faith. That's right. I do it because you said it. It's good enough for me.

But you know, it's such a gift that when you think about it, it's incomprehensible. Is that the right word? I mean, you're so in awe of of being forgiven and that he gave his life for us and you just can't, I just can't get over it. You know what's cool about that?

That demonstrates that it's all of grace because it comes at you. The thing that you needed God took care of way beyond what you needed and one of the When I was being led to Christ and these guys were telling me about Christ died for my sins and that it would take care, if I believed that, that I would be set for all eternity, my response to them was, the news is too good. God isn't that cool. He's not going to do that. You know what? He did that. That was just the beginning of what he did.

So when he comes and says to me, well, I took care of your sins, now I'm going to take care of the thing that does the sinning, your sin nature, I've crucified that. He comes to me and says, OK, do you believe me? Yeah, I believe you. OK, so reckon it to be so. All right.

And not only that, but reckon that you're alive to me, that there's absolutely no barrier between you and me now, because I took care of everything that was filthy about you. I didn't clean it up. I crucified it. And so, I mean, here I am. Here you are, you know, two little bumps on a planet in the middle of this universe and the God of the universe is saying, I love you, come to me. I've taken care of all the distance. Believe me? Yeah, I do.

And so you think, wow, I wonder, is God being gracious enough? I'm so overwhelmed by that I can't get up, you know? So it's hard to believe when you think about your life. I don't know if it is or not. Well, at times it is for me. I just think, my God, I just don't deserve that.

Yeah, don't you find it interesting that there's this, we are such doubters like Thomas, when there's some wonderful news. I mean, the Lord Jesus rises from the dead, and he goes around and meets all the other apostles except Thomas, and Thomas says, I won't believe until I see him and touch him. Why am I so much like that? I'm not going to believe you until I have some sort of experience about all of this. No, you just believe me. Trust me. And that's the hard part. Isn't that the hard part? I'm kind of jumping into the grace side of it.

I think it's our old man who I have to do something for it. That's the old man. That's the only thing the old man is doing is saying, you know, it can't be that good. I've got to do something. That's right. That's got to be the old man who's doing it.

That's when we step into the grace class. What we're talking about is just thank you. It's not anything in the unmerited part of it. I think the old man is the one who keeps that doubt going. That's a great point. I hadn't thought about that until you brought it up. Isn't that subtle? For the old man to still be in the game, to still be active, he would convince you that God is not. Same old lies he told Eve in the garden. God is not that gracious. That news can't be that good. He would not leave you out of the loop like that.

There's something left for you to do. No, there's not. Your job is to believe and reckon. And you're to believe and reckon that the job is done. You see, you're not to believe and reckon that the job is getting done. You're to believe and reckon that the job is done when it comes to sin.

It's difficult to get Christians to believe that. It's amazing. We have a lot of relatives like that. No, they do not. There's something you have to do. It's very tough, isn't it? And that's why I think that we as believers who understand this forget to use the tool that God gave us as the Word of God. Because you can say to people, well why don't you read this and tell me what you think it says. What does my old man being crucified mean?

What does Galatians 2.20 mean? I have been crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live. What does that mean?

Explain it to me. Well, I want to talk about the commandments. Now let's talk about these verses right here. What do they mean? Go back to the importance of the identification. It's critical. If you don't understand that crucifixion You're going to struggle your whole Christian life. Needlessly. That's exactly right. So then Adam can't function in grace. That's exactly right. What a great statement. Adam can't function in grace. He can't. That's why he hates it so much. Because it leaves him nothing to do. Nothing to do. Based upon the command in verse 11, What would you say is the very essence of a holy walk? And what I'm asking you for is to kind of run it down. Based on the command in verse 11, what's the essence of a holy walk?

The first one, maybe I'll prime the pump here. To receive and believe God's testimony concerning the old man having been crucified. It's a good place to start. To reckon yourself dead to sin. while conscious of sin in your members." He's still there. "...is faith indeed, and is walking according to God's word instead of according to our feelings. Those that are Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh and its lusts." Have. Done. Over with. "...because they know that the federal thing, the old man, has been crucified." The old man has been crucified.

It is in the power of faith that it might be of grace that God has dealt with all that we were in Adam, that we are able to deal with the manifestations of the self-life. In one sense, this is way too simple. We're the ones that make it complicated. If I fall down dead right now and go home to be with the Lord, how complicated is that? If not very, I'm gone. See? One event, goodbye. One event, goodbye to the sin nature. And you know, you can put all your butt monkeys away. Yeah, but God, butt, butt, butt nothing. You know, butt nothing.

God says it's so, so reckon it to be so. If the Spirit of God gets you to the point where you will trust God in whatever He tells you, it'll make your life a lot easier. Because when He says you're dead to sin and then sin is standing over here doing its coochie-coochie at you. My buddy Strahan had a great example.

He said, living the Christian life in the world is like living on a merry-go-round. And it's going around in a circle and you're hearing the music play and the horses are going up and down and you keep watching the horses. And the secret to the Christian life is to get off the merry-go-round. It isn't to fix the horses.

Isn't that a great example? Walk away from sin because you can. Speaking on to verse 12. It says, therefore, don't let sin reign in your mortal bodies, that you should obey it in its lust. Why? Why shouldn't you let sin reign in your mortal bodies and obey it? I'm not ready in verse 11.

I'm going to go back to it. Hang on, I'm going to go back if I get time. I've got to hurry. Notice, I want you to notice a couple of things. In verse 12 it says, therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body. In the Greek, those are all in present tense. Don't be doing that all the time. Don't let sin ever, now or any time reign in your mortal body.

All of this is built on one fact. What's the fact? You die. It's all built on that one fact. Now, what it comes down to is in your heart, in your mind, did I really die or didn't I? Isn't that what it comes down to? Am I still going to have to tap dance with sin because it really wasn't done by God or am I not? Is it even more subtle than that in the sense that, do I want to believe that or not? Yeah, do I want to really believe that God took care of the sin? Or I'm so used to fighting that I want to keep some skin in the game here.

There's some value there. Yeah, value to who? To the old man. That's right. I was just wondering, what you're saying there, it seems to my mind kind of nullify the sin. It nullifies something, what you're saying. I don't know what to do with 1 John 1. Oh good boy. Now he didn't call me and we didn't set this up.

1 John 1 says if you sin, if you commit a sin, Now you have to distinguish between sins, the acts of the sinner, and sin itself. If the old man, if the old sinner in you, if he died, then there shouldn't be any more sin. But the old man didn't die, I died to him. He's still alive and well and living inside a good old Mike. And he's really trying hard to express himself. The thing is, is that Mike is no longer a slave to him. I've been separated.

Now, I, in my weakness, engage in the battle and I'm going to fight sin. As soon as I do that, it wins and I sin. I commit a sin. What does God say? He doesn't say to me, I'm to confess my sin nature. I'm to reckon... He says to confess your sin. My sin, the acts that I committed. So if I confess my sin, He's faithful and just to forgive me my sins and to cleanse me from all unrighteousness. So what's the word confess me?

It means to say the same thing. Agree with God. Agree with God about what? About what? Sin itself. And about me. Sin is me. I say to God, you know what, Father? It signals that the old man is knocking on the door up there and that he needs to be knocked down. And the only way to knock him down is to confess the sin. How about this? How about rather than him needing to be knocked down, that I agree with God that he's already down.

That's the difference. See? So I look at God and I say, I'm confessing my sins. I'm saying that I have been living inconsistent with what you tell me is true. I confess that you're right. You're right. I've been living as though you weren't right. And that's the big sin. He says right there, I'm faithful, he's faithful just to forgive you. Yeah, and he says, so do you reckon yourself indeed dead unto sin and alive unto me? Yeah, I do.

So what 1 John 1.9 is designed to do is not to get me forgiveness because I already got it.

What 1 John 1.9 is designed to do is to restore me to fellowship because of my death, fear, and resurrection in Christ. Because it also adds up, you say he has no sin, the truth is not in him. Yeah, the one who says he doesn't commit sin.

I'm buying my citizenship in heaven. I'm down here yet, I'm still coping with a little bit of sin problems. And you know what's interesting about these verses? What God says is that the way you cope with him is to believe him about what he did. That's how you deal with it.

Well, that's all I didn't mean to say. No, that's good. Oh, I'm glad. Like I told you, you didn't call me, we didn't set this up. I guess on that too, I always think, you know, people fight a good fight and all that. All those verses I'm going to fight the good fight. I'm going to take on sin and I'm going to do it. It's not that. It's fight the good fight of faith.

Just believe. Believe me. I think in all of these, it's just believe what I've told you. Believe me, God speaking. Believe all these things that I've told you are true. That's all it is. Fight the good fight of faith. See how tough it is not to be religious?

That's right. Yes. Even though I'm reckoning in a consistent manner, I still have to wash my feet. Good point. Now you're leading up to something I want to talk about. Mike, I would say I want to point to both sides. I always like to think about that Romans 611 comes before 1 John 1 9. We should be ahead of the curve.

And if you're reckoning, then you won't necessarily get to 1 John 1.9. You won't have to. Because you'll be saying I'm dead to sin. God wants you to be realizing that you can sin, right? And counting upon what he's done for you.

And he wants you to be Romans 6.11 before you get to 1 John 1.9. That's how it is. I think what you've got to do, bud, I shouldn't say it that way. There's a difference, it's important that we get clear in our mind, there's a difference between sins, my sinning, and God forgiving me for those, and my sin nature, the thing that produces them. Did God forgive the sin nature? No, He didn't. He crucified him. Did he forgive the sins? Absolutely. If we forgive, if we confess our sins, he's faithful.

That means that, boy, if I don't confess them, or I miss one, I'm toast. Well, I don't know. I'm condemned with the world. I just don't know what it's in there for. I think you could wipe that out. The whole issue is not condemnation. The whole issue is fellowship. Because you can't touch your position, right? Let's say you don't confess. And let's say you die. Does that mean that we've now made a case for purgatory?

It's a fellowship thing. Well you do get it caught in the throat and what's so gracious about it is that God comes to us and says, you know, because you've acted in Adam and you've committed sins, primarily by not living by faith, you have conditionally separated yourself from fellowship with me. Now I've got a method in place for you to be restored to fellowship. The other thing he says in 1 Corinthians 11, if you don't judge yourself, if you don't do the one John one nine thing, guess what happens? He's going to come and judge you.

What a gracious thing that is. If I'm out of fellowship with him and I'm stubborn about it, he'll fix it so I come back. Thank him for that. I wanted to address what you were saying. How about this question, is the path to maturity just our reckoning? What do you think? I'm going to go through four points, hopefully I have enough time.

The Father has us right where He wants us all the time. No matter what you think, He's always got you right here. And this is the hand that's got the hole in it, and you can't escape, even if you're sinning. He's not allowing you to grab these identification truths and run off with them and reckon upon them.

He rather intends for you to become established clearly and solidly in those two basic growth truths. What are the two basic growth truths? I'm dead unto sin and alive unto God. Those are the two basic growth truths. While reckoning will result in definite gain in your Christian life, that is not God's primary purpose for it.

That's what he calls prodigal thinking. I'll explain that in a minute. The young prodigal reckoned his father's faithfulness and was willing to settle for bread and servanthood, wasn't he? He was willing to go back to his father's house and reckon on the father's graciousness and he would be a servant and so he could eat the father's bread. The problem with that is, at least that would free him from being in the pigsty. And give him some comfort and benefit that he didn't have living in the far country. But the father would never settle for that.

He fitted the prodigal son for fellowship. He took him into his presence in complete acceptance. And this is the father's purpose for you. He has freed us from the old and positioned us in the new, that he may enjoy fellowship with us. He wants the fellowship.

And if there is to be service, it will be as a son, not as a servant or a hired hand. Third, your father does not want you to be like the elder prodigal, the older son that stayed home. He served his father faithfully and kept his commandments all to establish his own self-righteousness. Right? Isn't that what he did? His father even humbled himself and went out to his angry presence. And while he refused to go into his father's loving presence, the father approached him. And he's angry.

If your father were to give you freedom and make you fruitful through your present state of reckoning, you would be just another elder prodigal. You would expect him to come to you and bless you and use you and you would see no reason for responding to his pleas for you to come inside and abide in his glorious presence.

Lastly, while you reckon by faith on your new birth, you do not reckon on your growth. Reckoning is the basis of growth but it is not the means of growth. Do you understand what I mean by that? Reckoning is the basis of growth, but it's not the means of growth. Reckoning yourself dead into sin does not free you from the reign of sin and the sinful old man.

The cross already did that. See the difference? You don't see the difference. The cross has already accomplished that fact. Your reckoning doesn't make it real. It's real because it's done. See that? And reckoning yourself alive unto God in Christ Jesus does not establish you in the position of the Lord Jesus above.

The Holy Spirit has already done that too. There are people that make reckoning a law. They make it the Christian law. They walk around and say, I'm reckoning, I'm reckoning, I'm really reckoning. Like that's going to cause something to happen. Reckoning is on something that's already happened. That's the secret of it. You reckon because it is already true.

I get up in the morning and say, I reckon, reckon, reckon, I'm married to Donna. Why wouldn't I do that? I've been married to her for 30 years. See? I don't have to reckon it. I know it's so. I'll say it another way. I don't have to reckon it to make it so.

It already is so. Same way with your death, burial, and resurrection with Christ. you reckon it's so because it is so. Make sense? Is that why we need an advocate for the Father in heaven? Yeah. And let's set up that scenario. How does that work? Let's say you, Sam, And here's the devil right here. Here's the devil right here and he goes to God over here and he says, did you see what Bud did? Did you see what Bud did? He needs to be condemned. That's exactly right. Hebrews 10 says that he's the freshly slain lamb, that his blood is brand new right now, right now, right now, right now. He's always there on our behalf before God.

I've got to tell you, bud, there are times when with repeated sin in my life and I go to the Lord and I'm ashamed to go to Him. Because I've been about this so many times, I'm tired of going there. Can't we get over this? And He says to me, you don't trust me, do you? I took care of all that, do you believe me? You just rest in me. Rest in the facts. I don't work in India, okay?

It is true that the Father has made you the object of His eternal love. Hallelujah. He has saved you and He has thereby freed you from the old sinful Adam life and placed you in the life of His perfect Son at His own right hand. Now it is for you to count upon these truths so that He can be your object. See that?

If he totally took care of the sin issue in your life, then do you need to spend any time dealing with it? Do you? If it's totally taken care of, do you need to spend any time dealing with it? Now seriously, now think about this. If he did take care of the sin issue, Is there any reason for you to be messing with it? Well, you'd think about it, wouldn't you? Stay with me now. I mean, you're giving me anecdotal evidence.

What I'm telling you is, if God says to me, you know, Monique, I've taken care of a sin issue and you don't need to be concerned about it anymore. I took care of it all. And you said back to him, yeah, but, He said, no, no, Monique, I took care of it. And what does that do for you, Monique?

It makes you free to concentrate on Him. See how cool that is? If the sin issue is taken care of, which God intended for it to be, then what does that free you up to do? If you're not spending your time doing spiritual push-ups, dealing with sin, what do you get to do? You get to hang out and fellowship with Him. Isn't that cool? That's really cool, I think.

Dear Father, how we thank you for your grace and how we thank you for the work of your Spirit that is leading us into a more intimate understanding of our incredible position in your Son before you and that we are free, absolutely free, to fellowship with you on a continual basis and not to be out fighting with sin, Father. We thank you and we pray in your Son's name. Amen.