You In Christ and Christ in You
Mike Doyle · Aug 23, 2009
You in Christ & Christ in You, No. 34
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492614137998

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

Okay, we're working on that paper from Lewis Perry Chaffer. What question did we get to? Four? Maybe just to set it up. The questions that we've talked about and answered so far is why is grace not withheld because of my deficiency or my misconduct or my sin or my, as Chaffer puts it, my demerit.

God's grace doesn't take into consideration the need of man. He is what he is and he's gracious to whomever and he doesn't do it because the need is so great and he certainly doesn't do it if there's any slightest merit that man would bring to the table because if he did then there wouldn't be grace and that's a very subtle But an important point, if there is any hint of contribution from the one receiving the grace, it ceases to be grace by definition. Why can't grace be lessened because of my sin or my deficiency? The reason was that God doesn't need more grace for those who are bigger sinners and less grace for those who are less sinners.

And the example of that probably is, when I was a young believer, it took me a while to kind of reconcile this in my mind. Why would the first man, who took one bite out of one piece of fruit and the whole creation fell, doesn't seem like a big deal.

You understand? Why, I mean, why does that one act create you know, 10,000 years of pain and agony and chaos and just corruption and the whole... Why? Why? It was sin. I mean, it was sin. Sin has to be paid for. And the consequences, the interesting thing about that act that we can think of thousands of sins that would be bigger than that, right?

But that's not the point. is, if you don't obey God, the result and the consequence of that is the creation that we live in. And so grace, when God exhibits his grace towards us, it is irrelevant in terms of how big or little a sinner you are. One little tiny sin is just as abhorrent to God as, I don't know, if you're a mass murderer or whatever.

And we talked about why grace doesn't incur a debt, meaning that I can't behave myself and then go to God and say, you owe me. You told me if I did these things, you would exhibit your grace. You can't put the giver of grace in a debt position. Why can't you? Especially God. What's that? Okay, it goes back in the work system.

Think about from God's perspective, Why couldn't you put God in a debt position when it comes to grace? What's our definition of grace? Unmerited and unlimited blessing. So if you think in your mind there's anything you could do to add to the unmerited and add to the unlimited, then if you could, you'd put God in a debt position, and guess what? Then it wouldn't be grace.

Isn't that interesting? Question four, why isn't grace exercised in just payment of a debt? Yeah, we haven't talked about that, right? Did we get to that one? So, honest payment of a debt is important for all of us. If we have a debt, we should pay it. But grace, there's no sense in which grace is the payment of a debt. Understand what I mean by that? or what Chafer means by that?

If God could discover the least merit in the sinner, then what? He's got to recognize it. He's got to say, I see some merit in you, so therefore, I'm going to save you, but it won't be totally by grace. See that? And God being holy, righteous, and just, would act righteously in giving you your due. Well, Mike, I think that's one of the things that's even difficult for believers. You know, believers tend to say, there must be something in me that's of merit because, you know, the reverse of that is I have absolutely nothing to bring. And that's exactly what Scripture says. But it's interesting how we want to say, there must be at least one little good thing I do. I thought like that as a young believer.

I mean, it was a thought that scared me, but I would entertain it. He said, you know, you got a good deal when you got me. Because I'm a pretty slick guy. She's choking over there. I have the education, the background. You found me just at the right time. And I'm really good with people. I'm a good talker. I'm a salesman. I can teach. I dress nice, take showers once a day.

What else do you want, God? You're all laughing, but I know you've had those thoughts. See, the thing is, if there was any merit in any of us, then God, because he is God, would have to recognize that, and he would have to reward us for it. He would have to. Right? But he looked around and guess what he found? Nada. Nada thing.

So, when you look at Romans 4.4, it says, Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as great, but as debt.

So, if you come out of the religion that I came out of, And by the way, I love the word religion because it does mean a derivative of a Latin word that means regulation. And so, if you come out of the religion I did, we were doing spiritual push-ups to earn salvation. It was a whole hierarchy of principles in which we had grace defined as different kinds. and if we did certain things then we would receive this grace and that we would have all these opportunities for salvation. Well, the problem with that is, is that if we could have done or I could have done anything that God would say, okay, that's a good one, I'll give you that one, then he would owe me, wouldn't he? He would have to respond that way.

I heard religion defined as man's attempt to reconcile himself. That's really good. So, it's subtle though. It is incredibly subtle. And if you, not that you need to do this, but if you become a student of religions of the world, and you want to, the only one that's gracious is Christianity. It's the only one that you don't have to work for salvation.

Right? The one I point up to is years ago when the Aztec display was here from Mexico City. And they had an incredibly ornate and intricate system of religion, including human sacrifice. And they would do all these things to get God to sort of bless them in what they were doing, grow their crops, whatever they were up to. It's religion.

And if God could say, boy, you know, if you sacrifice three virgins to me, you know, you'll have a big corn crop. If that was the principle, then he would have to do that. If you lived on that system or had that kind of system, that's the way the Mosaic Law was. If you obey me, I'll bless you. I will. If you don't, I'll curse you and I'll do that too.

Let's see, we can look at Ephesians 2, 8, 9, and 10 just as collaborating verses. If somebody gets it before me, go ahead and read it. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and not of yourselves. It is a gift of God that it there refers to salvation, not to the faith. Not of works, lest any man should boast, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, unto good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

You can say an act ceases to be gracious when it is in recognition of the merit. If I borrow five cents from Roger and he graciously gives it to me, if I try to pay him back, the grace is gone. I wasn't very gracious, Mike. So we are freely justified by His grace and the reason is because of the redemption that's in Christ Jesus. Why wouldn't grace then be an overpayment of a debt? So I borrow five cents from Roger. He says, don't pay me back. I said, I have to pay you back. I'm going to give you six cents back. The penny is grace. Why not? Or why? I think it's related to something. Yeah.

When when Courtney's serving up those drinks, you know, when he's when he's bartending at the catering thing, he doesn't wear a cross when he does that. And these guys are shoving dollar bills into his tip jar. Is that grace? See, whenever you start using the word payment, payment, then it isn't grace. You understand what I'm saying? If there's any payment involved, it's not grace. Even if it's overpayment. When I speak to you, you're talking about five cents, but when it's the grace of God, it's like, Ten billion dollars someone would give you and there's no basis. You don't have a basis for repeating.

That's right. Well, and that's the whole point. If we understand when it comes to dealing with God, we bring nothing to the table. We bring sin, weakness, you know, and God brings grace. So when you sit across from him, so to speak, and you say, well, here's what I got. You have nothing. Well, I got a little more about a tip. You have nothing of value. God says, here's what I have.

I have grace. And that's the mentality. If you're like me, though, there is the... If you're like me though, doesn't your mind go there a lot? You know, I'm going to do a little more for God. You know, if I just get up a little earlier, I'm going to just sit here and read this devotional a little longer and God's going to really like me for doing that. Or if I pray a little, I have a big need and now I've got to go pray more about it so God will answer it. Or maybe I never pray and now that I have a need I think I'll start to pray and maybe God will listen.

Don't you see how legal that mentality is? It sounds like a broken record, but it always goes back to the identification. That's the old man doing that. That is solely the old man wanting some recognition. He's the one who is thinking, you know, if I do it a little bit, God's going to smile on me a little bit more. You know, even in, you know, behind closed doors, But that's the scenario that the entire world operates on, that we were raised in, in every aspect. That's the sin nature of the sin mind, thinks like that. That's what I said, once you start thinking about that, that's helped me out with the edification, it's just realizing that's the old man. The minute I start thinking God's going to smile on me just a little bit because I did whatever, I immediately know that that's the old man. You start identifying how insidious the old man is still in you. Even though you're quote doing something good, it's the old man that is going, you know, you're pretty sharp. God's got a good deal. He likes orange shirts.

I wouldn't go that far. So you could say this, that grace is neither treating a person as he deserves, nor treating a person better than he deserves. Neither of those are graced. The issue is, you treat a person graciously without the slightest reference to whether they deserve anything or not. So, when we as believers begin to understand that God does not ever treat us based on what we deserve or not deserve. That isn't the basis on which he deals with us. What's the basis on which he deals with us?

It's the work of Christ and the person of Christ. And it's infinite. His love towards us is infinite and it has nothing to do with who you are in terms of deserving anything from God. Not a single thing. If we would live that way on a daily basis, it would change our perspective as to all of this wasted energy and motion and time that we go through the spiritual push-ups that we do in order to sort of get God to notice us. You know, it's like being at Invesco Field in the middle of a Bronco game, waving your arm, trying to get God to look at you. You know, because I'm doing all this really cool stuff.

That isn't the way grace functions. On the other side of that coin, though, grace comes at us so full on all the time that we were talking about this on Tuesday and we were talking about it on Wednesday night. How come we as believers who begin to understand about grace don't live more in it? Why not? We read these incredible verses about God's grace and we don't live in it. Why not? And we talked about that on Tuesday. This was the most honest man in the room, by the way. He said, you know, I know it's there, but I'm not living it all the time. All the other guys sat in their hands. I held out for 50%.

So what do you think? Why do you think we don't just say, oh, boy, look at this grace. I'm getting into that. Why do you think we don't do that? I think we're too judgmental. We're judgmental? About ourselves? So we don't deserve it? No kidding. No kidding. So what if you don't deserve it? You see the mentality? If I don't deserve it, then I have to do something to deserve it more. No, you don't. No, you don't. Because it isn't based on you.

See that? Give me another reason. You read this incredible verse, like, I've been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus. Is that true? You're all going like this, right? When's the last time you lived in that one? You understand what I mean by that?

You know what I think the problem is? We don't believe them. And the reason we don't believe them is because we've got this little marriage system going, where we're cause and effect, rather than saying, Thank you, Lord. I know I'm a slug bug, but I know you love me, and I know your grace is full on towards me all the time, and I'm staying right there, I'm not moving. Do you see that?

I believe you when you tell me stuff like that. I believe you when you said you crucified me. I was buried and resurrected in your Son. I believe you when you tell me I'm seated in Christ in the heavenlies today, right now. No experience, no feeling would verify that, but you said it, that's good enough. I believe you when I hear about and read about all of this grace. I discount what my mind is telling me, what my experience is telling me, what my emotions are telling me. I trust you and what you said. And that's what I've experienced too.

These guys are all sort of peeking around. They don't want to be busted. Do you see that? So here comes a guy like Chaffer and he writes a paper like this. It's a difficult paper to read, isn't it? It really is because it's gracious. And Chaffer's book on grace, you know, until at a time in my life, thanks to Chester McCauley and some other people, I started into that book at least a half a dozen times.

I had to put it down. I didn't understand what he was talking about. But you know what? want me to not understand. He wants me to live full on in that grace. So I think Chafer has done a great job of identifying what grace thinks grace, what things aren't grace. That we have sort of built this little hierarchy of deserving things about grace. See what I'm saying? I kind of like what he said.

Divine grace is never decreased or increased. It offers a standardized unvarying blessing to every individual life. That's a quote from his book. We can just keep that. And that's not only from salvation, but your whole Christian life is based on that premise. It has nothing to do with your performance. And so, I know what you're going to say. Well, now you told me I don't have to do anything. Well, what about the have to do anything? How does that work under grace? We've studied grace long enough now, we kind of ought to have that figured out. Grace is the motivation. Grace is the motivator. To do something. Do you see that? To study.

If we begin to enter in the fullness, the full on fullness of God's grace, unmerited and unlimited, when the Lord Jesus wins over your heart and he says, hey, I'd like you to He doesn't have to get the I like you out of his mouth and you're ready. Whatever you want, Lord, whenever. It doesn't matter. But then doesn't that go into the grace or the love circle thing too? Yeah. Why do we love God? Because he first loved me. Why do I obey him because I love him? Because he first loved me. And why is he going to reward me for obeying him, for loving him? Because he first loved me. our new life in Christ.

You've said many times, Christ didn't get up today and go, well I've got to do this and this and this and do the Father's will today. Yeah, on Thursdays I do this. It's not that you think, and today I'm going to go slay the world for the Lord. It becomes more a life rather than a process or something like that. It's a life. And you've got to always go back to that, that it's a life. And that's where you don't just You are in Christ. And that is how the life is.

On Wednesday night we were talking about the righteousness of God. And I quoted one passage from Martin Luther and another passage from John Calvin. And both of them had these pretty elaborate but kind of understandable definitions of righteousness. So I asked the classes, is that what righteousness is? And some said yes, some said no, I said no it's not. Because what really, to get all of the flack out of the way, what is righteousness?

Is it a system? No. What is it? It's right standing before God. It's not even that? Close. It's Christ himself. Righteousness is a person, not an imitation of what the person does. It's him. We are the righteousness of God in Christ. That's not a system, that's a person. Abraham was declared righteous because he believed God. That's a system. But that's not true of us. We are in Christ, and because we are in Christ, we have His godly righteousness. Isn't that something? That's grace. That's grace. Grace is always a person. How cool is that?

We're always looking for systems, formulas, matrices, rather than a person who's the Lord Jesus Christ himself. Like Courtney says, Christ doesn't get up in the morning and say, In the Handbook of Righteousness, I've got to do da-da-da-da-da. No, it's His resurrected life that functions in a dynamic way, way more energy than we could even think about duplicating, all based on His work and all based on God's grace coming towards us.

I dare say you can't help respond to the grace. I don't think you can help it when you start to learn what it is. You alright with that? Question six, why doesn't grace appear in the immediate divine dealings with the sins of the unsaved? That's a hard question. Let's get the question clear before we try to answer it. The question is, why don't you see grace functioning immediately with the sins of the unsaved? Do you understand the question, first of all? Who doesn't understand the question?

It's a matter of his justice. A matter of his justice, that's right. Judicially pardoning somebody because somebody else paid their debt. And Schaefer uses that word judicial, so it can't be both grace and judicial, is that correct? Right. Here's how you look at it. From your side of the ledger, it's gracious. Right? From God's side of the ledger, it isn't gracious. It's judicial. When the Lord Jesus Christ was made sin for us, was that gracious? It was judicial. Was he guilty? Yeah, because he was identified.

Doesn't it have to be a recognition at the point of salvation where the weight of your sin is present on you that you realize you need a savior? So it's not like he's just graciously doing something for you without there being a recognition of who you are in your own being. I agree with that because who would ever want a savior if he didn't think he needed to be saved? You know, why would you reach out to the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior if the gospel is presented correctly?

Now, he may be presented as, you know, a Tylenol, fix up whatever your problem is this week. Or things are going pretty rough in your life, you know, if you shoot Jesus into your heart, he'll fix all that. The issue about salvation is a very narrow issue. You know what the issue is? Sin. That's all it's about. Sin. one little tiny sin and you're separated from God forever, not four weeks, forever. That sin from God's side of the ledger has to be dealt with. The punishment of it and the very existence of it has to be dealt with because God is a righteous God.

He cannot say, oh never mind, you're a good guy, you've done a bunch of really cool things, I think I'll let you in. We've talked about the Fairness Doctrine, and I'm talking about radio and TV. God's Fairness Doctrine. What is God's Fairness Doctrine? Well, it isn't fair that he would save Roger and not me. Okay, so we're going to make God fair.

And that's the only attribute he has. He's fair. What happens to me and Roger? We both go in the tube. Both of us. Right? If he's going to be fair, then it's got to be fair equally to both of us. Here comes the Lord Jesus Christ, who's a man, so he can be a representative man, he can be made the sin, all sin, for us, right? That's a judicial act, and when he was made sin for us, the Father said, nice going Jesus, we're done now.

No. He died. Why did he die? Why did he die? Sure, God set up the principle, don't you remember in the garden? The soul that sins, it will surely die. He told Adam, in the day that you sin, you will die. In dying, you will die. So God set up the consequence, and you know what?

If you know anything about God's righteousness and holiness, there was no other consequence to be had. Does that make sense? Are you picking up on that? There wasn't 40 years of hard labor or I'll do these other things. Death was the only remedy, I'm sorry, the only consequence for sin. So here's the father and the son. They decided about how to solve the sin issue, didn't they? They didn't call us up and ask us, what do you think about our plan? It was a transaction between the father and the son.

If you become a man, and die for the sins of the world, I will raise you up." And the Lord Jesus said, OK, I'll do it. So when he's on the cross, here is this father as the judge, he's condemned his son because now he's identified with sin, and his son dies, separates from God, pays the penalty for every single sin ever, so that the righteousness of God is satisfied.

There's no grace in that deal. You see any grace there? Grace comes in when God decides graciously to extend the benefits to you and me. Did he have to do that? Why didn't he? Because in order for there to be grace, there can't be any debt. You see that? What was your debt to God? Sin. Your just payment was condemnation, right? So here's this transaction that's now completed. Christ has died. He raises Christ from the dead. At that point, God doesn't have to do anything with mankind. He can say, you know what?

You guys really upset me. I'm satisfied about sin. I'm not going to save a one of you. Because none of you deserve it. I'm done with you. Couldn't he have done that? And he'd been totally righteous in doing it. No one would have said to him, yeah, but. There aren't any yeah buts.

He says, you know, I love you and I'm a gracious God. I'm going to extend my salvation that my son accomplished to you. But here's how you get it. You get it by a non-meritorious act. You have to believe me when I tell you what I did about it. And if you believe me, the credit is in what you believe, not the fact that you're believing.

So, to answer this question, when God is dealing with the sins of the unsaved, His dealing with it is not gracious. It's judicial. Everybody understand that? When He's dealing with me, the sinner, that's gracious. But when He's dealing with the sins of the lost, that's not gracious.

I was just thinking, you know, in our society today, we just, back to the absolutes, we don't realize that he's really serious about it. And there's no other option. Yeah. Mike, it's kind of interesting. We noticed, it seems to be popular now, some notable person in society, a lot of them are athletes, will commit some sin, some notable sin, not that they aren't. But what's interesting in there, they spent some time in jail or whatever, and they'll come back and say, well, I'm a good person.

So they totally don't recognize... I promise I'm not going to kill any more dogs. It's kind of an interesting thing in our society. They don't recognize that they don't have a problem. I'm a good person. That makes it okay. What's interesting about that is that I'm the good person. When it comes to a human being standing before God, God is a good person, you're not.

And he extends his grace to you because of the Lord Jesus Christ satisfying him. We get a judicial pardon of a debtor in view of the fact that the debt has been fully paid by another. And that's an important point, because could you have paid your own debt? You couldn't, right? So, you know, like it or not, you're dependent. You're totally dependent on somebody else to take care of your debt for you, right? What's that?

So Schaefer says, when God thus forgives absolutely and eternally through the cross of Christ, he's acting as a judge. By his judicial decree, he sets aside forever all condemnation. On Wednesday night, we're studying Romans, and we're right there in 3.22.3.4, where the grace of God has come in on salvation. And you have to look at those passages as though you were watching Perry Mason. Some of you guys are pretty young, you don't know Perry Mason. a trial, you know, and the prosecutor has made his case, everybody's guilty before God, enter Christ, enter the judicial judgment carried out on him, and God acting as a judge can now declare those who believe in Christ, no condemnation.

He can do it. Such judicial forgiveness, which guarantees an unchangeable standing and position in sonship, should not be confused with the father's forgiveness towards his sinning child, and we'll talk about that next, which is holy within the family relationship and which restores the lost.

Every unsaved person is under a three-fold sentence of sin. What's a three-fold sentence of sin? If you read the paper, you know. If you didn't, you're in trouble. You're not under my grace. Every human being is a sinner by practice, he's a sinner by nature, and he's a sinner by divine decree. So God deals with this three-fold aspect of sin with grace. That's how he deals with it. Now, there is forgiveness for man in view of the fact that he is a sinner by practice, right? There is imputed righteousness for man in view of the fact that he is a sinner by nature. I disagree with that statement. Do you think you get imputed righteousness? I just mentioned it five minutes ago. Does God impute his righteousness, Christ's righteousness to you? How many think he does? How many think he doesn't?

Boy, you're all chickens. Cowards, all of you. No, he doesn't. There you go. See, he doesn't impute anything to you. What does he do to you? He puts you in Christ. You don't have it as a separate entity. It wasn't willed to you. Because you're in Christ, you have his very righteousness.

And so I disagree with Schaeffer on that point. Does everybody know why? There is a divine decree of justification for man in view of the fact that he is a sinner who by divine decree is under sin. So if by divine decree you are under sin, by believing in the person and work of Christ, by divine decree you are in Christ.

He doesn't. So judicial forgiveness itself is not an act of grace. Everybody understand that now? If you don't, raise your hand and we'll talk about it a little more. Judicial forgiveness is not an act of grace, because judicial forgiveness is based on the work of Christ and His Father. Was the Father acting gracious towards the Son on the cross? Was Christ acting gracious the other way on the cross?

There was no grace there. It was a horrible thing. It was justice being carried out. See that? So no grace. Why doesn't grace appear then in the immediate dealings with the sins of the saved? I already talked about the unsaved. Oh, by the way, let's get something else clear.

If you're unsaved, What does God say to you in terms of what must I do to be saved? What must you do? You must believe. If you're already a believer, and you were out with Courtney on Saturday night sinning, what must you do about those sins? Confess. I don't want, we don't need to get those two confused. A non-believer believes, a believer confesses. Now the religion I came from, confession was everywhere. It wasn't whether you believed or not, it was whether you confessed or not.

So why doesn't grace appear in the immediate divine dealings with the sins of the saved? And the answer should be pretty close to what we just did. Why doesn't it appear? When you go to God, after spending the night out with Courtney, and you confess your sins, is there grace involved in that?

Why can't God forgive your sins? Because they've been judged. They've been judged, see? They've been through the judicial process, maybe is a way to say it. It's not grace that forgives you. God doesn't act just because he's a good guy. With the sins of the unsaved, as with the sins of the saved, he took care of the issue via Christ on the cross.

You see that? That's a really important point to understand. What if you forget one? I'm confessing. I got the six and I forgot what it was. I guess I'm not forgiven for that one, right? Why does he forgive you for all of them? Because Christ took care of all of them. Not just the ones you confess. You see that? He took care of all of them. So what if you don't confess? You know, you're hard-headed, or you're just... You're out of fellowship, because when a believer sins, he's out of fellowship. It doesn't affect his standing and all.

But what if you just say, you know what, I kind of like the sinning thing. Kind of cool. And sometimes we do that too. Yeah, we do. So if God says, ah, gee, that Mike, you know, I had him coming along, you know, and now he won't confess. What does God do about that? He just gets the consequences. And the consequences come towards me, right. And in 1 Corinthians 11, what does he say? He says, you need to judge yourself.

And if you don't, I'm going to do it. You see the grace in that? Here I am on a fellowship as a believer, sinning along, and I've decided I'm not judging myself. I'm not going there. God says, OK, I'll pick up the slack. Like you say, I start suffering from the consequences of what I'm doing, all designed to restore me to fellowship.

He can do that graciously. because he resolved the sin issue judicially. You see that? You don't suffer the punishment of a sin you committed just because God is mad at you or because he wants you to pay the consequence. He does it to restore you to fellowship because he's already taken care of the condemnation. He already has done that. That make sense?

So you guys, if you're a sinner like me, you think, oh boy, that gives me a lot of license, doesn't it? No, it really doesn't, because what happens is, is I begin to understand the grace of God that got me to where I am. That He came and judged me, and He restored me. I paid a more severe price than I would have otherwise paid, but I'm thankful that He did it. Is that okay? I know some of you are blinking and thinking, oh boy, I've been getting by with it this long.

God has been on vacation. The basis is all out of love. And that's the thing. Sometimes I think God's got a big stick and he's just waiting for me to step out of line. He's going to correct me. And that's so wrong. He's not there with a big stick just wanting to whack me whenever I do something wrong. And there's a lot of times I feel that way. You know, he wants to correct me. And that's all he wants to do. He's in the garage waiting for you to mess up. It's like, how bad is that? He's always out of luck.

Well that's one of the reasons why on Tuesday we spent so much time talking about intimacy and grace because the original plan, plan A for God when he created man was to do what? He created man in his image and likeness. Why did he do that? He didn't create my German Shepherd in image and likeness. He created man in his image and likeness. Why did he do that? He wanted fellowship with the man. He wanted to be able to love the man and get love back. He wanted to be able to communicate and share his personhood. So, you know, Adam messes that deal up. And so we go and we get to the cross. Has God's plan changed? It's still the same plan. So here we are, you know, all of us Christians, we've got all of these systems of religion going, we forgot the plan. The plan is still the same.

He wants to have fellowship with us. And if we don't get the intimacy part, which is the integral part of what Christianity really is, then we end up religious. and we end up doing a bunch of systems so that if we have intimacy with Christ and I sin, I know it. Because the intimacy goes away. If I have an intimate relationship going with my wife and I do something that displeases her, I know it. Not because she tells me, I just know it.

See, that's why intimacy with Christ is so important in terms of spiritual growth. Because then when you do sin, the fellowship is broken immediately and it's like, wow, that's a blow to you. Does that make sense? Is that the second Bill? No. Go ahead.

Okay, I was going back to something that you said earlier that when we sin and don't confess it, that we didn't judge ourselves? Judge ourselves is to take account of what we've done and confess so that we can be restored to fellowship. Yeah, but I thought it was kind of more of a not judging ourselves but kind of like what you said with your wife is more like knowing it and that knowing it is kind of grace that we figure that out without actually having to judge And which we do. And the word confession means to say the same thing. Which means I agree with God not about me being a sinner, but about me being a son. And I have been acting inconsistent with what being a son is. I confess that I've been doing that. I also confess that I am your son. I am your son. And I have been out of fellowship.

And his part is that he will restore us to fellowship, forgive us our sins, and cleanse us from only the sins we committed? No, from all unrighteousness. He's more desirous of that intimacy than we are. Because it's his plan. See that? Thank you. All right, we've got to close. Father, how we thank you for your grace. But mostly, Father, we thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray in his precious name. Amen.